I have connections in a country with low wages, so I can get cheap but ok/good quality devs.

What is the best way to leverage this?

Don't

Warum denn nicht?

Obviously, you can offer that labor for a competitive price on a more expensive market. But you would have to do the communications, management and quality assurance to actually affer a competitive product. So if you always wanted to be a manager and communicate with workers and clients, it might be the right thing for you.

If you start with the word "cheap" and "labor"...

I really hope that someone gives you a wake up call in regards to treating people with respect...

... Cause you sound like the kind of hooker who has no trouble sending a truck full of 40 people across the border for 3 days without food or water when it's 40 degrees celsius outside.

@IntrusionCM that escalated quickly

@IntrusionCM The thing is more like because I did not invent the disparity among labor markets in different geographic locations, I am not a villain in this story.

Labor prices form according to supply and demand. People in a given locale can even enter the labor market in different locations now because remote work is possible.

It is because they are unable to do that, that people stay and work in their local labor market. They lack English skills, or they cannot -yet- produce high quality code, for example. Or maybe they cannot properly market their skills. You bridge that gap for them and make money. You may believe this is evil, but believe you me, that they don't, because they get paid better.

@IntrusionCM Now if you would like to do something about that particular issue with capitalist markets - that is, the price disparity between locales - you would be better served by inventing your own tech-based solution to the problem instead of flaming random people on the internet.

@IntrusionCM Or maybe I misunderstood your comment. You are talking about my choice of words?

In that case, you are right, of course. My vocabulary seems to be narrowing with all the brain damage I seem to be suffering from.

this post smells of management

@maces13 Exactly.

@hardCoding so, you came to the website where different IT roles come to complain and talk shit about non IT position such as yours to mingle and ask for advice? do yourself a favor and go back to the "agree?" network aka LinkedIn.

as for your original question it's tried and failed many times before, research about offshore agencies.

@maces13 I am a developer, though, not a manager-agency founder/ceo (yet). Thanks for the advice.

@hardCoding

I'll try to start from the beginning.

The law of supply and demand isn't realistic, not by a long shot. When someone uses it as an argument, I can only shake my head as they seem to lack an understanding of how the economy works.

Or to be more specific - the law of supply and demand is a nice fictional model, as it completely ignores the fact that the price has to be made. It leaves out the crucial way of how a price is determined and who makes the price.

Which brings me back to the point of why I made you a villain in this story.

Most forms of outsourcing for a "cheaper" price is exploitation.

I could make this very long and detailed, but simply put - you make the price, you set the bar and you make it cheap.

Even if you hire via an foreign agency, the foreign agency will determine the price *in their best interest*.

Not in the interest of the dev / employee.

Which brings me back to my point and why I made you a villain.

Unless you decide the price in the best interest of the dev - you exploit them.

This applies *in general* of course.

The working from home story brought back - sadly - in management the culture of "how can we make labor cheaper though the person doesn't work less".

I'm always arguing in favor of that the company has to make sacrifices instead of the employees.

If the company argues that they can pay less because the employee moved... One should reverse the argumentation.

Why doesn't the company move for lower costs?

It's as simple as that...

Just because one is working from home in an area that has lower living costs shouldn't mean that they have to be paid less.

@IntrusionCM So capitalism. You don't like capitalism. Good. Neither do I.

So solve it, so that I don't have to do what I am about to do. Because otherwise I am absolutely going to do it.