Programmers In Thailand

[olenorg]

Does anyone know if it is possible to find highly skilled software programmers in Thailand? I have some ideas for an S60 application for smart phones and I am thinking about setting up a small R&D unit somewhere in Asia.

[freitag1]

Forget it, I can only speak about the web design and database programmers that we wanted to hire (I worked for a very well renown Thai design company) and they were all bad. I know there are some out there but they all work freelance because they made way better money this way.

Its a pity, I could see myself doing a web design company here but not after the bad experience I had. We looked for half a year and were not able to assemble a decent team. Our payment limit was 30.000 THB/month. If you want to dash out 50k you will probably be able to hire some better people.

But keep in mind some absolutely under qualified people will show up for your job interviews. I don't know whats going on with them but we had people who claimed they speak fluent english and they couldn't speak a word.

[nikster]

freitag1: I would be able to pay a very good salary, but where do I even look? Where is the place to post jobs etc? How much are freelance programmers? 50k would work out to about 315 BHT/h...

Edited February 12, 2008 by nikster

[dsys]

freitag1: I would be able to pay a very good salary, but where do I even look? Where is the place to post jobs etc? How much are freelance programmers? 50k would work out to about 315 BHT/h...

If you are interested in freelancers, do you really need them to be onsite? I would consider looking further afield - India and Australia all have a good pool of programmers and work cheaply. I tend to use guys in India for programming and people in Canada/USA/Greece for copywriting.

Have used people in Aus. for long detailed projects and have had good reults. google "getafreelancer" several siters out there that are similar.

[freitag1]

Use the typical job sites here in Thailand.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz...amp;btnG=Search

Check the links on the first two sites, jobtopgun is a big one here in Bangkok for example.

But seriously believe me. I'm a programmer myself (even though just php,mysql and script languages) and had the task to build up our multimedia department. I would never rely on Thai staff when it comes to technical things like that. You just can't compare it to first world countries.

I currently make my money online with Internet marketing and that is great. I don't even want to work for any Thai clients, but that's a different story. Doing business here with locals s#cks.

[Veazer]

Use the typical job sites here in Thailand.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz...amp;btnG=Search

Check the links on the first two sites, jobtopgun is a big one here in Bangkok for example.

But seriously believe me. I'm a programmer myself (even though just php,mysql and script languages) and had the task to build up our multimedia department. I would never rely on Thai staff when it comes to technical things like that. You just can't compare it to first world countries.

I currently make my money online with Internet marketing and that is great. I don't even want to work for any Thai clients, but that's a different story. Doing business here with locals s#cks.

My experience has been pretty much the same as Freitag1. I was assisting someone trying to develop a educational software package and it quickly grew into a disorganized unusable monster using thai programmers. They never came close to having a usable piece of software and they would miss glaringly obvious bugs that testers would see within seconds. He eventually took the job to Romania and was extremely pleased with the results he got there, but of course all the work that was done here had to be junked.

[onethailand]

I also agree. Unless you have a programming background and know exactly what the programmers are supposed to do, I think you will not easily find qualified Thai staff - the only ones who are capable make way more being independent.

[freitag1]

I also agree. Unless you have a programming background and know exactly what the programmers are supposed to do, I think you will not easily find qualified Thai staff - the only ones who are capable make way more being independent.

and if you know exactly what you want get prepared to tell them exactly what to do. You got to know that Thai people are not trained to think independently. The education system here is bad and they learn to do only what they are told. This is not just the case with programmers or people in the IT area. Instead of coming up with solutions for small problems or thinking about a best way how things should be done people here will just do exactly what they are told. As soon as there is a problem they come back to you and you have to tell them what to do next.

I came to Thailand with this great job offer building up the multimedia department of one of the best design studios here. Payment was great and the studio was "cool". Best location in Silom and everything awesome. Sounded all great but we were not able to pull it off. After half a year and without a decent team I just quit the job and since then all the jobs this studio gets are outsourced and just the project planning is done here. In the end it was me not supervising the production but actually producing things and I'm sorry but my time is a bit too valuable than doing this.

As mentioned before if you want to spend 50k a month check eastern Europe or some good Indian companies. You got to be careful with them as well. Just call former clients of them and make sure they don't sell any stolen scripts or software they just modified. Designwise especially most Indian companies s#ck in my opinion but you can get the UI design somewhere else and let them just do the coding. There are many very talented GFX artists who have no idea about programing. You should know enough about the usability callenges to give them an outline, let them make it fancy and take the project to a credible Indian or eastern European country to get it done. Then you can hire me and I show you how to market it online hahaha

By the way the local web design market is overpriced exactly because of this reason. We did so simple sites for 80 - 100.000 THB just because there were not many decent alternatives. Just the thousand changes and additions of Thai clients made working pain in the ass. If you think you have problematic clients in the west who think they know better than you then you never worked for any Thai company.

It was really funny to sit with the board of directors of a big outdoor advertising company in Thailand and they were trying to teach me about usability and design. Of course they had to look good and dominant as other people of their company were around and they are running the show like kings. My Thai translator gave them all the sweet talk they wanted to hear though

Edited February 12, 2008 by freitag1

[GmB]

I am an Italian senior PHP/MYSQL programmer and i work as freelance for some european companies.

If someone needs I am based in Phuket.

[nikster]

Thanx for the tips, I will let you know how it goes. I will be well able to judge how good the people are that I get. Finding good programmers is hard under the best of circumstances, so we'll see.

I guess the only thing that keeps me optimistic is one guy I know who is Thai and a good programmer. Of course he's since left Thailand and is now director of engineering for a mid sized U.S. company so perhaps he was an exception...

[Wolfie]

Let me know how you get on... (and i'm always looking for a new and better employment opportunity)

[swain]

Ukraine really was the best place to work up to about 2 years ago... the skill set is good and I never had a problem finding English speaking programmers. But with the decline of the dollar, inflation is out of control over there and its almost as expensive as the USA now. And USA would be my first choice over just about anywhere else. If your budget is in Euros the USA might even be a good deal as you win with the conversion.

[expat-global]

As Managing Director, my time is valuable but I waste way too much time mentoring Thai staff rather than promoting the company's business and growing the company.

Thailand is not known as a software outsourcing country. Software Park was a flop. So the same will apply in-house programmers. What you can do here is limited. I have hired Thais who taught things like Linux at various institutions, and I am shocked at what they cannot do.

Success is about productivity. I'm just about to the point of outsourcing design and programming to a western country again, and having the Thais just do the basic non-programming stuff over here. It's far from ideal, but I've been wasting my valuable time otherwise.

The problem with hiring an expat over here is so many are consumers of alcohol in large quantities or high frequency and things like that, in addition to all the paperwork and expenses.

[Wolfie]

As Managing Director, my time is valuable but I waste way too much time mentoring Thai staff rather than promoting the company's business and growing the company.

Thailand is not known as a software outsourcing country. Software Park was a flop. So the same will apply in-house programmers. What you can do here is limited. I have hired Thais who taught things like Linux at various institutions, and I am shocked at what they cannot do.

Success is about productivity. I'm just about to the point of outsourcing design and programming to a western country again, and having the Thais just do the basic non-programming stuff over here. It's far from ideal, but I've been wasting my valuable time otherwise.

The problem with hiring an expat over here is so many are consumers of alcohol in large quantities or high frequency and things like that, in addition to all the paperwork and expenses.

So your not looking to hire expats?

[RonD]

As Managing Director, my time is valuable but I waste way too much time mentoring Thai staff rather than promoting the company's business and growing the company.

Thailand is not known as a software outsourcing country. Software Park was a flop. So the same will apply in-house programmers. What you can do here is limited. I have hired Thais who taught things like Linux at various institutions, and I am shocked at what they cannot do.

The problem with hiring an expat over here is so many are consumers of alcohol in large quantities or high frequency and things like that, in addition to all the paperwork and expenses.

Agreed on many points here, and it's amazing how universally bad experiences we all seem to have here.

On my current (soon to be previous Thank God) role I was "ambushed" (being a "virgin" in Thailand) in a 2 prong attack with a corrupt Thai manager on one hand more interested in spending money on "representation" (you can guess on what the money went on) and self-preservation powerplay and a Thai technical and development staff on the other hand. There's is so much you can do, but miracles don't come by easily. I could turn the development team/technical team around, but it would take a loooong time, and with the management refusing to support me with anything that costs money (including software licenses, training for instance) it would've been a high risk adventure with low succes rate.

Software Park was a huge disappointment, There are a couple of good outsourcing companies there in my view, one of them being Hyro Consulting (but is on the expensive side). I have previously worked with Russian outsourcers with a very good success rate: Kentor, StarSoft for instance. I've also go hands-on experience with working with Indian outsourcers. I find them great, for the mechanical, and logical tasks in the software development cycle, but worse off in terms of creativity, innovativeness for instance.

He, he. So it is a real problem with western staff - drinking and letting go of work discipline. Yes, I guess it's a risk. On my part, yes, the night-life was great, and deadly addictive in the beginning- but in general I find that people been here a longer time do discipline themselves professionally.

Cheers,

J

[freitag1]

Yes, forget outsourcing the creative part to Indians. We gave some Indian companies the chance to help us with design for some smaller projects and ended up doing it ourselves. Hiring foreigner here makes somehow no sense. I mean yeah you can run a company here with foreigners but you will never find the variety of skilled persons you could find in any other western country.

What I did was not trying to change the Thais or make them a good workforce, I just looked what they can do and then made a business out of that.

[Insight]

My experience is pretty much the same as freitag1. The countless times I've seen hard-coded gunk bodged into source code for various projects is shocking, and when questioning the software developers about it they never understand why they are at fault.

The standard here will never be anywhere near export quality unless there's a significant shift in how the subject is approached by the locals. You do get developers out here with no shortage of knowledge with a particular technology - the problem has always been how they apply it.

[freitag1]

Yeah Insight exactly. We had found finally a girl that was a bit skilled but she was unable to think outside of the box after writing one sort of Java classes for two years in her previous job. If you are a programmer your main job is problem solving and this doesn't work too well if you just learn to repeat and do as you are told your whole life.

[Shah Jahan]

everything agreed above - NEVER - - -

The last Thai programmer I spoke with- when I asked her what languages she worked with - she replied proudly Thai, English and a little bit of French.

however- I have found Thai's to be great at graphic design - especially when you give them something to emulate and work off - they are good like that.

Indians are good for highly specified modules. A typically conversation with an Indian programmer will go something like this

* “Why doesn’t this program work?”

* “Because Sir, as you can see there is a call function that is necessary to complete the process.”

* “So why didnt you include the call function?”

* “Because Sir, you did not specify it in the documentation.”

* “AAAHHHHHHHH”

However I have found some gems in Jordan for detailed backend PHP,ASP work - Western quality at good prices.

Falang in LOS are not so bad- the beer drinking variety that you describe are usually the middle aged guys who taught themselves dreamweaver - not the real geeks who can use actual languages. But the real good programmers that come to LOS come here because they want out of the crap race - meaning that they require glory, purpose and freedom in addition to good pay.

[Crushdepth]

however- I have found Thai's to be great at graphic design

Yeah, great design work (anything artistic or creative) can be had in Thailand. But as far as programming skills go attention to detail, discipline and planning are in very short supply (and as a result security is a total disaster).

[freitag1]

I guess the really smart guys don't actually work for anyone anymore and just have their own sites running

[Wolfie]

I guess 'Gamers' are just too geeky for some employers also...

[freitag1]

Smart gamers have websites about their games... can't wait until war starts! I'll do a class specific website...