Recruit Thai Devellopers : Experience Anyone ?

[pol123]

hi there,

Anyone have any experience about recuiting ( as employee ) thai prorammers, devellopers, graphist, etc... Possible to find good peole in thaland ? For how many bath/mouth ? Condition ?

thanks,

Pol.

[~G~]

Do you need them to speak English? If the answer is yes, you will pay a premium for that. There are many good programmers out there, unfortunetaly only a small percentage of them speak good enough English to take instructions and report to a non-Thai speaking boss.

[laxman1960]

hi there,

Anyone have any experience about recuiting ( as employee ) thai prorammers, devellopers, graphist, etc... Possible to find good peole in thaland ? For how many bath/mouth ? Condition ?

thanks,

Pol.

Are you looking to start a company here? Or need work performed? I have several colleagues in the IT business here with development staff in place who could do the work on contract. PM me for details.

Dan

[pol123]

hello, thanks for all reply ...

1rst i want to say that to being programmer and not speak english is very "bizarre" no ?

well i can speak and read thai my self but i work with french people and speaking english is very usefull !

Dan : thank for your proposition for now it's too soon but i'll keep your nick !

thanks you.

pol.

[~G~]

1rst i want to say that to being programmer and not speak english is very "bizarre" no ?

It is Bizzare, Sad but true.

well i can speak and read thai my self but i work with french people and speaking english is very usefull !

If you can handle communication in Thai with your programmers, then salaries can be as low as 10,000 - 12,000 baht for a fresh graduate, around 15,000 baht for a programmer with a bit of experience, and higher, accoding to experience, qualifications and field.

[listenup]

Do you need them to speak English? If the answer is yes, you will pay a premium for that. There are many good programmers out there, unfortunetaly only a small percentage of them speak good enough English to take instructions and report to a non-Thai speaking boss.

I wonder how many programmers/designers you have taken on here in Thailand.

Last week I interviewed 16 programmers/designers, all spoke reasonable English, enough to communicate the project requirements.

I recommend advertising on jobdb.com, you will need a thai company set up to advertise on the site. jobtopgun is another site but I get a better response from jobdb.com

PM me if I can be of any help.

[~G~]

Do you need them to speak English? If the answer is yes, you will pay a premium for that. There are many good programmers out there, unfortunetaly only a small percentage of them speak good enough English to take instructions and report to a non-Thai speaking boss.

I wonder how many programmers/designers you have taken on here in Thailand.

Last week I interviewed 16 programmers/designers, all spoke reasonable English, enough to communicate the project requirements.

I recommend advertising on jobdb.com, you will need a thai company set up to advertise on the site. jobtopgun is another site but I get a better response from jobdb.com

PM me if I can be of any help.

I have interviewed over 50 designers/programmers during the last year and less than a dozen spoke good enough english. Candidates came from Jobsdb.com. jobbees.com, thaiitjobs.com, jobthai.com, and bangkok post. We may differ in the English level we seek. I have seen enough people that gave the impression they understand and managed to communicate on some level during the interview but did not really understand project's requirements when it came down to it - that could only be discovered by the results of their work and not always from an interview. I do agree that the English level of candidates from Jobsdb.com is on average higher than the rest.

Frankly I find that with sales people or administrative I don't need them to speak a high level of English. My Thai is enough to instruct them and their Thai or English is enough to report back. But when discussing subtleties of a programming project the average English level is not satisfiable for me.

My point was higher salary for those that speak good English vs. those who don't. If you have employed enough Thais I believe you could not have missed it.

Edited July 12, 2006 by ~G~

[Soju]

For a large project requiring multiple software engineers, it makes sense to hire one Thai manager who has excellent English skills and then hire low-level engineers who's English may not be the greatest. The manager is then responsible for all English communications and sees to it that the engineers understand perfectly. My experience has been that this is how it's down around the world. If the project is too small this can't be done, but for large projects it makes it much easier to find qualified engineers for a reasonable price.

[~G~]

For a large project requiring multiple software engineers, it makes sense to hire one Thai manager who has excellent English skills and then hire low-level engineers who's English may not be the greatest. The manager is then responsible for all English communications and sees to it that the engineers understand perfectly. My experience has been that this is how it's down around the world.

I'd agree with that.

If the project is too small this can't be done, but for large projects it makes it much easier to find qualified engineers for a reasonable price.

Correct. The salary of this project manager will be far from the average Thai programmer's.

[Lotti -1]

hi there,

Anyone have any experience about recuiting ( as employee ) thai prorammers, devellopers, graphist, etc... Possible to find good peole in thaland ? For how many bath/mouth ? Condition ?

thanks,

Pol.

Just a quick question what industry is you're working in?? and is it just thai employees you are loking for??

[Oleg_Rus]

****

Forget about local programmers, if you're in bigger project - deal with indians, despite some communication issues, they do such job 10 times better than locals. Example - True, they employed pretty big bunch of ind's ...

as designers - I think Eastern Europe. Again - locals can only copy, not create

[kiakaha]

****

Forget about local programmers, if you're in bigger project - deal with indians, despite some communication issues, they do such job 10 times better than locals. Example - True, they employed pretty big bunch of ind's ...

as designers - I think Eastern Europe. Again - locals can only copy, not create

I agree on the Indians. Cost effective, great quality work, not afraid to talk in meetings or challenge your opinion on a technical matter in order to arrive at the best collaborative decision.

Generally more fun to work with too in terms of comradery...you only have to talk about cricket and you'll immediately get on great , and 100 times more likely to come to the pub with you on Friday ....the thai guys prefer stay at work and eat somtum

try these guys :

NIIT

NIIT (Thailand) Ltd.

1206, Level 12, River Wing West

Empire Tower

195 South Sathorn Road

Yannawa, Sathorn

Bangkok 10120, Thailand.

Phone: + 662 670 0735-41

Fax: + 662 670 0742

[appleman_thai]

Got to disagree that the Thais are uncreative.

I have worked for 5 years in IT development here and have had some excellent Thai developers working with me. It took some time to encourage them to come up with their own ideas but once they got some confidence up there was no stopping them.

It does take some initial effort but the rewards are great.

[pol123]

Got to disagree that the Thais are uncreative.

Agree with you, and i will say more... "To be or not be" cretive is nothing to have with the fact you are thai or not, it's more about life, experience, culture, education.. and inspiration

Dont say that every "Farang" are creative

[Crushdepth]

I'm going to dissent with some of the above opinion - fantastic graphic artists available in Thailand. Wonderful. But language is a bit of a hassle (if you don't speak Thai).

[Soju]

Got to disagree that the Thais are uncreative.

Agree with you, and i will say more... "To be or not be" cretive is nothing to have with the fact you are thai or not, it's more about life, experience, culture, education.. and inspiration

Dont say that every "Farang" are creative

I have to also agree with what's being said. Nothing wrong whatsoever with Thai professionals as long as you find the right people. There are good and bad people from all countries in all professions. It's up to you to make a good judgement about their capabilities and potential before hiring them. I've meet some excellent Indian engineers and also some who were absolutely terrible. Likewise with farang engineers, Thai engineers, and just about every country. Brilliance, or lack of it knows no geographical boundaries, although they also have to have a proper education which can be difficult to get in some countries or for people of a lower economic class.

I should add that in my experience, poor performance by the staff of a particular nationality is usually a sign of poor management and/or lack of management's ability to adapt to another culture. The problem is typically with the management and not with the staff. If you're managing Thai professionals, you have to understand about Thai culture and accept it and learn how to motivate your staff and to communicate with them and for your staff to communicate with each other. Differences in culture and language can often be huge barriers to effective management if the managers don't have experience in managing people of various nationalities. I have made a career out of managing technical professionals from all walks of life and have seen successful farang managers in their home countries become absolute failures when trying to bring their management style abroad to work in a foreign or international setting.

Proper management and careful hiring of the right people will yield excellent results with Thai professionals or any professionals.

Edited July 17, 2006 by Soju

[sting01]

First what mean exactly IT worker :

Are you looking for a photoshop/illustrator guy?

A flash designer?

A java enginer?

A PErl/php/javascript/python .... wizard?

A SQL expert (including Oracle)?

A network security professional?

.........

Are you looking to run some web developemnt business, or going to outsource some big projects for major companies?

The needs are not the same, and in some case you will hardly find suitable people here (or you will have to pay a price comparable to a western specialist).

Easy to find here is Java enginer, in more you have a big bunch of so called graphist expert/web guru (I will restrain myself to quote those people).

On the other hand, I hardly found in 5 years any real professional scripters (Perl/php/javascript/python), nor SQL litterate. Those I met where or expats relocated in Bkk by their company , or thais with an impressive experience in international corparate (so not really local people nor earning local wages).

Uncreative but copy can also apply to indian coders (more than to thai coders), the difference btw both is simple : Indians coders mostly have huge portfolios of already stolen programs and by so are able to adapt them immediatly to your needs.

Beware , what I am saying is a generalisation, by so if true with big number, it's WRONG for many individual case.