How to evaluate an offshore development team, including ours
The questions we would want a founder or CTO to ask before hiring any offshore team, what a good answer sounds like, and why the same questions are worth asking as a candidate.
Founders and CTOs who send a brief through the hire page are usually comparing us with somebody. That is the right thing to do, and we would rather they compared well than compared on price alone. These are the questions we think separate a team worth hiring from one that will cost more than its rate card, with the answer we give to each. Every answer below is already stated elsewhere on this site, so it can be checked rather than taken on trust.
It is on a careers site because a candidate should ask most of the same questions before joining. A team that answers them badly for clients usually answers them badly for its own people too.
Who is actually doing the work?
The most common gap in an offshore proposal is the distance between the people who sell it and the people who build it. Ask for names, not roles. Ask what else those people are carrying and how many hours a week you have them for. Ask whether the team is employed by the company you are signing with or subcontracted to someone else.
Our answer: design, development, automation and QA sit in DHA Phase 2, Islamabad, at GoDesign Technologies LLP. Client relationships and commercial decisions sit with GoDesign FZE in Dubai. It is one company and one team. We do not place candidates at other companies and we do not resell contractors, and during team assembly the client is told the people, what else they carry and their hours.
How much does the working day overlap?
Timezone is the cost that never appears on a quote. A question that waits overnight for an answer turns a one-day task into a two-day one, every time it happens.
Our answer: Islamabad is one hour ahead of Dubai, roughly four ahead of London and nine to twelve ahead of the United States depending on the coast. For UAE, European and UK clients the day overlaps almost entirely. For North American clients the overlap is the morning, and we run written handovers rather than pretending it is not there.
Can they show you something close to your project?
Aggregate numbers are worth checking, and ours are public: 900+ projects delivered, clients in 14+ countries, Top Rated Plus on Upwork with a 100% job success score. But a big number tells you a team has shipped, not that it has shipped your kind of thing. The better test is to ask for work close to what you are asking for, and to see what happens when there is none.
Our answer: on the first call we show work close to the brief, or say plainly that we have not done it before. The stacks we list on the hire page are ones already running in production for clients, not a list of things we could learn.
What happens when it is not working?
A long lock-in is a sign a vendor expects to need one. Ask what the commitment is and what ending it looks like, and ask what you are left holding when it ends.
Our answer: engagements run monthly with a notice period rather than a long lock-in. Client work carries handover notes, credentials in the right place and a readme, so the codebase stands up without us.
How do they handle access, and what do they refuse?
This is the question most buyers skip, and the one that says most about a team. A vendor who asks for an owner login when a staff account would do, or offers to drive your machine over a remote-desktop session instead of documenting the setup, is telling you how the rest of the engagement will be run.
Our answer: access is requested early and narrowly. A staff account, not an owner login. A DNS record added for us, not the registrar password. Scoped repository access, not the whole organisation. We decline remote-desktop setups and off-platform contact outside policy, and we decline work outside what we actually do.
A short version to take into the call
- Who, by name, is on my project, and are they your employees?
- How many hours of the working day overlap with mine?
- Show me something you built that is close to this, or tell me you have not.
- What is the commitment, and what do I keep if I end it?
- What access do you need, exactly, and what will you refuse to do?
If you are a candidate rather than a client, swap the last question for one about the work: ask what a typical assignment arrives with, and who reviews it. The answer will tell you as much about a team as anything on its perks page.