The Philippines has a lot to offer when it comes to software development. The country has a large pool of talent and a growing economy. Additionally, the cost of living in the Philippines is relatively low, making it an attractive destination for outsourcing software development.
There are several reasons why the Philippines is a good choice for outsourcing software development. First, the country has a large pool of talented workers. Second, the cost of living in the Philippines is relatively low. You can find more information via a post on fullscale.io.
Why did we choose to outsource software development to the Philippines? Why do we feel the Philippines is the best offshore destination for our clients? We get these questions a lot.
Let’s take a step back first and ask a bigger question:
Why Hire Offshore Developers?
Let’s look at the realities of the current market:
To summarize, in the current US job market, developers are extremely hard to find, increasingly expensive to employ, and virtually impossible to hold onto.
So, as a CTO or tech lead, if you need talented developers and you need them now, what do you do? If you can afford $150,000/yr+ salaries, a $100k signing bonus, and a 25% recruiter fee, you can likely poach some great software developers. Just be prepared for them to jump ship within 12 to 18 months.
Our founders at Full Scale faced this problem in 2018 with their tech companies, Stackify and Gigabook. They needed developers but would only get a trickle of applicants when they posted job openings.
When you’re VC-backed with a mandate to scale up and accelerate growth, you’ve got to cast a wider net to fill that talent pipeline. For many tech companies, offshoring is the best way to survive (much less thrive) in the current market.
Why Outsource Software Development To The Philippines?
We’ve done work with developers all over the world. There are talented, brilliant engineers everywhere. So why did we base our international outsourcing operations in the Philippines? Here are a few of the major factors:
The Philippines has been educating a large pool of software engineers
While the US is minting an estimated 54,000 Computer Science graduates each year, the Philippines reported 73,000 new IT grads in 2017. There were even concerns of oversaturating their local market with software developers a few years back. Cebu and Manila have a vast pool of talent to draw from.
Still not convinced? How many applications did you receive for your last developer position? For the open roles we had last month, we received approximately 1,000 applications. We have developed a reputation in the Philippines as a great employer and an exciting place to work, so we’re able to have our pick of the top talent.
Political and Economic Stability
Compared to other parts of the world, things are (relatively) stable in the Philippines. Eastern Europe and Russia have been completely devastated this year. China’s posture toward the United States is increasingly adversarial, and it is notoriously difficult to protect IP. Many parts of Central/South America and Africa are crippled by corruption and hyperinflation.
The Philippines, by contrast, has been very welcoming to American business investment and makes it comparatively easy to do business.
Cultural Compatibility
Historically, the Philippines was a Spanish colony for roughly 250 years. Names of places and people are ongoing reminders of those Spanish roots. It’s also a heavily Catholic country, another thing that the Spanish imported.
In 1898, the Philippines became an official US territory and began to absorb American culture and language. Even after becoming independent, they’ve remained closely aligned with the United States. American movies and music are popular there, and as a heavily Christian country, there’s much overlap with our holidays.
English Language Proficiency
Many schools in the Philippines teach exclusively in English, beginning in elementary school. A considerable part of their economy is built around business process outsourcing (BPO), so English language skills have been built into their educational system.
Our Own Past Experience
We have worked with developers in many countries with mixed results. There are brilliant developers worldwide, but it takes a lot more to build a successful team.
Our experience has been that, on average, our developers in the Philippines have great attitudes, they’re enjoyable to work with, and they are incredibly dedicated. We have clients who have experienced zero churns over their first 1-2 years with teams of up to 10 people. Retention rates like that are unheard of in the US.
If you’re looking for hard-working, talented developers with excellent English skills, the Philippines is a great place to start.
Ready To Hire Developers In The Philippines?
Full Scale can help you do it quickly and affordably if you’re looking to ramp up your development team. Our developers have delivered over 2 million coding hours for clients. We’re fast approaching 300 full-time developers on our team, all working full-time directly for clients.
Our talent portal allows you to browse available candidates based on tested, verified proficiency and schedule interviews in minutes!
To see who’s available to join your team, just take 2 minutes to answer a few questions!
This content was originally published here.
