Project Speaker Pierre Bisaillon STEAL PEOPLE'S WORK Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Back in October of 2012, I had the idea of going offshore to save money on a website for our start-up ProjectSpeaker.  Using oDesk (a great platform, btw!), we found a web designer under the name "Yanitsa Todorova". A person by the name Borislav Bogdanov responded under a company name Flyheart Creative. We never did get an answer why the variation in names but nevertheless, Boris showed us samples of his company's work and we agreed on a cost for the design.

We sent over a brief and although we had delays of approx. 1 week, the work was very nicely done. In fact, we asked for a few extra items and offered more than what Boris had quoted us to encourage on-time delivery.

Based on our dealings with the designs, we moved forward on having Flyheart convert the designs into HTML/CSS code and forwarded an advance. We explained how our site had dynamic pages that needed to be coded with a very specific structure to mesh with our Scala core. We were assured again and assured that they understood what this meant. Soon, it became obvious there were core aspects that Boris did not understand. After hours and hours each day over a week spent explaining what was wrong with their code and why it can't work with our system, Boris continued to send the same code for review. Repeated requests to speak to the coder were rebuffed until finally, after 2 weeks of delays, Boris finally agreed to allow us to send Skype messages to the coder as long as he was present. 

I could then understand why. The coder lashed out at us about how his code was perfect and we had no idea what we were doing. I pointed out that his code might be perfect but not for our structure. This was a complete surprise to him and it became obvious that we had been caught in the unfortunate scenario that Boris either had no understanding what our specs outlined or he was unable to communicate it properly to the freelance coder. Either way, it became obvious this inability to communicate cost our company dearly in lost revenue. After three weeks of delays and the coder refusing to fix his code, we decided enough was enough and looked elsewhere to have the designs converted. We found a domestic coder who charged us $2,700 to have the designs coded, we were finally able to launch the site and on-time. 

The structure of Flyheart was never clear to us as some days Boris presented it as his company and then other days he would say his boss is mad at him for this. Some days he would describe a team of 6 staff members working for him but the coder we messaged with was freelance. I do feel bad for Boris as I'm sure his coder is demanding payment for what he worked on but Boris would be better served to not simply respond every time to the question "Is that clear? with a "Yes, I understand" when, in hindsight, it isn't clear at all.

Although we lost a lot of time and money in this unfortunate situation, our take away is to be far more careful and ask for references from former clients before ever attempting to save costs by off-shoring. That's not to say the process of off-shoring is inherently negative but rather that given the issues of distance, time zones, language and culture, we should have dug a bit deeper into the workings of Flyheart Creative before handing over a project of this type.

Specifically to Boris' assertion that we reused his code, I welcome you to visit www.projectspeaker.com and "view the source code" so you can see for yourself that none of their code was or even could be used.