If you would like to hire a decent shop, there are boutiques and larger firms available, but they will charge $40-50/hour, not $15.
And at that point it's just easier to hire local developers.
I just don't get the push to hire cheap people. Even if you do find someone who is a rock star in the Philippines for cheap they might work for 3-6 months before job hopping again. Any sizable business is going to have systems and businesses processes that take time to learn and if you're constantly churning through people you end up not getting much real work done.
Unfortunately, it's because you're a programmer that understands the actual cost of software development. Believe me, there are many "business" people that don't understand software and never will. They see stories on the news of teenagers developing million dollar iPhone app in a weekend and think "Wow, this must be so easy."
And because they don't understand the difficulty (especially with larger systems) they don't understand why paying one developer $75/hr is probably better than paying one $15/hr. (I say probably because I have come across people charging high rates that weren't really that productive). As a business person who probably can't be that much more productive than the next person, they don't understand how a programmer could really be more productive and get things done in much less time.
To give you an example. On my last contract I was hired near the start of the project. And even though it was near the start, I could tell from the code that this was headed towards a disaster. Eventually I got things cleaned up and got it released for them and they are making money from it. They went through 5 other developers and I ended up being the only one near the end. I left shortly after one of the company owner's comments got passed down to me. He said "Why are we paying this guy so much when we could just hire high school students at $10/hr."
People like that will just not understand the difference and look only at the hourly rate.
And at that point it's just easier to hire
local developers.
No it isn't. Even if you're in the Bay Area, the local talent pool is small, as demand outweighs supply. If you're not Google, or Facebook, or a startup with the potential of being the next Google or Facebook, then you'll get scraps.
There is a wide continuum between what the Googles of the world hires and 'scraps.'[1] You're also falling into the all developers are on HN and live in SV trap. What most businesses would do best with is to hire a small team of good devs who can learn the business and do more than just development. This will require more up front work from the business, but will get the project (and others) complete much easier in the long run.
[1] I've never interviewed at any of those so maybe I'm scraps. Every company I've worked for though is still using my software internally to make them better than their competitors.
And at that point it's just easier to hire local developers.
I just don't get the push to hire cheap people. Even if you do find someone who is a rock star in the Philippines for cheap they might work for 3-6 months before job hopping again. Any sizable business is going to have systems and businesses processes that take time to learn and if you're constantly churning through people you end up not getting much real work done.