If you are comparing alternatives to BairesDev
This article is about how CodigoDelSur works, so you can decide whether it is the shape you want. We are a software development company in Uruguay, building products since 2007, with a team of about 140 people. That size is the point of most of what follows.
You pick the people, by name
We send you CVs once you sign off the role brief, and you run whatever interview process you run for your own hires. Nobody joins your team without your yes, and nobody is swapped for someone else without your yes either.
A full time engineer works for one client only: your standups, your sprint planning, your Slack. Their employment, payroll and career are our responsibility, not yours. If you only need part of a person we do offer part time engineers, and a part time engineer is assigned to a maximum of two projects, never more. We tell you which of the two you are getting before you sign, because "dedicated" is a word this industry uses loosely.
You talk to the engineers, not only to an account manager
You do get an account manager, and on a dedicated team you also get a project manager on our side, included at no additional cost. But neither of them stands between you and the people writing the code. The engineers are in your channels and in your ceremonies, and when something is wrong you hear it from the person who found it.
That is easier to promise than to keep, and the thing that keeps it honest is the time zone. Our engineers work 10:00 to 19:00 Uruguay time, which is UTC minus 3: the entire US East Coast working day, five to six hours of live overlap with the West Coast, and an afternoon overlap with Europe. Shifting the day an hour later widens the Pacific overlap without asking anyone to work nights, and it is the reason this arrangement is still working in month twelve rather than quietly falling apart in month three. The longer version of that argument is in nearshore vs offshore.
The team is shaped around your product, not around a bench
Three different products get sold under the same word, "outsourcing", and picking the wrong one is the most expensive mistake in this category. The table below is the short version. What matters for this comparison is the middle column: on a dedicated team we staff and coordinate the group, but you own the roadmap and you approve every person on it.
Design and QA come from the same team when the work needs them, so you are not coordinating a second vendor to get a screen reviewed or a release tested.
How fast someone actually starts
Five business days from signed agreement to first day is the standard. If the engineer is already on our bench and your side is ready to receive them, they can start as soon as the next business day.
What varies is finding the right person, not starting them. If the profile is on our bench you get CVs one business day after you sign off the role brief. If the role has to be recruited, first CVs take about five business days. We tell you which of the two you are in on the first call, before you have signed anything, because that is what actually moves your start date.
What you commit to, and what it costs
The minimum project size is $10,000, roughly one engineer for one month, and the shortest engagement we sign is two weeks, one sprint. That is short on purpose: the first sprint works as a trial with real work instead of a test project.
There is no recruiting fee, no placement fee and no management fee. Billing is per sprint, Net 14, or monthly if your finance team prefers, with volume discounts of 5 percent from five people and 10 percent from seven. What an engineer costs depends on seniority and on what the role covers, and you get the number in writing before you commit to anything.
If someone is not working out
You tell your account manager and we replace the person at our cost. There is no charge for the search and no penalty for asking. The outgoing and incoming engineers overlap for ten business days so that context, access and work in progress transfer inside the engagement instead of landing back on your team, and those ten days are not billed: during the handover you keep paying exactly what you were paying for one engineer.
We would rather absorb that than have you carry a bad fit for a quarter, and a company that will not put a replacement policy in writing is telling you something.
Who owns the code
You do, exclusively. Everything created for you is assigned to you with full title guarantee: source code, application logic, APIs, integrations, data models, configurations, UI and UX designs, documentation and any derivative works. The assignment covers the deliverables as they are created, it is not conditional on final payment, and it is not a licence back to you, it is ownership.
Every CodigoDelSur employee signs a non disclosure agreement and an intellectual property assignment as a condition of employment. In practice we also work inside your repositories and your cloud accounts, so in most engagements the code never lives anywhere else to begin with.
What long looks like
The best evidence that a partner works is that clients stay, so here are engagements measured in years rather than sprints.
MILC Group: nine years as their software partner, building the ONE dairy platform end to end, backend, web and offline first native apps. It ended the way these should end, with a planned handover to their in house team.
Skout: we supported the iOS and Android engineering from a 5,000 user MVP through to a platform that reached 300 million users at its peak.
Emeritus: our engineers embedded with their product teams to expand a learning platform across web and mobile, for learners at more than 80 universities. That is the dedicated team model in its natural habitat.
Litify: four Ruby on Rails developers shipped the case referral MVP in four months, then built case management over the following two years.
Supreme Golf: we refactored 90 percent of the iOS and Android apps, which cover more than a million tee times across 13,000 courses in 41 countries.
When we are not the right call
If you need fifty engineers next quarter, you want a vendor built for that volume and we are not it: we are about 140 people in total and we staff carefully. If your budget is below $10,000, our minimum project size, a freelancer you hire directly will serve you better. And if what you want is a supplier you never have to talk to, our way of working will feel like more contact than you asked for.
We say all three on the first call rather than after the contract.
Frequently asked questions
Do I talk to the engineers directly, or only to an account manager?
Directly. You get an account manager, and on a dedicated team a project manager on our side at no extra cost, but the engineers are in your channels and your ceremonies. Nothing is routed through a single point of contact.
How big is the team, and will we be a small client for you?
We are about 140 people. That is large enough to staff a full product team with design and QA in house, and small enough that a four person engagement is a real client rather than a rounding error. If you need fifty engineers next quarter, we will tell you we are not the right fit.
What time zone do your engineers work in, and how much overlap will I get?
Our engineers work 10:00 to 19:00 Uruguay time, which is UTC minus 3. That covers the entire US East Coast working day, five to six hours of live overlap with the West Coast, and an afternoon overlap with Europe. The schedule is set that way deliberately: shifting the day an hour later widens the Pacific overlap without asking anyone to work nights, and it is the reason this arrangement is still working in month twelve rather than quietly falling apart in month three.
How fast can you actually start?
Five business days from signed agreement to first day is the standard, and if the engineer is already on our bench and your side is ready to receive them, they can start as soon as the next business day. What varies is finding the right person, not starting them: if the profile is on our bench you get CVs one business day after you sign off the role brief, and if the role has to be recruited, first CVs take about five business days. We tell you which of the two you are in on the first call, before you have signed anything, because that is what actually moves your start date.
What happens if the engineer is not working out?
You tell your account manager and we replace the person at our cost. There is no charge for the search and no penalty for asking. The outgoing and incoming engineers overlap for ten business days so that context, access and work in progress transfer inside the engagement instead of landing back on your team, and those ten days are not billed: during the handover you keep paying exactly what you were paying for one engineer. We would rather absorb that than have you carry a bad fit for a quarter, and a company that will not put a replacement policy in writing is telling you something.
Who owns the code and the intellectual property?
You do, exclusively. Everything created for you as part of the work is assigned to you with full title guarantee: source code, application logic, APIs, integrations, data models, configurations, UI and UX designs, documentation and any derivative works. The assignment covers the deliverables as they are created, it is not conditional on final payment, and it is not a licence back to you, it is ownership. We also warrant that what we deliver does not infringe any third party's intellectual property, and where third party material is involved we secure the consents for both sides first. For our own pre existing components that were not written specifically for you, you get a non exclusive, irrevocable, royalty free licence to use, copy and modify them, so nothing we bring with us can be used to lock you in later. Every CodigoDelSur employee signs a non disclosure agreement and an intellectual property assignment as a condition of employment. In practice we also work inside your repositories and your cloud accounts, so in most engagements the code never lives anywhere else to begin with.
Will the engineer work only for us?
A full time engineer works for one client only. If you take someone full time they are on your product and nothing else: your standups, your sprint planning, your Slack, and for practical purposes they are part of your team, with the difference that their employment, payroll and career are our responsibility. If you only need part of a person we do offer part time engineers, and a part time engineer is assigned to a maximum of two projects, never more. We tell you which of the two you are getting before you sign, because "dedicated" is a word this industry uses loosely.
Tell us what you are trying to build
Tell us what you are building, what your team looks like today and where you are short, and we will tell you on the same call which of the three models fits, who we would put on it and how fast they could start. Start here.
