The case for U.S. tech talent

Question

Hi everyone, TL;DR: In what scenario should companies hire American interns/devs instead of talent overseas? I've recently started working for a tiny, fully remote startup as a technical team lead, and I'm in the position to potentially hire an intern for the summer. However, the discussion came up on the value of hiring a college intern in the US (where it is much more expensive) versus hiring from Eastern Europe (where costs are much lower). For context, I am the only American dev in the company, while the other devs are from Eastern Europe. One of the founders (who comes from a non-technical background) asked about the value of hiring an American student. As this is my first leadership dev role, it is my first time thinking about hiring issues, and I've always operated under the assumption that what you pay for is what you get. I've only briefly read anecdotes about overseas hiring of talent causing headaches (Mostly from India), and I've never managed a team before, so I'm really uneducated on the topic. However, after working with Eastern European devs, I'm not so sure anymore. The current dev team is great, and from my limited perspective, we're meeting goals at a fraction of the labor cost. I'm interested in hearing more about your experiences and make the case for or against hiring U.S. talent for a lean startup focused on efficient spending.

randyburden · Accepted Answer

I ran an intern program for a year as a software development leader at a previous job. About 25 interns ran through the program that I created. Each intern was paired with a full-time mid to senior-level developer. Out of the interns, only about 5 were decent and required very little handholding while the others required quite a bit of work to answer their questions and keep them on task. Of those 5 decent interns, I only offered full-time employment offers to 2 of them. I believe we paid $16-$20 per hour (the executive team set that rate) and most worked around 10-20 hours per week while a few were able to work upwards of 30-35 hours.
I can only speak for my experience, but I couldn't make it work financially and we would have gotten a lot more done had we used those funds to pay for 1 or more nearshore or offshore resources. It created a fun environment and I think everyone learned and grew from the experience, but from a productivity and financial point of view, I don't think it was worth it.
So based on your experience with Eastern European devs, I think your money would be best spent on hiring 1 or more additional devs from Eastern Europe.