At first blush, admits COO Roger Green, it sounds like they’re trying to avoid U.S. taxes, regulations and pay rates. Not so, he maintains. SeaCode will be a U.S. corporation, and the ship will fall under a number of state and federal regulations. Green, who has managed outsourcing projects before, says just 10 percent of every dollar spent will go to paying developers—most of whom will probably be non-U.S. citizens. Remaining expenses will overhead—for equipment and supplies, fuel and other costs—all purchased in the U.S., the three say.

How much will developers be paid? That will depend on skill set, not country of origin. Cook says they aren’t interested in competing for “low-level, Visual Basic-type” work, but rather, enterprise-type projects that require advanced coding and project management skills. That may well mean hiring U.S. workers for some of the slots, the three say, workers who will be paid at a rate comparable to what they’d earn in the U.S.

For non-U.S. developers, “The take-home money [will be] the same as if someone was working as an H1B inside this country,” Cook says.

“We’ll pay for your skills,” Cook says. The rate may not be competitive for an L.A. developer “in the lower-level ranks,” he says, “but as you become a manager, absolutely.” As for non-U.S. workers, “you’re going to find [wages] far higher than the country you’re from. You’re getting paid so well that Indian [workers] will be able to go home and pay cash for a house.”

[T]here are several markets they’ve identified as SeaCode’s “sweet spot.” One is “projects that are under significant time constraints and are driven by market forces that are beyond the company’s direct control -- things like cell phones [and] video games --where they have multi-generations in a year and they need to have that high level of collaboration. We believe we add tremendous value to that kind of project. And also they don’t tend to be looking for thousands of bodies.”

Hey jerk-offs, how about paying Americans a decent salary? We have plenty of coders looking for work. It sounds like a joke, but it’s aupposedly dead serious (or these guys tricked this magazine). It’s beyond nuts.