Contracting Developers...Nightmarish Lack of Control

[Evil_Jester]

General Discussion

What problems have you had hiring developers and how have you overcome them?
How do you deal with the fact that you have little control? (When you hire a developer, only 1 person
can do the job at a time).
What are your contracting guidelines?

I feel like i've given my baby to a stranger to hold onto. If I piss him off, he will poison the baby. If I'm too easy going, he won't return my baby.

This is for a single website, not a web design business.

 

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[Fox]

General Discussion

What problems have you had hiring developers and how have you overcome them?
How do you deal with the fact that you have little control? (When you hire a developer, only 1 person
can do the job at a time).
What are your contracting guidelines?

I feel like i've given my baby to a stranger to hold onto. If I piss him off, he will poison the baby. If I'm too easy going, he won't return my baby.

This is for a single website, not a web design business.

Personal referrals. Go with who has a solid reputation of successful past work.

Exactly like someone looking after a real baby (babysitter) you go with someone that a close friend or colleague recommends.

Also set stages, check work regularly for the first while, give a small job to start with before you go big and look at thier past work and the relationships they have kept with thier clients.

 

[Evil_Jester]

Personal referrals. Go with who has a solid reputation of successful past work.

Exactly like someone looking after a real baby (babysitter) you go with someone that a close friend or colleague recommends.

Also set stages, check work regularly for the first while, give a small job to start with before you go big and look at thier past work and the relationships they have kept with thier clients.

Excellent advice. Thank you

 

[Fox]

Also, and people might disagree with me on this, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. If you are using upwork and trying to get a website done for $50 then you can only blame yourself (I'm speaking generally here - not at you). If you want to have a successful business you have to be willing to hire the best talent. That still means you can find good rates but you have to do your homework.

*** Some of the best guys on here for copy, Adwords, design etc. have excellent rates. Why go elsewhere when they people have pages of advice showing they give and shit and can get results. I'm not promoting myself since I am nearly full with work anyway but I do web design for example. There are quite a few threads on guys who do it also. ***

 

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[Evil_Jester]

Also, and people might disagree with me on this, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. If you are using upwork and trying to get a website done for $50 then you can only blame yourself (I'm speaking generally here - not at you). If you want to have a successful business you have to be willing to hire the best talent. That still means you can find good rates but you have to do your homework.

*** Some of the best guys on here for copy, Adwords, design etc. have excellent rates. Why go elsewhere when they people have pages of advice showing they give and shit and can get results. I'm not promoting myself since I am nearly full with work anyway but I do web design for example. There are quite a few threads on guys who do it also. ***

I've coded several of my own websites. I designed my own html/css for this and wanted to outsource the php/mysql/java because it requires talent. I tried online contractors and I learned a ton from the hiring process, even though I wanted to kill those people.

I hired my contractor friend who is one of the best in the industry. But he has been going through too many personal/family issues at the moment. The 1 week job turned into an ongoing 2 months now.

 

[Fox]

I've coded several of my own websites. I designed my own html/css for this and wanted to outsource the php/mysql/java because it requires talent. I tried online contractors and I learned a ton from the hiring process, even though I wanted to kill those people.

I hired my contractor friend who is one of the best in the industry. But he has been going through too many personal/family issues at the moment. The 1 week job turned into an ongoing 2 months now.

That is quite similar to how I work also. I only personally know how to do HTML and CSS.

A good habit of getting into is never having only one of something critical. If its a necessary part of your chain then you need a backup.
Hire the next guy before you are stuck and maybe alternate jobs so you always have some.
Or have hi do small parts of jobs while your main guy does the other 80%.

When things are going good try picture what could go wrong and fix the issue before it fails.
When things are going bad try imagine they are going great!

 

[HoneyBadger]

I've coded several of my own websites. I designed my own html/css for this and wanted to outsource the php/mysql/java because it requires talent. I tried online contractors and I learned a ton from the hiring process, even though I wanted to kill those people.

I hired my contractor friend who is one of the best in the industry. But he has been going through too many personal/family issues at the moment. The 1 week job turned into an ongoing 2 months now.

Is it something small you are trying to code? I might be able to help you out real quick if it isn't too elaborate. Silly to think a website is holding back making sales for two months.

 

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[Evil_Jester]

Is it something small you are trying to code? I might be able to help you out real quick if it isn't too elaborate. Silly to think a website is holding back making sales for two months.

No it isn't easy, unfortunately. It is a membership site with mailing systems, and posting systems. Most of it has been finished but I don't have all the latest files

 

[HoneyBadger]

No it isn't easy, unfortunately. It is a membership site with mailing systems, and posting systems. Most of it has been finished but I don't have all the latest files

Well if he flakes out entirely let me know.

In the future in case this comes up again look into Visual Studio Team Services - it is free online source control from Microsoft where you can have him or future workers constantly checking in code. (Don't use this source as your production code/ the code that goes straight to your site). That way you can watch progress of their check ins and if they stop working you have the latest code you can give to the next guy.

He was on a down hill path as soon as he told you a week for all of that unless he was going to use one of the membership plugins for Wordpress.

 

[Evil_Jester]

With developers, it's best to set many small milestones so that you can evaluate progress and head off issues before they multiply.

Having a detailed product/design spec is important as well, so that the developer doesn't need to guess what you want, and so you can avoid costly mistakes where assumptions are made because things are not written down.

Everything was spelled out specifically. I had all the front end done and it is easy to see how the backend should work.
Also, the developer is a friend/associate of mine. I don't usually involve friends with business but he is an entrepreneur who provides valuable input. Paid $1,000. I know he is multi tasking about 4 other projects so that was a risk I took. In the long run I assessed that its better that I picked him.

Later on when i montetize the site, I want him on my team.

 

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[Justin Gesso]

Everything was spelled out specifically. I had all the front end done and it is easy to see how the backend should work.
Also, the developer is a friend/associate of mine. I don't usually involve friends with business but he is an entrepreneur who provides valuable input. Paid $1,000. I know he is multi tasking about 4 other projects so that was a risk I took. In the long run I assessed that its better that I picked him.

Later on when i montetize the site, I want him on my team.

One of the many hats I wear is to hire off developers for projects. We are very strict about the developers we hire...multiple interview rounds including personality, cultural fit, and coding challenges.

Once accepted, Junior Developers are given very specific requirements put together by Business Analysts. Senior Developers are capable of exploring architecture and requirements more on their own.

We keep close tabs on them with regular check ins. Teams do code review and QA, but that's not feasible on one-man jobs. For this, I would just expect (write into the agreement) regular status updates with specific metrics and deliverables. Developing small features one at a time can help you (as a business user of the development) understand progress.

 

[Jon L]

One of the many hats I wear is to hire off developers for projects. We are very strict about the developers we hire...multiple interview rounds including personality, cultural fit, and coding challenges.

Once accepted, Junior Developers are given very specific requirements put together by Business Analysts. Senior Developers are capable of exploring architecture and requirements more on their own.

We keep close tabs on them with regular check ins. Teams do code review and QA, but that's not feasible on one-man jobs. For this, I would just expect (write into the agreement) regular status updates with specific metrics and deliverables. Developing small features one at a time can help you (as a business user of the development) understand progress.

My company writes custom business software and we hire people overseas. I happen to have a very reliable sales rep in Pakistan and we hire developers local to him, so my experience is unique. In addition to what people have mentioned above, I would:

1) write very detailed requirements - mock up each screen with all buttons, labels, wording and features. Describe how the user will interact with each thing on each screen in exact detail
2) meet several times a week with the developer to check progress. make them describe, in detail, the logic they're going to use to accomplish your requirements
3) make them show you the code and describe for you how it will work. Make sure they put comments in the code that describes what it does. Make sure you understand the basics of what it does. (if you can't understand it, chances are other developers might not understand it either. If you're not a developer, you should be able to read through the comments in the code and get a rough idea as to what its doing. The comments should seem well thought out)
4) price and/or feedback and/or interview skills don't necessairly mean much. One particular developer I hired wasn't cheap, and he had great feedback on upwork. His work, however, was very shoddy.
5) Pay a developer friend you trust to review code your overseas developer writes on a regular basis...at least until you've developed a comfort level with the overseas dev.

 

[Evil_Jester]

Thanks for the advice everybody.

In other news,
I got laid off my normal job yesterday. Kind of saw that coming.

Until I get a new job, I'm going to search local machine shops on yellow pages online and find the ones that do not have a website. I'll call them and meet in person. I'll make a simple website and negotiate a price after it's finished. Any advice would be great. If I pick up a couple of clients I'll make a progress thread on the short term cash flow business.

 

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[nradam123]

General Discussion

What problems have you had hiring developers and how have you overcome them?
How do you deal with the fact that you have little control? (When you hire a developer, only 1 person
can do the job at a time).
What are your contracting guidelines?

I feel like i've given my baby to a stranger to hold onto. If I piss him off, he will poison the baby. If I'm too easy going, he won't return my baby.

This is for a single website, not a web design business.

Hmmm... is your problem with just 1 person doing job at a time?
Well, you can always break it down to smaller independent modules.
And synchronize all developers through GIT (BitBucket is a free software)

Now, for a single website this is too much hassle lol.

And of course if you don't know code and your developer writes badly written code you are in trouble if you want to add or change stuff in the future. Always get someone to read the code and pass quality as well.
Ask developers to write comments for each code he make.
Ask him to write a documentation.