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What is the procedure for hiring a programmer?

by hustler101
6 replies
What systems do you have in place for hiring programmers overseas?

I've been working on my apps for almost a year now for both IOS & Android

I hired a freelancer from pakistan last december whos been working on my apps for 9 months.
Long story short after 9 months I demanded that the freelancer send me the code which I quickly had to evaluate by the 3rd party whom told me that the code is of very poor quality and needs to be redone.
This freelancer from pakistan was the worst freelancer experience I ever had! Now I realize that he was learning how to code using google search while designing my app.

9 months and a few thousand dollars later I hired another programmer from Indian whom things seemed to go smoothly until a few days ago the freelancer took me off his skype and closed the project, this is 6 days after he send me a message wishing me a Happy diwali Holiday telling me we'll touch base in a few days.

This freelancer requested Graphic maps to show how all screens interconnect which I delivered.

I later saw the freelancer took on another project afew days before he deleted me from his contacts as it stated on his elance account. I'm unable to leave this freelancer any feedback because no money has been transfered.

Its hard enough finding somebody with good communication skills in India and pakistan but to find a good communication + good programming seems like an almost impossible task.

10 Epic Fails when Outsourcing to India | Learn how to make money online with affiliate marketing

After reading this article on outsourcing programmers it seems my new developer decided to act smart and take on a higher paying contract and abandon me and my projects after a month of discussions and apparently some work..

I don't have 20K to hire a local programmer to do this task so I'm stuck with these 3rd world country

How do you manage programmers overseas? What red flags do you look for? Is it possible to find a good programmer for a low cost?
How much space do you give an overseas company working for you? How do you keep communication with these guys to make sure things won't go haywire?
#hiring #procedure #programmer
  • Profile picture of the author wayfarer
    How to hire an overseas programmer really depends on your ability to manage a technical project, which means you either need some technical understanding of software, or must rely on the consulting advice of someone who is a proven good communicator.

    The fact that you believe that your budget would have to be $20K to hire someone locally shows me that you're doing something wrong right now. It doesn't matter what you're building, you should be able to put in a minimal foundation for far less than that for just about any product imaginable. I would suggest finding the minimum viable product, and developing THAT. This way there are as few obstacles as possible to success, with less details to get bogged down with later.

    Try to reduce your project description to a single paragraph, or even a single sentence. Then, reduce it to a feature list that is LESS THAN ONE PAGE. This way it is absolutely clear what you are trying to accomplish to anyone with below average English skills. In fact I recommend doing this even if you're not outsourcing.

    If all else fails, hire a consultant part-time to manage the project for you. Having oversight to help guide a process you don't fully understand can be invaluable.
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    • Profile picture of the author hustler101
      Originally Posted by wayfarer View Post

      How to hire an overseas programmer really depends on your ability to manage a technical project, which means you either need some technical understanding of software, or must rely on the consulting advice of someone who is a proven good communicator.

      The fact that you believe that your budget would have to be $20K to hire someone locally shows me that you're doing something wrong right now. It doesn't matter what you're building, you should be able to put in a minimal foundation for far less than that for just about any product imaginable. I would suggest finding the minimum viable product, and developing THAT. This way there are as few obstacles as possible to success, with less details to get bogged down with later.

      Try to reduce your project description to a single paragraph, or even a single sentence. Then, reduce it to a feature list that is LESS THAN ONE PAGE. This way it is absolutely clear what you are trying to accomplish to anyone with below average English skills. In fact I recommend doing this even if you're not outsourcing.

      If all else fails, hire a consultant part-time to manage the project for you. Having oversight to help guide a process you don't fully understand can be invaluable.
      It's not just 1 app, its 3 apps, both for IOS and Android, so we're talking 6 seperate developments right now.
      If I make it simple then they will underquote me, as soon as I'll start explaining them the full spectrum they'll raise the praise. You have to make the initial description as clear as possible!
      Do you know how many times I hired freelancers before they gave me a ridiculously low price, only to double it or even triple it once I got it all out in detail? No way! Long description prevents misunderstandings, and especially with overseas freelancers you need to spell it out to them.

      I consulted a local guy, he was charging 20K for 1 app almost as complex as mine.
      Good programmers at 60$ - 100$ an hour, yep 20K for an app thats right!
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  • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
    Months? Thousands of dollars?

    I've outsourced about 200 projects, and they're usually in the tens of dollars, lasting for a few days, or possibly weeks. The idea is to chop things up into very tiny pieces, describe them very thoroughly, and demand daily communication. (State up front that three consecutive days of silence means project termination with no pay.)

    Of course there will be problems, (my own rate seemed to be about one in six projects), but with such tiny amounts of money and time, it almost doesn't matter.
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    • Profile picture of the author hustler101
      Originally Posted by David Beroff View Post

      Months? Thousands of dollars?

      I've outsourced about 200 projects, and they're usually in the tens of dollars, lasting for a few days, or possibly weeks. The idea is to chop things up into very tiny pieces, describe them very thoroughly, and demand daily communication. (State up front that three consecutive days of silence means project termination with no pay.)

      Of course there will be problems, (my own rate seemed to be about one in six projects), but with such tiny amounts of money and time, it almost doesn't matter.

      I can outsource pretty much anybody now, except mobile programmers, it just doesn't seem to be working out.
      Have you ever outsourced programmers thought, specifically app programers?
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      • Profile picture of the author kilgore
        Sorry, but I just don't believe there is much -- if any -- of money to be saved outsourcing programming overseas -- at least if you're looking for high quality work. Yes, you may be able to find someone cheap to install Wordpress for you in a place like India or Pakistan, but once your application has any complexity at all, I think that any short-term savings you think you'll have will be quickly offset by a lack of scalability, extensability, maintainability, security and elegance -- yes, good code should be elegant, something you'll never get by cutting and pasting snippets you find on Stack Exchange.

        Note, however, that I am not at all saying that there aren't fantastic programmers overseas. India, for example, has developers every bit as good as those in the US. But quality developers in India have jobs that pay almost as much -- if not as much -- as US-based developers get paid working for state-of-the-art companies like Infosys. You certainly won't find them working on Freelancer for $5/hour. The fact is that with programmers -- as in anything else -- you get what you pay for.

        Essentially your problem seems to me like someone who is trying to start a long distance delivery company with only $250. Sure you could try to find a delivery truck for $250, but what kind of quality would you expect to get for that? It's doubtful that any truck at that price would last that long and you may be lucky that it would run at all. In that case, I'd advise you to (a) figure out a way to come up with the additional $9750 (or whatever) to buy a decent truck or (b) adjust your business model to one where you're only doing local deliveries and instead of buying a crappy truck, buy a decent bicycle.

        To my way of thinking, the latter is probably a good idea regardless. There's no reason you should be on a 9-month release schedule -- that's just crazy. So instead of trying to build your dream application from the outside, pare down the feature set to what Steve Blank and Eric Ries call the "Minimum Viable Product" (see: Minimum viable product - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or The Start-up Owner's Manual: Customer Development Experiments | Inc.com). In other words, invest in quality code, but just less of it -- at least until you're (a) sure that your idea is worth investing in by testing your pared-down app in the marketplace and (b) you have the means to fund it.
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      • Profile picture of the author David Beroff
        Originally Posted by hustler101 View Post

        I can outsource pretty much anybody now, except mobile programmers, it just doesn't seem to be working out.
        Have you ever outsourced programmers thought, specifically app programers?
        Programmers, sure, but I've never had a need for apps, myself.
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