Ask HN: Best practices for hiring software contractors?

I'm interested in any guide to this - what I need in the contract, how to protect myself, how to find good contractors, etc.

You get what you pay for.

There are expensive outfits that deliver piles of shit too.

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2016/09/post_183.html

Here is a stock agreement template to get you started. It has some language which attempts to provide limitation of liability, but your particular state may have specific language or case law which you'd be better speaking to a lawyer about.

https://www.docracy.com/6285/independent-developer-or-contra...

As for finding good contractors, that is arguably the real challenge. You can do this yourself, or work with a recruitment agency. In either case, you tend to get what you pay for -- especially with contractors, where you are not necessarily going to be providing training, as in the case of an employee.

If you choose to forgo using a recruitment agency, there are many places you can look for developers, LinkedIn being a good place to start. You can either post a job opening there, or actively search for and contact potential candidates (this is the typical domain of a recruiter -- a dog eat dog world.)

PS. This may sound obvious, but please don't expect to treat a contractor like an employee. In general, a contractor gets to decide when, where, and how the job gets done. If you expect to micromanage your project, then you should consider hiring an employee. The exception to this would be if you contract through an agency, in which case your "contractor" is really "someone else's employee."

One thing you have to figure out is if you want to contract freelancers directly (or through a recruiter), or work with a software development agency who can provide you with a full team and also offer other services like project management or hosting. See e.g. https://www.quora.com/Is-a-software-agency-or-an-individual-...