How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
dennybritz.com
How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#2Everything made sense to me except for the part about writing tests.
If you're confident you're product will have a long lifespan then tests make perfect sense. But from what I've seen most MVP's are experiments that may or may not stand up to real users.
If you're in the latter camp, writing test code is prematurely optimizing for stability.
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#3Everything made sense to me except for the part about writing tests. If you're confident you're product will have a long lifespan then tests make perfect sense. But from what I've seen most MVP's are experiments that may or may not stand up to real users. If you're in the latter camp, writing test code is prematurely optimizing for stability.
Totally agree, but I thought I wrote that ;) "If you know that you will start from scratch soon you can most likely skip the tests and focus on testing your hypotheses as quickly as possible."
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#4Everything made sense to me except for the part about writing tests. If you're confident you're product will have a long lifespan then tests make perfect sense. But from what I've seen most MVP's are experiments that may or may not stand up to real users. If you're in the latter camp, writing test code is prematurely optimizing for stability.
Only if you write unnecessary tests: e.g. for CRUD code, or for front-end UI. But when you have complex procedures with clearly defined outcomes, writing tests is never premature.
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#5So... freelancers are vampires.
Just to pick on the most obvious one:
"Freelancers want to make money. They don’t care if your business succeeds or not."
A good freelancer does care. Ignore the other ones. Good freelancers want to be involved in decisions regarding their piece of work. They take interest in what you want to achieve and try to do the best for your project. They pour in an extra hour for a bit of polish that would hurt their pride otherwise.
Freelancing leaves a lot of flexibility and ways to cut deals.
To give you an example: I had multiple prospect clients where I straight-out said "don't build that feature (now) and especially not for my price.". Quite a few ended up not doing (or delaying) the project and were very happy with the decision. All of these turned out to be lucrative events, because those clients pass you on to others with kind words. Find the ones that jump on your idea once you tell it to them and want to work with you. Enthusiasm is (relatively) hard to fake.
Also... I'll never do a fixed price project, unless you agree that: a) it is time-constrained, b) you won't change any of your wishes during the project.
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#6Everything made sense to me except for the part about writing tests. If you're confident you're product will have a long lifespan then tests make perfect sense. But from what I've seen most MVP's are experiments that may or may not stand up to real users. If you're in the latter camp, writing test code is prematurely optimizing for stability.
> If you're in the latter camp, writing test code is prematurely optimizing for stability.
Not sure test have something to do with stability. Writing test code will help document the code for the next developer who touches the hair ball and will force better definition of requisites in the MVP phase.
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#7So... freelancers are vampires. Just to pick on the most obvious one: "Freelancers want to make money. They don’t care if your business succeeds or not." A good freelancer does care. Ignore the other ones. Good freelancers want to be involved in decisions regarding their piece of work. They take interest in what you want to achieve and try to do the best for your project. They pour in an extra hour for a bit of polis…
I don't disagree with you that "good" freelancers should care, but that doesn't change the fact that (in my experience) most do not. That being said, most of my experiences were with "low price" freelancers, which probably has a high correlation with that fact.
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#8Perhaps I'm a jerk, but I don't feel bad when non-technical people get taken for a ride when hiring people for a tech-startup. I have no business trying to start a hair salon on the cheap, so why should I feel sorry for someone who feels that he can make a go at something that requires highly talented, seasoned workers?
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#9I'm currently working some freelancers on my HypedSound relaunch. The designer and frontend coder both worked on hourly billing but everything was very well-defined. Since the backend is a much more complex scope, it was hard to define hours, and I'm working with a 'variable scope and budget' that we're shooting for. I wasn't ready to commit to hourly billing. Luckily, I have an advisor looking over all the code, which I think is essential as you mentioned. Whether it's a language barrier, technical barrier, or incentive barrier to good communication, you should have someone technical on your side even if they're not doing the coding.
Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup
#10What a terrible article. There are very few actual justifications for the arbitrary claims the guy makes. Even some anecdotes (especially non-personal ones) would be better than this guy's random assertions.