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How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

dennybritz.com

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Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#11

Post by StavrosK »

Argorak wrote: post #5

So... 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 agree, a lot of this sounds like he just found bad freelancers. I have been contacted in multiple occasions by people who wanted to launch their own startup and wanted to hire me to write it, but it was clear that they didn't have all the business details ironed out. I advised them to get feedback first, then try for an MVP based on that feedback, and then come to me for implementation. They were all very happy with this, because it's good advice they hadn't considered, and it's free.

Also, working as a freelancer right now (although in a more long-term role), I definitely am concerned about code quality and the thing I'm making working well, because I'm the one who's working on it. Writing unmaintainable code on purpose is not only unethical, but it comes back to bite you in the ass when you have to maintain it. Thankfully, I have no shortage of work at the moment, so it wouldn't be my dream job to have to work on an unmaintainable mess, much less so when I created it.

I disagree with the article a lot.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#12

Post by StavrosK »

mjolk wrote: post #8

Perhaps 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?

"Perhaps I'm a jerk, but I don't feel bad when non-waiters get taken for a ride when hiring waiters for a restaurant."

This makes no sense. If you want to open a restaurant, you need to know the restaurant business well, not how to efficiently coordinate table serving.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#13

Post by Argorak »

dennybritz wrote: post #7
Argorak wrote: post #5

So... 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.

Sure. If you buy at a low price you show that _you_ don't care.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#14

Post by dennybritz »

Gorbzel wrote: post #10

What 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.

Yeah, these are just my personal experiences, no hard data. I added a little note making that clear.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#15

Post by Argorak »

danhou wrote: post #2

Everything 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.

The "write tests" part could be rewritten as: don't let the freelancer dictate the rough technical direction. If you want a proper state-of-the-art software project, tests should be included.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#16

Post by mjolk »

StavrosK wrote: post #12
mjolk wrote: post #8

Perhaps 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?

"Perhaps I'm a jerk, but I don't feel bad when non-waiters get taken for a ride when hiring waiters for a restaurant." This makes no sense. If you want to open a restaurant, you need to know the restaurant business well, not how to efficiently coordinate table serving.

If you want to open a restaurant, you sure as hell better know how to screen for qualified waiters/bartenders.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#17

Post by aculver »

I believe the better solution to most of these problems is to find your freelancer, consultant, etc. through personal channels where their reputation is already established and their past success verified.

For example, you may not have a technical co-founder, but you may have a friend who does, and they're likely to have a friend who is still doing independent consulting. Now, that person may not be available to work with you, but since they're in freelancing circles, they'll likely be able to put you in touch with someone who can, all while knowing that a bit of their own reputation is on the line in the process of recommending someone.

The key here is that you're not finding a stranger online and asking them to establish their credentials. Instead, you have no idea who you'll end up with and the only way you'll find them is if they've got the credentials (and the availability.)

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#18

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

> Hire an expert to regularly review your code. Contrary to what you may think this doesn’t cost much. Any good developer can tell “good” from “obviously bad” code in a matter of minutes. Hire a consultant for one hour and he can tell you exactly what state your code is in.

Generally-speaking, an "expert" is not likely to be interested in periodic code review engagements:

1. Most "consultants" aren't working on an hourly basis, at least one free of reasonable minimums. In other words, good luck finding an expert-level developer eager to take on periodic hour-long "Is this code okay?" projects.

2. A real code review consists of more than just a cursory "this is good code, this is bad code" analysis.

3. A code review doesn't really help a client who doesn't have the ability to rectify issues that are discovered. I can guarantee you that a consultant asked to perform a code review in the scenario described here will nine times out of ten find himself being asked "How do I fix it?" Unless the client is prepared to pay for the skills of a quality developer, getting involved in a "How do I fix it?" discussion is going to be a tar baby for the consultant in question.

4. The author is generally distrustful ("Don’t trust reviews or portfolios", "the motivation of most freelancers directly competes with writing concise code") yet curiously he doesn't consider the possibility that the "expert" you bring on to review your code, if he's looking for development work, has an incentive to raise questions about the quality of the code.

Not all of the advice here is bad, but I think the author generally glosses over the fact that finding good freelance developers and doing so when you have limited technical skills and experience managing the development lifecycle is difficult and may not be a viable approach.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#19

Post by danhou »

dennybritz wrote: post #3
danhou wrote: post #2

Everything 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."

Yeesh, just went back and re-read that. I fail at reading.

Re: How to (Not) Hire Freelancers for Your Startup

#20

Post by cpt1138 »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #18

> Hire an expert to regularly review your code. Contrary to what you may think this doesn’t cost much. Any good developer can tell “good” from “obviously bad” code in a matter of minutes. Hire a consultant for one hour and he can tell you exactly what state your code is in. Generally-speaking, an "expert" is not likely to be interested in periodic code review engagements: 1. Most "consultants" aren't working on an ho…

re: #4 is that kind of distrust warranted? Is it really common that portfolios and reviews are falsified?
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