Ask HN: Do you reveal all of your code to contractors?

#1

Post by whatdoyouthink2 » Thu, Nov 23, 2017, 11:52 AM UTC

Hey SAAS founders and CTOs, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether you trust the people you hire enough to share all of your codebase with them?

I believe for employees that is no problem so my question is more related to contractors. Contractors in the US vs. East Europe? Do you sign agreements with them? Have you had issues happen?

Interested in hearing your opinion and experiences.

Re: Ask HN: Do you reveal all of your code to contractors?

#2

Post by Sevii » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 2:34 AM UTC

Just don’t give them access to all your git repos. It’s pretty easy with github/bitbucket

Re: Ask HN: Do you reveal all of your code to contractors?

#3

Post by aprdm » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 2:37 AM UTC

We do share the part that is relevant for the work to be done. We try to isolate it as much as possible and only share that.

We require some paperwork to be signed beforehand and we obviously do not share any production secrets or database information.

We usually have some database stub with fake data that they can work on / spin locally.

Re: Ask HN: Do you reveal all of your code to contractors?

#4

Post by muzani » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 4:41 AM UTC

aprdm wrote: post #3

We do share the part that is relevant for the work to be done. We try to isolate it as much as possible and only share that. We require some paperwork to be signed beforehand and we obviously do not share any production secrets or database information. We usually have some database stub with fake data that they can work on / spin locally.

We tried doing that but it ended up being more effort isolating the part that they would work on.

Re: Ask HN: Do you reveal all of your code to contractors?

#5

Post by visox » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 8:33 AM UTC

Hi i am working in Accenture in Europe as a contractor, i have pretty much access to code on the project as anyone else on the team.

Re: Ask HN: Do you reveal all of your code to contractors?

#6

Post by akulbe » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

I get access to code, but I have to sign an NDA beforehand, in most cases.

Reputation is everything to me, so I'm not about to do something that'd abuse that trust. It's just not worth the risk.