My company is growing which is great, however I’m being held back on people power and revenue. Some of the things I need are all around in office help which I plan to have hired by next month, however developing is always our core focus and is not something I can spend the dollars on as they are not ever cheap, especially around my area. While I’m a programmer by trade I find it hard to find the best fit of remote help in development. Everyone I have found that is priced at a couple K a month fail to hit deadlines, or are “senior developers†that I don’t think have more than 2 years of learning in PHP/MySQL. Since I am a senior developer in PHP/MySQL, etc I feel maybe Im looking to hard for a developer like me, which I will never find, and wanted to hear what some of you guys are doing and who you are using (I think you will have to PM so the mods don’t get pissed) to get services develop in function and form each month as needed to keep the business machine running! Anyone I feel like Im being pulled in 6 directions, marketing, support, sales, developing, design.. Because of this everything almost standstill… arg!
If you want to hire someone local you have to be able to pay them a wage they can live on. 2k+/mo would be a reasonable start. I would expect to be earning 4+ if I went out job hunting. If you're looking for a decent resource you can consult to then that's a different story. You now have a chance to find someone from a much larger talent pool who would be willing to work at a lower rate or split himself among projects. If I was looking for a developer online, I would want to see: - Samples of past projects - Proven communication skills - Examples of past code - Someone who can explain their design decisions and defend them - Reasonable skill on my programming language of choice Marketing, sales, development and design are all separate skills. If it were me, I'd focus on a sales/marketing guy to sell your products.
There are plenty of people online willing to work for you for reasonable rates. Especially if they're living in countries where the USD has greater purchasing power. The trick I found, is to break jobs down into small measurable specific tasks. Don't expect the person to think for themselves at first, just get them to do the work. If you find someone you like working with that communicates to your expectations and timeframe, then you can start giving them bigger jobs that require less micro-management. It is hard but you have to "invest in your staff" so to speak. Which means coaching, communicating, and giving them feedback. unfortunately this takes time which we're all short on, but if you can get over the hurdle it will free you up later to do the things you need to do.
Let me know if you are open for remote assistance? If so, we are ready to move with that, before that we'd like to offer you our rich working exp samples.
Have you tried freelance websites??? You can find good web developers there from India and pay them a fraction of the cost that I would take you if you had worked with someone in the US or Europe.
I have had two India developers in the past and I fired both due to milking the clock. I have this one kid that is great, really good developer, but he has not learned the art of making deadlines. He is too young, and life gets in the way of his work. We already have a couple remote assistants, and soon I will be adding in house Executive Assistant as well. As this is our core business, doing a JV would not work and I would lose probably 200k or more a year doing that. Not with it, when I can hire people for cheaper. Its all about business growing pains…. Just needed to vent, thanks!