Where do you find your expert developers?

makethatgreen

makethatgreen

The Freeway Killer
Mar 1, 2009
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I have several larger projects I want to begin working on and I am at the stage where I need to find a very experienced and knowledgeable developer(s). I need to find someone that is very fluent in PHP.

My first project will be a script that uploads creatives to an ad platform automatically. Probably similar to some of the FB ad uploaders on this form. I'll also need the script to record some data. That's just to give you an idea of what I need a developer for.

In the past I have always used scriptlance, but I rarely find quality work from there.

Thanks.


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Hot damn nice pics.

Ive gone through several developers, almost all of them have sucked, finding a good dev is like finding a unicorn. The current 2 I am working with, one is a referral from a friend and the other who just started is actually from Odesk but only lives 30mins away from me. So I really havent found a good way to find decent developers.
 
Great pics!

I never have any real luck with devs through places like Rentacoder, but at least you don't get screwed there.

Next big project I'm looking for coders here on the programming sub-forum. -I'll see if I can get them to use RAC the first time to make sure we both walk away happy.
 
The programmers who are looking for work on vworker and scriptlance usually aren't that good.

Because any programmer who is good will almost never need to whore themselves out on a site like that. There are more people who want great programmers than there are great programmers, so anybody who's any good will either be developing their own stuff or making a very comfortable living with a stable job.

Word of mouth is the best way to find a great programmer, and expect to pay a premium.
 
Good developers are everywhere, but you get what you pay for which is something I had to learn the hard way.
 
Simple answer really is -- you don't. The high-end developers who know their shit generally aren't available for freelance work. They've figured out they're worth more, and have positioned themselves appropriately. Either that, or they've went into a 9-5 job for the stability. This is especially true nowadays due to globalization, because now everyone thinks $40/hour for a quality developer is expensive, let alone $120 or $150/hour.

Your best bet is to find a development firm who's manager / project manager is an amazing developer. Better chance that he'll know what the word "quality" means, and will keep on his/her staff to ensure your project is completed the way it should be.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Simple answer really is -- you don't. The high-end developers who know their shit generally aren't available for freelance work. They've figured out they're worth more, and have positioned themselves appropriately. Either that, or they've went into a 9-5 job for the stability. This is especially true nowadays due to globalization, because now everyone thinks $40/hour for a quality developer is expensive, let alone $120 or $150/hour.

Your best bet is to find a development firm who's manager / project manager is an amazing developer. Better chance that he'll know what the word "quality" means, and will keep on his/her staff to ensure your project is completed the way it should be.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. :)

It's hard to find a very reliable staff in a freelance sites who offers cheap prices. Always remember that you'll get what you've paid for. If you want a great developer, you should pay and invest for it. You need to work and help each other to grow your business. Outsourcing is a business that trust is the first requirement. Business won't grow if you haven't
trusted the company that you're working with. This business has it pros and cons, you just need to find the right company, ask for samples and client references so you can decide.

I suggest to hire a Staff leasing company instead of a freelancer. because leased staff are permanent workers of a company and are easy to reach in case you need them. Freelancers do not have employers so they do as they please and sometimes cannot be contacted for various reasons.

If you have some questions, do not hesitate to contact us. Please see my sig for more information.
 
oDesk - I have used one developer from there and he's been amazing and never flaky. The guy knows his shit and never bullshits me. I got lucky though. He had no reviews when I first used him, but I kept giving him tiny projects and his rate was low. Eventually, he tripled his rate as he got feedback (the only downside). I started giving him bigger projects and he's never failed me. He's Eastern European and even though his rate has gone up, it's still 5x less than the US coders who used to bid on my projects.

Prior to this, I was using coders from other freelancing sites and they were mostly flaky and/ or unskilled. oDesk seems to have a pretty good process for vetting contractors though. I would give it a try.
 
I am a developer, and in all honesty, what was said above is true. I don't put myself out there anymore because of all the crap I got when I first started. People wanting a Facebook replica for $300, etc.

A lot of beginning freelancers get their chops in the beginning and many find out it is not for them, so they disappear. Others get a good enough reputation to where word of mouth is enough to keep them busy.

If you want one golden piece of advice, it is this:

Do NOT look for one programmer. Look for many. Have a couple of developers do your project. Get a person to put it together, (an architect or tech lead), get other lower level developers to do simple pieces of the site. This way you will not pay one person $100+ per hour to develop everything from scratch. Instead, just have him work once a week for maybe a few hours to a day to put everything together that the lower level programmers did for $20-$50 per hour.

Here is the next advantage, (that many of you I'm sure have faced). If you hire multiple developers, you will not have a single point of failure. You hire one developer, and he ends up bailing on your project, you are out EVERYTHING. If you hire multiples and one does not complete a small piece, no big deal. Just hire another and your project won't be held up.

Remember these two things when it comes to development:

You get what you pay for.
Always have a plan B.
 
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ryanstreet said:
I am a developer, and in all honesty, what was said above is true. I don't put myself out there anymore because of all the crap I got when I first started. People wanting a Facebook replica for $300, etc.

A lot of beginning freelancers get their chops in the beginning and many find out it is not for them, so they disappear. Others get a good enough reputation to where word of mouth is enough to keep them busy.

If you want one golden piece of advice, it is this:

Do NOT look for one programmer. Look for many. Have a couple of developers do your project. Get a person to put it together, (an architect or tech lead), get other lower level developers to do simple pieces of the site. This way you will not pay one person $100+ per hour to develop everything from scratch. Instead, just have him work once a week for maybe a few hours to a day to put everything together that the lower level programmers did for $20-$50 per hour.

Here is the next advantage, (that many of you I'm sure have faced). If you hire multiple developers, you will not have a single point of failure. You hire one developer, and he ends up bailing on your project, you are out EVERYTHING. If you hire multiples and one does not complete a small piece, no big deal. Just hire another and your project won't be held up.

Remember these two things when it comes to development:

You get what you pay for.
Always have a plan B.
Click to expand...

Solid advice. rep ....
 
I'm a developer and get most of my work on oDesk. I've also hired on there. Problem is when you're bidding for jobs, hordes of sub-standard 'developers' blindly apply to each and every job with a really low price and boiler-plate cover letter. A lot of jobs now require you to insert some codeword in the job cover letter just to prove you read the description.

Sometimes an employer will choose one of these monkeys and I always message them saying if everything goes tits up, contact me. I nearly always get a message a few days later saying the other guy flaked and can you do the job.

Another problem is employers who don't know what they want. They write up a 4 line job description with the vaguest details. I don't even bother applying to these jobs anymore. Employers should include as much details as they can in the description so the developer can accurately cost it and estimate a time for completion.

And you need to pick developers who specialise. Adam Smith and division of labour and all that. I personally just take PHP jobs involving screen scraping, automation, etc and also Magento plugins. A job I had recently was a screen scraping job and then setup a basic interface for the data or so I thought. But he wanted me to make the website in Adobe Business Catalyst. I gave it a shot but Adobe BC is the biggest POS ever and I wasted loads of time learning this crap that I would never use again. So I flaked. I felt really bad for that and it affected my oDesk rating but I wasn't going learning a new technology for one job.

I'm gonna plug my oDesk profile here if anyone wants to hire me! I prefer fixed price contracts.
https://www.odesk.com/users/Zend-Certified-PHP-Mysql-Developer_~~f67c2035d3b973b7
 
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