IT:BD:Team/Getting the development done for cheap
Summary
The number of times I've listened to someone with an idea – even a good one – with a key part of the execution plan involving finding a “good, cheap, developer” is … argh!
Notes
Let's analyse some of the options:
- To keep costs down, Joe could learn development, while continuing to perform his daily job.
- Hate to break it to you, but development is a career.
- It's a career, because production level code – not VBAScripts in Excel – is hard, takes commitment, and time to learn.
- It's pretty addictive….each logical block of code is a puzzle… and solving them, pondering them, will sooner or later interfere with your primary source of income – your job. If you get yourself reprimanded and fired, problem solved as the folly money will soon dry up.
* Joe could take a sabatical to learn development.
- It's hard – years hard – to learn development well. If you can afford a sabbatical long enough, you probably don't need the income from a risky startup.
- While you are studying, your primary career skills will dry up. I speak from experience (ask me about it someday…)
- You'll neither be focusing on accomplishing job a, or job b – just learning. It's distracting. You'll never finish.
- As for finding a developer who will do it cheaply. Finding a developer who will take less than market rates indicates either stupidity, ignorance. Both spell disaster for a scrappy startup final product.
- Could mean simply lack of self belief…probably not so hot to have a non-autonomous developer – that needs a lot of management – for a scrappy startup.
- Could be a passionate developer who believes in exactly the same things you do, and is just dying to do it. The odds of finding a competant developer, who is independently wealthy, or has a girlfriend who is willing to foot his rent while he takes under-market pay to work on your project…is infinitely small.
- Could consider using a remote Freelancer from Bulgaria or somewhere. Attempting to use a freelancer to produce a finished development – market ready – would be throwing money in a pit. Without having the experience to define and communicate the exact requirements rigourously, and the architectural and technical constraints you want to impose – you're asking someone else to discover, design, develop everything. Not going to happen. Plus, you would not know how to verify they returned to you.
The list goes on.