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Do freelancers/consultants magically need no onboarding and become fully productive on day 1?

• flukus 10y ago
  According to the job ads that need someone to "hit the ground running" they do.
• whyileft 10y ago
  With freelancers you can just stop paying them after day 1 if they don't and try another. In some verticals of software development there is a ton of supply.
  • st3v3r 10y ago
    That tends to get you a reputation, which makes it harder to find more freelancers.
• tedmiston 10y ago
  As a dev employee turned freelancer, the onboarding is still there but much different. Much more focused on learning just enough to work on specific tasks vs poking around for a week or two and figuring out the whole system. I'd say I spend 1/4 the time onboarding as a contractor vs as an employee.
• rejschaap 10y ago
  No, but they can adjust much quicker than regular employees. Adapting to new environments is a skill that can be trained. Freelancers who do a lot of different jobs for different companies have a lot of training. But you are missing the point. The idea is to have a small core of highly skilled devs who can chop complex tasks/systems into bite sized chunks that can be outsourced. I've seen it work, but it's very difficult to pull off. I've seen it fail more often.