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> Hire an individual freelancer instead of an agency More people should do this. Many agencies, if not most, prioritize new customer acquisition. If you're not

> Hire an individual freelancer instead of an agency More people should do this. Many agencies, if not most, prioritize new customer acquisition. If you're not their biggest customer, their priority is to do as little work as possible and inflate the cost (partially why they love retainers). Very often a customer like this would be relegated to junior employees in an agency anyway. You can get a freelancer with a lot more experience, and still save money. I worked at agencies for about the first 5 years of my career, and left to freelance when I realized I was already doing most of the work... but someone else was making most of the money.

that_guy_iain 4y ago
I've worked at a few agencies. One being a low budget fixed costs agency: Here it was literally all about how quickly can you get it done. The code they outputted was terrible and often done by people who had very little knowledge of best practices. On a technical level this company had the lowest skilled people I worked with, once even asked me how to do an else if, I answered, "Oh you just do else and then put an if like you would normally do with an if." This was not clear enough for them. One being a high cost enterprise level counsultancy agency: Here I probably did the best technical work but lowest product quality. The Agency prided itself on doing good technical work and doing BDD so they only did what brough value. Mostly I was bored, the work was slow paced as the company and clients cared that deadline and estimates were kept so things were overestiamted to give a solid buffer and then client charged for the hours used to develop it. Which often meant by the end of the sprint it was a case of sitting around doing nothing. Overall, both cared about one thing. Time. Personally, I much rather be an inhouse dev at a small company. Get to work without caring about time so much and care about the product.

that_guy_iain 4y ago

I've worked at a few agencies. One being a low budget fixed costs agency: Here it was literally all about how quickly can you get it done. The code they outputted was terrible and often done by people who had very little knowledge of best practices. On a technical level this company had the lowest skilled people I worked with, once even asked me how to do an else if, I answered, "Oh you just do else and then put an if like you would normally do with an if." This was not clear enough for them. One being a high cost enterprise level counsultancy agency: Here I probably did the best technical work but lowest product quality. The Agency prided itself on doing good technical work and doing BDD so they only did what brough value. Mostly I was bored, the work was slow paced as the company and clients cared that deadline and estimates were kept so things were overestiamted to give a solid buffer and then client charged for the hours used to develop it. Which often meant by the end of the sprint it was a case of sitting around doing nothing. Overall, both cared about one thing. Time. Personally, I much rather be an inhouse dev at a small company. Get to work without caring about time so much and care about the product.