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When you say "contractor work", do you mean agencies, or the work of individual contractors? Individual contractors in my experience tend to be very good (abov
by kypro 4y ago
When you say "contractor work", do you mean agencies, or the work of individual contractors?
Individual contractors in my experience tend to be very good (above average) and do care about building quality software - their reputations depend on it.
Agencies on the other hand are a nightmare. I have nothing against junior devs but in my experience agencies love to put junior devs on projects they're unqualified for and then give them bare minimum support and guidance. And obviously they'll happily cut corners because technical debt is their problem so most stuff is hacked together so it just about works, but is utterly unmaintainable.
- rgblambda 4y agoHaving once been a junior dev at an agency, I can confirm most of what you're saying. I would add that the strongest advocates for cutting corners tend to be leadership and management, who have been through this before and know that as soon as they can get the client to agree that release 1 is done, the rest is the support team's problem. I find the quality of individual contractors can vary massively. Some are brilliant while others are borderline useless with behavioural problems to boot, yet somehow aren't being fired. One argument I'll always make in defence of agencies/contractors is that a lot of problems stem from the fact that the client is often not engaged and believes that because they hired you, there's no effort required on their end.