4 ms·

It’s tough. Finding people who are good, fast, and cheap is difficult in the best of circumstances. When I was broke, I decided to beg developers who liked me

It’s tough. Finding people who are good, fast, and cheap is difficult in the best of circumstances. When I was broke, I decided to beg developers who liked me & offered to pay them something (say 40/USD per hour in 2010). The catch was I had to wait until they had time, so it took maybe 12 months to get a 1 or 2 months of work done. But it got done & that got my business off the ground.

brudgers 3y ago
Good, fast, cheap. Pick one. And pray.
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  You’re not wrong :)
em-bee 3y ago
the upshot of that story is that if you don't need it done fast, it's possible to get something going even with a low monthly budget.
sbrother 3y ago
This is a really good idea, if time is not important. If you want someone experienced, in the US or Western Europe who does freelancing full time to prioritize your project, you should budget $100-$200/hr on the junior end, up to $300+/hr for someone more senior with specialized skills. Less than that and you're going to be dealing with someone who's either learning on the job, or trying to fit you in every now and then around their full time job. Either of those scenarios might be totally fine for your startup, you just have to understand what you're getting yourself into.
- xjapappy3311 3y ago
  Yeah this is pretty accurate. I've had good luck with the learning on the job thing in the past I will say. The way I think about it is that I would be doing the same thing if I thought I had the time to do it myself. The framing I use is that I am paying them a competitive rate but I am just not paying them for the hours spent learning. There is obviously some push and pull there about what exactly learning is, but it's usually turned out okay and I have made some good connections to help my buisness in the long term from it. Once they learn and you have put that investment, you give them a good referral if they need it and they will usually be more than willing to help you at a reasonable price in the future since you helped give them out originally. You can get burned doing this I am sure, it just hasn't happened to me the two times I've taken this strategy. The one thing you definitely do not want to do is to wind up with one of those learning on the job people but where neither of you are quite sure what the expectations are. You see this a lot with companies offering way below market for a skill and candidates accepting but not being made comfortable to admit they are not experienced enough to get market rates. Mostly this is a problem when the company doesn't know what they are doing and/or are incompetent in other ways that led to them not knowing they are underpaying what it would require to get somebody they really knows what they are doing.

brudgers 3y ago

Good, fast, cheap. Pick one. And pray.

devoutsalsa 3y ago
You’re not wrong :)

em-bee 3y ago

the upshot of that story is that if you don't need it done fast, it's possible to get something going even with a low monthly budget.

sbrother 3y ago

This is a really good idea, if time is not important. If you want someone experienced, in the US or Western Europe who does freelancing full time to prioritize your project, you should budget $100-$200/hr on the junior end, up to $300+/hr for someone more senior with specialized skills. Less than that and you're going to be dealing with someone who's either learning on the job, or trying to fit you in every now and then around their full time job. Either of those scenarios might be totally fine for your startup, you just have to understand what you're getting yourself into.

xjapappy3311 3y ago
Yeah this is pretty accurate. I've had good luck with the learning on the job thing in the past I will say. The way I think about it is that I would be doing the same thing if I thought I had the time to do it myself. The framing I use is that I am paying them a competitive rate but I am just not paying them for the hours spent learning. There is obviously some push and pull there about what exactly learning is, but it's usually turned out okay and I have made some good connections to help my buisness in the long term from it. Once they learn and you have put that investment, you give them a good referral if they need it and they will usually be more than willing to help you at a reasonable price in the future since you helped give them out originally. You can get burned doing this I am sure, it just hasn't happened to me the two times I've taken this strategy. The one thing you definitely do not want to do is to wind up with one of those learning on the job people but where neither of you are quite sure what the expectations are. You see this a lot with companies offering way below market for a skill and candidates accepting but not being made comfortable to admit they are not experienced enough to get market rates. Mostly this is a problem when the company doesn't know what they are doing and/or are incompetent in other ways that led to them not knowing they are underpaying what it would require to get somebody they really knows what they are doing.