How I hired my 1st remote developer as a non-tech founder:
This is a series of articles I am writing along my experience in founding a tech product base start-up as a non-tech founder. You can check part 1 here: 5 life-giving lessons for non-tech founders while working with developers.
Up till 2 months ago when I had a project idea I would go to Upwork.com and start searching for freelancers that can help me bring the project to life, especially developers.
Never have I thought that hiring a developer would be a much better business decision than working with freelancers, especially on the start-up phase.
1. He is going to be much more interested in your company than a freelancer would ever be.
Usually freelancers just want to take your money and delivery your work as fast as possible. Sometimes this is recommended but if you need that person for more than few weeks it is better to have somebody that cares for your product and brings his input on the table too.
2. It’s time to stop asking your developer how much development hours will a new feature take, because you are too concerned about the increase of the price.
One of the best parts of having a developer employed on your start-up especially if you are building a tech product is that you are not limited by the increase in development work as you are when working with a freelancer.
For me this was a release. I always research better experiences and come up with other solutions to get something done. Now, I just schedule that and when the time comes we will modify/update the previous experience without any concern regarding your budget.
But, be aware not to fall into the trap of requesting too many features before having a real business out of the product you are building. Stick to the minimal required features that your product needs so that your customers will buy it.
To keep this away I am using the Time Management Matrix by Stephen Covey. If you think this is a bit too complicated you can divide a sheet of paper into 2 columns: have-to | nice-to-have. I did so.
3. Full availability.
While a freelancer is working on multiple projects at the same time, a full-time hired developer is focused on your project only. Most of the time this means a better quality of work, too.
How to find full-time remote developers for your start-up?
There a few platforms up there similar with Upwork.com but with a focus on remote workers such as: Hubstaff Talent and Outsourcely.com that I personally used but you can find more here.
It’s extremely important to know what you are looking for. First, define what kind of job you want that person to get done and try to figure out how a demo of that would look like like.
Personally, I was looking for somebody to build a chatbot for online ordering on Facebook Messenger, which is quite a new technology out there. In addition, I was in need to build a dashboard for that, too, so I started to look for somebody that has experience working with the back-end.
Once you get your job posted on the platform you start getting applicants. I’ve got around 30 in about 4 days. I filtered them by the cover letter and the skills they had on the profile before getting to talk with them, so I had a list of 7 people that I started to approach via chat. In about 2 weeks and half I had my first developer hired.
❌ Quick tips: ❌
- look for people that live in small-medium cities. The ones that live in big cities are much more expensive.
- ask them to create a demo for you. You should ask for something simple that would take 1–2 days to get done.
- have their work checked by a professional developer. You must have a friend on your list that is an experienced developer.
- use TransferWise for payments. Simple, fast and cheap.
- don’t check on them every single hour. Let them send you an email at the end of the day with the progress and if anything Skype.
- email is the best tool to keep organised. I tried to use Trello, Flock, Todoist but none of these work better than email.
- a good peace of advise would be, every Sunday night send an email with the tasks for the following week. Try to break them into days if possible.
- encourage your employee and treat him like your friend. Thank him for the work that he does on a regular basis.
If you find this stuff useful push the recommended icon ❤
