What I Love about Freelance Developers
I’m not kidding. I do believe hiring an individual coder may be a great idea in a number of situations. In fact, you might have thought quite the opposite if you read my previous story — I Want to Hire a Freelancer (Really?!) — where I took down on the common misconceptions about indie devs being better than software development companies. However, let me make up for it by outlining a few cases when hiring an individual freelancer can really be the right choice. As a bonus, I’ll compare them with companies in these aspects as well.
The project is short. By “short”, I mean several days, a couple of weeks of work max. Then the product will be simple enough to be tested properly by the developer himself. On your end, no significant management effort will be needed as well. The larger the system, though, the harder it will be to test and manage it. So for a successful result, one will naturally need a well-knit team of several professionals, which would include a dedicated tester and project manager.
The developer is senior or has developed a similar project in the past. If so, he will probably finish the project quickly and safely by essentially reiterating his past experience. Otherwise, as soon as he faces an unexpected issue, note that there will be no one to ask for assistance besides googling or posting on a forum. Working at a company, however, a developer can always ask for help when needed. There is a fair chance someone on the team has already resolved this issue before.
No language barrier. The developer is a fluent English speaker, and you can understand the accent, too. That will result in no miscommunication of your requirements and you’ll get comprehensible explanations if any uncommon issue emerges. The same is true for companies. No well-established firm will assign a project manager or a developer to engage directly with a client unless they are strong communicators with decent language command.
No deadlines and you risk nothing if the release is delayed. The developer can work at a comfortable pace, which helps ensure proper quality. However, if you rely on certain dates and the development falls behind the schedule, adding more developers to the project is often the only way to speed up. If you work with an independent coder, scaling the team won’t be smooth as it’d definitely take time to recruit and train the additional resources. Companies, by contrast, may help with bringing additional employees aboard quickly, with the originally engaged teammates facilitating quick onboarding for newcomers.
The scope of work is small. It may be something related to bug fixing or adding a small feature to the current product version. Such sorts of tasks can be tackled after one’s day job so a freelancer may be interested in a side gig like this. As opposed to that, most dev firms render these services for existing clients only. Normally, companies require a full-time workload for their employees so before getting started, the customers are encouraged to put together a sizable backlog for the cooperation to be efficient.
Have you hired freelancers? I am wondering if your experience with them is in line with mine. I would love to hear your opinion that you can post in the responses below. And follow me on LinkedIn for more insights.
