The Death of Upwork? 7 Tips to Hire the Best App Developer
December 28, 2015The Death of Upwork? 7 Tips to Hire the Best App Developer
Time to market is critical. Freelance hiring sites such as Upwork seem like a dream come true when needing to find an app developer. Upwork, formerly known as oDesk and Elance via acquisition, is an online global platform that connects businesses and individuals to freelance workers. But Reddit CEO Yishan Wong advised against using freelance sites such as from Upwork, stating that its use will result in mediocre results.
This dream can quickly turn into a nightmare. Potential problems include: major billing disagreements, difficult or even complete lack of communication, poorly designed or failed products, among many other issues. Can’t reach your developer for weeks? Is their estimate suddenly triple the price? What happened?
At the end of the process, you are left with a bad product, no money, and feeling burned out from the entire process. Dont be misled by quotes as little as $5/hour. They often come with a much more expensive price tag to your product and sanity!
We’ll guide you through the tricky world of hiring app developers with these seven tips.
1: Ask Crucial Questions
Check the developer’s work ethics and background. The problem with freelancers is lack of accountability, transparency, and overall quality of service. It’s a real risk. They say the past is a good indication of the future. Ask potentials about past clients, request clients contact information (and contact those clients!), and view samples of their work. They should provide you with a solid work portfolio.
2: Communication–It’s more than just talk
Always do a Skype interview before hiring someone. Always. Always.
This ensures you can communicate effectively, and they understand what you want. If you cant communicate, there will be significant problems down the road. Make sure they aren’t just rehearsing a few lines that theyve practiced over and over. Have a long conversation about diverse topics to evaluate how good the communication is.
And it’s not just about language–do they understand your dream and vision? Do they speak your creative language? Do they care about your project? If you care about your product, make sure the person you hire does too!
3: Be mindful of time zones
Take into consideration it might be very hard to communicate with certain time zones. Will they be awake when you are? What if there is an urgent problem? Do they have someone else you can contact in an emergency? A different time zone can create a lot of stress, or it can be a non-issue. Make sure they have the means to handle problems that arise.
4: Just say no to offshore outsourcing!
Our advice is to select a professional and established company. But many companies outsource their work to inexperienced cheap developers in developing countries — the same ones you were trying to avoid in the first place!
So when interviewing, make sure to ask who will be working on your project. Some cases may be preferable to outsource. For example, you prefer a highly specialized designer you know, and that’s fine. But it should always and only be done with your permission.
5: You get what you pay for
If you hire the $5/hour developer, you might end up paying the same as the expensive developer anyway.
Reddit CEO Yishan Wong advised against using freelancers such as from Upwork, stating that its use will result in mediocre results. Its impossible for an Upwork user to really determine who is good at their job and who is not just by reading a job bid proposal, and even more so when choosing people across the globe at a rate of a few dollars per hour.
You shouldnt do this; it will probably result in failure. I have a friend who is a designer and he was hiring developers via Elance [now known as Upwork]. Even with consultation from friends of his (e.g. me) who were real engineers, it was extremely difficult to find decent engineers who could do the things he needed, deliver reliably, and iterate according to ongoing testing/customer feedback. The end product was merely okay kind of slow, with little glitches here and there. If you have total technical ignorance and no local (friend) resources to help you, hiring from Elance or oDesk is almost impossible to do correctly. I would recommend trying another route. Reddit CEO Yishan Wong
6: Trustworthiness and Business Ethics
Any partnership should be based foremost on honesty. Find a company that values honesty and doesnt hide behind complex technical words that can misconstrue facts. Are they talking over your head, using terms you are unfamiliar with? If you ask, will they simplify so you can understand? The company you hire should take pride in their work and makes the process as transparent as possible so that you can evaluate the work for yourself, even if youre not a technical person. Find a company that upholds industry standards for best practices, and has a policy to build products at the same level as published work samples.
7: Perfected App is the perfect solution for web/mobile app development
I’ve written this article to help businesses and individuals find the perfect app development team for their product. Our company, Perfected App, is a client-oriented company that will treat you right and get you the perfect product–faster than any of our competitors. Time to market is critical! Get your product to market fast and flawlessly. Focus on your business and let us take care of the development. In only a few weeks we’ll deliver you a wonderful product and get you earning money. We guarantee a high-quality product and trusting business partnership. Check us out: