How I hired a great web developer on oDesk for $12/hr

Though I'm a developer, I outsourced the development of my side project, <a href="http://www.watermarquee.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.watermarquee.com</a>. That was a bad call on my part.<p>I used oDesk to hire a development team from Indonesia. At the time, with a small baby at home, I felt like I didn't have the time to develop it myself. Also, I was just learning Rails, and felt that if I wanted it done right, I should hire a professional, instead of trying to learn as I went (I had written the free version myself, and hired the dev team to make the "Pro" version which costs $5/month)<p>The development team did a good job, but only after the work was complete did I find out they implemented some things differently than how I would have preferred (my fault for not paying more attention). Also, it ended up taking much longer than I thought and, thus, costing much more than I had anticipated.<p>Knowing your application code from top to bottom is the only way to be able to maintain it after the development contract ends. I dread having to modify my app because I don't understand it all. I've done other projects since then, and wrote them myself (in Sinatra or Node), and am now way more confident in my development skills.

When managed properly outsourcing doesn't have to be a problem. Bad hires do tend to take a bit longer to show themselves and could end up leaving a bad taste to everything outsourcing related.<p>A few years ago I did some work via oDesk and ended up with a permanent contract for a US/Mexico based company that allowed me much more freedom than I would have had working at any South African company in my area.<p>Overall I enjoyed working with most of the other employees from across the world and some of the brightest people I've worked with was part of the team. I do think however that it probably put a lot more pressure on our manager than most conventional environments would.<p><i>edit</i> Paragraphs

&#62; <i>Seriously, if you are an online entrepreneur, do yourself a favour and start outsourcing. It is low risk and has great returns.</i><p>If you are a serious online entrepreneur and have 0 experience outsourcing online, be very careful. It's very hard to find the right developer at $12/hr. The picture isn't always as rosy as the OP paints it.<p>&#62; <i>Once I picked three candidates, I tell them they are entering a trial period where I need them to develop a small project.</i><p>This is really good advice, but this means you hired a developer at 3 * $12/hr, which means you're project actually cost you $36/hr. This is reverse thinking for many people, since most people go to oDesk/elance/etc because they think their dreams can be created for $12/hr right off the bat. The reality is, you should expect to pay a large amount of money up front (trialing developers) to then get lower ($12/hr) returns later. This is a massive misconception in the outsourcing world.<p>TL;DR - YMMV.

For $12/hour you are not going to get the right stuff, not by a long shot.<p>By rule of thumb, if you are paying less for a professional in a job that requires decades to do well, than you'd pay a McDonalds burger flipper, what you are going to get is a McDonalds burger flipper. Good luck with that.<p>You know how companies always like to tout that they hired the cream of the crop, the top percentiles? Well, by aiming for the $12/hour price segment, you've made the reverse commitment, you've decided you're gonna hire from the bottom 10th percentile, if even that.<p>As Paul Graham noted, the productivity difference between an average developer and a great developer can be as great as 50x. I'm leaving it for you to figure out what the difference between a bottom barrel developer and a great developer is (hint, it's probably more than 50x)

I don't know if the author considers Czech Republic as part of Eastern Europe but $12/hour is pretty low there. It would be OK for a high school/undergrad student to earn some extra money that way, but other than that it must be a desparate "developer" to work at that rate.

According to this survey(please use translator) <a href="http://jobs.dou.ua/salaries/#period=dec2012&#38;city=all&#38;title=Software+Engineer&#38;language=C%23%2F.NET&#38;exp1=1&#38;exp2=3" rel="nofollow">http://jobs.dou.ua/salaries/#period=dec2012&#38;city=all&#38...</a><p>Median salary for junior .NET developer in Ukraine is $1500/month.<p>This data comes from full time employees, not freelancer. It is obvious that freelancer should spend more time that full time employee to get the same amount money. So, $12/hr is below the average for Ukraine.<p>I am RoR developer from Ukraine, with 4 years of experience and 'Rails Core Contributor' achievement, my oDesk rate is $40/hr. And I consider it low.<p>TIP: Don't hire developer from Ukraine for less than $25/hr, or you will get into trouble.

Great writeup. Another approach I've seen to get inexpensive face-to-face work is to call a local high school (sometimes college) and ask the CS teacher if any students have some knowledge in web development / mobile development that they gained outside of school, and then see if such a student wants to work for you. It's usually a good deal for the student since they get to improve their skills and learn more while getting paid better than a bagger's salary, and it's a good deal for the boss because the student is probably a quick learner and can fill in any knowledge gaps quickly, plus a part-time work agreement during the school year is a low-risk trial period that can lead to full-time in the summer.

Just don't lose control of the code.<p>Outsourcing to $12/hr programmers works well when you're designing the structure of the code and the way things work. Not so well when you give them a free reign of how to code a feature (for example)

How am I supposed to feel confident in pursuing a career in CS with 3rd world developers doing the work for $12/hr?

&#62; That lives you with around 30 applications. Off these applications, I focus my attention on Eastern Europeans. In my experience, Eastern Europeans have the right mix: low cost of living, high level of education, high level of integrity.<p>&#62; I have hired developers from India in the past but it is harder to find the good ones among a lot of low quality applications.<p>Since when is it okay to be casually racist when making hiring decisions? There's a reason this sort of shit is illegal in the US when hiring employees.<p>Don't be a dick.

Good points in your article.<p>Generally, I think outsourcing has gotten a bad rap because a lot of the poor quality firms / freelancers that have sprung up. The big sites like oDesk, eLance, etc. have certainly helped to prevent the scammers that initially populated the field, but more and more quality firms are popping up in countries like the Philippines.<p>The key to outsourcing is doing it right. Outsource work you or key players shouldn't work on. If you're a design company, find someone to slice and dice for you. If your a coding company, find someone to design for you. Find a partner that can be trusted and you work well with and you're set.

Outsourcing is something I need to get better at. For some reason I never feel at ease giving away control of my projects, which is why I often end up spending time on peripheral things like setting up servers or coding up mockups.<p>There's also the fact that I would feel bad about hiring someone for $12/hour when my own hourly rate is more than 10 times that. But at the same time, I would definitely not be able to afford somebody as expensive as me (or even half as expensive)…

You got me at "and everyone has PowerPoint.".. ;)<p>I like the idea though, it shows you can find the right people without throwing too much money in, provided you plan it right, and put yourself in the developper's shoes at some point. It would be interesting to evaluate how much the recruiting costed you as well in the price. Your time, the paid (I hope they all were) trials, and the time to organize your guy's work once in the place.. Just being curious!

Paying a couple more dollars an hour more may result in $100-$200 more, but produces much better work.

Who accepts the job for $12 when there's written $12 to $17?

How did you "package the files into a Google Play app." ?