Hi! This is The Daily Overpass. My name is
Eric and I make apps. Now today I want to
show you how I hire people in the
Philippines.
Okay, so I hope you all had a great weekend. It's been a fantastic
weather here in England this weekend.
It's been really nice, but it's also
really nice just to get back to work, you
know, get back into the thick of things,
right? So today what I want to do is talk
to you about something which I think is
really cool. And I know if you do
run a business, I think it might really
really help your business, and if you're
going to run a business one day, you know
you might you'll find this really useful
too. Basically, what I'm going to do is I
want to show you some of the websites
that I use to find, you know, to build my
team. So where do I find
talented people? you know where do I find
the best prices? and all
that kind of stuff so. So like you know I
think I find it really interesting, but
first I want to tell you a story, because
you know I like to tell stories. So if
you want to see the nitty-gritties fast
forward to the end, but let me just...
actually, no don't fast forward
to the end. Stick with me here. This makes
sense. I want to tell you about a
contract I was working. It was about 11
or 12 years ago, oh God can't believe it was so
long ago, right? And it was a... I was
working for consultancy and we were
working for like this huge investment
bank, right? So and I have it, so this was
you know this contract I think I was
making about 310 a day about 310
pounds a day, right? which was which might
sound like a lot to you or little to you.
It was actually kind of low for me at
the time, right? So for my contract
for my daily rate, right? And you know the
only reason I was at 310 was because I
negotiated up when we
talked about it and the guy who got me
the job who was like he is way better
developer than I am. He still is. He's
like the most talented developer I have
ever known, right? He's the one who
contacted me. They were looking for
developers so he contacted me, and I went
and I was being paid 10 pounds more a
day than he was and for liked it
probably the only time ever in my life.
It was kind of... that's kind of
coo, right? So it's like coffees on me or
whatever so, but we were working for this
big investment bank and we were
sometimes we'd work in this consultancy
office, but most of the time we worked on
site at the investment bank, you know no
big deal. So you know and it was
fine. I mean the consultancy didn't
really have a lot to do.
I kind of knew who the managers were, but
never really work for them. I mean I
send them my invoices or something like
that. And then, you know one day,
I think I worked there about you know
three or four months, but one
day I found out how much our markup was.
Because you know if you're hired to a
consultancy, there's going to be a markup
to the other company, so there you can
pay based on project or they gonna be
paid based on the day or whatever.
So there was a markup which I kind of
figured it would be. I mean that's the way
the game is played. So I figured my
market would probably be like 400-500 a
day something like that, and then one day
I found out what it was or I was like
the they were charging me out at 800
pounds a day. They were charging
us developers out to 800 pounds a day,
and we were making 300 pounds a day and
I was so...I couldn't believe it. I
couldn't believe the scale of this, right?
because I thought wow! This you know
then you think, well the consultancy they
had like... they had lots of overhead, you
know they had to have an office and they
had to walk around with coffee and had
to schmooze and all that kind of stuff. I
don't know what they did but you know
apparently was important, and uh but
we were the skill. We were
the product so and I was really
surprised about that, right? so but I
guess that's just the way it is.
So you know if you do
work for somebody else, there's always a
markup on how much you make, right? so
fast forward a few years later, I went to
China so I want it to be you know I
thought enough contracting I'm going to
get to Overpass, right? and we're gonna
yeah I've worked with developers in
India, worked with developers in Poland, but
I speak Chinese and I wanted to go to
China and I wanted to work with Chinese
software companies. I thought that would
be it would just strike up a partnership
and all this kind of stuff. So I arranged
like 10 different meetings with software
companies in Shanghai and Dalian,
right? so I went on this business trip
just Overpass, just me
right? So I went out there in the suit
and everything and met with all these
big software companies. Some of the
software companies were really small,
right? They were just like a couple guys
and just like you know dingy little
office and everything like that which
is great, right? and then and
but some of them were like huge. There
were like huge buildings. Brand new glass
buildings like you know just
really impressive, and you go down
there you think wow and
then rows and rows and rows of developers
coding away at desks and everything like
that, and I give you a big tour, right?
like you know and I'm thinking "Wow".
So they're showing me around this big
offices and you know here's our meeting
rooms and here's our other meeting rooms
and here's the other third meeting room
in case the other to get booked and all
that kind of stuff and you know and I
met with the senior managers and spoke
Chinese with them and they were just
like you know oh yeah everybody was
afraid of them and I'm sitting across
for them just trying to look like I have
this big company. So it's just like me
and I tell you what, I've never felt like
a bigger fraud in all my life, right? but
they showed me these offices and the
more extravagant their offices were the
only thing I could see was overhead,
right? 'Cause I was thinking about that
contract I worked at, you know it was
like that I was...what I wanted
was the skills of the developers. I
wanted talented people and you know
but they were giving me talented
people but they were trying to impress
me with overhead. They were trying to
impress me with big offices and
nice industrial parks and
everything like that, and I just you know
I was more impressed with a smaller
companies because
I was thinking if I'm gonna be
paying for it, I want to pay for what I
need to pay for, alright. A few years
later, last part of the story. So
I'm working with an Indian company, right?
So we're doing apps
and I have a dedicated Indian company.
It's got you probably hear from some
companies like this, "It's going to be
your own dedicated team but they're the
part of our company but they work for
you". So I was working with I had like
7 developers, right? So you know
making sure they read the right things,
their skills went up. And I
tell you what, it'd be like one or two
months they'd raised the rate on these
guys, but I was paying like really low. I
was paying...I think I was paying around
$7 an hour for these
developers, right? which is luck,
right? I think you'll agree that it's low,
and then you know so usually when you
talk to offshore firms, at least when I
do it usually it's around $25
an hour. For a
senior developer, $25 an
hour maybe a little bit less for a
less skilled, but generally that's what
it is so. So I was like... so
occasionally somebody would leave that
company, right? and they would
get in touch with me on Skype
saying you know "Eric, I left that
company, but I need work can you hire me?"
and I think well I don't know you know
because I don't know if I really
want to and then they would tell me that
they were that when... so I was paying
$7 an hour and they were
making$2, and I thought "Wow",
right? It was like the same thing as that
consultancy, right? There was this
big markup I was paying. I was
paying for the markup. I was paying for the
managers. I was paying for the building.
I was paying for all that kind of stuff
which has its value. It has this value
when you don't have to worry about, you
know the management are people
showing up and are they working and all
that kind of stuff, but I'm still more
concerned with that kind of stuff,
right? So the reason that I'm telling you
this is because I'm going to show you
this website so you'll see what kind
of rates and stuff there are, and I like
to go direct to the developer and
skip all of that markup, but I
don't want you to think that I'm cheap,
right? So it's I'm more concerned with
paying for talented people and the
talents of others that I am for paying
with offices, for offices and all the
other you know bells and whistles that
people had. Now you might disagree with
this and I know you know I've had lots
of arguments with people. I've had people
say to me "Eric and his sweat shops" which
I can tell you that that's not the case
you know we do...I really have good people
working on my teams, but
yeah so let me show you this website.
This website here real quick, but first
let me just...this is more for hiring
freelancers. Most of time if it's
like a small project like some
translation or like a one-off WordPress
thing and I don't need that skill full
time or even part time then I will just
go on oDesk or Elance
when it was there. oDesk or freelancer.com
or whatever one of those ones. My
preference is oDesk and I'll just hire
somebody for on a project-based work, but
when I need somebody long-term then I'll
go to this website. So let me just show
you this website here real quick. Okay so
here's the site it's called onlinejobs.ph
It's like this big database
of people you know they put their CVs on
here. People who want to work from home
from the Philippines, so talk about
freelancers who are working at home
using their own computers,
and they want to get away from the
office life and work you know from their
own home from their own computers using
their own internet connection, right? So
let me just give you a little warning
here. I've been cheated on this
site before, right? So and because it's
not the site itself, it's the you know
it's the people. So you're going direct
to people. You're not going through a
company. You're not going through a
recruitment agency. You're just going to
try to find you know people directly. So
in the past, I have found people who you
know they work more than one job. So
sometimes I will hire them
full-time and they would have like
4 other full-time jobs, right? You
can't even fit for eight hour shifts in
a day, right? So or they work 3
full-time shifts. 3 full-time jobs
which was not possible unless they don't
ever sleep, right? So this was something
that was you know that happens from time
to time, because in the Philippines
they have trouble with internet connections,
right? So you know internet might not be
so reliable, you know there's typhoons,
there's power outages all the time, that
kind of stuff, you know I personally I've
hired somebody on a full-time basis and
they seem to be...they seem okay, right? They
were kind of you know had a little bit
of experience, so I trained them up on
Corona, couldn't find anybody for Corona
SDK. I trained them up and put them on
like a think of 2 months of training
and then you know then later on I'm
going to go find a Corona developer and
then there was 4 people listed.
So and then I looked at them all and
they were all this one guy with
different variations on his name.
So which is this kind of stuff happens
so I'm telling you this so that if you
have any trouble here you know don't
come with blaming me. You might think
it's not worth it, which is cool
you know, it might not be worth it for
you, but let me show you this site. So
basically what you can do is you go in
here and you can post jobs or you could
just search for people and it says you
know used by Google, used by different
places and there's little stuff here. Now
the site costs like you know the site
costs $50 a month. I have a
lifetime membership so you know I
got that a few years ago which seemed to
really to work out for me. So here you
can type in. So let's say if I type in
WordPress as a skill here because you
know there's so many WordPress
developers in the world, right?
Someday I think you know like...
for those you developers out there, if
you're thinking about going into
WordPress or something just because
there's lots of jobs available, I would
say that the more people are going into
a specific field means the less that you
could charge for it. So when it comes
actually marketing yourself sometimes
it's riskier to go for niche but it also
pays a lot more to go for a niche so.
Okay, so here we got a WordPress. so I
typed a WordPress. I've got a few people,
virtual assistants so this person making
between 15,000 to 20,000 PHP of philippine
pesos per month which is about $300
to $400 per
month for 40 hours of... well I mean an
hour so uh you know 189 to 250 to an
hour. This person over here a bit more
experienced, you know $700 to $800
an hour, I'm sorry a month, and so
forth. So you know there's lots of people
in here you could go, and now I'm not
logged in. So I logged out just because
you know because I was going to be
showing this to you. So this is what you
would see if you go onto the site. Now if
you login you actually see names and a
bit of contact information and you could
contact them directly. So this is one of
the things. This is not like a service
like oDesk where you pay through oDesk
and it goes into escrow and all that
kind of stuff. This is the kind of
service where you establish a
relationship and the website has nothing
to do with you. This is why it's easy to
get conned and scammed and all that
kind of stuff. It's also easy to find
people because you don't have the
overhead of administration fees of
somebody else, so you can pay them by
paypal or whatever type of thing. What you
want to do is hire them as a freelancer
and not as an employee because you have
lots of other different types of
overhead as employee too and they have
lots of different tax obligations and stuffs
like that so. So let's say if I go in
here and I type in Ionic. Now Ionic is a
bit more of a specialized skill so you
know not many people have that
on this platform. So I go in here
and I see a senior developer $1000
a month, senior web developer $600
and $700 month, and of course you go in
here and I can see his skills you know
if I sign it I see a bit more
information and they all got these
little CVs and self evaluated
stuff like that. I mean it's kind of
thing where you know you go in there and
and have a look around. You might be able
to find somebody who's good. Now I think
personally I think you have to hire a
lot of bad people before you find a good
one, so you know it's a
learning curve. So you know always
hire slow and fire fast. Somebody in the
comments said this once
fire fast. So this is... I mean I was you
know I was the kind of person who I
think yeah maybe they'll come around,
maybe a little better later, but you know
it's just you know it's if it's not
working out early on just let them
go. I mean because you know it's better
for them if they can go find something
else of whatever so. So yeah, so that's
that's how that works. Now you might
think that you know maybe having show
you this that I'm just very very cheap
which maybe I am right
but if it comes to like if I need
to hire a brain surgeon I will hire a
brain surgeon, right? If I need to
hire somebody to give me a band-aid, I'm
gonna hire somebody to give me a band-aid,
but I'm not going to pay the person to
give me a band-aid the same as I would
have paid the brain surgeon. I'm not
gonna pay the brain surgeons the same as I hire
somebody give me a band-aid, right?
There's different varying levels of
skills and you don't always need senior
developer. I mean I'll make your life
easier if you have somebody who's
top shelf and you need them to do a
log in form or stuff like that. He would
be able to a much quicker than somebody
who is a junior developer but it also
cost a lot more to begin with, so
anyway I'm showing you this now and I
hope it doesn't make you think any less
of me. This is kind of one of the
things that we do going forward and
people always say why don't you just
well you just hire somebody locally?
basically because there's some
tasks that I need that is you know I
need somebody who's dependable and
doesn't necessarily need to be on site
and sometimes I do need somebody to be
on site. I mean yeah I need somebody to
help me go to meetings and stuff like
that. So anyway, I hope this has been
useful and you know I hope if
you are setting up a gummy, this might be
something you might want to look into. So
anyway, that's it for today. I will talk
to you guys tomorrow.