Hey, this is Overpass Insights! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, I want to talk about whether you should hire a freelancer or a software company?
Alright, so today is a nasty rainy, gray day here in England. I'm at
least in the part of England that I live in and
Do you know what? It's kind of nice - it's nice to get the rain and the grayness
and you know, back to - back to what we love
about England. You know, it's cool. Anyway, today I want to talk
about hiring developers specifically about
whether or not you should hire a a software development company
or a freelancer, right? So, I've done both over the years and when I talk about a
company, I'm talking about a software house. So, they've got a whole
bunch of developers, they've got a building, they've got
managers, they've got project managers, etc. and you just hire the company.
And ideally, they will just do the whole project for you.
Or should you hire a freelancer, so just go out and find a single developer
who could do your project for you, right? And both of these methods - I've used both
of these and I continue to use both of them.
Depending on the size of the project or this or the goals of the project or
my confidence in both of the different
methods, right? So, I wanted to give a little bit of my insights on this
because I know a lot of you guys out there
are software developers like me. You don't need to hire anybody, you're good,
right? You can do anything yourself. However, some of you guys might be
busy with your day jobs and you don't have time to do like your apps at night
or you might have your day job and then you have you know
your side project already. But you have lots of ideas and you're thinking about
hiring other developers and hopefully, this will help you a
little bit. So, like i said i work a lot of times with
companies and i work a lot of times with freelancers and they both have the pros
and cons. And I want to go through both of those. So, let's talk about companies
first. The major pros of a company are they
should be able to do everything for you. They have everything in-house and you're
not managing developers, right? They have a
project manager who should be able to tell you when things are going to be
done. I say this a lot of times
this fails. Like if you work with a really bad company, this starts to break
down. And when I talk about this stuff I'm kind of cringing a little bit
because I know I've worked with companies who
didn't do this very well. But they should have a, you know,
a project manager with time to be able to give you time skills they should have
all the equipment they need especially with mobile
development like you need to have several physical devices to test with
you need to have you know you need to have the right machinery you should have
qa testing you should have all that kind of stuff
and that kind of company should be able to handle that you don't
need to worry about broadband speed you don't need to worry about whether or not
the the ideally you shouldn't have to worry
about whether or not the equipment is pirated or the the software is pirated
although it might be in a lot of cases right so and they're just able to take
care of everything for you the cons of working with the company are
that a lot of times you're not dealing directly with the developer
right you're dealing with the uh with the owner of the company or the project
manager or you're you know they're and they're
they're hyping up the developers oh yeah we've got the best developers in the
world they're they're absolutely terrific oh do they
know xamarin oh yeah they know xavier you know flutter
they are the best at flutter you know and then sometimes you could even throw
like a a made-up language at them are they good at um
you know zilbar because the zeal barb is perfect right
they don't you know the the company owners are just they're just pushing
that kind of stuff right and i know this because i used to work
at a company where i was the sole developer at this
company and we would go to these meetings with clients
and the owner of the company was just bigging me up big time and he was like
they're saying well we need c plus plus uh our projects at c plus plus
and uh and some java so eric is the best you know eric is the best c
plus plus and i'm sitting over there thinking i'm like a vb guy i don't know
if i should interrupt him and say this or
see if he's just on a roll but like a lot of times the company owners
they either don't understand the technology or they're so interested in
the sale that they'll just say anything when
you're dealing with a company a lot of times you
you get that kind of stuff so that's a major con
and even though i've had projects where even though there's a project manager
and there's there's seniority in place then you also
you bet you spent a lot of times working with the developer
and that developer you didn't meet until after the project already
started right so it could be very very stressful also you're paying more
for a company because you're paying for the management
the building the infrastructure all that kind of stuff so it's a lot cheaper
if you go to the other side with a freelancer now working with a freelancer
can be a lot more refreshing because you're
working directly with a developer right if he's especially as a developer
working with a freelancer so for me i like to hear what the technical issues
are i don't want to just say it's late i want to hear
what's going on you know explain to me what's going on maybe i could help
you know i want to you know or just just so i have an idea so working with
directly with a freelancer a lot of times is a lot better right
however when you work with directly with the
freelancer you get the issues of managing that person sometimes a
freelancer will just go quiet right don't doesn't answer emails
doesn't respond right you just and you're just pulling
your hair out because the freelancers just
they've just gone they just they're ghosting you or they're ghosting you and
then they pop up two weeks later saying here's your project which is again so
so stressful or they come to you and say oh my internet is so slow or my
computer's so slow or i don't have the equipment so an example
let me give you an example of of a project that we've had just this past
week where um i'm testing it on an iphone 11 so i
get a test flight build i'm testing it on my iphone 11
and it crashes immediately and i go to them saying
oh this is through a company by the way it's through a company and
so i say well it's it's crashing on my iphone 11 and they're like well it
shouldn't be crashing and i said well it should never be crashing nobody
intended it to be crashing right so and then they said oh well uh we're
testing it on an iphone 8 and i go okay well
test an iphone 11 and they said well the developer doesn't have an iphone 11.
and this is again and i had to go to the company and said
look i didn't hire this developer as a freelancer i hired you guys as a company
so you need to make sure that he has the equipment he needs right
he needs to find out what this is right so eventually the company had to
run around they got the equipment and and he was able to test it on an iphone
11. the issue by the way was facial
recognition it was using thumbprint on the other one
and for whatever reason in the code it wasn't catering for that so
it's good but anyway that was the kind of thing which you know
the company can handle when you're working with a developer or start with a
freelancer directly there's times where they'll come to you
and say oh i don't have a mac you know again you have to ask these
questions if you hire them ideally but they'll say
oh i don't have an iphone 11 and i can't afford to buy an iphone 11 right so
you're dealing directly with the developer
and it could be a little bit more stressful uh there
there's a strange thing at the moment with the covid stuff a lot of developers
are working from home and they don't have the support of the companies that
they're working for and i've had projects at the moment
where i would have been further ahead going directly with the freelancer right
because i'm having to solve a lot of problems for
them and that kind of stuff so um i think and i think the rule of thumb
is if you're a technical person if you're a
developer yourself and you're working with a fellow developer
then a freelancer is great going straight to a freelancer because
you're going with a technical person who could handle a lot of the technical
issues for you the same as if you're a if you're a
builder and you're going to hire somebody who has a specific skill to do
something for you and you understand what that skill is
and you know what you're asking for them however if you're like somebody's asking
someone to build you a house and you need that architect and that
infrastructure and all the other layers of management
uh then you might want to go with the company right so that's the way that i
think about it but let me tell you what it can be stressful
both ways i mean after years and years of doing this it
still gets stressful it still gets difficult
but you know it is what it is you build that's what software is all about
you know uh you know no one wants to see how the sausage is made sometimes but
Anyway, those are my insights into it. Now, let me ask you, guys if you've ever hired
anybody whether or not you've hired a software
development company or a freelancer, and what were your experiences with that?
Maybe it's just me, maybe i'm just hiring the wrong people,
but it's been a lot of companies, a lot of freelancers over the years
and it's very consistent issues that I have.
Anyway, I hope you, guys, are having a great day! That is it for today. I'll talk to you again next time!