So, you need a person who will help you reach your goal and make your special idea a reality. How and where to find him?
Developers for startups
How to find a developer for startup? It all depends on the type of project:
- A startup with funding, that is, the founders have enough funds for development. In this case, you can find a web studio or agency to implement the product. To do this, create a tender on specialized platforms.
- A project with limited funding. In this case, an MVP, i.e. minimum viable product can be gathered by freelancers. Where to look for such developers? For example, on the freelancing exchanges or in the directory of programmers.
- Startup without money (a project based on enthusiasm). The only option is to search and hire people you know. Unknown specialists will not agree to work for a percentage of future sales.
How to find a developer for remote work
There are a lot of variants:
- Post vacancies on specialized sites for finding programmers.
- Add a remote job vacancy on services that specialize in finding remote employees for IT companies. The vacancy is advertised free of charge to an audience of hundreds of thousands of specialists.
- Add job openings to popular social networking sites. Some groups publish vacancies for free; some charge money for this.
- You can look for a programmer in freelance directories. They are usually free for employers.
- Add information about your jobs to the directory of employers offering remote work.
Thus it is possible to find a developer for web, mobile, PHP, Java, Java Script and other specialists.
How to choose developers for a startup?
Each of you (if you started a technology startup, of course) faced the problem of choosing — who better to write the program code for our project.
Self-development
Self-development is probably the most economical option. You alone or together with your friends (if you have the necessary knowledge) can sit down and start developing the code. At first all the participants of the project, charged with enthusiasm will write a huge amount of code, but gradually the enthusiasm will fade.
The point is that without seeing an instant financial return from the project, the participants will spend less time working on the project in favor of more pleasant or financially profitable occupations. In the case of independent development by one person there is a risk of reducing the speed of development. That’s why you need to find a developer. With 2 or more developers, the speed increases significantly.
Freelancers
They can be found on many sites. The criteria for choosing a developer is usually their portfolio and the cost. When working with freelancers, there are a lot of risks, which you should be aware of and be careful when choosing people:
- To find a developer in this way, you have to try hard. Because it is not always possible to check the authorship of the portfolio. A person can declare their involvement in developing the Google search engine or a lot of functions of Twitter. But they can not show the code due to the signed NDA (non-disclosure agreement). But in fact they do not represent themselves as experts.
- The person may just take the money and disappear.
- The quality of the code may suffer. The developer has formally fulfilled his part of the condition — the code is written, but not optimally, with low performance, or does not work correctly. In this case we have to check everything that was written after the person and fix the errors.
Companies developing on demand
Companies that develop on demand. This option is the most convenient to find a developer, but you should choose the company very thoughtfully and carefully. I would suggest paying attention to the following points:
- Cost. For a startup where in the early stages every penny is precious, you don’t want to run after the most expensive developers, expecting that they will make you a project you dreamt about. But also do not count every penny; in this case you may have to work with the most skilled developers.
- Portfolio. Having a portfolio of high-profile projects and major clients is not yet an indicator of the professionalism of developers. Sometimes a company with a good name and a lot of serious clients shows in some projects not the best results — no version control systems are used. There is no SLA (Service Level Agreement), no bug tracker, and a lot of errors in architecture and code. In any case, to find a developer who is right for you, ask for more information from your past and present customers — what they think about their cooperation with the company you choose.
- Open Source. Support for open source projects and the availability of their own developments in the public domain is a positive factor. The point is that in this case you can evaluate the quality of the company’s programmers’ work by yourself or with the help of an outside expert.
- Technologies used. Before you decide to find a developer, look at the technologies used by the company’s programmers. Listen to their arguments for the choice of technology, programming language, or framework. What they see as the pros and cons. You should not work with people who use outdated and irrelevant technologies, you should also avoid contacting experimentalists — in the first case, you will have a problem with the development of the product, and in the second — with its support, because the experimental developments do not always work quite stably.
Developers on staff
Another convenient, but on the other hand rather problematic option to find a developer. Recruiting people to the staff, you will have to:
- find an office and prepare workstations;
- find people, interview them, and get them into the company;
- be prepared to “solve” disagreements between employees;
- fire employees, including if your project does not bring the expected results;
- do a lot of accounting and organizational work;
- and much more.
On the other hand, you get full control over people and will be constantly at the center of the work process.
Choosing the right scheme to find a developer is not the easiest thing to do. You may have to go through all the stages — make a prototype yourself. Hire freelancers, and after seeing the inconvenience of working with them, hire a company, and later, as the business grows, form your own team.
Do not disclose the whole idea of the startup to the developer at first, tell him only about the technical part, the tasks directly to the programmers, and see how those tasks fit the skills of a potential employee. And after hiring, you can already broadcast your brilliant idea.