Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} hire a programmer or company?

[Florian Philipp]

Am 27.05.2012 08:22, schrieb Grant:
>>> I'm debating whether I should hire an expert programmer for $X/hour,
>>> or a company of expert programmers for $2X/hour.  It makes sense from
>>> a financial perspective to hire programmers directly, but I wonder if
>>> there are benefits to hiring a really good company.
>>>
[...]
>>
>> For starters, you could give us a bit more insight into the kind of
>> project we are talking about. What's the expected development effort,
>> what are the services you pay for (binaries, source code, testing,
>> maintenance, ...)?
>
> The project is made up of various and ongoing scripting tasks for a
> relatively complex website.
>
>> Regarding programmer vs. company, I'd say it depends on what you expect
>> and pay for. If you just want it coded, then the lone programmer is
>> probably as good as the company (since programming itself doesn't really
>> scale well with the number of devs).
>
> That's a really good point.
>
[...]
>
>> But in the end, these issues a minor. It really boils down to whom you
>> trust more. Ask for references, look at their previous work, talk to
>> them, etc.
>
> Can you tell me what sort of positive and negative things to watch out for?
>

I probably don't have enough experience to give you an exhaustive list.
However, since this is a web development, the two biggest points I'd be
looking at are:
1. How do they plan to separate the production environment from testing
and development? You don't want to crash your site just because the dev
is too lazy to test his changes beforehand.
2. Do they have a basic understanding about web security? What
precautions do they take with regard to XSS, CSRF and the classic
injections (HTTP header, SQL, Shell, etc.)? Do these words even ring a
bell to them?

Methodology is also a good indicator: Are they happy hackers with no
real software engineering background, then they'll probably be good for
smaller projects but will break down on large ones where you need the
additional management. On the other hand, if they throw only buzzwords
at you, I'd get suspicious.

>> All things being equal, paying 1*x instead of 2*x gives you the chance
>> to pay another 1*x to a second developer if things don't work out with
>> the first one. ;-)
>
> Once I need more than one developer (which could come sooner rather
> than later due to the availability of these guys) am I likely to
> struggle managing them?  I've read a bit about "Agile" software
> development and I plan to read a lot more.  Is that the way to go?
>

Two independent programmers working on the same project? I wouldn't do
that unless they know each other and have experience working together.
If you need to scale beyond the capabilities of your contractor, you
should definitely start with a larger contractor (i.e. the company).

I cannot give you any insight on agile development. First and foremost
because I've never worked agile (well, unless you count rapid
prototyping) but also because that's one of those buzzwords that can
mean many different things to different people.

> Would hiring a company make management a non-issue from my perspective?
>

Not completely but it's definitely better than managing two developers.
You should still try to be in close contact with them. See if they
understand your requirements, watch their progress, look at their
intermediate results, plan the final acceptance testing with them and so on.

Regards,
Florian Philipp