Best country for freelance coders?
 

I need to hire some extra coders to help me get a few projects up off the ground. I'm thinking about using a site like elance or rentacoder, but am having a hard time deciding what country would be the best to select a coder from. I've written very detailed specs and will be able to do code reviews to verify the quality of the work. Have you had better experience with russians or indians?

Russia.

Or, what the hell, India.

Holy crap, unless you're trolling, I made the above comments without even reading your post.

Would you prefer to be stolen from, or something broken that needs to be thrown out? Take your pick.

Nope, not trolling. So what would you suggest? Take the hit on $$ and try and hire an american coder?

At the very least, make sure you hire someone competent. Depends on what you need, but I've been paid many a time to fix both columns (not currently taking clients, so I have no stake in this). Talk to people who have done similar, and hired similar.

WordPress? Fris. General? Mrkris. Other? I haven't worked with him, but I hear borked is quite good.

What's been written so far is php using codeigniter w/ smarty

Personally, I'd take mrkris for this since I know he's worked with this semi-platform. There are several other decent coders here; I just haven't worked with them. Make a thread here, and see if anyone shows up.

Thanks for the advice :thumbsup

Good luck with your stable, secure platform. :thumbsup

Times have changed, for small projects you can still outsource but anything serious have someone come into your office.

As far as countries go I dont think that matters there is good and bad everywhere.

Avoid elance at all costs as they do not have a good system in place to protect the buyer. RAC is the best when it comes to arbitration and trust me dealing with programmers that happens allot.

Here are some common sense things to do when hiring off RAC or other sites that protect the buyer.

a) if your work involves PHP and MYSql look for those with recent as in past 6 month completed jobs within that skillset. 150 positive feedbacks about how great he was and how fast and ontime he was related to html and JS jobs wont do you any good.

b) explain you have a deadline that under no circumstances can be missed and missing of those deadlines will result in the cancelation of the project with no exceptions. NEVER allow anyone to work with a open ended deadline, you do that and you will always regret it.

c) Do not work with companies, work with developers directly, if your project is so big that it needs a few people, hire locals. If the repy starts with "We are a team in india..." delete that right away.

d) KEY POINT: if at all possible pick out the most difficult part of your project and try to find a developer for that and if he was good use him for other stuff. For example a basic ordering system for a site and a database and user management e commerce type stuff a million people can do, but that complex new thing you like to do, maybe some special online java app maybe something that uses special drivers whatever it is get that out of the way first.

e) If you dont live by rules and are the emotional type a simple project like a contact us form can take a few years. Missed deadlines should always regardless of excuse result in immediate termination, be upfront about that policy or they will take on new clients and push you to the back. On RAC you can make those deadlines clear and if the programmer fails you keep your money.

f) Get a phone number, a gtalk/aim/yhoo etc messenger contact to them

g) No visual updates = nothing was done! There is no exception to that rule. Obviously the day after a developer starts he might not be able to show much but if you cant see some sort of changes daily he didnt do shit! The day a programmer says that the reason he cant show you any new things for the past week is because hes "debugging" fire him, no exception! BE upfront that on a daily basis he needs to upload his work and be in touch.

Good honest hard working developers will not be scared of the above, I have many years of experience getting shit done and I have a formula that works, the moment I dont follow these rules I lose!

PS. No developer can read your mind, if you dont have a program like EDDraw etc to draw up exactly diagrams and details of what you want, take a pen and paper and do your best. The more you show the better and quicker they can understand what you need.

I always draw things out and it makes the project go quick, a picture is really worth a 1000 words when it comes to getting things built.

In mainstream I have a good coder. They did a few asp , php, script mods, integrations

But no porn

There are few around here on the board that know a thing or 2

awesome post :thumbsup

i need to hire a web development company - i wish i could put it in the hands of somebody from the adult industry but guys in adult are lone wolves, i need a team because it's not a typical porn site i need developed.

my 2 cents,
excluding Europe,
most countries reps are underserved,
sure there are some excellent programmers in india or russia or fillintheblank_____,
but to think all or most are good is a mistake,
I have even found people using their buddy tech certs to apply for a job,
and companies posing as one person.
Whats you should be looking for is qualified staff, not a country's reputation.
Or even better a project manager.

my other 2 cents:
most projects I see fail is when the programmer chooses the language and or platform,
of course he will choose what he is more comfortable with, not by any means the right one.
You should first choose the lan and platform THEN the programmer.

Nice post EB.

That should be followed like law.


From what I've noticed in the past 3 years the quality of Indian labor has slipped dramatically.

Also, workers in the Philpinnes have too many excuses.


The best bet is Craig's List or Linked In. And make it local. Meet the person IN PERSON first. Offshore is the second option now a days, not the first.