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Out of context: Reply #10

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  • rosem0

    Here are a few rules I lived by when I first start out — before I could afford to hire local developers.

    1) DO NOT hire Chinese or Indian developers. You will just end up beating your head against the wall.

    2) DO hire European or Eastern European developers. I still work with a few developers in France and the Ukraine. Most have a design sense that is more in line with the Western World and makes for a lot less explaining (see above)

    3) DO hire a Ruby on Rails programmer. By doing this you eliminate the lazy people who haven't bothered to switch over from PHP. I've found that if you can find developers that know the latest and greatest, they are usually very good.

    4) DO NOT write a project brief, hand it off, and expect great results. With any project it's best to break it down into small chunks. Tell the developer the end goal of the project but assign realistic weekly tasks for them to complete. You should be spending some time each day reviewing (Skype), organizing, and preparing for the next steps.

    5) DO pay a realistic wage. You get what you pay for. If you hire a developer at $10/hr and expect great things — you're an idiot. A good European developer will only ask for ~$35/hr. This is about 1/3 less than a developer here in Chicago.

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