Hard-won Wisdom: What to look for in a Developer

If you’re in the US, hire US or Canadian.

You get what you pay for. There are a lot of bright Indian developers & executives, but they’re all HERE. The guy you get in India for $10 was not good enough to get work here and may have lied out of sheer desperation to get your work.

In a recent project, we found a great Indian company that charged for $13/hour. My partner spent a lot of time meeting with them & watched their work closely. And these were good Indian developers.

In my first experience, I sent a beautiful Visio mockup including a drop-down list of American states showing a sample of 3 states. I got back an actual product with a dropbox that contains 3 states, including Luciana (Louisiana).

Need I remind you that India is 12.5 hours ahead of Pacific time? If you plan to go international, Ukraine was the best option. Unfortunately, Ukraine was invaded by Russia, resulting in numerous casualties, and it’s currently challenging to find developers there. It’s advisable not to hire Russians. Mexico, on the other hand, is another promising market and offers cost-effective solutions.

I live in California, which means that if you want to hire me for more than $600 per year, you would need to set me up as a W-2 employee rather than a 1099 contractor.

1099 or Wu-BENE

For US-based contractors, the appropriate classification is 1099, while foreign companies should use W-8BEN forms. Both options are easy to account for, and taxes are the responsibility of the 1099 developer. However, you would need to provide a 1099 tax document. A W-8BEN form indicates that your contractor is in a foreign country and has no intention of residing in the US. On the other hand, a W-2 arrangement requires you to file taxes four times a year with state and federal agencies, and it may involve additional benefits.

Must understand business. There are millions of developers in the world who can handle JSON and data manipulation, but most of them lack business acumen.

I once worked on a website that was previously developed for hosting events. It functioned adequately, but there was a credit card page displaying credit card numbers and owners’ information. Access to this page didn’t require login credentials, which posed a significant privacy and financial security risk. To minimize such risks, I always recommend using PayPal and Stripe for storing credit card information. My goal is to reduce privacy and financial security concerns to a negligible level. Dealing with sophisticated hackers is not something you want to burden yourself with, especially when a breach can put you in jeopardy. Life is too short.

Must care about Workflow.

Workflow is often used as a buzzword, but what does it really mean and why does it matter? Simply put, when you establish an online presence, you have billions of potential customers. If your business becomes successful, do you want to enjoy the profits and relax on a beach, or be trapped in a nightmarish hell where you have to manually close each of one million transactions, one by one, with wheels spinning and 850,000 more to go? Similarly, if you receive a million orders for various fruit baskets, do you want to struggle with a small apartment overflowing with fruit boxes, baskets, cellophane, and shipping boxes? There are ways to handle big business and even manage fluctuations. You need a capacity plan, and your developer should understand how to enable you to handle your end of the deal in a humanly possible manner, even when the demand is overwhelming. This also means you’re not hiring disposable day workers; you are looking for a long-term relationship, and you must be serious about how you search for talent.

Project Pricing

My policy is to estimate the number of billable hours based on my rate to provide a cost estimate for a project. The maximum actual cost would be less than twice that amount. This approach strikes a balance between predictability and fairness. With my experience, I can deliver complex, sophisticated, and high-quality work. However, due to my disability, it takes me longer to complete tasks. I spend most of my time debugging the code to ensure it functions correctly, avoids unnecessary actions, and, most importantly, doesn’t skip anything.