Assistance starting team

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hrcap
Posts: 131
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:20 pm

Assistance starting team

Post by hrcap » Sun Jan 31, 2021 5:38 pm

Greetings All

I hope that everyone is well.

***May I take a quick opportunity to say a big Thank You to Livecode, the use of your product has allowed me to get to this stage and has really given my project unlimited 'freedom' from the constraints that its previous language imposed.... Keep up the great work****

Having spent the last two years learning Livecode and rebuilding my existing product from a different Language into Livecode, I am now in a (budget constrained) position to look to take on my first Dev to assist with the ongoing development and enrichment of the software.

My vision would be to follow a similar start-up strategy to Digital Pomegranate, sourcing a Dev from somewhere like Armenia where I can hopefully pay the person more per month than they would expect from the average salary of their country.... while at the same time being kind to the budget available.

If anybody could assist with any of the following it would be much appreciated:


• A Livecode consultant to:
- Assist with moving my project in to something like Git-hub to allow co-working
- Advice on any security measures / contracts to protect the product when being worked on by others.
- Possible ongoing input into Project Management to ensure that the Dev is being productive.
- Possible ongoing advice in relation to tech strategy and business strategy


• A Dev that:
- Is looking for long term work in taking the project forwards and to the next level
- Fits the budget



Many Thanks in advance for any input.


Hadleigh

FourthWorld
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Re: Assistance starting team

Post by FourthWorld » Sun Jan 31, 2021 6:59 pm

I can appreciate being budget-conscious. All businesses built to last are.

If you find few candidates who meet your requirements, feel free to message me, or any of the experienced regulars here. Most of us charge at least twice per hour than most overseas rates, but how many hours will be spent? I have three times as much experience as a candidate who's been doing this for a decade. And few candidates have been doing this for a decade.

For example:

- We have tooling in our community that, with a little patience posting here in these forums, can get you migrated to GitHub without needing to pay anyone at all. You just saved 100% of the budget for your first task. :)

- Security is first an awareness, and later a practice. You'll want someone who not only knows LiveCode deeply, but also stays current with infosec trends, tools, and threats. But someone who holds an infosec certification would likely be out of budget. I'm studying for certification, but until it's in hand my rates remain more affordable than a certificate holder would expect. Many others here also include security materials in their weekly reading. Look for someone who does.

- Generic code functions can usually be outsourced easily, but strategy often benefits from cultural immersion. If your candidate isn't already representative of your business' audience, look for one who's demonstrated an ability to quickly grasp customer needs, priorities, and predispositions across a variety of industries.

- Newer devs tend to think about cost, seasoned ones focus more on value. The difference often comes down to being told what something will cost vs being told what can be done within the budget you have. Nothing productive comes from a proposal out of alignment with budget, but nearly every budget can be used prudently to drive at least the most valuable business goals forward. In your case you have an advantage because you've already brought the project this far, and expect to continue being the lead dev going forward. A seasoned dev will enthusiastically embrace any budget, and work with you to see that each dollar is spent toward the highest-value activities first.

- Strategy in planning and execution in product are both critical, of course. But the bridge linking the two is marketing. At this point in the 21st century that usually means a strong social media component, and that often means content strategy. These days just about every growing business is also a content publisher. Be prepared for focused, directed writing, and flexible thinking with how it's syndicated. If your candidate understands the flows and trends of social media engagement your business will benefit from the amplifying network effect.

We have a sizable community with many very experienced developers. Outsourcing can work very well for many things, but for a long-term relationship you may want to also talk with some of the regulars here before making your final decision.

If you need to get started soon I'm out of the running; booked solid through March, possibly April.

But with so many reliable developers here, if you remain flexible with your approach to finding a good fit I'm confident you will.


In addition to your good choice to post your solicitation here, you may want to also post it in the LiveCode Developers Group on LinkedIn. Membership there is less active but very broad, likely useful in gathering the broadest range of candidates:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/50811
Richard Gaskin
LiveCode development, training, and consulting services: Fourth World Systems
LiveCode Group on Facebook
LiveCode Group on LinkedIn

richmond62
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Re: Assistance starting team

Post by richmond62 » Sun Jan 31, 2021 7:20 pm

The last time I paid anyone by the hour I got cheated.

When I want work done (of any kind) I pay by results.

Just my stotinka!
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stotinka.png
stotinka.png (22.18 KiB) Viewed 5323 times
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Currently working on a translation of a 320 page book about Manicheism in Bulgaria for a flat
fee and a deadline (after which I pay penalties).

golife
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Re: Assistance starting team

Post by golife » Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:42 pm

Greetings

I agree with all the points that have been given here. 

But I consider myself an outsourcing specialist as I did this for many years. This was not LiveCode, but we later started with C#-- then as a new language, with Java also then a new language, and we worked partially hourly-based or salary-based with very good salaries compared to local salaries.

Everything always depends on the people you select, their attitude, intelligence, knowledge and experience on one side, and your own ability to create a bridge between customer's expectations and your ability to translate such expectations into workable "code". You may be your own customer of course.

In LiveCode before version 7, I had an Egyptian coder (C++ background) and he started to understand LiveCode within a couple of days and was able to develop applications already. At that time we stopped because then LiveCode was not yet supporting Unicode (except in a very limited way) and because of that the project died.

I believe, having a group of dedicated developers (or even a single one) in such country with good background and keeping them/him for a longer time pays off. You need to give them a month or two to learn. But for computer guys, LiveCode is just almost too easy.

Just now I am working with someone in Bangladesh for JavaScript and PHP, a graduate, and the hourly rate is 6 dollars. This is the rate he gave. He is doing remarkable work. I am thinking of giving him experience with LiveCode, especially server side...
So, always, everything depends on a lot of variables and to make the right choice also depends on budget and time pressure. But never think that anybody will do anything useful without your dedication and input/output.

Also, a good mix is interesting. On one side highly experienced developers in LiveCode, on the other those who learn.

Good starting points are universities and students near completion. Intelligent people are fun to work with no matter where and what. Intelligent people attract other intelligent people around. They know how to scale work if requested.

Not so good experience I have when working with a company already established. Going through any sales and company manager -- I would not do this again. You need direct contact with developers, with individuals, be able to communicate directly, and do not give away the control of the process.

And additionally, this is a good way of making LiveCode become better known to "real" developers, and with "real" I mean those with a strong foundation in C/C++, assembler and application development and/or graphic skills and content production and development. There are only very few on the international level that would qualify without learning LiveCode. But how fast they learn depends on their background. For them, LiveCode is simply a layer on top of a layer -- where the basic layer is C++.

So, as always, the answer is: "It depends..."

hrcap
Posts: 131
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:20 pm

Re: Assistance starting team

Post by hrcap » Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:10 pm

Good evening all

Thank you very much to those who have taken the time to reply so far, your input is very much appreciated.


Richard
• Very kind of you to offer to take a look at any candidates, thank you very much.

• in regard to getting Git up and running myself using the forum: this is the approach that I have been using so far with my project, I have utilised the forum on sticking points, taken the advice and then researched and practiced to continue with the build… it has now come to the point where I need to start sourcing assistance and Git is one of the first tasks… I more than likely could figure this out with help from the forum but the outsourcing needs to start somewhere and this is it.

• Totally understand your argument with Cost versus experience… this is why i would like a combination of both, a more experienced Dev to act in a consulting / adhoc dev role….. and a lower cost dev who hopefully I can offer an attractive comparative salary to so that they can chug away with improvements and new features…… Maybe this starts with a relationship with the higher skilled dev who whilst getting to grips with my project also starts sending feelers out to their network to help look for the lower cost candidates??

• Marketing - again totally agree and in fact this is one of the contributing factors to me now needing to source assistance, I am as we speak building the website and as such tasks like this are starting to decrease the amount of time that I can spend coding.

• Timescale - Im not in a massive rush to get started yesterday but I would like things to start moving in the right direction so your availability could be a possibility, if you could send over your charging structure for assisting with ongoing projects it would be much appreciated.


Richmond
Totally hear you, in my bread and butter business this is the approach that I follow

…. So why am I considering a lower cost dev on a salary you might ask?

… The answer to this may be that I like the idea of having a fixed cost per month that ‘should’ allow continual improvement of the product

….. hmmmm or maybe using that fixed cost on higher skilled devs is a more favourable option????

…. Quite simply my commercial background isn’t software development, i’m a self taught coder and I just have zero experience with how this will work and what is best…. maybe my strategy of using both a higher skilled, and lower skilled will open my eyes (hopefully)

• Again if any of the above is of interest please forward over your pricing structure for working on ongoing projects.



Golife
• Couldn’t agree more in respect of recruiting the right people with the correct attitude. In fact this is a lesson that I have learnt recently and am reaping the benefits of a CV19 forced re-jiggle of my small team.

• Maybe your co-worker in Bangladesh has a colleague who may be interested in coming on board? or indeed maybe he has a contact in the uni Computer department as you suggest?

• Direct communication, this is something that I think I will hopefully be quite good at and is the main reason that I have stuck with learning Livecode for the past two years… to allow me to communicate directly with the dev, understand what is being done, and have input as to possible ways forward.

• If we can raise the awareness of Livecode, and/or have a positive economic impact in a developing country along the way then all the better.

• and again to finish if you have any interest then please forward over your pricing structure for ongoing project involvement.



****ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTERS****
Hopefully this wont be the end of this thread, if anybody else has any input or potentially would like to be involved then please add to this post, your information and past experience is greatly received.




Many Thanks

richmond62
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Re: Assistance starting team

Post by richmond62 » Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:39 am

Hopefully this wont be the end of this thread
Now you are in trouble: 8)

This is probably way off the point, mainly because I have only ever employed someone for software dev. twice, and that was a long time ago.

So: off the point:

I am what is called a "style editor". My wife is Bulgarian, and has an extremely high level of English, so she is a translator.
But, my wife, not being a native speaker, still suffers from an element of "mother-tongue interference" when she translates
from Bulgarian into English: hence the need for a style-editor (think of the chap with the furniture polish).

Now both of us get paid, either as a team, or, occasionally separately (the current stuff I am 'polishing' has been translated by
someone else, which really helps me see how fantastically good my wife's work is). We command the highest rate for this sort of thing
in Bulgaria as there are no teams where one is like my wife and one is like me (Literate, M.A. in Linguistics, 30-odd years experience of
seeing exactly where Bulgarians go wrong in English). This is not meant to be a swank, just a statement of fact.

So we are paid 25 leva (13 Euros) per 1800 characters, including spaces.

For style-editing alone, I am paid 5 leva (3 Euros) per 1800 characters, including spaces.

That is 1800 chars in the original text (all translations are longer than the originals).

The only difficulty that I can see for adapting this model to software development is:

1. "Wicked Richmond" makes his code as needlessly verbose as possible so as to get paid more.

However, I am not offering myself to do this sort of thing as my programming is just not up to the job, and it's not really "my bag" anyway.

Ultimately it all comes down to Quantification, and the Quality of what is quantified.

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