I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack

Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by icey on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:35PM (#1017460)

I feel like there are whole marketplaces I'm not aware of - where do people go to find offshore help? I've universally found poor quality, which ends up with me paying people I know personally a ton of money to grind out boring crap (or doing it myself), when I'd much rather pay them to work on the interesting things.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by maxklein on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:42PM (#1017470)

A lot of it comes from experience. After outsourcing for a year, you can judge pretty accurately within the first paragraph what a person is good for. The way they communicate will tell you a lot.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by icey on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:43PM (#1017471)

I'd definitely be interested in hearing more about this.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by zaidf on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:50PM (#1017484)

I always felt like someone should write a quick, to-the-point ebook for outsourcing newbies on working through the outsourcing world. May be I'll pen that one day:)

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by allantyoung on Sunday December 27, 2009 @04:28PM (#1017657)

Zaid - I love your blog so your future ebook will probably be good too. If you have extensive experience outsourcing, I want to learn from your trails. So please do it.

Here are some helpful links to get you started. I'm looking forward to reading your ebook.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/03/you_should_w...

http://www.squidoo.com/howtomakeanEbook

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/09/16/thirteen-steps...

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by zaidf on Sunday December 27, 2009 @08:21PM (#1017911)

Thanks for the encouragement Alex. I will start putting together my ideas and bring it together one of these weekends!

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by maxklein on Monday December 28, 2009 @05:15AM (#1018412)

I'd most certainly buy it too!

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by icey on Sunday December 27, 2009 @04:23PM (#1017646)

One of the things that I really like about HN is that I feel like most of the people here have information worth sharing, and information that's valuable enough that I'd pay for a PDF of that information.

I'm kind of surprised we don't have an HN ebook marketplace going yet, to be honest.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by mattm on Monday December 28, 2009 @04:32AM (#1018382)

Me too.

I have done freelance work through oDesk (at one point full-time for a couple months). I see postings looking for programmers where they are willing to pay max $4/hr. I try to move on and not get frustrated but it's difficult.

I would be really interested in hearing just what kind of programmers you hire. From the little you mention, it sounds like you need to treat them like kids/code-monkeys - spelling everything out, not wanting their creativity, etc.

I have thought sometimes to just spend a couple hundred bucks and hire a couple cheap programmers to work on a made-up project just to see what it's like. It would make for an interesting blog post at least.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by zaidf on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:59PM (#1017500)

A lot of it is also expectation control. I am always mentally ready for a programmer to bail out on a project. New folks who try outsourcing often give up after their first or second failed attempt. There's no secret - even after years of doing this, I pick the wrong guy every now and then.

Few days ago I made a full-time offer to a php programmer in India after extensive interviewing. Finally, I sent the contract. He went missing since getting the contract. Not a huge surprise - he probably used it to get a better offer at another company. I just went down the list to the next candidates.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by zaidf on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:49PM (#1017482)

Start at rentacoder.com(lots of individual coders). Another option is elance.com(better for larger projects; more companies bidding).

I was a top coder there in high school(early 2000). These days I use it exclusively to hire coders and designers for very specific projects.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by catfish on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:38PM (#1017463)

The key lies in documentation. The better you explain it on paper, the better the result. Especially with India.

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Re:I'm not an enterpreneur, I'm a dirty hack by zaidf on Sunday December 27, 2009 @02:52PM (#1017487)

Bingo! A lot of my programming projects, I do the db schema design and post it along with the other specs. Dumb it down as much as you can.

Of course, at some point if a project takes off you would want someone longterm. That's a whole different game(hiring a full-time developer offshore).

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