

I would like to outsource development but can't break the mental barrier - robomartin

I've outsourced all kinds of things.  From accounting to graphics sound production for games.  Code: Never.  Why?  I have a mental block preventing me from taking that step.  How are you doing it.<p>I've hired many in-house programmers in the past.  I've had the good, bad and ugly experience.  As a coder myself, I recognize that in some of the bad cases I should have been more involved in the hiring process. Too busy running other aspects of a manufacturing business at the time.<p>I've also seen productivity issues first hand.  Hell, I have productivity issues of my own.  We are only human.<p>And, lastly, I've had work flat out stolen.  After about six months I let go a marketing manager who had been in charge of developing our website.  He went to work for a competitor and had them hire my (freelance) web developer to duplicate all of the internal and external functionality that we spent a year developing and fine-tuning.<p>I am no-longer in manufacturing.  My new world is 100% software-based.  And I have tons of projects I'd like to tackle.  I can't do it all myself or in-house.  But, when I think about the idea of outsourcing development I get images of my past experience that are keeping me from pulling the trigger.<p>I keep reading about people doing this here on HN and other sites.  I can't, from my current vantage point, possibly imagine hiring someone clear across the world to, effectively, hand them my ideas and have them built.  This isn't a case of American egocentrism at all.  I am very well travelled, multi-cultural and speak a few languages.  No issues there.  I guess it boils down to trust.<p>How do you do it?  Does one just jump in to it with a degree of innocence and hope for the best?
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fbuilesv
You're a coder so you're already ahead in the outsourcing game, you can judge
a people technical skills before hiring them and they won't be able to
bullshit you with the typical "The RDBMS has no I/O QPS so the MVC can't
connect to the furblong lasers".

In the past I've helped a couple of people like yourself and some of the tips
I can think of right now are:

* Use something like oDesk to keep track of the worked hours (at least in the beginning). You'll see screencaps of what they were doing every 5-10 minutes so you know you're being billed for real work.

* Get his/her contact info. (Skype, IM, phone) and keep in touch during the beginning to make sure everything's going fine.

* Use something like Pivotal Tracker, Basecamp or any other PM tool so you know at every moment where the project stands at.

* Try to talk to the person more than once a week if possible, don't let them go rogue.

* Only hire reputable people (either through something like the oDesk reputation system or GitHub account).

* Set them up with small/test projects before giving them the full thing. A 1-2 week assignment will help you both get acquainted and you'll know if you want them to be working on your stuff. Pay them for this!

My email's on my profile, if I can be of any help just drop me a line.

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robomartin
I might take you up on that. I am currently finishing up an iOS game. Once
done with that I might go through my outstanding projects and pick one to try
and outsource partially or in full.

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aymeric
I suggest you start with outsourcing unimportant stuff: admin stuff, small
marketing stuff.

You need to get used to letting go.

This section of my website lists the virtual assistants I personally
recommend: <http://taskarmy.com/virtual-assistance-outsourcing>

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sharemywin
I think on anything new you try you test the waters first. Try a couple of
different vendors with small projects and see what/who works and what/who
doesn't. Don't scale what don't work. Plus look at breaking the work into
peices like an API and front-end don't put all your code in one group.

