

Ask HN: How do you outsource design and development? - gacxllr9

Ideally, I would have someone in my immediate circle of friends who could create this project. Since I don't, I want to make the process of outsourcing development and design as seamless as possible. Does anyone on HN have experience hiring out, and ensuring that the vision is executed upon?
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fjabre
You're the architect so you'd be the glue between the design team and
implementation team. Ideally they are not the same people.

For a programmer I'd start by farming out the project in pieces to a few
different people to find the right person. For designers I'd start looking at
sortfolio.com or CSS portfolio sites where you'll typically find designers
demonstrating their skills. Expect to be emailing quite a bit. It's not an
easy process but assembling the right team is half the battle - directing and
architecting the product to release is the other half.

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gacxllr9
In a comment that will probably be laughed at, I'll just ask this: what kind
of a site can I expect with a $500-$1000 price range? Surely something can be
built for that much money.

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Travis
No need to laugh. But you should _seriously_ adjust your expectations.

For a US firm, $1k will get you a website with around a dozen pages. Probably
from a template. Maybe with a contact form or email signup.

If you outsource, $1k will get you the above with maybe a single database
interaction. E.g., you could probably expect to make a to-do list, with user
login and password updating. Maybe it would even email out the tasks when
they're due. But not much more than that.

Figure it this way -- a kick ass US programmer will charge about $1k for a
day's work. You can't get much built in a day.

And for outsourcing, I can only speak to my experience, but they tend to take
4-5x longer (per hour basis) than I do. So the hourly is much cheaper, but the
quality and efficiency are much worse (note: that's an obvious
generalization... but the parent comment is exactly the type that will tend to
get screwed on outsourcing due to lack of domain expertise.)

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scorpioxy
$1k for a day's work? Really?

Wow. Some people on this website considered it weird when i said that $15/hour
is a low rate when you ask for freelancers who can code more than your run-of-
the-mill php page.

I am not talking about US vs non-US, that makes no difference to me. I expect
to pay a premium for service from knowledgeable people regardless of their
nationality. Why don't people do the same when it comes to software?

Or am i completely off base here?

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jeffepp
Design: I would look at sortfolio and contact them directly Development: I
would look at design shops with development (one company is better) again,
they can be found on sortfolio.

If you are looking intl, then you have odesk, elance, guru and rentacoder.

You definitely should make sure that it is scoped out, with business rules,
wireframes, use cases, etc. All of these will help the contractors come up
with a realistic price and timeframe.

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imp
I haven't done it myself, but for your price range you'll likely end up on
rentacoder. An article posted here a while back had some good tips on managing
a project there:

[http://maxkle.in/the-subtleties-in-outsourcing-using-
rentaco...](http://maxkle.in/the-subtleties-in-outsourcing-using-rentacode/)

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zackattack
Yeah, definitely. Your best bet is to make your spec documents as detailed as
possible, to the letter. Then, only hire someone whose references you've
checked; ask them how reliable are they (do they randomly disappear?) and ask
them how close they stuck to their initial estimate. I like looking on
Craigslist when I prefer to deal with an American and Rentacoder when I'm
willing to go international.

