
Ask HN: How do you find affordable but capable remote developers? - JFitzDela
Hello!<p>I&#x27;ve finally gotten my business to the point that I NEED to hire on at least one subcontractor to take over some of the development work on my plate.<p>My first thought was to hire out of the Philippines, as I&#x27;d heard from a couple of online business bloggers I know that there are a lot of very capable folk willing to work for what amounts to a large sum for them but a small one for me.<p>I&#x27;m just concerned, I guess, about hiring anyone, much less a foreign worker, for no other reason than I&#x27;m scared to &quot;let go&quot; as it were and trust ANYONE.<p>To that end, I need to find someone capable in PHP -- most of my projects are currently built on a &quot;custom&quot; codebase (all my spaghetti code from 10 years of work) as I&#x27;d gotten too busy to keep up with the latest frameworks and such. I would LIKE, however, to get someone who can work with me to transition to Laravel&#x2F;Symfony (I&#x27;m not ready to go to Rails&#x2F;Node, I don&#x27;t think).<p>Anyone have advice for where&#x2F;how to find quality developers that fit the bill? I can&#x27;t quite afford to hire at American full-time rates, but I need full-time work. May be crappy of me, but there it is -- I&#x27;m in that weird limbo that I MUST get out of.<p>Thanks a million!
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edoceo
I find mine on oDesk. Rates vary widely; good talent is always worth it. I'm
paying between $12 and $38/hr.

I post a small gig, with well defined deliverable. Then I have like 100+
applicants. I use a tool I created to filter this down to four or five.

I'll do a quick interview, ask for code or something and then hire two of them
for the same gig.

I evaluate their work over this short period (10-20h).

I pick the "winner"

The cost of this hiring via experimental gig is very low and I've had good
results thus far.

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JFitzDela
Thanks! I'll give oDesk another look.

I'd just always heard about the difficulty finding an actually talented
contractor, but I like your approach.

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badri
Toptal([http://www.toptal.com/](http://www.toptal.com/)) could fit your bill.
The average quality of developers is much higher there.

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gus_massa
> How do you find affordable but capable remote developers?

You pay them more.

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JFitzDela
Not entirely helpful, but I'll bite.

I'm more than willing to pay higher than "standard" rates, I just can't afford
to do so here. The numbers I hard from the Philippines, for instance, meant
that I could pay a yearly salary of between $5000 and $10000 (USD) and that
would be an amazing wage (I haven't verified that, however).

The issue is not necessarily how MUCH to pay, but how to find the developers
in a place I can afford to begin with.

