

Ask HN: Most development bang for our buck w/o another full time hire? - callmeed

So, we have a number of projects/tasks in the pipeline and we'd like to increase the pace at which we can knock them out. At the moment, however, we only have 50-75% of what a full-time, salaried developer would cost per month.<p>So, what's the best way to put that money to work? Try and find someone who will work part-time and salaried? Try to find a contract person? Try to find a small development shop to assist us?<p>My main fear is that I'll work with someone and then they'll be gone in 3 months.<p>Has anyone else faced this scenario?
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davidcuddeback
Perhaps you don't need another developer at this time. I find that operating
at n-1 developers forces a team to really consider what the most important
features are. As a developer, it's really easy for me to start thinking of
really cool features, and if only I had another programmer or two on my team,
I could do those features. But those are usually the superfluous features.

Joel Spolsky makes the same point in one of his posts on Joel on Software,
although he uses a schedule as the limiting factor instead of number of
programmers. (Skip to item 13:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html>).

I'm saying this because based on the first sentence of your post, it sounds
like these projects in the pipeline aren't mission-critical. Of course I could
be wrong. You know your business better than I do.

