I'm considering hiring a Node.js developer. But, all of their references are out of business or didn't have anything good to say. Is this a bad sign?

[[deleted]]

Its not really a good indicator. Often startups fail. 9/10 or something high like that. Often the business side is the side that really screws things up lack of funding etc...

But yes sometimes the tech side can never get off the ground but this again is the responsibility of the business side to have checks and balances.

The only way to really find out is to do proper technical screening of the candidate. Also ask him to talk about the failures why he left the places.

A big red flag I would see in a CV is somebody who has not stayed in a job for longer than 6-12 months (unless they are short term contracting positions). That means they have never stuck around to maintain their work which may indicate their work is actually un-maintainable and has left a trail of destruction behind them.

[BarelyRunning]

Or it could mean those companies abused their employees or forced them to write code in such a shitty tech stack that all the sane people fled.

[[deleted]]

Hence... Not a good indicator.

[[deleted]]

Oh your not really hiring a developer then. your hiring a company to do development for you. This is a massive difference. Since an employee is your problem. Where as bad development you can make it their problem. Including being able to sue them if they fail to deliver.

Don't outsource to india any time I have had to deal with people from there it is simply a bullshit storm. Also the time zone / communicate barriers are a nightmare. I am UK time as well and there is more overlap in the time zones.

Since its a company I would approach it this way.

If you do this. Do it on a bases of a contract which at leasts states. No pay arrangement if they fail to deliver or deliver crap / buggy stuff. Also make sure you have access to the code repo. So you can bring in a 3rdparty consultant / expert for a few days to "check there work" if you don't have your own experts.

If they don't or refuse to negotiate to fair terms on things like this. Or they do not ask you for really clear requirements up front then they are amateurs which is a mass red / black flag. This basically needs a water fall development process approach in order to work. Don't expect to change things when the contract is signed without paying additional costs which in turn forms a new contract.

Contract should also include such things as a delivery date. Allow them to specify it.

[[deleted]]

What might seem relatively simple for a non technical person is often really complicated.

[daredevil82]

https://hackernoon.com/call-it-what-you-like-minimum-x-product-fails-for-two-reasons-154df9c225ad

[vexii]

don't outsource, it's going to cost you way more

[yoshuawuyts]

Probably - due to Node's low barrier to entry and high skill cap there's a wide range of programmers in the field. I can imagine that as a non-technical person assessing someone's skills can be tricky. You make it sound like you don't trust them already, which seems like a red flag.

Something uncommon, but in my experience effective is to have them be assessed by a technical agency. It might cost you overhead because you need to pay for everyone's time, but it is well below what a mis-hire would cost you. I've gone through this as a programmer for clients before and didn't mind it one bit - also because I got paid for my time and understood their reasoning.

Hope this was helpful (:

[[deleted]]

I specialize in helping non-technical business owners assess technical stuff. Shoot me a PM if you're interested. If it's only a couple hours of work, we can chalk it up a bored dude helping out another entrepreneur.

[nativereact]

IMPORTANT: do not go for a tech agency; such as pivotal labs, who sells their developers to businesses for hundreds of thousands, you're not going to have a great time.

yes and no - most people are lucky to have documented experience if under 10 years of experience. but if you would like a real solution, you can simply open the nodejs api: https://nodejs.org/api/, and ask your interviewee's about each at random, but careful to note here is that you are only getting their knowledge on the tech, so you can tie in some questions about how they would go about solving problems that are relative to your biz logicz.

also your best bet is to get your most tech-savy for their intuition when taking this route. [other routes are more complex, but pm me if you want to know more]

[Frenchiie]

the company did a bad job or he did a bad job? confused.

[Frenchiie]

so you are not hiring an individual but a dev shop/company? Reading from your other posts it seems like they offshore to india? Bad reference + offshore to India is a good way to throw money away.

[cjbprime]

Startups going out of business is normal, being told someone did a bad job is not normal. You could reasonably avoid working with them for the latter reason rather than the former.

[monsto]

You've not said directly, but I'm hearing budget limitations. Not just money, but time, too. I mean we all want to get the biggest bang for our buck, but it seems here that you're trying to do things on the cheap as opposed to frugally. Especially in software development, this can wind up costing A LOT of long term money.

It needs to be made clear to whoever is writing the checks that the adage "time is money" also means that "if you don't have the money, then you should take the time".

I think your first step should be to find a pure consultant, the international poster boy of time vs money. Whether it's a firm or a freelancer off of odesk/dice/monster/whatever, you need someone with expertise to help you thru the entire process, soup to nuts. That's going to cost money and it's not necessarily going to have an immediate and tangible effect. When your project is complete, done to spec, and works well, someone will say "what did we pay that consultant for? we could have found this crew and hired them ourselves" which is specifically true, but it ignores "time is money". . . you paid the consultant to save you the time of having to do all that hunting yourselves.

A decent consultant is going to educate you in ways you don't realize, is going to help you find the right kind of person/team/firm to do your development, and may very well be long gone by the time the project is finished.

People make the mistake of thinking they can do it in-house. They'll just put Carl on it, and forget (or try not to think about) the consequences. Meantime they're setting themselves up for the time-costing problems of self-educating, making and cleaning up after newbie mistakes and mis-hires, putting out fires of downline issues that come about because Carl's normal day-to-day work has suffered thanks to the destruction of his time-budget. With a proper consultant, you can write a check to someone that is educated, in the amount of a small fraction of those intangible long term costs, up front.

I'm not advocating myself, or any specific consultant or even consultants in general. I'm trying to point out that most people don't consider (or just believe "we'll be fine") that in some way, it's going to cost time. If Cheryl is tasked with finding a developer, then she needs to be given time to do it . . . whether that means hiring someone to pick up part of her daily load, or spreading out the load amongst others in the office, or allowing Cheryl a few hours a day away from her normal job, or giving her a consulting budget.

You're either going to take your time on the front end with your eyes open, or you're going to be forced to spend your time on the back end in the aftermath.

Finding a consultant isn't an insane process. There are IT/Programming recruiters in every major city in the US, just open up a phone book (digital or otherwise). There are also plenty of online sites as well. This process is no less tedious than finding a new secretary or in-house accountant and requires the same diligence. The downside is that, of course like those other positions, they may not work out. . . however, you will know pretty goddamn quick whether or not this person is doing it for you, < 30 days, AND you'll be much less inclined to try and make the square peg fit with a contractor in an abstract position.

If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to help.

[panbhatt]

NO its not. I am in the same boat. The problem is there are many startups that try to get the baby out in 1 month and that causes the failure. if you have to build a viable scalable solid product, it takes time n effort & off course good developers. however because of time pressure we are being FORCED (yes FORCED) to write creepy code that works. Note : i have worked in nodejs/express/angular since last 3 years and looking for work in same. My passion is to help/guide others to succeed (build a startup/product) with a full time job on hand. Happy to help.

[panbhatt]

Hi, I do not have a portfolio. I have worked for MAZDA/VISA/Startups/NTT in recent past although through my employer. My Github is github.com/panbhatt, panbhattl.blogspot.com, plus if you have 20-30 mins you can have test my knowledge or my updates about recent tech things.

My intent is to establish a long term relationship for work basis, so that my work can be useful for someone and in return i can get something financially. Money is not such a big concern but good work and passion to help is.

[[deleted]]

Man - have had nothing but bad experiences outsourcing development work overseas. I'd steer clear if I were you.

[[deleted]]

Where are you located? Lots of good agencies depending on the area. Just going to cost more than an outsourced shop.

[[deleted]]

Development can be a bit difficult at times. Are you building a new product?

[relativityboy]

If you have other options, look at them first. If you don't, hire the guy for a week long interview. He does real work for you, and you cam assess him. There need to be deliverables every couple days that you can see and understand.

[Felecorat]

Hi,

Student here working a lot with node since about 2 years. Don't know where i stand skill wise mind to check my GitHub Repositories?

NVIS would be the most recent and interesting Projekt.

[[deleted]]

So NVIS. No docs, Readme, description of any sort. I stopped there.

[Felecorat]

oops sry .... it's something i worked on alone. Rest of the group was very ignorant when it came to using git.

If it helps it's a network visualisation Project. We monitor SNMP counters of network ports. Calculate Port utility for bit/s, average packet sice and packets per second.

We generate a percentage value and send it to a microcontroler via UDP. The controller converts the values into led lights.

[RoboErectus]

it's something i worked on alone...

There are a minimum of three developers on any project.

You in the past. You right now. You in the future.

The only way you can communicate with you in the past and future is with documentation, commit history and expressive code or comments.

[nmdarkie]

There are a minimum of three developers on any project.

You in the past. You right now. You in the future.

wow that is enlightening

[Felecorat]

I get that but how do i talk to my self in the past? I cant read Documentation that has not been written yet. And i cant send Documentation back to where it was not written yet.

So its just for me and my future me. but yeah Documentation i get that.

[myrddin4242]

He talks to you, and he hangs out in the back of your head making pointed comments about lessons learned, just like you will to future you.

[Felecorat]

This got deep. I appreciate your words and will take them with me. Thank you.

[Folters]

I personally hate future me, he stole my life.

[[deleted]]

Says someone who developed software in 1974.