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Finding a Ready-Made Dev Team?
marshrew writes "We are a small startup just coming out of a period of R&D with IP and prototype code (containing open source, commercial & freelancer-built custom components) developed/integrated in-house by essentially one guy. We're at the point where we want to build out first commercial implementation which will require a handful of developers for at least six months. We really don't have time or funds to go through a developer recruiting cycle, create a practice, get the team "gelled" etc. What we'd really like to do is find a small pre-existing team which which we could form a relationship to get our product out the door and possibly continue working with. We don't mean a splinter group from a larger dev house, but an agile, self-contained team, who enjoy working together and have an existing practice. Geography is not a problem as we are used to working in a distributed manner." Does such an animal exist? What have other teams done in a situation like this?
In the long run, you'd almost certainly be better off hiring developers of your own. Hiring developers from companies like IBM GSA, CSC, etc. is a recipe for disaster if you aren't very careful about the contracts and other legal niceties, they'll eat you for breakfast, and then go out for seconds.
Another poster also comments on long term support and maintenance. Combine all these factors, and I would strongly recommend keeping it in house. Yes, it's a pain, but it'll be better in the long run.
In any event, good luck.
The way one local (and now powerful) company did it was by "hiring" people for pizza. If the product is cool, then you'll corral some college geeks to do the groundwork and free up your good coders for the cool work.
0 0713.html ) that college students, who were used and abused during the bubble, remain a good resource of, dare I say it, cheap labour. They like the prestige, need the experience, and are used to working in small project teams. And yeah, you can pay them peanuts.
This has been touched on recently in some blogs ( http://www.wilshipley.com/blog/ and http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/0
And no, they don't even need to be in college. Two of the most impressive code monkeys I know dropped out of High School.....
Well, since you're posting as anonymous with high praise for IBM Global Service, let's see this counter argument from Kuro5hin: How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions .
This is a first-person account of how IBM was able to con my execs out of millions of dollars. Gullible management tries to swim with the shark and gets chewed to pieces. Witness the exec-level FUD sales techniques and the $325/hr subcontractor labor bait and switch.... More...
I don't mean to be facetious. It's just the team you describe would normally be 90% of the value of a company, so they will be in the position of strength. In their position my first question would be "Why should we go with you when we could probably get to same position by ourselves?", especially given that you seem to be low on resources.
I've had a good working relationship for some years with SoftRP.net . The Web site says they're in Canada, and this may be true, but the outfit originates from the Ukraine. AFAIK, most are graduates from the University of Kiev.
These are a varied and skilled bunch of coding mercenaries, and they quickly and graciously executed a number of small projects for me (figureheading for a small company that was the actual customer). Their prices are a bit higher than your run-of-the-mill Indian/Chinese shop, but that was compensated by their ability to think for themselves and produce a working product off a simple, not overly detailed spec. Also, and I find this important, they ask questions rather than stumbling into blind alleys. As I mentioned, I'm a one man show and my projects were small, on the order of few man-weeks, and I was sorry not to have a decent-sized job for them to chew on. They certainly suggested they had manpower in reserve.
No, I'm not affiliated or kickbacked or anything. I'm just a satisfied customer and would likely hire them again for the next project that comes up.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel