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Ask HN: What is the best place to hire part time devs?

61 points by yosito ↗ HN
I'm building an app, and starting to realize that it makes sense to pay someone to help me. I don't have the budget for full time, or even part time, really. I want to hire a person or agency to help me with tasks as I need them and as I can afford. My ideal situation is to hire a consistent person who I can give access to my repo and have them work directly in GitHub on assigned tasks. I've used Upwork for other tasks in the past, but I'm wondering if Upwork is the best place to find affordable and good dev help. Are there any other platforms you would recommend for finding consistent devs who are willing to work on occasional small or medium sized tasks via GitHub?

44 comments

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thih9
HN’s whoishiring freelancer thread could be an option. Many comments there mention part time work.

You could add a comment with the “SEEKING FREELANCER” tag.

The thread is monthly; most recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36573870

yosito
Thanks, I'll share there!
dri_ft
You should probably put some kind of contact details on your HN profile in case an interested party should happen across this post.
samarthr1
Hi, while I am not a platform, I do have a bunch of colleagues who are on the lookout for work, at various levels of experience and different interests.

If you wish to get in touch: samarthr1 (AT) outlook dot com

iforgotmypass
Depending on the available budget, tech stack, intensity of your involvement (and the functions and competencies you can cover) and the seniority of the devs required, I would additionally use these three channels: * Senior dev hiring marketplaces like Toptal, Proxify * If my project uses PHP, Laravel, I would check Laravel Partners to find out reputable agencies and software development houses (perhaps there are similar listings for other ecosystems as well?) * Post a contract job listing on LinkedIn * Ask around in my network of engineers (everyone knows someone)
Kalpeshbhalekar
I have tried Upwork, Fiver - Both are very big and global.

Eventually you'll have to find a great Dev from an off-shore country and retain them over time.

I have seen multiple off-shore candidates who are super good that work at reasonable hourly rates.

jmspring
One thing with Upwork, and I was helping a project awhile back where this was the case, someone with a high tech social profile will post. They will outsource the work to someone at a much lower rate. The last of these projects I was involved in, the individual had a very high dev advocate type profile, the outsourcing was to Pakistan. Rather than outing things, I just chalked it up to learning and being more aware for future such projects.
Kalpeshbhalekar
Oh yes, but one can always have systems in place like location + system tracker.

Upwork has a system where you can track clicks per hour & screenshots every 10 mins along with other details.

throwawayXX1XX
I have FAANG and Unicorn Startup experience and looking for freelance type tasks that you mentioned. You can contact me here: prakhar897 [AT] gmail.com if you think I'm suitable.

P.S. Don't go through Agencies, they charge a high rate upfront, may or may not deliver and know every strategy to increase the billing amount. Rather hire a highly rated person from Upwork etc.

jlund-molfese
The highly-rated part is important. I have a friend who tried to save money and hire a guy off Upwork for mobile app development for the first time. The guy from Upwork ended up changing my friend’s passwords and trying to extort him!
dustingetz
offshoring US to Europe costs about $30/hr, 1/2 time work means many context switches so 1/2 efficiency and it can take a few tries to fight the right person, so if FTE for 6+ months not affordable i am concerned that this is not going to give you the outcome you want (and be painful for both you and the freelancer), recommend trying to find an advisor who has successfully done this before to reduce risk
iforgotmypass
Not sure where did you get this number. $45/hr was the standard expected rate for software development houses and agencies 7 years ago in Eastern Europe. So now it probably is around $70-80/hr. For $30/hr you could get a talented junior freelancing, if you're lucky. But that comes at the cost of quality and efficiency, which offsets the savings from the seemingly lower rate considerably.
dns_snek
OP is seemingly open to the idea of hiring individual freelancers. If they can skip the middleman (agency), that rate effectively doubles (From what I've seen, the developers working for the agency get paid around half of what the client pays).
brudgers
The problem is lack of cash.

Finding part-time developers who will deal with "I don't have the budget for...part time, really," is a symptom.

The best solution is finding cash because it will solve other problems as well.

Good luck.

devgoth
I would love a place like this. As someone who is learning iOS dev and has a background in web dev I would be very open to a couple hours here and there to help someone in their project...and probably not charge an arm & leg if it is in a tech I am learning for fun!
koistya
Part-time can be a great fit for developers who use their own stack and stick to a consistent architecture across multiple projects. For instance, I personally begin each of my projects with the same template (https://github.com/kriasoft/react-starter-kit 23k). This approach reduces overhead when juggling multiple tasks, allowing me to seamlessly make changes in one place and effortlessly push and merge updates into various upstream repositories for different clients. Excited about this efficiency-boosting method? Check out my new blog post where I delve into the details: https://medium.com/@koistya/enabling-efficient-front-end-dev.... Good luck with your project!
em-bee
the hard part is finding part time work where you get to use your own stack.
spapas82
I'm looking for some kind of part time work similar to your description!

Please take a peek at my gh profile (username spapas) and if you find it interesting mail me at the same username on gmail.

devoutsalsa
It’s tough. Finding people who are good, fast, and cheap is difficult in the best of circumstances. When I was broke, I decided to beg developers who liked me & offered to pay them something (say 40/USD per hour in 2010). The catch was I had to wait until they had time, so it took maybe 12 months to get a 1 or 2 months of work done. But it got done & that got my business off the ground.
sbrother
This is a really good idea, if time is not important. If you want someone experienced, in the US or Western Europe who does freelancing full time to prioritize your project, you should budget $100-$200/hr on the junior end, up to $300+/hr for someone more senior with specialized skills. Less than that and you're going to be dealing with someone who's either learning on the job, or trying to fit you in every now and then around their full time job. Either of those scenarios might be totally fine for your startup, you just have to understand what you're getting yourself into.
xjapappy3311
Yeah this is pretty accurate. I've had good luck with the learning on the job thing in the past I will say. The way I think about it is that I would be doing the same thing if I thought I had the time to do it myself. The framing I use is that I am paying them a competitive rate but I am just not paying them for the hours spent learning.

There is obviously some push and pull there about what exactly learning is, but it's usually turned out okay and I have made some good connections to help my buisness in the long term from it. Once they learn and you have put that investment, you give them a good referral if they need it and they will usually be more than willing to help you at a reasonable price in the future since you helped give them out originally.

You can get burned doing this I am sure, it just hasn't happened to me the two times I've taken this strategy.

The one thing you definitely do not want to do is to wind up with one of those learning on the job people but where neither of you are quite sure what the expectations are. You see this a lot with companies offering way below market for a skill and candidates accepting but not being made comfortable to admit they are not experienced enough to get market rates. Mostly this is a problem when the company doesn't know what they are doing and/or are incompetent in other ways that led to them not knowing they are underpaying what it would require to get somebody they really knows what they are doing.

em-bee
the upshot of that story is that if you don't need it done fast, it's possible to get something going even with a low monthly budget.
paddw
Have you considered reaching out to a local uni? An above average uni student could be better and cheaper than the average junior dev
bdcravens
Another option others haven't mentioned is Codementor. The quality ratio is much higher there than on Upwork. It's not just for mentoring calls; you can post small freelance projects, and jumping on calls is a first-class feature of the platform.
yusufnb
Best to do it as exempt or retainer. Hard to build or do anything creative while counting hours.

DM me yusuf.nb @ gmail, I might be able to help.

vendiddy
Plugging a service I helped create: match.dev

Typical rates are $40-$60/h and many work part time. We vet everyone by paying them to create a small project for us.

em-bee
firefox 108 gives me:

    An error occurred during a connection to match.dev. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR
exparent
ultrahiring.com will help you find and interview developers in APAC countries. Rates are very low (Under 10 USD/hour) since you hire them directly. You'll get someone full time for a lot cheaper than what you'd pay a part time person in the US.
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jmspring
I had someone reach out on a freelancing site some months back for an account I don't monitor much anymore. They had asked my interest about something I didn't find interesting and their budget wouldn't have covered setting up a test system for the issue.

That said, I have had people reach out with a project I am interested in (and had time) and did so for the equivalent of low fixed amount. It is rare. I consider them the equivalent of bug bounties.

em-bee
i am available for part time work. flexible, depending on how much you want to spend each month. happy to do a trial run. contact is in my profile.
Devraj4522
Many freelance sites like Upwork, and Freelancer helps to do so, but the problem of finding a reliable developer with capability of building good architecture, timeline, fast and cheap is difficult. You can also try Toptal While it's generally known for providing top-tier talent, it also offers options for part-time and hourly engagements. You might find skilled developers who are willing to work on smaller tasks as they have availability. Also reach out to your network and ask for recommendations.

I'd also be delighted to offer my services. With background in Python, Django, Node.js, React, Redis, Kafka, and more, I believe I can be a helpful to build your project. Reach out to me github.com/devraj4522.

akg_67
First create a few tasks (suggest 3-5), describe them as much as possible, then identify what skills would it take to do these tasks, then reach out to you network with request, for example, “I have a task to build user registration API, do you know anyone with Django/Python experience who might be interest in taking this on.”

IME, having been on both sides of similar situations, such “specific” approach works much better than “part time, inexpensive help” to take on tasks whenever I need. One shows you are proactive, prepared and in need, other shows you are just exploring, fishing to see if you find a resource, and don’t want to spend any time identifying needs until you have a resource committed already.

jmconfuzeus
I'm currently helping 2 other clients build their MVP and would like to help you out part time (~20 hours per week).

Share your contact details if you're interested or use this form to contact me: https://forms.gle/sgGdZMPaGy9ch8bt6

figassis
I can help you. I live in Africa, currently work full time for a US startup, and have worked for companies throughout Africa, Europe and the US. So I started a dev agency, https://nellcorp.com, hired interns straight from college, trained them and continue to help them grow. We have a capable team of 5, including a designer, 2 frontend and 2 backend devs. If you hire us, you get a dev as well as all my experience building systems of all kinds, including infra/devops, architecture and product recommendations, etc. reach out at figassis at nellcorp dot com.