Contracting in software development is an interesting business. You get to work with some of the best people in the industry: people who know what they do and they are confident to go on their own. You get to develop new products every week as opposed to just maintaining or supporting legacy platforms. You fuel business concepts. You have fun!
But there are many miss conceptions people have when it comes to working with independent contractors. Here are 5 of the ones we hear most often:
(1) Contractors don't work for us, they work for themselves
This is actually not true. Contractors are the first ones who are interested in their customers business to work well as they are looking for repeat business for themselves from the same customer. Read more projects. Contractors and consultants are generally very competent veteran developers who not only care about the customer business but can also help with solid advice to make them grow.
A good contractor delivers tremendous ROI and it's worth every single penny you invest in his/her work.
(2) Contractors are very expensive
Not necessarily. It depends on your project and certain niche skills / industries / markets charge more than others but a contractor does not have to be expensive or hard to afford.
Another aspect with contractors is that they write fast and accurate: by definition their business is a business of efficiency since all they sell is pretty much time and intellectual brain power. A good contractor can cut you tremendous man hours spent on your project and in reality when you draw the bottom line you will see that generally a contractor costs less than a staff member per project.
(3) Contractors do not know what they are doing / they don't deliver :)
This is actually pretty entertaining. How could somebody who was in the business for more than a decade be considered a rookie? And how could somebody with strong references and portfolio be suspected he/she will not deliver.
A reputable contractor will not take your project if he/she is not 120% sure he/she can deliver. It hurts his reputation and reputation is everything in this business.
(4) Contractors won't take two (or three) projects to get paid for only one
Well, here we have a matter of economics. It is true that contractors work per project (though there are usually many packages available such as lump sum, hourly based, weekly based, monthly based or yearly based contracts per head- and they are designed to be in the best benefit of the customer) and you cannot really "double-up" with them.
But think about it: do you really want to do that even with your employees? When I worked in Corporate I've seen many employees burned out and miserable, working on multiple projects on the same time, not doing a good job on any of them and ultimately delivering product with defects/patches. It is in my opinion not a good practice as it affects your company's reputation.
Another aspect of this: contractors and consultants are very efficient. We've seen and we currently have contractors who can deliver in 60%-70% of your projected time for a particular work item. Which means you can use them for the balance of the time left on another task / work item.
(5) We prefer in-house employees vs. contractors because we invest in them
Investing in a contractor is actually not that different than investing in an employee. If you are a great company and have long term projects your ROI in contractors will be higher than your ROI in staff employees. Like I said contractors are not there to jump from one company to another: they are actually interested in providing dedicated resources for multiple long term projects with the same company.
And don't forget that many consulting companies (like ours) do have packages where you can hire a good contractor as an in-house full time employee. That usually happens after a 12 month period of time- time necessary for both you (as a client) and the contractor (as a resource) to get accustomed to each other.
So bottom line is that as a business you should have no fear to work with contractors and consultants: they are competent, hard hitting, reliable resources who can fuel your business growth.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
Witty Web Solutions (http://wittywebnow.com) is a Miami Beach based software development company. Our code is lean, small foot print, easy to read, reliable and fast. We have excellent tech support. We save development costs by implementing agile project management techniques.
