February 02, 2022 • 449 Views • 20 min read
Bohdan Vasylkiv
CEO & Co-Founder
Probably each tech startup development company has faced the need to hire a dedicated software development team. Contrary to tech software development companies, startups might struggle with financing and maintaining a house team of software developers, who will be working on a single project.
Hiring a software development team is not the only issue here. Apart from startup developers, you will also need an office, and other staff, working there. Additionally, when choosing an on-premises software development method, you must deal with numerous departments and specialists from different fields.
Alternatively, there are outsourced development teams of app developers for hire. They are proposing the same or even better results for less salary. Additionally, all the paperwork and other procedures like employee management and recruitment are the responsibility of an outsourced IT vendor.
Besides, these are not the only benefits, provided by IT outsourcing. What are the other advantages of IT outsourcing, and how to hire a development team for a Startup?
When it comes to hiring developers for a startup, the first and most important startup stage to take care of - is to set up clear requirements. Business owners, who want to outsource, should understand what exactly they are looking for, before actually starting the hiring process.
Truth be told, a dedicated software development team is just a single example of app developers for hire.
Apart from the dedicated software development team, we can name remote and offshore teams, team extension services, or freelance app developers for hire. The difference may seem not as crucial sometimes, but it can have a great impact on the overall efficiency of the software startup development cycle.
Thus, you will have to decide which one is the most suited for your startup development. For a more balanced choice, you will need to learn the differences between all the foregoing cooperation methods.
Freelance software developers are the cheapest and simplest solutions for any startup development. Freelancers are communicating with their clients directly. So, it is cheaper and simpler to work with a few individual app developers for hire. Yet, if you are looking for a full-fledged team of software engineers, freelance is most likely not the best choice: it might become a challenge to ensure communication and collaboration with a remote team of standalone individuals, who have nothing in common. It is also challenging to manage such remote software development teams.
Outsourced startup developers are a great possible alternative. Just like freelancers, such specialists are performing specific and previously agreed tasks. Yet, it is possible to continue your cooperation by signing new agreements. Outsourced app developers for hire are more expensive to work with because they are usually proposed as a service by IT outsourcing companies. Still, it is a very reasonable approach: if you aren’t satisfied with the results, you can easily switch teams after the agreed tasks are done.
Offshore dedicated software development team model. Finally, among the most common practices for hiring startup developers is finding a dedicated remote software development team. It is similar to having a full-fledged team of startup developers, who are staying remote, yet fully dedicated to the project. In other words, they have no other priorities except for your assignments.
Once again, which one to choose - is the client’s preference. It depends on the context of your future/ongoing project, working specifics, and available resources. To make this process easier for you, we created a brief list of case studies for each possible solution.
The first question, that comes to mind is why people even bother dividing them into different categories. The answer is straightforward: third-party involvement.
So, the procedure of hiring developers for a startup differs a lot. For instance, a freelance software developer for hire is easily reachable on various specialized online platforms and various social media networks like LinkedIn. At the same time, if you decide to choose a team extension service, you will have to find an IT vendor, who has a list of available app developers for hire and will help you to find the one you request.
When you have chosen freelance over full-time software engineer, then you will have to find and contact such app developer for hire on your own. This approach brings a lot of potential risks and requires more resources. At the same time, hiring a software engineer offshore is a much simpler and automated process, which only requires finding an IT vendor, choosing candidates from the list, and interviewing them.
Hiring developers for a startup on your own is also an option. The reason why it is undesirable is clear - team extension services and hiring freelancers are common for short-time contracts when a company requires extra hands to take care of some software project aspects. So, if you hire a full-fledged software engineer, you want to keep them for longer to cover expenses.
Therefore, we won’t consider such a solution. The principle of hiring a full-time developer, as well as methods, approaches, and even reasons are very different from short-term project cooperation. But how to hire a dedicated software development team for a startup, and when to look for freelance software developers?
It is hard to argue, that finding a freelance software developer is easier and faster. Thanks to the existing freelance platforms for hiring, as well as the popularity of such services, both sides can easily find what they are looking for.
Freelancers are individuals, who are working as independent contractors, who are proposing specific services and own skills and earning money for a specific task or job, they are doing within the contract. To make it simple, these are specialists, who are fully independent and are not obliged to anyone except for themselves and the company, which they have an agreement with.
Thus, the first and most obvious conclusion, that can be made - it is cheaper to work with a freelancer. For instance, finding a software vendor with a team extension feature means, that you will also have to pay extra money to this IT vendor for their assistance, including paperwork and other procedures. At the same time, cooperation with freelancers includes only their salary and peer-to-peer agreement.
Moreover, due to the specifics of the freelance market and competition, such app developers for hire are usually niche-experienced, meaning that they often work on various software projects, that have something in common.
Usually, it is an industry, to which these software projects are related. So, in addition to developing skills, freelance developers can also bring extra expertise in the field, upscaling your future product. These developers are also more flexible and might agree to work on the project in time, which is more suitable for you or your house team of developers.
Besides, it can be easier to communicate with freelance developers, because most likely you will use direct communication.
Quality assurance is a regular drawback of such a development process. When comparing freelance vs full-time employees, it is hard to deny that freelancers commonly lack quality assurance.
As a result, in case you are hiring freelance software developers, the final quality of the performed task depends on how lucky you are when finding an application developer for hire. Individual developers have less strict demands, therefore their attitude to quality assurance depends on them.
To add some more, the maintenance of the performed tasks is also commonly not included in the agreement. To rephrase it, the main job of the freelancer is to develop a specific agreed task. After doing so, the agreement is considered fulfilled, and the chances that such a developer will maintain them are critically low.
Eventually, it is worth remembering that freelance app developers for hire may have reliability issues and bring some potential security threats. Freelance developers commonly work on multiple projects at the same time. Sometimes, they might not meet the deadlines or give priority to other projects they are engaged in. They can even become unavailable during the development, which will impact the overall efficiency of the startup development.
They are working for a short period and on a limited number of tasks. Therefore, if freelance app developers will make some mistakes, related to security, they will most probably not take responsibility for them, when the mistakes will get exposed. Finally, they can get access to private or vulnerable information during development and it is hard to predict whether will they use it in the future.
Cooperation with a software vendor seems to be almost the complete opposite of the freelancing model. At least, if when we consider the pros and cons of both methods.
Contrary to choosing a freelance software developer for hire, working with a software vendor’s team extension services allows startup owners to avoid all the foregoing drawbacks.
First of all, maintenance is a must-have option for most such agreements. Therefore, even after developers have completed their tasks, they will keep supporting the project to fix the potential bugs or issues. It also affects the final quality assurance.
Besides, most such companies have guidelines and requirements for their engineers, including QA and security. It helps to save the reputation of software development contractors. So, developers will do their best to provide the finest code sample quality.
Additionally, to avoid risks and according to governmental regulations like GDPR, IT outsourcing companies sign several other agreements like the Data Processing Agreement, ensuring the most responsible treatment for vulnerable data.
Another advantage of hiring dedicated software development team with an IT outsourcing company is that hired specialists are committed. It means that they are prioritizing your tasks if they are engaged in a few startup development projects.
However, there are also disadvantages to hiring developers for a startup.
As was mentioned before, it will be more expensive to find app developers for hire with the help of a third-party, than contacting them directly. Also, these developers are less flexible, when it comes to changing work time, or other conditions, i.e. they will work according to the terms of your agreement.
And what is the most crucial - when you are working with dedicated developers from software vendors, you will need to ensure communication with remote developers. Communication and management procedures are the most vulnerable aspects of such a type of collaboration.
This is why, it will take your time and resources not only to implement a working communication strategy but also to figure out how to measure your software development vendor’s efficiency and productivity.
Frankly, one of the most valuable benefits of startup development is the fact, that you can develop it as a Startup MVP. So, instead of hiring a dedicated development team for the full-time project, you can find a single freelancing software engineer, who will take care of each startup stage.
It will take more time, compared to the performance of a whole development team. Nevertheless, it will be much cheaper.
When it comes to hiring a software development team, there are different ways how to find one and contact it. Depending on the type of startup remote development team you have chosen, the approach will also vary.
If you are willing to collaborate with freelance startup developers, you need to find a freelancer on specialized online platforms like Toptal, or UpWork. You simply look for app developers for hire, check their portfolio, proceed with an interview, and sign an agreement. To make such a process even easier, these platforms propose multiple user-friendly features like ratings, feedback, various security guarantees, etc. So, it won’t be an issue to find what you are looking for.
Alternatively, both dedicated software developers and IT vendors are usually harder to find. For example, most such remote software development teams are proposed as a service by a particular IT outsourcing company. Thus, it will be very hard to find the portfolios of these startup developers bypassing the company itself.
Instead, most preparation and routine steps are performed in direct cooperation with the startup company, hiring a dedicated software development team is one of the final stages of startup development. It might be difficult to understand how talented developers are and what technical skills they have.
However, startup owners, who have at least some previous experience in such partnerships can easily find all required information. To better illustrate how to find an application developer for your startup with the use of an IT outsourcing company, let’s consider a specific case.
For instance, here, at Incora, we highly value the needs of our potential clients. This is why, we try our best to provide them with all the needed information on the types of agreements we are using, our technical expertise, the industries we have worked with, successful projects, etc.
Most of this information you can easily find on our website, in the case studies section. Additionally, we try to keep up with various B2B platforms, where you can find our company, as well as the feedback or ratings. We regularly post them on our social media pages.
To find a reliable outsourcing company, you need to:
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Hiring a development team is crucial for a startup as it helps in building a solid foundation for your business. A skilled and experienced development team can help you build a functional and high-quality product that meets your customers' needs, while also ensuring that your product is scalable and flexible enough to accommodate future growth and changes.
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