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I have some programming projects on the back burner (i.e. Someday) that could yield commercial success if I ever had a chance to implement them. First among those is an Android app for doctors suggested by my wife. I'm going to try to get it done via Elance. |
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Today I posted a job on Elance describing my project. I'll see what proposals come in and what they say, and if any seem reasonable, I will pick the best and pursue it. |
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If I exceed my budget ($500) or the app is finished, I'll consider this done. If this fails I won't call it the final Elance project, though. I'm willing to give it more than one try. |
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I would really like to see this project and others like it come to life. I need to get over the idea that I'm the only person that can do them, and/or that they're not worth enough to pay someone else for the initial product. |
Create an Experiment
Brock Tice
- Member Since
- 08/10/09
- About Human, husband, father, (atheist) zen buddhist, tidy, good neighbor, thrifty, starting a cardiac simulation services company, doesn’t worry about current events, reads for pleasure, tries to keep his home and his things safe and sound, occasional home improvement DIYer, trying to keep ties to close friends and family despite moving all over the country.
- Web http://virtuallyshocking.com
- Experiments 19
- Observations 297
Comments & Observations
Matthew Cornell I love it! Outsourcing can still make sense, given the pay discrepancy globally. My experience with Elance was successful - I found a Drupal programmer who I've since used again. I also outsourced audio transcriptions, which was successful, but expensive. "You don't have to go it alone" is emerging as a TTL guide.
Looking forward to hearing how it goes.
Mar 05, 2010
Brock Tice Got 9 bids with amounts ranging from about 250 to 750. Working on some NDAs for providers that want more info for their quotes, then I'll pick. Glad to see so many people think they can deliver it for under $500 and within a week!
Mar 06, 2010
Matthew Cornell Great indications, Brock. People are hungry, which makes it a perfect time for your project. Surprise #1 so far? :-)
Mar 06, 2010
Brock Tice Sure, I put it in the lowest price bracket, having no idea what the market price was for contract-writing of a simple Android app. I'm waiting for details from one more proposer, and then I'll chose one and move ahead.
Mar 15, 2010
Brock Tice I ended up with 14 proposals, only a few of which seemed actively engaged. I gave the project to the guy I had the best feeling about. I also chose him because he's a single provider (vs a team), and I've had better experience that way (GetFriday vs. AskSunday) with outsourcing in the past.
His bid was not the cheapest -- in fact it was near the top of my price range, but in the past with these kinds of decisions I've gone with my gut feeling, and it has served me well so far. We'll see how this one goes.
I'm OK with the fact that this money might never be made back from application sales. It's business-derived money and I'm using it to try to expand my business and learn about outsourcing programming work in the process. I'm waiting for him to accept my terms and then we'll see how it goes! (I'm excited!)
Mar 19, 2010
Matthew Cornell Cool! I agree re: gut. Plus, I like your experimental attitude, which says that the investment might not "work out," which indicates one dimension of evaluation or success. I wonder what other ways you can define success. As you said, you'll learn about outsourcing this way.
Mar 21, 2010
Brock Tice Got the first partial beta of the app today. Overall they're doing a great job, and fast, too. I had a number of tweaks to submit to them, and it was evident they hadn't tested the app in Landscape mode, but overall I'm impressed. They're promising delivery by the 31st.
Mar 28, 2010
Matthew Cornell Have you had any synchronous communication with them? I'm looking for a Ruby on Rails developer for Edison and wondering about communication.
Apr 20, 2010
Brock Tice I did have a little synchronous communication, via Skype and the Elance workroom. I've got the app now and am sitting on it until I have the chance to load it up, add the icon, and post a beta (which is the next stage).
Apr 28, 2010
Matthew Cornell Sweet. I'm waiting to talk to a local guy next week for Edison version 1.2. If that works out, fantastic. If not, I'll broaden as you've done.
May 04, 2010
Brock Tice App has been posted in a time-limited beta. So far I have about 25 users who've kept it installed and one 3/5 star rating. No comments yet in Android Market.
Jun 03, 2010
Matthew Cornell Hey, that's awesome, Brock. Any users are good users :-) Hopefully the feedback is constructive...
Jun 04, 2010
Brock Tice Had a little constructive feedback, but not a lot. On the downside, I went to re-hire the developers for some updates/fixes, and found out the guy who does their Android stuff left. No idea how to find him. So now I have to do it myself or hire someone new, who will take longer to do it because they have to learn the app from scratch.
Aug 26, 2010
Matthew Cornell I'm curious about your DIY decision. Edison is written in Ruby-on-Rails, and a colleague suggested it would be straightforward for me to learn it and program it myself. However, when I asked a brilliant programmer and friend who I worked with at Umass about learning RoR, he told me it would be a month to learn it and then "a lifetime of agony." (He knows I value beautiful architectures.) The other consideration is that time spent programming is time not spent on the two other legs of my plan to bring TTL to the world: Writing the book and becoming the leader. Those two I absolutely cannot outsource, and programming would take way too much time, and there are better people at it. The trade-off is finding (and keeping!) good people as you've discovered. I would consider a revenue-share arrangement if I could find the right person. $ might be a ways off, though.
Sep 16, 2010
Dan Owen Matt: Couldn't agree with you more about this: hours are scarce and you have to pick how you spend your time strategically. Having said that, there's value in knowing something about the thing you're hiring someone to do. I learned this the hard way in my own business: I refused for years to learn Quickbooks and hired others to do my bookkeeping. When I finally (was forced to) learn QB and do my own bookkeeping, it led to my completely reorganizing my business. Wish I'd done it a decade ago. Now I'm truly ready to subcontract out my bookkeeping, and have taken the first steps to do so in an intelligent way. My fears about learning QB were justified: it took time away from important work, cost me money, was enormously frustrating, and the learning curve was aggravatingly long; but once I paid the price, the payback was gigantic. There seems to be no way around this problem where software is concerned (there's probably a business opportunity here). (By the way, didn't Liza teach herself Ruby?)
Sep 19, 2010
Matthew Cornell @Dan Good story. Are you suggesting that software is different from your accounting experience ("There seems to be no way around this problem where software is concerned")? I could certainly learn it, and might have to if I can't find anyone suitable. But I wouldn't be happy with the big hit on writing and leadership. Re: Liza, gosh no - she's just learned HTML and that was a stretch. Her expertise is in things like Edison's simple and clean design.
Sep 20, 2010
Dan Owen Matt, generally, my experience has been this: hiring help has benefits, but it also has costs -- including costs beyond the wage you're paying your help. A significant cost is management time. There's no avoiding spending time communicating your needs to your help and managing their performance. The 80/20 rule applies here, though, as in everything else: if you can target the key 20% of effort on YOUR part that will get you 80% of what you need from your help, then you're getting the optimal return on YOUR time. This is why micro-managing is such a mistake. So, learning enough of Ruby to be able to know its capabilities and functionality at something deeper than a superficial level will leverage your usefulness as a manager. If your friend is right and you really can learn the language in 30 days, that strikes me as a small price to pay in order to have meaningful conversations with your help, to have conversations that are useful to them and get you the results that you want. If learning Ruby actually takes a year, I might not be so inclined -- that would be like me learning Dreamweaver in order to hire a web designer. The bottom line is that, one way or the other, you have to invest time in order to get the results you want; knowing where to invest that time is going to be a trial and error process; the more information you have going into the process, the better off you are.
Sep 20, 2010
Brock Tice Yes, I just had to issue an ultimatum to a developer. He's very communicative when he does talk with me, but he's really really slow to respond to requests for updates, and I can tell the project is low-priority for him. I'm expecting I'll have to fire him.
Oct 14, 2010
Matthew Cornell I'll be curious how you work out payment for (non?) delivered work. I ended up paying 1/2, out of generosity, but I'm not happy about it.
Oct 18, 2010
Brock Tice Yeah, I may have to write it off. In the past I had not needed really to make large milestones. This is already broken into milestones, but I think I should have put more of the value later on.
Oct 19, 2010
Brock Tice Fired the guy, wrote it off as a loss. Elance's policy (rightly) precludes me from getting money back for milestones I've already approved and paid out.
Nov 22, 2010
Matthew Cornell Re: policy, I came across this too. We had to get Freelancer staff involved to change his original bid to the agreed-upon amount. It wasn't satisfying, but I felt I needed to pay something. I ended up leaving a frank summary and review for future people thinking about hiring him.
Nov 24, 2010
Jonathan Maddison Great experiment Brock! I've been considering outsourcing some development projects, but I'm not sure about the calibre of offshore developers.
Your experiment is (kind of) encouraging. At least it seems there are some capable developers, even if they are somewhat lacking motivation.
Mar 01, 2011