Finding a Ready-Made Dev Team? 294
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?
Perhaps you could hire these guys (Score:5, Funny)
These men promptly got released due to a technicality
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire...the @-Team.
Re:Perhaps you could hire these guys (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perhaps you could hire these guys (Score:2)
I love it when a (code) plan comes together! (lights cigar)
Another possibility (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.newtechusa.com/ppi/talent.asp [newtechusa.com]
Re:Perhaps you could hire these guys (Score:2)
ObOnTopic: What the OP is looking for is to partner with another company. Sure, the project will not be 100% in house, but that's the price you pay if you need both fast and cheap.
the fACe man
Already at +5 funny, so no adding my mod points to this post.
Re:Perhaps you could hire these guys (Score:2)
Just remember that B.A. CanHackus doesn't like to fly.
Re:Perhaps you could hire these guys (Score:2)
IBM Global Services (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IBM Global Services (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:IBM Global Services (Score:2, Insightful)
You get zero resumes from experienced programmers. You hired and let go seven programmers this year. You had 3 EE grads that weren't even programmers, yet they were "world-class programmers". Hmm. Maybe you don't know what a "wo
Re:IBM Global Services (Score:2)
Erm...experienced developers read newspapers?
I bet you were watching for resumes by the fax machine too...
Re:IBM Global Services (Score:2)
Bullshit. I've worked with 3 people from GA Tech over the years, and they were extremely talented developers. 2 were Windows/UNIX, 1 was Windows/Mac. None of them exhibited the problems you claim.
I agree with previous posters, sounds like the problem is within your company, not with the people you hire.
How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions (Score:5, Interesting)
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... [kuro5hin.org]
Re:How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions (Score:2, Interesting)
Nice link, but it has zero relevancy to our relationship with IBM. If you're an idiot and don't manager hourly billing with any vendor you will get burned. That's especially true when dealing with lawyers and more so with Certified Public Crooks^H^H^H^H^H Accountants. For programmers you will get burned if you don't give them good specs and make sure they're giving you what you need as they're building. The sooner you correct a programmer the cheaper it is.
Also, in the link the guy admitted:
There w
Re:How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions (Score:5, Insightful)
"Whenever management was trying to select a vendor, or even having second
thoughts about a vendor, this consultant would offer senior management the
solution to their problems. Management, in a hurry, would agree, happy to
have the matter resolved. The questions of whether IBM could deliver on
their promises or whether their bid was competitive went unasked."
Okay, management couldn't get their head out of their arse so they made a snap decision based on questionable information. Nice.
"Where was the technical staff during all of this? Staying out the way,
mostly. They knew that IBM was selling solutions two levels over their head,
and they didn't want any part of it."
The techies saw an impending clusterf*ck and decided to do a duck and cover rather than trying to intervene. Can't blame them, management types probably wouldn't listen, but if you've got a highly paid consultant whispering in your exec's ear and no one tries to present a counter-arguement, what do you expect?
"Upper management was very reluctant to move back the deadline because the project
had a lot of visibility, and executive bonuses were dependent upon completing the
project by the end of the year."
Okay, management had their bonuses on the line, so they stopped making sane decisions and started spending the companies money to make their own.
The story goes on much like this. Yeah, you got hosed. IBM saw, in military parlance, a target rich environment, and they were right. That sucks, the fact that those dollars come out of my pocket sucks(since they are a defense contractor all those dollars trace back to taxes). But don't play the part of the innocent bystander, management f*cked up. Period.
IBM Wants You! (Score:2)
more like how incompetent companies lose money (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The client was a defense contractor. defense contractors are some of the most absolutely incompetent companies I've ever worked with. Just as bad as telecom (old at&t) and government.
2. The client apparently went with a waterfall project plan, in which there were few if any milestones. And surprise, they discover at the very end that there are problems. Duh.
3. According to the poster, the client wasn't capable of simple math: didn't know that the contracting run rate would consume their budget before the project was complete. Again, duh.
4. According to the poster, IBM was charging $325 for everyone. That doesn't sound accurate in my experience with IBM (and other large consulting companies) - in which a couple of top people would be at $325, and the shock troops anywhere from $150-$225.
5. Also, the customer hired programmers for a small project from a large system integrator. That's never a good way to save money, it's a good way to assemble a team overnight.
6. The poster doesn't really understand knowledge management, business intelligence, or customer relationship marketing. By simply dismissing these domains as over-hyped, he's just revealing ignorance. This isn't to say that everyone needs everything that all vendors claim they can deliver, but these are huge domains full of history and detail. And can deliver a lot *if* you understand them and their best practices. If you don't, then you're probably buying/building the wrong solution anyway.
On the flip side, I do agree that IBM has a hard time holding onto top talent. They don't pay enough, and their bureacracy can be a pain in the butt. When you get a team you should absolutely interview every member, and put milestones in the project where you can jettison the team if they suck. But, this isn't an IBM-thing, it's something you should do for whatever team you work with.
Thats a joke right? (Score:2, Insightful)
5 years to make a website? No problem, IBM can drag it out that long.
10 years to make a database, yaking so long that the hardware goes out of date before it's complete? RAF can tell you about that one.
Re:Thats a joke right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IBM Global Services (Score:2)
Dev Team hiring (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dev Team hiring (Score:5, Insightful)
But (as a technical founder/co-CEO myself) let me tell you why even if you find a decent consulting shop that this is a bad idea.
First, you're a startup. You're dreaming if you think your requirements aren't going to change as users start interacting with the site and you tweak your product idea and learn more about the market. This just doesn't jive with a consulting agreement, where clear expectations and well-defined specs are absolutely essential for success. Otherwise, you're asking for a world of hurt (time, money, stress) when you quickly realize that you and the consultant have a very different view of what constitutes "complete" in terms of quality and features. I guess if you have a great relationship with your consulting team, maybe they can be nimble for you. But you'll pay for it -- "Whoa whoa whoa -- you wanted to be able to SEARCH posts on your message board? That wasn't in the spec, it's going to be at least another week, and at x hours at $y per hour, plus overtime, that's..." And this is assuming, too, that you find a scrupulous dev shop -- I can only imagine the horrors of an unethical dev shop screwing over a technically unenlightened founder/CEO (I've seen it. It's not pretty.)
Fundamentally, you and the dev shop just aren't on the same team (your "incentives aren't aligned.") Look at it from their perspective: they want to get your project done as soon as possible (so that they can start working, and making money on something else) and to do the least work possible that could pass as "complete" especially if you have a flat $x/milestone agreement. You want to make something your users will love, and you don't quite know what that "something" exactly is until a few iterations in. Think about it -- if you're a consultant, and you're trying to wrap up this damn project which is already running late (and it's your head under the guillotine for missing milestones), are you going to 1) complete the feature in the quickest way possible or 2) add a little extra to make something the end user will love... but not get compensated for it? Yes, maybe are consulting companies that will go the extra mile, but these aren't the ones bidding for the bottom of the barrel at rent-a-coder.
You can maybe align things better with clever contingencies. You can negotiate a support contract or retainer (for bug fixes afterwards) or something with them. But after the project is delivered, you are in a _terrible_ negotiating position as you desperately NEED them for bug fixes and enhancements (i.e. your alternatives are terrible), and they can easily make you pay dearly. Plus, what if you're willing to spend the money but your former lead dev at the consulting shop gets staffed somewhere else? or leaves? etc.
And all this even ignores the major point. Your product is your special sauce; the thing you do better than your competitors; the source of your sustainable competitive advantage. It's just suicide to try to contract that out to someone else. It's one thing (and highly recommended) to outsource ANCILLARY business functions (accounting, legal, etc.) that to you are basically a commodity. But not your crown jewels. Did Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, or frankly ANY successful startup start by outsourcing/offshoring the development of their core IP? (There may be RARE exceptions, and I'd love to hear them, because I know of precisely zero successful companies that have done this)
So I shudder when newbie founder/CEO or MBA/management major types say they'll get their first product done for $20k and in 3 weeks by shipping
Re:Dev Team hiring (Score:2, Interesting)
On the whole, this is good advice. However, I would like to provide more detail here:
You can do this if you core IP is marketing and
Why is this true with software? (Score:4, Insightful)
We had a small crew who did framing and all the odd jobs to glue all the pieces together. But painting, trimming, electric, HVAC, plumbing, and architectural design all got handed off to a specialist who was paid by the job, and didn't get hired again if he did a crappy job. After a while it became very apparent which guys in town were worth hiring, and they're the ones who got all the jobs on the next projects.
Sure there were problems, but none of this "oh you wanted the walls actually painted? I thought you just wanted a primer" BS that I seem to hear all the time out of computer consulting services.
And, for the most part, people stand by their work. All work is pretty much guaranteed for a year - if it was their crap that broke, they'll fix it free. Only time you have to pay them for extra work is if it's something in their expertise who breakage wasn't their fault.
And when people did screw up horribly (like ending up with two different shades of paint in the same room) they worked overtime for the rest of the week to fix it so we could make our schedule or they didn't get paid for the lousy work! Why doesn't anyone enforce this sort of thing in the CS environment?
Re:Why is this true with software? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is this true with software?t (Score:5, Insightful)
With construction you have set plans that don't change too drastically, with programming you'll find people changing their mind through out the build.
Think of it as your building a 4 bedroom single family house and the developer is constantly making little(to him) changes to the plan, you know, add a new bathroom, change the den into a formal dinning room, oh, and the garage is actualy supposed to be part of the house, not a seperate building (didn't we mention that?), and yes it wasn't on the plans we signed off on originally, but those plans just don't work anymore.
Now with 50% completion, the owners decide that what would work at this location, is actually a 4 family duplex.
Now that the building is finished and awaiting final inspection, we need 1 really quick change, insteaad of regular telephone jacks wired to each room, we need Cat 6, as we will be doing IP phones, but thats a real easy change right, a couple of plates is all? Now that you've done that, we talked to the guy who bags our grocerys and he had a great idea, move the hoy water tank from the basement to the attic.
Would you expect the contractors to just eat the difference, or not ask that the deadline change? You as a contractor would point out the changes are all going to cost time and money and aren't in the original thst you based you quote on, but the developer is convinced that it has to be done and pays the extra costs. of course once everything is finished, the developer will go on and on how expensive the project is, and how long it took, and how it still isn't exactly what he wanted (but is exactly what the plan and change orders asked for).
And yes I've seen this, I've provided IT to costruction and HVAC companies for over 10 years and see this all the time. They complain about delays annd costs, and compare it to how they build projects.
Re:Why is this true with software?t (Score:3, Insightful)
When you're designing a $250,000 house, and you're half done the design and the future owner wants to move everything around, then it might become a $260,000 or $275,000 house cost and the owner sees a small percentage change because design is a small perce
Re:Why is this true with software? (Score:2)
Well, when you're hiring developers it's slightly more complicated because there's a lot of fish
Re:Dev Team hiring (Score:2)
marshrew: Note that your core business may change slowly over time. If and when that happens, you have to be able to identify the change, because #2 requires that you then hire (and fire) people. When you get big enough, you will be able to slightly over-hire in case of contingencies, but that sounds like it's a ways down the road for you yet. The key is to take the time to find the right m
Re:Dev Team hiring (Score:2)
If you're looking to do "commodity" IT work, look at outsourcing partners (maybe offshore, maybe not). Examples are setting up back-end systems, package configuration (SAP, Siebel, etc), Oracle apps for the beancounters. There's value in these being as standard as you can make them.
NO, no, no, ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I don't work for them, I do NOT receive any $$$ from them, but most of them are former University colleagues of mine, and I can vow for their honesty and seriousness. Visit their website, give their clients a call, give them a call, IIRC they can even send someone to talk to you in person.
It exists all over the place - but caveat emptor (Score:2)
The big problem you have is you can't trust anyone. Even if you rea
Sony contractors (Score:5, Funny)
Have you tried... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:3, Funny)
lame.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]
Look for layoffs (Score:2, Informative)
Either way, its rich pickings and unfortunately not that hard to find.
Try Origin (Score:3, Informative)
Or S3 (Silicon Software Solutions) in Dublin, Ireland. I used to work for them.
power of 3 rule (Score:5, Insightful)
(where UOW=unit of work (man/month
1 UOW = program for yourself
3 UOW = give it to someone else
(you install, you copy, etc)
9 UOW = give it to local group
(howto, platform change)
27 UOW = shareware/open source
(configure/make/make install)
81 UOW = product
(real docs, slick UI, support teams)
243 UOW = business
(lawyers, CEO, sales, marketing)
you're looking at a lot more work than you're willing to
admit. unless it is a trivial application you need to
understand that writing the program in the first place
is the easiest part of the whole problem. Teams which
don't include the original developer are even harder.
Tim Daly
OSS Community? (Score:2, Interesting)
Team 345 (Score:4, Informative)
http://team345.com/ [team345.com]
Be cool enough (Score:2, Interesting)
Motivation is a key factor among geeks. Spread awareness of the project, show people that it's worth something, and that its success is in th
Consulting Engineers (Score:3, Interesting)
I would be surprised if you couldn't find consulting engineers (no clue what you call them in English) that specialize in software development. While I don't personally know of any, try calling around to various consulting engineers, or visit in person if there are any in the local area. I know that my employer had calls like that at least once a week (not software development though), and they never had a problem in directing people to the right company (knowing that they in turn will direct people to them). Even if they don't know a company for sure, they'll probably know who might know, or they'll get curious and start asking around themselves.
I hope this helps - and if you manage to find some that do this, by all means tell the rest of us - we never know if it might come in handy.
Correct approach? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, what happens when the product is in need for support? Who are going to support code written by a team of super corders?
What happens when there's a demand for extra functionality? Who's going to implement that?
Who will maintain the code?
Yes, you could try to reassemble the team, but developers hate support. And besides, the team will much rather start on a new project than supporting the old one.My suggestion is, that you take your time and hire people the old fashioned way. If you don't have enough time to do that, your project is doomed anyway.
Re:Correct approach? (Score:2)
Second, you can usually get the same consultants back for maintenance work. And if you can't because they are busy, there are other consultants, often with the same firm.
Hiring lots of permanent employees is not the only way to go.
-- John.
Re:Correct approach? (Score:2)
First, why are you assuming he can't hire home grown consultants?
I don't assume anything - I just reflect on his statement: " Geography is not a problem as we are used to working in a distributed manner." . He doesn't say which country his company is in, but if it's in the US or Europe, then coders from India is definitely cheaper.
Second, you can usually get the same consultants back for maintenance work. And if you can't because they are busy, there are other consultants, often with the same firm.
Re:Correct approach? (Score:2)
If I hear that one word one more time..... (Score:5, Funny)
Tough to find, tougher to manage (Score:5, Insightful)
Managing this group is even tougher. The way you describe your company is that it is small, tightly knit, build around one person. Now you need to get new people to work with your group, to smoothen out differences in development philosophy, to get the leader to let go of parts of his baby etc etc.
Tough job ahead of you. Good luck.
Funding is a problem and will remain a problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been touched on recently in some blogs ( http://www.wilshipley.com/blog/ [wilshipley.com] 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.....
Re:Funding is a problem and will remain a problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Programmers which are inexperience or have little experience, are cheap because they make lots of mistakes (after all they're still learning). Even then most gifted ones are unaware of how, in the middle/long term, an application evolves in a real-life environment.
Expect hard to change applications, strange bugs, costly to bugfix applications, es
Re:Funding is a problem and will remain a problem. (Score:2, Funny)
Partner up? (Score:2, Insightful)
We currently are partned with three startups; our company provides the IT knowledge for a seriously reduced fee in exchange for a partial ownership in the product that is being build.
Basically we're investing (the reduced fee is still very much required, so that there is an incentive to actually finish the product). However you still need to convince the IT firm why it should invest.
in ither words... (Score:2)
My advice based on 20 years experience... (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Only work with people you know and trust. Until you're Microsoft, you cannot (CANNOT!) afford to make hiring mistakes, everyone in your team must be experienced and brilliant.
b) Try to arrange for everyone to be in the same building or room, THE only way to brain storm is on an old fashioned whiteboard, not on a chat client, which is really only suited to quick questions and answers, not visual thinking. That's why companies still have physical offices, even in a world of broadband and video converencing.
c) ONLY allow remote workers if you can be guaranteed they WILL be available online when YOU are online to ensure maximum productivity and real-time discussion of vital issues.
d) Only farm out small modular tasks to remote workers, keep your core coders close to hand and reward them with ownership in the project.
e) Have a well written contract and strict but fair code of conduct that should be signed by all parties on paper (not e-mail 'replies').
f) If you lack the personality to be firm with those who let you down, or cannot hire someone to take on such a role, do not embark on your venture, else your ship will drift all over the place only to be washed up on the rocks.
g) Else, go for it and if you need any more tips (or can provide any!), reply to this with posting.
Good luck, and "May The Force be You!"
Please excuse my typos... (Score:3, Funny)
And one more (obvious!) tip... (Score:2)
Re:My advice based on 20 years experience... (Score:2)
Ok so you are going to pay high 5 figures, even 6 figures then?? Experienced and brilliant = EXPENSIVE. something a startup can not afford.
You need to hire realistically, what's the budget? what is the resource pool? experienced and brilliant and not near you = their salary + $20K or more to move them to you unless management is
If you can't pay the right people .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Serious question about point "f)" (Score:2)
What's in it for the developers? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
build your own (Score:2, Interesting)
My experiences from a few years freelance consulting in mid-sized development projects are:
Students (Score:2)
We were one... (Score:5, Informative)
Although many websites (like rentacoder.com) offer this functionality, it is difficult to guarantee the quality of people you will end up working with. The surprising limitation of these sites is that they have no mechanism to ensure quality of bidders or participants. Which is exactly why Arzoo.com (by the hotmail founder) failed. Bad quality. Add to that, people simply trying to outbid others. I have even seen $100 for a 1 month job!!! If you go to such sites, you are very likely to lose some time trying to filter out the not-so-good ones.
Since you will be working with people you know little about, there are however things that you could do, before making your final decision.
1. See if they have blogs. Look at their attitude, language, code quality, passion, whatever...
2. Talk to them. Check for conversational skills. These are very important!
3. See if they have done any open source work. (That will be a real bonus!)
4. Ask them to send source code.
I feel such a practice certainly has a place in modern IT. Agile, Quality-Concious and Inexpensive.
Things are looking up again, and thats good news.
Good luck to you.
Cambridge in the UK (Score:2)
If you leave some contact details I will try to put you in touch with some of them.
Mike.
Recommendation (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
It takes one (wo)man (Score:3, Insightful)
Geography is not a problem... (Score:2)
Get serious or get out. (Score:2)
Outsourcing involves huge overhead and dicey contractual negotiations, and you'll spend more money than you'll save as a small outfit, even if the coders themselves are in India. The money you save in HR you'll blow on travel, telecoms and lawyers. Especially lawyers, and you'll lose the company if you try to half-ass it.
If you are unwilling to hire more than one geek to do the work neede
Well, I'm sure (Score:2)
Go for it.
Be prepared to pay (Score:2)
There are people who make a living with this (Score:2)
I have a list of people I know personally and have worked with and allthough I'm not the Über-developer I'd say I could come up within a month the most with a team that can pull off nearly any coding job. People who know me call me with the most remote and unusual developement problems, because they expect me to have some ace up my sleve that will bring their project up to speed. And ususaully I have.
There should be other people like this, because this is a market, as it fills the gap b
Give me a call (Score:2)
Yikes! (Score:2)
I have seen this before. I once interviewed for a job with a small group of wunderkinds who had done "all the feasibility work" and had all the "IP in place" and "just needed to hire some developers to productize". I ran screaming from the building as fast as I could. It was abundantly clear they viewed the development job as just converting their brilliance into code, as if coding
As long as we're dealing in fantasy . . . (Score:2)
rentacoder.com (Score:3, Insightful)
My advice
Start with something small - i.e. around the 100 USD mark. By all means say that it's part of a larger project soon to be up for bidding, but make sure the project tests several areas in which you need experience and expertise, but is relatively straightforward and simple for people who actually know what they're doing. This will hopefully attract the attention of the coders you want and hopefully make it easy for you to weed out the wannabes.
Check out . . . (Score:2)
They occasionally sell entire IT teams. loaded and ready to deploy.
I've wanted to start this (Score:2)
Your alternative is to find one good developer and hire everyone he wants to work with. If you came to me with big bags of cash, I could get you a team of 5 good developers that have worked together before. But you'd have to lure them away from mostly secure positions with stable companies. That takes cash nowadays, not just equity positions.
Work backwards (Score:2)
A good source of tips could be asking CA [ca.com] employees about recent events. IMO CA [ca.com] excels at laying off / firing many competent people and keeping the chaff (yes, I worked there and no, I wasn't fired or laid off, I got out before they figured out I wasn't chaff :P )
I thought about doing that (Score:2)
Put together a crack team of 5-6 guys. Finding these people is a tricky business, but if you've been in the industry long enough it should be possible.
My idea was to put it together as an XP style team (although you always have to bow to your customers' wishes). 1 "customer proxy" and
Browse sourceforge (Score:2)
Seriously, browse through sourceforge. Find a project in the same rough skill as your project, e.g. if you're creating a web app in Ruby, find a group that made a web app in Ruby. Don't necessarily look for a group doing the same task, i.e. if you're making a calendar, don't feel you have to get calendar people. Platform
Offshore in a box (Score:2)
The box itself is stackable with the "data centre in a box" also rumoured to be in the works at Google.
Watch the Gaming press (Score:2)
So, watch for "Gone Gold" announcement of smaller games, look up the developer, and give them a call. You can get an entire team for pric
Try us or try this ... (Score:2)
my team is at 50% unoccupied and we can shift the the rest on a project like yours. We have alltogether 6 developers, 4 senior developers with 15 - 20 years experiance. See: http://www.visualsphere.com/ [visualsphere.com] (sorry web site still not mature but should give a good impression, typos you find you may keep
Our server was down last week and mail is still not reconnected, so contact me if you are interested.
Or look here: http://www.hotdispatch.com/ [hotdispatch.com] a web site
Hallo 1999 (Score:2)
Not-for-Profit Research Institute (Score:2)
Yes...what you want is called... (Score:2)
crash & burn (Score:2)
Buy a small company who did similar. (Score:2)
In addition to the team, you also get whatever parts of that project are relevant to yours.
Da Da Da Dah Da (Score:2)
Look to startup rich areas (Score:2)
Similarly systems are at work in other areas like Seattle, Austin, Boston and even NYC, though none are as well developed as silicon valley.
You can
DON'T DO IT! (Score:2)
THE ONLY THING THE WHOLE GROUP EVER SHIPPED ON TIME WERE HER COOKIES.
On top o
You better hope that they can't find you... (Score:2)
It is a dangerous business naming names. There have been a number of people sued over the years, along with the organziations that provided the veil for their anonymity. By, for example, naming Mr. Griggs, you are providing only one side of a story, without giving him an opportunity to reply. Since this could harm his ability to get new business, this might be grounds for legal action. Of course, as we say on slashdot: IANAL (I am not a lawyer) nor do I play one on television. So what do I know.
Re:You better hope that they can't find you... (Score:2)
Nevertheless, I wrote nothing but the truth.
Frankly, if he sues me, that'll make a far bigger splash of my words than anything I, personally, could do.
So, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But I didn't take the cop-out route, and post anonymously. Because, to be honest, I'm still pretty darn irked at the whole affair.
Re:Offshore it. Seriously. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Offshore it. Seriously. (Score:2, Insightful)
India and Bangladesh are 2 separate sovereign countries. India hasn't quite annexed Bangladesh (yet!) and I don't think they want to either
Re:Offshore it. Seriously. (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume you mean Bangalore. Bangladesh is a separate country.
Not only that, we still had coders working days in the US, plus the devs working in India, so we were coding over 16 hours a day.
Does this matter? Two people working in the US and two in India should be no better than four working in the US. In fact, they should be slower, as there are all sorts of communications hassles.
The "16 hour day" rubbish works well with call-
[OT] I found them... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The global team.. (Score:2)
Not quite true, a little more clarification is required. No you can't get FULL profit from the product, but you can get more than if you just programmed it yourself.
The additional features and testing you get from having an open source product are MUCH higher than what you could get from a proprietry environment. (Well you could get it, but it would cost you the earth)
Plus you get money income from development of custom
Re:Walmart???? (Score:2)
Thoughtworks and Valtech (Score:2)