from Hacker News

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Hiring Freelancers

by strimp099 on 7/20/22, 6:14 AM with 42 comments

After five years wrestling with my side project, I'm finally optimistic I'll ship it.

How did I become optimistic? The short answer is money. The longer answer is indifference.

The Journey.

Since 2017 I've been working on a side project which I always intended to launch as a paid SaaS product. I matched every cliche about people bootstrapping their SaaS:

- The code isn't clean enough - The UI isn't pixel perfect - The export feature doesn't work correctly - I need to completely refactor the entire app because I learned a new way to write a for loop...

On at least two occasions I became so stressed out I had to take a break from working on it.

On a side project!

Here's how I finally got some momentum.

Step 1: Hire a freelance developer

You need help. You need a new perspective. Most importantly, you need indifference.

Freelancers are hired to achieve a specific outcome. After achieving that outcome, they move on to the next project. They don't have time to refactor that same library three times. They force you to prioritize what's important to ship.

Step 2: Hire a UI/UX designer

Having a rough outline of what the app should look like gives you a target to work toward. Instead of becoming an expert with Figma, hire someone that can do it for you. You'll be shocked what value two weeks of a designer's time can bring.

Step 3: Hire a marketing agency

Digital marketing is a highly complex endeavor. If you think spending money on Google Ads or posting on Twitter is sufficient to bring your product to life, you'll be disappointed.

Yes this all costs money.

Yes you have to give up some control.

Yes you might miss some learning opportunities.

But if there's one lesson I learned after five years, it's all about shipping!

  • by janosdebugs on 7/20/22, 9:58 AM

    Step 4: 2 years down the line the code touched by dozens of freelancers becomes so brittle that you can't launch a feature without breaking two others. Greenfield projects are easy, long-term maintenance is hard.

    Edit: during my career, I had numerous projects needing cleanups after developers only interested in shipping the next feature and rotating frequently. If the long term maintenance isn't your problem, the incentive to slap it together is strong.

  • by is0tope on 7/20/22, 11:25 AM

    This resonates with me also. I've gotten into a nasty habit of always trying to do everything myself.

    I recently launched a project for tracking crypto market data and suggesting trades. I went to Fiverr to see if I could get someone to design me a UI, and after going around one guy quoted me ~1.2k USD.

    I decided that I could do it myself, and proceeded to spend multiple evenings working on it. I did learn something true, but it delayed the launch by weeks and if I factored my hourly rate in i probably "overpaid" several times over.

    Getting past this "do it all" mentality is going to be one of my goals for the remainder of the year.

  • by TheLoafOfBread on 7/20/22, 11:43 AM

    > Step 1: Hire a freelance developer

    yeah that's the point where most of you get stuck, because lot of Freelance developers are outright liars. Before you will find somebody who at least understand what you want from him, you already wasted 2 months of your time. This can follow into a guy who understand what you want from him, but has no clue what to do and creates horrid mess.

    Eventually you end up redoing everything what your cheap Freelancer did.

    Another dimension is that if you can't separate Freelancer from you codebase, you can easily leak IP through Freelancing. Which might be even worse than sloppy job.

  • by MaxPengwing on 7/20/22, 9:48 AM

    Just curious what is the budget you had for this, and what did the freelancers cost?

    Was milestones part of the contract deliverables for payments?

  • by yigitcakar on 7/20/22, 7:06 AM

    I used to try to do everything myself, being a jack of all trades and I was proud of it.

    Then the life stopped rewarding my jack of all tradeness and I felt the pressure to focus on one thing and one thing only.

    That one thing allowed me to hire people who are good at what they do instead of half assing those things myself.

    This is my story, your story, and probably the story of the humanity itself.

  • by ad404b8a372f2b9 on 7/20/22, 7:42 AM

    How did you go about evaluating the non-technical freelancers? I have to hire for design and marketing and I'm having a lot of trouble evaluating talent. I can tell who's obviously bad but beyond that it's a bit of a toss.

    Also how much did it set you back, if I may ask? 2 weeks of a designer, we're talking 10 to 15k, right?

  • by Janetsomehow on 7/21/22, 7:28 AM

    This is very true. I had so many projects I was working on by myself and I got burned out fast until I hired a freelancer. This has greatly improved my work. Just be ready to pay them.

  • by Raed667 on 7/20/22, 8:41 PM

    > Step 2: Hire a UI/UX designer

    If its the first time working with them, good luck not being scammed with barely any usable deliverable.

    And I'm not even talking about cheap bottom of the barrel contracts.

  • by ekianjo on 7/20/22, 10:20 AM

    How is everything about shipping? If you ship and you fail to find a market it's game over. Shipping is closer to the beginning of the journey.

  • by b20000 on 7/20/22, 2:15 PM

    1) how did you get the money to hire people

    2) what did the marketing agency do or do better than what you could have done yourself?

  • by jollybean on 7/20/22, 6:41 AM

    Great post. Q? What exactly are the things your Digital Agency did for you, and how much did it cost?

  • by l5870uoo9y on 7/20/22, 11:09 AM

    Can you shed some light on how much you spend on freelancers?

  • by rozenmd on 7/20/22, 7:05 AM

    Did you speak to potential customers in that time?