If you drive a company and his main business is development as service, have you ever thought on building products?. If you cannot cover the real cost of building a product with your current utilities and you have a well known market where to sell the product, you can start searching for investment, because you have several options to start building a product. You already know developers that you know that can do the product, you already know the market, and you just need to think a little bit more on the product to start building it, and start searching for investment. If you are not capable of do something as searching for investment, you are not probably good enough to make business. There is a related post that I loved, which also I am using as guide to answer many questions related to similar communications that I receive, which is entitled “Dear Programmer, I have an idea”, where the developer as final answer has four key points to review before asking for help on building a project, where he answers “So, either you need to:”
- Have some way to pay the developer.
- Have an impressive track record of expertise / success in the relevant industry.
- Have considerable technical skills.
- Have considerable design skills.
The 4th point is not so necessary, you will not require real design skills. But other ones are a must. As you want an awesome developer and as I have said before: “if you want an awesome software solution, pay to an awesome programmer an awesome salary… do not be an idiot… #code”. As you require a very good expertise and skills to build your product, the developer also has the right to ask for your skills, if you are not a skilled manager doing business, why should a skilled developer trust in your pretty nice words about business if you do not have a previous track of successful business? Just prove how good you are on doing business and pay a very good salary, and mainly “don’t become one of the worst places to work”. If you are good doing business, you will be able to pay.
You’ve got to pay your people competitive rates. You don’t have to be the highest in the market, but paying below market or having substandard benefits shows that you care more about your bottom line than your employees.
Why someone that is much over the average should be paid as someone that is on the average available developers?. At least you should be able to hire programmers as the average programmers on the market, otherwise, just be conformant with that kind of programmer that is below the average. But remember that but a little over 49% of developers are below average. So, your pretty nice words about a pretty nice future, are mere words, mainly if you are not capable to make a very good payment to a very good programmer. Otherwise you should start sharing the ownership of the product and make real business, probably that programmer have other ideas to drive too, and you can start doing more business in future, not only centered in your product.
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