how to tell if you've found the right programmer? (10)
I'm thinking about hiring a programmer to help me fix up landers. When i asked a guy how many hours would it take him to code the home page of evernote.com and dropbox.com (just trying to gauge how good he is), he said 6 and 16 hours respectively. I asked for more details and he said the following:
"it basically depends on number of unique elements
for evernote, this element is repeating so wont consume much of my time apart from this there is header and footer plus two more sections which are quite simple in nature and easy to handle in responsive."
"while dropbox design doesnt repeat same elements mostly unique in each section plus some cute animations in slider block and will be a bit tricky for responsive handeling too. overall 6 unique sections for dropbox and 3 unique sections for evernote"
I'm not recruiting any world-class programmers to write a new operating system, just someone who is good enough to do the "fixing up lander" and "convert lander ideas to code" job for me.
Based on this guys' reply, do you think he can do a good job? How much should I pay someone like him?
Any great resources you could recommend apart from upwork, onlinejob.ph etc? thanks a lot! 
Find 2-3 tasks for him, agree on a payment and see how it works. You should have him do some real work before you think about hiring.
Otherwise, his answers seem good, he explained the reason for this in easy to understand language. The real test would be if he manages to stick to his estimates, because I could also give those estimates without being able to actually code it so quickly right now since I haven't touched a piece of code for a few years.
Agree with Manu on giving him a few test tasks.
Apart from testing this guy’s ability to turn your ideas into code. One other thing which I think is important when hiring someone for such tasks, is to have a clear understanding on his availability requirements.
It’s pretty important to clear such things out as it will save you the trouble and time needed to deal with delays that for some reasons will weight on your own delivery time.
Second Manu's advice, apart from that , one suggestion I can think of is try hiring more than one programmer at the same time, and use the same 2-3 task to gauge them. I guess hiring programmer works a lot like affiliate marketing, you never know which one is the best offer/lander, but you do know which one is the better one.
I learn this from Derek Sivers, he has a blog post on how to hire a programmer , which could be useful
thanks Manu.
So I guess this guy is reasonably good if he could deliver what he estimated, that is, 6 hours coding for evernote home page and 16 hours for dropbox? I wasn't sure if that means he is slow or fast...
If this guy charges $10/hour and another more experienced guy charges $20/hour but can deliver in half of the time, who would you hire?
Originally Posted by manu_adefy
You need to send him a sample of what you WANT HIM TO DO. You're not gonna make another dropbox or evernote, right? Send him 2-3 landers and tell him to rip that stuff, that's what you are after if I'm not wrong.
$10 an hour for a solid coder is a rather low rate, $20 sounds more about right --- depending on their country of origin --- but a person of such level shouldn't take more than an hour to rip a LP, even less if it's a simple one.
Yeah, what @matuloo said. My point was that his explanation makes sense but you should send him a proper task and pay him whatever he asks if it's in line with what your budget for this is and let him do some real work.
It's difficult to work with coders strictly online, I don't know if this is a possibility for you (to do eventually) but try to find someone local, you'll pay more, but you'll be able to communicate and build a longer term relationship that can lead to other / better projects. Check out fiverr (you'll pay more but you will get to see sample work as well, and there is a feedback system).
I'm a programmer myself and doing AM at same time. His answers based on elements were correct.
But when it comes to choosing who to go with you need to think of some minor but yet major stuff.
If you give me a lander to fix up I would have some questions in my mind, first: is the code clean enough, is it too many repeated js code that I can just combine to one and make page load faster and would it take me much longer time to fix up the current landing page rather then write the code myself.
Often times when I take landers from adplexity I see the code is huge and unnecessary. Page load is high and if I were going to fix the code it would take me 3 hours where as I could write the whole thing myself in 2 hours.
So basically what I mean is you need to see if he is caring and creative enough. You would be surprised to see how many landing pages I wrote myself again and loading page went from 4 sec to half a sec.
You have 3 type of programmers one that would just fix the current page because it takes more time which means more money from him, 2nd type he'll write some parts himself and rest copy paste and 3rd that guy that thinks about every aspect such as how can I make it faster, should I compress images, where to add js code and he cares, this guy's is a winner. He'll use less time and pages are fast and everything works.
Hello,
When i hire a programmer for a small project, i usually pay a fixed fee, which fits my budget. I don't really care the number of hours needed. If the guys works faster, good for him.
For bigger projects, i usually do milestones, so that i pay based on progress.
Using this method attracts usually programmers that deliver. Good to hire first on Upwork, so that the payment stays in escrow until the work has been completed.
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