How to find and motivate a programmer (project, startup)?

Question

Startups

Hello. I asked myself a question - how to find a programmer and motivate for long-term work in the project?
Given:

preamble

Проект: marketplace (цифровые товары + услуги по типу биржи фри-ланса)
Опыт в нише: несколько лет, MVP не нужен, все опробовано и приносит прибыль, а для масштабирования нужен маркетплейс. Нет вопросов по маркетингу, прототипу, дизайну взаимодействия.. - есть четкое понимание что и как должно выглядеть и функционировать.
Бюджет именно на разработку (морально готов) на 400-800т.р. своих на первые 3-4 мес. Будь 100% уверенность что сделают как надо - заплатил бы больше.
Понимание: маркетплейс нельзя заказать и сделать, подписать акт и всё.. Он строится и постоянно развивается.

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Problem and questions:
No experience in hiring programmers for more than 1.5 months, and therefore there is no certainty in determining the salary for a programmer, just as there is no certainty on what to write: Ruby rails, Django, ASP.NET.

1. Advise - how to find out that this programmer for this payment will really do the job to the end?
   
2. How to define and control the stages of development if I don't understand the code myself?
   
3. Office or remote? An agreement between individuals or is it not accepted?
   
4. Pay 100-150tr per month? And what if it merges in 2-3 months? Not everyone will be able to continue what they started, or is it not critical ..?
   
5. Offer 50tr+% share? -I think that they are fed up with such proposals, so many stillborn projects ..
   

I know from my own experience that a programmer is a creative person, if he is not interested in the project itself, then he will not work much for market money. And for 50-70k / month, there will easily be a crooked code and a database that is not optimized for load.
I talked with development studios: either the contract was crooked and frivolous, or semi-ready-made solutions and improvements of 1.5-2k per hour, which seemed expensive. I do not rule out that normal studios will request 1.5-3 units. for development, not ready for it.
Thanks in advance for your advice.

Answer 1

Strange even.
It looks like you wrote everything so well. No, as usual in such cases - "I don't know when a startup will make a profit, work for future billions."
And it's even strange that you can't find it.
Except the cost. 400-800 bucks for such a project is nothing at all, and even more so because, as you write, your project is already mature. And, therefore, the issues of long-term scaling and performance are already important.
On what to write is a question of the developer. The customer should not focus on this.
The only thing when it is important for the customer is only if he himself then supports it and knows some kind of programmer's tool. Then yes, then it makes sense to choose the technology yourself. Otherwise, leave the choice of technology at the mercy of the developer.
No way.
If only the programmer has recommendations from people you trust - then another matter.
You can guess from the poor results of the first week of work and stop working with him as soon as possible - this will at least minimize your losses.
Agree right away that the project be implemented as "ready for demonstration at any time."
To avoid this, I’m sawing a feature, but I can’t show you, because it’s deep inside, and I’ll cut the appearance only when I finish all the internal features in six months.
That is, agree to immediately make a draft-pre-draft appearance. And already drink from it.
Thus, you can observe almost daily how some little thing changes.
For non-visual stages, get git and require daily commits to it. There you can see the whole history of changes. Even a non-understanding person will be able to see in git that "something is changing". Simulating a flurry of activity by spamming git with garbage is pretty tiring for a programmer every day. Therefore, there is hope that in git there will be a true result of the daily work. In extreme cases, you can order an audit from a third party - the developer - in fact, his colleague is doing something or imitating violent activity.
As a programmer and a person who sometimes acts as a customer, I strongly recommend that you constantly monitor the results of the work of programmers. We are guys like that - customers do not understand anything in our work. We can always lie that we are doing something smart, while we ourselves will be doing other things. Especially after receiving an advance payment.
;)
Office or remote?
The project does not seem to be large enough for the office style of work.

Pay 100-150 per month? And what if it merges in 2-3 months?
Not everyone will be able to continue what they started, or is it not critical ..?

I will tell you a secret. When a developer merges, despite the fact that you clearly fulfill your payment obligations - often this means that he is not qualified enough and "did not pull it off", he misestimated the complexity of the project. That is, after it, it is better for another developer to redo it from scratch. It is often cheaper and faster than figuring it out. But not always, of course.
As a rule, qualified specialists have a sober approach to both the scope of the project and the quality of the code and plan their time for future work more efficiently. Therefore, it makes no sense for them to merge. Well, if you agree on the price. If you don’t get along, then a qualified one simply won’t take it from the very beginning. My imho.
And this too.
There is another consideration. The developer will do it for you today. Tomorrow, what will he do for you in the project? A share - pay forever.
In especially large projects - it makes sense.
And, by the way, the share does not mean that you can not spend money at all.
After all, everyone needs to eat.
If a person agrees for a bare share, then he is either stupid / irresponsible and does not understand that he will still need to earn money somewhere else for life, and there will be little time left for your project .... Or he has already taken place, having enough to live income and therefore being able to work on your project without pay in the hope of future billions. But here I do not understand how you can attract it.
It's great when you get tired of work. But not necessarily at all.
You idealize the profession of programmers.
The studio should be more expensive. Employees are somewhat less efficient. Plus the owner of the studio wants money. Plus overhead costs - premises, accounting, etc.
One of the advantages of the studio is that it gives a guarantee for the full cycle of work. In the case of a single developer, you personally will have to separately look for / negotiate with the front-ender and back-ender and somehow coordinate them. I would not entrust such a project to an "all-in-one specialist" if you have really serious plans.
It is also easier for the studio to sue money back if something goes wrong. But the choice of a studio/individual developer does not affect the overall quality/speed of development.

Answer 2

Advise - how to find out that this programmer for this payment will really do the job to the end?

nothing until he does or does a couple of projects for you

How to define and control the stages of development if I don't understand the code myself?

write technical specifications, write test cases, run test cases

Office or remote? An agreement between individuals or is it not accepted?

not important

Pay 100-150 per month? And what if it merges in 2-3 months? Not everyone will be able to continue what they started, or is it not critical ..?

then try it on other less complex projects

Offer % share? -I think that they are fed up with such proposals, so many stillborn projects ..

the share is needed for those who are going to invest their money in the project

Answer 3

Just start working and control the process + hire a person for an independent examination.
This person should not be familiar / friend with the performer, but you must trust him.

Answer 4

on what to write: Ruby rails, Django, ASP.NET.

On any popular stack - python, php, node.js, the rest is already less popular for web development.
You need to look at qualifications and motivation. For motivation, you can offer salary + share in the project. And in order to determine qualifications, a qualified person is needed. A good indicator would be if a person has some similar projects in their portfolio, but their absence does not mean anything, many work under NDA.
Agree on work steps. There may be a discrepancy in terms (because additional nuances arise), but in any case, you should see progress in the stages of work.
It is easier in the office, but remotely is also possible.
May merge. The other person most likely will not want to continue the project, because. for sure, everything was sad there once it merged or just a new person has a different stack of technologies.
Everyone is fed up with offers like “I have an idea, you do everything for free, for this you get 10% of the profit if it works” or “I have an idea, you do everything, we share fraternally 50/50”.
If you have already worked out marketing in this area, then this is already much more interesting.
How much salary and% to offer depends on how much your project brings, discuss individually.

Answer 5

I wrote a long article here on how to look for a developer in your project, it may be useful to those who stumble upon this question https://vc.ru/life/300488-kak-nayti-tech-kofaunder...