Almost every single day I hear horror stories of startups and established businesses who have outsourced software development either to a freelancer or an agency. The culprit is not India or Russia or any country in particular. The truth is every country has its fair share of software developers and agencies who take advantage of startups and existing businesses. Usually these agencies and developers are in a different city or country, lowering the accountability they have for the project. Once they do a bit of work and get their first invoice paid some of these developers will hit the road. One of our clients once hired a senior C# developer from a respected world-renowned tech hub. He did well at the start then suddenly everything fell apart. His finance cheated on him two weeks before their wedding so he called off the wedding and moved to a remote office in Thailand. He was quite a good looking chap so I’m sure he enjoyed the nightlife over there. All of a sudden his C# code, which was not bad initially, looked like it had been written by a junior with zero C# experience. It made the client's software unusable and the company started losing £100,000 per month due to all the bugs. We are pretty sure this freelancer outsourced his work to a junior while he partied and did work for other clients he met at this remote office in Thailand.
We’ve had clients who went the agency route and the agency held their code ransom, other clients who’s agency told them technical lies about why they can’t redirect domains or why hosting costs them 10x more than it’s supposed to. Becoming a technical expert could take you years, causing you to completely miss the window of opportunity. So what should you do? Always ask for referrals from the company or get referred by a friend. Word of mouth from people you trust is usually your best bet. Sure, you can read reviews on Clutch, Trustpilot, etc. but the ones you read about are often also the most expensive. Going for a small to medium sized, less-known or up-and-coming agency that comes highly recommended could mean you are getting great quality and reliability at an affordable price.
The size of the team matters. One freelancer can quickly get overworked and overbooked. If he gets sick (or even passes away) you are screwed. If he decides to hold your code ransom, you are screwed. An agency with a few developers and a good reputation can scale with your business and add resources as you require more. At Bitcube we give you access to the Git repository so that you can save and back up the code we have written for you at any given time. We also allow you to add or remove resources to your project at with sufficient lead time. We pride ourselves on being 100% office-based, so we can always keep an eye on our team and stay productive. Skype and Slack is great, but a one minute in-person meeting can clear up so much confusion and prevent bottlenecks and bugs from creeping in.