Tired of slow in-house teams?

Need something extra? Read our extended FAQ!

• What is a remote developer?

  A remote developer is a professional coder creating web pages and applications for many different clients and getting money for every project. Since no employer dictates their rate, they choose it themselves — just as they choose clients or projects to work with. 

• How to hire a great remote developer?

  It’s not easy to find freelance coders who will be decent — but the time you spend on it will bring you numerous benefits in the future. Therefore, it’s essential to analyze the hiring process and choose the proper steps. 
  
  Step 1. Review their portfolio and work examples
  Find as much as possible about the freelancers’ contribution to the projects they completed (open source projects aren’t under NDA). A developer yourself? Review their code together. Ask them to explain their design, architecture, style, and framework choices to learn more about their decision-making process. 
  
  Step 2. Get acquainted with your candidate in person
  Soft skills are just as critical as hard ones, so after analyzing the code, dig deeper and establish personal contact. Mostly, you’ll have to conduct behavioral interviews — that is, if you hire yourself. If you delegate the job to non-bidding marketplaces, they’ll just offer you some pre-selected candidates. If the intro call is on you, here’s the short checklist that can come in handy:
  Attest verbal skills;
  Ask about outstanding past projects;
  Evaluate problem-solving skills by asking questions;
  Inquire about personal interests, hobbies, and pet projects.
  
  Step 3. Arrange the in-depth project discussion
  Introduce the project, giving a brief description of aims, tools, and strategies. 
  Break the project into subsections, clarify the aim of each part and explain how they will compose the wholesome product. 
  Describe the provenance of your project and its primary purpose. Is it a part of something bigger or an autonomous tool?
  Discuss the tools and techniques needed to complete the project. Check if the dev is familiar with all the necessary frameworks, languages, and libraries. 
  How many people will be working on the project? If the dev won’t be alone, describe their future company, and mention the communication routine and the degree of independence for each participant.
  Give clear milestones and timelines for the project. When will it start? What is the presumed release date?
  
  Step 4. Offer a paid trial period
  All the trial periods should be paid, and here’s why. You are still unsure if you’ll work together — however, if the dev is working just as hard as you are, you both deserve a remuneration, right? Establish the bonds of trust even if your paths will diverge this time. Who knows, maybe you’ll meet one another soon.

• What is the difference between programmer and developer?

  A developer is a software professional who manages the code in computer programs, specializing in a particular language or framework(s). In addition, developers maintain program documentation, computer architecture, user interfaces, and databases.
  
  A programmer is a coding pro. Programmers also test and troubleshoot software applications, making sure they run smoothly. Along with following the specific clients’ instructions, they broaden their horizons and think innovatively to garner the highest quality code. 
  
  Specializations
  Both developers and programmers have their own narrower specializations within broad professional fields. 
  Programmers’ specializations:
  Application programmers. Application programmers develop software aimed at specific tasks. For instance, an edtech app programmer is entirely focused on education, and the programmer working with online banking can’t imagine their days without banking apps.
  System programmers. System programmers help maintain system software.
  Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning engineers. Engineers of that kind are aimed at enhancing the efficiency of AI in completing human tasks. Chatbots, sentiment analyzers, text parsers — that’s precisely what AI and ML engineers do.
  Game programmers. For them, it’s all about games, consoles, modifications, and desktop/smartphone adaptations.
  At the same time, developers’ careers can have the following types and modes:
  Mobile developers. They create programs suitable for mobile phones and tablets and/or adapt applications and programs so that they can smoothly run both on desktops and tablets/mobiles.
  Full-stack developers. Full-stack part-time or full-time expert developers understand the peculiarities of user experience (front-end) and code functionality (back-end). So they can improve the latter to enhance the former. 
  DevOps engineers. DevOps engineers are aces in software development and IT maintenance coordination. A DevOps engineer helps foster collaboration between software development and operational or maintenance teams.
  UI/UX developers. Developers of this kind focus on customers’ evaluation of the final product. If something goes awry, they change the software design to make the layout more intuitive and often test software with focus groups to figure out pointwise refinements.

• What should I know before hiring a developer?

  1. Turn into the best guy on the block
  If you want to tie top talents with prominent competitors, activate your collective mind, cooperate with HR and Marketing departments, and consider your clear advantages. Incorporate them into your ad campaign. Queues of applicants prove that you’ve done everything correctly.
  
  2. Get acquainted with the software development cycle
  To find freelance coders who allow you to sleep peacefully, you should understand what they do and how qualified ones differ from those who are overconfident. By the way, clear business expectations and objectives expressed to your promising candidates will make the hiring process smooth and transparent. Knowing what a typical working day for a dedicated software developer looks like, you’ll be able to establish fair and realistic deadlines for your applicants (or employees) and access their suitability for the job. The churn metrics are the best proof of your success in this field (they show how many employees don’t survive the trial period / how many of them quit during the first year). 
  
  3. Clearly define qualifications
  What technical skills are needed to get this job? What kind of experience would be relevant? Are there any specific soft skills that could help the candidate become a true ace? Before addressing job boards, answer these crucial questions for yourself and make a list of essential soft and hard skills to include in your job description. Include any company-specific skills and needs, i.e., employed technologies or time zone to work in (that’s weird and extraneous only at first sight).
  If you fail to define your needs and requirements properly, you will likely fail to find the right person. You don’t need those who are ill-fitted to your corporate culture or those who can’t instantly grasp both near- and far-fetched work objectives, do you? 
  
  4. Verify credentials and portfolios
  A proper and well-arranged HR department makes this task a piece of cake — but if you’re hiring for a newly born startup, that’s probably not the case. However, even if you’re the sole member of your team (that also happens!), never neglect the verification procedure. Find experienced developers and/or HR specialists and ask for their help! If your social capital allows it, ask friends and acquaintances, monitor social media, and arrange tit-for-tat service exchanges. Candidates may misrepresent themselves, and it’s your (or the HR department’s) duty to correct their self-presentation.
  
  5. Evaluate tech skills
  Employ real-life challenges you/your company encountered and ask candidates to address them. Use realistic scenarios: if the candidate tackles the problem during the job interview, they will be more ready for it in real life. Ask about all the solutions coming to their mind during the interview — so that you can trace their thinking and problem-solving patterns.

• Do companies hire remote developers? 

  They do — what is more, developers are in great need not only at the so-called “pure IT companies” whose core business is running websites, fixing bugs, or building web services or applications. That’s valid about web developers in general, but for remote developers, it’s even more so. Nowadays, not a single business can imagine its development without a decent website. People spend significantly more time on the Internet — browsing, selling, buying, or advertising. You lose the fight for clients if you don’t have a website or an app. Web developers get more work and become globally wanted. 
  
  Now, on the “remote” part. Of course, you can think that onsite aces are more controllable and productive — but I’d like to remind you about a couple of things. Hiring an onsite web developer, you sign a contract with them, promising to pay for 40 hours a week, no matter how many productive hours this number comprises. Furthermore, for an onsite developer, you should pay insurance, sick leaves, vacations, holidays, and many more unplanned expenditures. Remote professionals will have their own schedules — but they tend to work more often because they want to get more money. Here, you pay them for hours spent developing your app or web — nothing more and nothing less. 

• What is the role of the developer? 

  Let’s rephrase this question. What is the difference between programmer and developer? (I bet you wanted to ask precisely that.) Both professionals share some typical responsibilities and skills, but they have slightly different aims for their work. Whereas a programmer is a coder, i.e., a tech ace whose daily job is program code writing, a developer is more like a project manager with coding skills. So, a web developer has a broader scope of responsibilities than a pure coder (or programmer). In addition to coding tasks, web developers manage web applications’ creation, documentation, and management. They can give instructions to programmers and design software.
  
  There are multiple developer specializations. To name just a few, one can meet mobile developers, DevOps developers, UI/UX developers, and front-end/back-end / full-stack developers (depending on what they’re in charge of — visual elements and user/computer interaction or the underlying server side).