5 (+1) things everyone forget calculating price – Polish IT prices part III

In response to one of my previous articles about prices in IT outsourcing I have been attacked that I lower employers expectations. It turned up from simple misunderstanding, because I was writing then about not too experienced developers (2-3 years) hired for full time and my arguer was freelance senior. It could agree with most of his points, but as someone who worked both as developer and manager, and have quite good understanding of economics, I would like to explain you what often we don’t take in account when we build (both employers and employees) our price expectations.

1. Average is a liar

When you discuss about prices you talk about majority. You have to be aware that most of technical role salaries don’t have representative average values. Why? Because they grow very fast in first 1-2 years and then are static to some point when they fire in the sky and grow without limits. There are reasons for it of course. Similar like in scrum voting we should cut off marginal values. Taking median or average of second and third quartile we get most reliable data. In general that means that you can’t take any valuations for granted.

Average can lie in other element too. You have to remember that most of your contractors will be sole traders. But not all of them. Some will be represented by LTD. Sometimes (in case of branch) you will consider simple employment. That determines price. Work costs in Poland are extremely high. Above 1000 EUR it’s not worth to be employed, but some people will take that cost to feel safer about their retirement.

Comparing data with non-EU or UK offers also needs attention. If you outsource work from EU state different than your own, you pay 0% VAT on top of them. That means your contractor benefits for working for you more, than by working locally.

2. Outsource is neither there and neither here

This point makes most of controversy. UK company while hiring someone remote WILL look for cost saving. If for the same price, they could get someone who is relatively cheap here, they wouldn’t even try to find outsourcing. On the other hand remote worker WILL look for better salary than in his place. Otherwise he wouldn’t spend time searching offshore clients. Let’s take a try. On reeds.co.uk I made a search for PHP developer positions within 10 miles from centre of London (so high prices). It gave me following results:

• 15,000 GBP/annum – 29
• 15,000 – 20,000 GBP/annum – 47
• 20,000 – 30,000 GBP/annum – 160
• 30,000 – 50,000 GBP/annum – 284
• 50,000 GBP + – 170

That gives median on level of 30,000 – 50,000 with tendency to be closer to 30,000. Extending to radius 50 miles didn’t really made big change. That means that for very good, experienced, self-sustainable and self-organised developer UK company will be looking for not more than 15-30K per annum, what gives 11 EUR – 18 EUR per hour. Otherwise cost of managing offshore resource would be simply too big and won’t match the balance. Is that a rule? No. Especially free lance, per-project, short jobs are one the level o 100, 200, 300 GBP per day. Yes, it happens. But competition is high and requirements are even higher.

In the same time, if I compare prices advertised recently on local Polish forums I see that salaries hardly beat level o 10,000 PLN / mth, which is equivalent of 14 EUR / hour. If you compare that it’s not a big difference from employer point of view. Anyhow there are things that employer may take in account:

• Side costs like taxes, are much higher in Poland. You can find better deal, if employer helps Polish contractor to register his sole-trader-ship in the UK
• When by taking average (still good) workers we can expect better prices than in UK, if you consider real diamonds drop that argument. Poles are winning worldwide coding contests. For best you won’t compete with small local companies, but with Google, Microsoft and NASA.

3. Risk costs

There is huge difference between long and short term contract. No matter what kind of agreement you both have. If you hire some one for full time, with 2-3 month notice period you can lower expectations. If you hire someone to make some project, expect even twice more. Why? Because the risks. Someone who is ad-hoc freelancer is not anymore an employee. He is an agency. Agency have a lot of other costs, but give you flexibility. You pay for it, but it’s worth sometimes.

• Agency/Freelancer takes more responsibility for the result.
• Agency/Freelancer solves for you management and design loads.
• Agency/Freelancer works no-time-limit for you. There are no 8 hour work day, there is deadline.
• Agency/Freelancer costs more to find you and to find another deal. Employee is safer. That safety is what you save on the price.

4. Some things are priceless

Remember me saying about marginal values. That’s where it comes from. If you want extraordinary person, with good networking, not-like-an-agency ownership and dedication, narrow specialisation, big demand (you can compete for some), then expect higher prices. Most of high skilled workers feel bad, when median/average salary values are being published. But the reality is that, if you want to make things done best you are ready to spend more, like on triangle below:

5. Commitment and responsibility costs

One of the biggest mentality differences between Poland in UK is attitude. Good workers from Poland are dedicated, have wide knowledge and want to help you find solutions. Many workers from Western Europe are corporation creatures just executing orders. But there is a price. You have to take in your calculation, that this commitment will cost. Otherwise you will have just an agency, that does what you ask and not think if that has any sense.

and 6th

Hiring single person full time is just beginning. Still you have to sort our how you will cooperate. If you hire more experienced (more expensive freelancer) issue will be solved automatically. But often you will have to find about side costs like for finding candidates, travels, project management, documentation, etc. If you need some tips in that area feel free to ask or contact Hire Poles consultants.

 

5 reasons why Customer Support in Poland is best choice for you

Last time I described raw cost of one Polish rambo-developer hired full time on remote basis (read on blog or on linkedin). This time I would like to explain much simpler and obvious scenario. Again I will explain you my personal views, but proved by actual client scenarios. Again I will offer you my help to find proper candidates and will point you few talents I worked with. If you have other opinion or questions, feel free to ask and comment.

So simply, why Poles?

1. English is almost second language for Poles. Huge amounts of young people speaks it on quite efficient level. Let’s be honest. It takes 1,5 hour to fly from Szczecin, Gdańsk or Poznań to London. To Warsaw from all of them takes from 3 to 6 hours by train and plane is many times more expensive.
2. You won’t be first. Just in Szczecin you will find big support centres like Arvato (Shell, Microsoft, Garry Webber, Douglass) or Stream specialised in German speaking support. Tell you a secret? It’s not too difficult to compete with them for candidates.
3. For 1000-1500 EUR/mth invoice (VAT free because reverse charge in EU) you can get good a sole-trade worker with advanced English both written and spoken. If you look for efficient data entry work also forget about Philippines or India, you can give first good job to students for budget of 650 EUR/mth. That allows relatively high income for them together with important kick-off in career, with low cost in UK realms and high quality. Anyhow hiring students require proxy via resident in the country. Still it’s fully achievable.
4. In Poland you will find without problem efficient German, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Danish speakers too.
5. Poland is part of EU. Travel, legal, transfers is simpler than India, Russia or Philippines.

Of course that are basic numbers. If you are startup, you can start straight ahead. If you need to move your support overseas, optimise your costs feel free to ask. I can direct you to Hire Poles consultants or to many colleagues from strong IT networking in Polish cities.

About me: I am over 10 years in IT industry. Worked for WAYN.com, Nokia, GameFactory. Assembled IT and Customer Support teams for Casamundo.com, Belvilla.com, Apprecie.com, PureHolidayHomes.com and others.

How much does Polish outsourcing cost? PART 1

Disclaimer: Many agencies are hiding values to hide their margins and gain a lot on somebody’s else work. Often quality doesn’t go with the price. Few days ago Elon Musk gave his great Tesla technology as open source to the public. Was that wrong? Of course not. He creates new rules in the market. I might be afraid of someone reading this article and not willing to use my help facilitating enclosed data. Surely I can’t help everyone and I don’t even want to. On the other hand I know that data is beginning to long journey and you need to know how to apply it. Values I present some agencies keep in secret. I will try to explain where it comes from and for what you should pay, if you let someone find best work force for you.

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While I was talking many times about pros and cons of outsourcing work to Poland, I didn’t mention they key element – price. I don’t think that price should be your main driver to pick subcontractors in such difficult a industry like IT, but still it’s significant. Still I can honestly say that Polish developers may not compete by price with India or Philippines, but can compete both with price and quality with all European resources. Compared to Ukrainian or Belarusian, who are still very high quality, it’s far more stable (compared to what happens now in Ukraine) and accessible (compared to no VAT reverse charge and non-EU outsourcing restrictions for Belarus).

If you want to have statistical information about how much developers costs in Poland, you can visit wynagrodzenia.pl. Because their copyrights I will leave them numbers and diagrams about median and average values. For sure numbers given won’t fully apply to your case because:

• for proper, secured outsourcing you will look for agencies or senior freelancers, who may not be counted into Polish market price stats;
• you need candidates who can communicate with you, so more likely already work for non-Polish customers/employers and may be not considered as statistical group;
• numbers will lie about most interesting group, which are sole traders and will show their net income, when you look into gross invoice values;

Rambo

Let’s start with easy scenario. You just need your personal MI5 double “o” to help you with a project. It may be your raw idea, untypical order from your client or rescue mission. You need someone who is self-sufficient, reliable and experienced. Simple answer. While query we made to our list of potential subcontractors most of them priced 2-3 years experienced all-stack PHP/HTML/JavaScript developer for 5 days per 8 hours asked about 2000 EUR per month (what would be around 1600 GBP/mth or 19200 per annum). With experience price spanned to 2500 EUR. From personal experience I can say that this level is sensible. Giving less is still possible, but may bring issues with quality. Giving more will be simply spoiling your contractor. For price as given you may expect proper skills and VAT free invoice (reverse charge service purchase from EU state). On top of it you should consider following costs:

• software licences proper to your project – it may happen you use software specific for your project and you would have to count it as extra cost;
• head hunting activity costs
  • check of your needs, requirements and budget and how it meets possibilities
  • job posting, appliances qualification and intermediate interviews
  • candidates background checks
  • help to organise efficient remote work scheme

EDIT June 16th 2014: Based on valuable comments from readers I have to mark that this scenario works to situation when you hire long term full time developer with relatively short experience. That person still can solve many of your problems. Situation will show totally different, if you talk about more experienced workers and/or freelancers. Because flexibility you gain with them and expertise you have to consider higher values. I will extend that topic, in further articles.

Most of agencies will charge your one or two agreed gross monthly salaries just on posting job and giving you list of potential candidates. Is it worth it? I think you need a bit more. If you don’t want to waste your time nor money feel free to contact me, other Hire Poles consultants or any other competent oversea hire service.

In next articles we will consider:

• multilingual customer support
• project teams
• branches
• designers and illustrators

About me: I am over 10 years in IT industry. Worked for WAYN.com, Nokia, GameFactory. Assembled IT teams for Casamundo.com, Belvilla.com, Apprecie.com, PureHolidayHomes.com and others.

 

Uhlans fantasy – how to deal with Polish temper

(In this article I would like to explain cultural differences, that may be difficult to handle while working with Poles. To give proper background I would have to start with some historical description. Anyhow article is still about Polish IT specialists)

Uhlans were one of most successful formations in history of European warfare. Next to hussars they made strong impression on Polish, Lithuanian, Russian and Prussian (German) history. They replaced hussars (famous of wining the siege of Vienna) and marked presence during Napoleon period, World War I and World War II. Famous Uhlans were Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Casimir Pulaski who are both American War Heroes. Uhlans were known from great honour, extreme courage and a temper.

pol. Ułańska Fantazja (Uhlans fantasy) – eng. bravado

Poles are very hot tempered nation. It’s quite funny, as we are known among Slavians as one of most complaining and intrusive. Anyhow compared to other Slavic nations we are also very rapid, flexible, agile and active. It’s a historical mixture where our country was always between biggest empires of their time (German tribes, Vikings and Golden Mongol Horde; then Teutonic, Tsar’s Russia, Swedish, Ottoman Empire; later Austro-Hungarian Empire and Prussia; in the end between III Reich and USSR) which created culture of courage, honour and patriotism (but also erased our knowledge about our pressure on Ukrainians, Czech, Belarusians and Lithuanians). On the other hand years of political nonexistence in XVIII and XIX century, long wars and 40 years of communism tough Poles to “contrive like a Pole”. It was big mission to organise fridge, car or even meat or chocolate in communism. Even today Poland is known of one of most bureaucratic and business unfriendly places in European Union. It’s not a surprise why so many Polish companies are being opened in Great Britain every day. Poles feel here like in economical heaven and despite many accusation are more likely to create new work here, than overuse benefits.

Fire fighters

Same like Vikings were both farmers and warriors, Uhlans were common people, who joined army in need or to repair own budget. It’s quite common to mix skills. It happens that many people from Eastern Europe are even over-skilled with theoretical manner only (especially huge amount of people with master degree in Economics or humanistic science). It’s not typical like in Western Europe to be specialist in narrow field. If you hire Polish construction worker you can almost assume we will be mason, painter, tiler. Most will do basic plumbing and electricity. When you hire someone to refurnish your home you likely hire one person, rather many. The same applies to IT specialists. You can find of course Objective C (Apple) developer or Java specialist with business intelligence portfolio, but most people on market (and likely in your interest) will be all-stack-web-developers. It may mean some rookie making magical things with out-of-the-box solutions like WordPress, Bootstrap, Joomla, etc. It may also mean someone who is senior in at least one popular server side language, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5 and SQL. And it is already quite obsolete set. Personally I am shocked when in the UK someone without understanding of code versioning software like SVN, GIT or Mercurial, without understanding of agile process, unit testing is called senior developer. Personally I wouldn’t hire such person above junior and most of juniors I have hired so far learned that skills over weeks.

Having such a rich set of expertise Poles are very good for rescue missions to your products. Many are specialised in reverse engineering. They won’t spend half a day staring on the screen and will actively debug to find source of the issue. Let’s don’t full ourselves, this fire brigade won’t fix your business, if you won’t fix your processes, planing and resources. But they can give you breath and ignite proper team setup.

To facilitate your saviours you would have to:

• find people with showable portfolio in your area
• agree on paid test (Poles are afraid to be abused) where they would have to fix some of your issues
• if you suffer of wrong processes, lack of documentation and never-ending fire fighting define very precise issues. Don’t worry about how things will be done, but express expected result
• don’t squeeze too much (will explain later in morale hyperbole)

Strange silent people

Once finally you found your dream Slavic warriors, you find out something odd in discussion. They seem less communicative than expected. Sometimes they don’t answer at all. Reason is “small talk”. Slavs don’t have small talk. We talk when we have a reason (no matter what reason is). In past, when our cultures weren’t so familiarised it happened that Poles were offended by Brits asking “how do you do” and not waiting for an answer.

• if you expect feedback, mimic that. If you ask group “does anyone have questions” likely no one will say a word. No questions, means no questions, nothing worth mentioning
• if you expect updates describe that in the beginning as a rule. If you ask for feedback in the middle of process, it will be understood as “you are too slow, I am unhappy”.
• determine workers role in decisions, if you expect only executing orders that’s what you’d get. If you decided to delegate decisions, you have to stick to that, otherwise you’d run into delays.

Morale hyperbole

Where is a lot of passions and fire, there is a risk to burn out. People who are extremely enthusiastic about work can lose their eager while finding obstacles.  On the other hand not always you want people, who will treat job as “just another contract”. If you think about building proper team then you have to:

• don’t ask people to work longer than normally. Poles won’t refuse, but each time will get them closer to leave you.
• don’t give roles without proper power. Poles will feel both obligated and unable (left without tools) to match your expectations. Another reason to leave.
• if you expect more than executing orders explain origin and story behind project, present skills and experience behind roles in company. Many times Poles, who see under-skilled supervisors making wrong decisions direct frustration against the project. Ambitious people in general (not only Poles) can’t stand working for people who have no background to do proper decisions and push responsibility to the team. On the other hand not drawing full picture, may result that some middle-man mistakes may be understood as chief executives weaknesses.

Dodgers and pretenders

Not every Polish IT specialist is talented, ambitious and helpful worker. As everywhere you can find pests. There are in general three kinds of based often on background they grew up in.

• “you may stand, you may lay, still you deserve be paid” was proverb often repeated in the communism. If people spend more time on arguing your decisions, makings plots, forming groups (especially against other team members), are spending longer time at work, but not productive, cut it off. (you may need proper CTO to recognise such people first)
• “it will never gonna work” – complainers, no matter what happens they complain. They are not the same group as constructive critics, who give explanation and solutions. Complainers just complain. You don’t need them.
• “I am too good to do it”. With 90ties generation, we started to observe people, who have extreme high expectations in the first place, and give nothing in return. It’s unlikely you will meet them, because often such people having great diploma and no experience look only for senior, manager level positions. But if you find them, don’t keep them. If your project is too small for them, let them go.

Babel

But Poles aren’t only difficulties. Next to extraordinary engineering skills comes one more benefit. Because political and economical situation of Poland, with addition of IT marker requirements most of candidates from Poland will speak English. Intermediate level is absolute minimum. You won’t have problems to find German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish-speakers for your support team as well. They will be far better skilled than most workers from India or Philippines and their attention to details and work ethics will be higher than most of your local specialists. Big companies like Microsoft move their customer support centres to Poland because of that.

Want to know more?

It’s very hard to gather all knowledge about nation and specialisation. It’s hard to not generalise too much and describe every case. I hope this article help you a bit to understand specifics of working with Polish IT workers. If you have further questions please contact me.

It’s so simple, isn’t it?

Recently in discussion with colleagues we exchanged opinion about software that automate development. We mentioned using unit testing in TDD to minify debugging, prototyping tools that can even generate some classes from UMLs or IDEs that allows “so called developers” to create more or less complex ERM-wanna-be software just by using their mouse or touchpad. On the very end of that list discussions turned into comparison of DIY-webpage software so widely advertised over the web. It was burning under the fire of total criticism. Especially for boosting business expectations. As in recent times developers are being often mentioned as spoiled profession, anything that challenges old fashion engineers finds extreme enemies and believers.

So, where lies the truth?

Of course there won’t be single answer to the question as there is no single solution on the market, no single possible case and business. Tools can both save time and lead into dead ends. You need to be able to judge, if they are helpful in your case. That’s why you need lead development resource, who won’t be coding (mentioned in previous article).

Prototyping

My opinion won’t be liked by some. Especially not by IT agencies. I think, that, if you start your business in the web, you should start with all DIY tools you can. Why? Because you are limited. Yes. Don’t be afraid of saying that. You may have an idea, even budget, but you have no skills (not apply to some geeks reading that too). That makes you perfect measurement how hard are things. Take anything you can manage on your own and try to reproduce your business idea by using that. It may be some site generator, blog engine like WordPress or more complex site framework like Joomla. If you don’t code (or just begin to code) don’t try to. Forget about even the easiest solutions that require coding. Try the simplest.

Why? You will learn about limitations. How much time it took you to build basic feature? Can you easily amend it or introduce variety of experiences? Can you translate it? Can you test (there are plenty of tools online) it’s capacity in sense of traffic, exploits? Can you do all you wanted to do?

Knowing that you may have already product good enough to show to the clients or investors. A lot depends on what you do. You will also appreciate lack of knowledge and process you had. How much time it take you to configure all? How much time you spend on learning and reading tutorials? How much time you verified, if there are no bugs? Did you have organised list of things to do? How many unsuspected issues you have found so far? Well. These questions are your challenges in the next step.

Growing

Now you know how big effort is to go to the place you are at the moment. Previously you might think, that if you write some blurry, marketing, bla-bla-bla folder any freelancer/agency will be able to change it into working product in few moments for budget of sausage roll. You know it’s not true. I bet you have doubts about how complete is or how looks it looks like. You feel not confident at all. Well you should be, if your plan and goals were perfect. If you still think they were, give your prototype to few people. Let them try. You will see it’s not.

But at least you know, that you need to build in you plan time and budget for key elements:

• planning – to determine business/user goals and MVP
• process – to determine expectations
• foundation – to determine and prepare documentation, technologies, infrastructure, testing, monitoring, deployment, severity, incident handling
• roadmap – to determine actual milestones in development
• resource – to determine how much people and skills you need on board to move forward

That all will generate bigger costs than you assumed and may extend deliverables you expected. But there is good part of that. You know how much you can achieve by out of the box solutions. You can talk to investors or clients and improve. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Agencies would to the same. Very few would write software for you. Most will use something that’s free. Better DIY, learn, take distance to your dreams and save money for proper process in future.

 

Role of lead technician in technology startup

There were books, articles, movies made in that topic. We all might think all is clear and understood. But still we face same problems, same issues, we make same mistakes. It feels like Einsteins definition of insanity:

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I won’t fix it now. No. But I can share with you some thoughts that may help, as same challenges faced me and my teams in multiple projects. As developer dragged into management in time I had chance to learn about both ends of the rope and maybe my experience can help you (especially if you on the business side) common mistakes.

Don’t lie. You are A tech startup

I believe you are an expert in what you do. You learned over years, found a pattern and now decide to automate your practices to turn them into ultimate kill-the-rest product. From your point of view that is essential. Yes. It’s true. Your domain, branch, industry is great part of that cake. But there is tiny bit that changes a picture… Remember word “automate”? That’s right. As soon you try to replace any business workflow, by any method, software, algorithm you have to consider your company as IT startup.

What does it mean? Same as without full effort to your business part, any shortage on IT will be deadly path to go. Don’t underestimate it and don’t overestimate yourself. Even me, as over decade in industry developer who gets great (maybe to good to reality) feedback from colleagues know that I am very limited. IT is not two buttons on the keyboard and some “Klingon” slang. IT is topic no one can over even in 1/100. And I am not saying about project managing yet.

Does it mean you should find someone to delegate that part of it? Yes. Does it mean that person should be in your top executive team? Absolutely! Does it mean you can hand over all papers you have and let them work? No. You need CTO. CTO means not role on resume, but someone who is almost equal to you, understand fully your path and your skills (and previous failures) and have close to you decision power on the product. You can keep your goals, but you can’t tell IT how to do things and you can’t make them tell you how to do things. You need dialog. You need equality.

Name doesn’t matter

When I meant CTO I really didn’t meant name. I meant responsibility. Personality I can’t stand CTOs who do technical decisions on their own when their skills are weak. Many of them grew to CTOs from Project Manager or QA roles. With all respect to many great CTOs. To be CTO you have to be great engineer at first. But great engineer won’t be ultimate great CTO. Does CTO has to be great architect – better when your team is senior and be architects on their own. Anyhow there is needed a lead, decision point, someone all can trust. You WILL end up closing people in their silos. You unlikely can make all up to date with everything. CTO will know more than rest of IT about business, and less than them about “using factory as default construction pattern in model classes” (that was example of Klingon that pretends to be English).

If you will hire someone as Lead Developer, System Architect, Senior Developer, Junior Developer, Web Developer, Designer and there will be no CTO over him. It means. He is CTO. Sorry. If he won’t cover duties of CTO, no one will. If IT won’t be in your business process… I am sorry. It won’t work.

Ok. So we’ll say. “Lets hire talented senior, give him architecture. In meantime he will lead development and do main coding including bug fixing and preparing demo for the client. He will also  help Project Manager to organise priorities and enforce agile practices.” Sounds awesome? Not? Well. You can try. First, if you hire someone for that likely that person don’t know what you expect from her (most often we have noooo idea). Secondly you can put sofa in your office, buy microwave and fridge full of frozen pizzas. You can buy tones of coffee. Next you can prepare health fund for that person, as soon you will have to call 911 to rescue from overload and heart malfunction.

Planning-coding CTO is thing you can afford only once in your company. When you with other founders sit first time over the weekend and do first prototype to show to investors. Over. No other situation where it applies. Putting someone in CTO place who has no skills to plan and spec means failure. Saying you can’t afford essential functional documentation means you can’t afford business itself. Saying you don’t understand leaks or demand on documentation, means you don’t have CTO to understand it for you. If you have and problem still exists it means you still don’t have CTO, as you don’t empower him/her enough to do his work.

Experience should be your wings, not a burden

Best place for an engineer to be is a seed startup. Be your partner from the first day. Then having proper people will benefit for years. Often (especially in UK) companies are giving that job to agencies. I am sorry to tell you, but that is ultimate failure. You need a team. Agency WON’T EVER care about your delivery. Agency care about bill to be paid – over. IT has to be part of you founding team – father founder of your new bright world.

But you made that mistake. Or worse you hired (not took on board as founder, but hired) crappy CTO who was more “chatty, chatty”, than “doin’ doin'”. Worse when he said “I did that before”, he always meant “my coders did that before”. You found that not working, fired a person and… you come further with great bargain. Yes. It hurts. You find new, bright people and you go on. Most likely you still cary bargain and that bargain is lead to new team. What you told your former CTO, in you assumption is known to new team. But it’s not true. You go on, as you have no time and choice. Your team just started. If you won’t click reset button. If you won’t take lead on board of decision. If you won’t explain basics from beginning (marketing bla bla presentation is no explanation). If you repeat that all things… like in Einstein insanity you will continue deadly course marked in your first days.

Hope notes above help you to understand how important is to consider yourself as an IT company. Experience is collected on top of many projects, clients, articles and learnings which were not only mine. Some conclusions about how to resolve conflicts were learned over years of dealing with them. If you need any help to understand how to do things properly in your IT startup feel free to contact me or other experts of Hire Poles Remote.

How to verify Polish contractor?

If you want to hire someone in the UK it’s quite obvious you can hire agency, that will verify that person. From credit to criminal checks. Everything can be requested and clear. Problem starts when your contractor lives in other country. Poland is part of European Union, but still a lot of services are not very multilingual and you may find it very difficult fighting with Polish bureaucracy (compared to Poland, there is no bureaucracy in UK at all).

Basics

Each contractor to be able to work with you should be registered as a company. We strongly suggest you to pick sole traders because of liability reasons (read here). Still both self employed and LTDs can be verified in proper registers online. You can find there a lot information like is/how long company is running, if had some bankruptcy records or limitations. Of course you will learn more about people, than about facade structures like LTD or PLC.

Documents

It’s difficult to verify all foreign documents, but it’s still possible. Before sending specific requests to Embassy or Police you can easily verify personal identification number PESEL or company tax number NIP. Specific algorithms are public.

Criminal Checks

You can’t easily do criminal checks of foreigner. You have to ask via UK Police on behalf of contractor once you agree on terms. Otherwise you have to do that via branch in Poland or via international credit check agency.

Google

Last, but not least always you can google someone. Even, if people now can request to be forgotten, Google still learns quite a lot about them. To use it, likely you will have to know the language. 

If you think you may need to check your contractor, learn about him, check documentation, calculation or terms. Please feel free to contract Hire Poles to support you.

How to rise and go forward

Many times in my or colleagues experience we had to pick some existing project or start over again with everything we did so far. Let’s be honest it’s always painful process and great risk to the business. It doesn’t have to be binary choice in between keeping (for some time) what you already have and starting new thing. Personally I am more keen to suggest always overlap as best practice, but each case may be different.

One of my former colleagues referred story of Wunderlist, who after series of failures had to do drastic moves. They had to truncate whole team and replace it with the new one to start over again. As many times I didn’t agreed with my fellow, this story is one I can totally understand. Issue is that many business is keen to start over with new resources, but never change their bad habits, plans or even executives. So, success have many parents, but failure often is an orphan.

Taking lesson from successes and issues I might suggest you following rules to increase your chance to makes your changes, changes to better.

Fish rots from the head, cut it.

Most likely you will be keen to say – your team didn’t deliver. Before you judge that check, if your team knew what they have to deliver. Without logically consistent, complete functional specification you shouldn’t event start. If you don’t know how to do it, find people who can translate your goals into such document, but in the end you are the one to sign that off. Mockups and unlinked wireframes are useless with it.

What are we doing?

Before you even create functional specification you should determine your goals. In other words you should define you MVP (minimum valuable product). And let’s be honest: You should be able to explain your goals in one sentence. If you add more, then it means it’s more complicated, more risky and less likely to deliver. And even, if you are perfectionist. It’s better to release early and improve than wait years to deliver.

Forget about past

Never ever refer to what were done before. Things you said to former team or even to the current may be obsolete. Decisions you made may be not valid anymore. Work that has been done so far may not fit anymore. In business project valuation, you never count already made costs in the budget. That’s past. Referring to it will only make argues and lead you to lose your team.

Delegate

You don’t have to be good in everything. If you are not, don’t try to be. Hire people who are better than you, request, trust and verify the result. More you focus on goals and leave solutions to the others, better result you will get. If you can’t afford very good Project Manager, hire one or two senior developers. As long you give them way to report progress easily, they will mange themselves. Project Manager can only turn into annoying obstacle.

Don’t scale at hoc

If you are not sure about plan take one tech on board. If you have very precise plan with technical documentation solved, take two more. If you take two another you will have to get proper Project Manager and include processes. Development don’t scale lineally. Every new person increase speed less and at some (near) point even slows down.

Work according to the schedule

Make short term goals, execute and iterate. Spend one day on proper planing and let people work. Don’t come with requests and ideas in the middle of iteration. Otherwise you won’t get anything.

Be pessimist

Team will be saying YES. Team will be positive and will try to do more than they can. You have to control the scope. You have to require small, but steady steps. If you say YES to everything and allow scope creep no matter how much money you will spend and how great people you will have on board – you won’t deliver.

Quality, not quantity

On top of last point I can refer our yesterday training session on Dragon Boats. It’s great team building opportunity, but it proven me very simple fact. Big effort in the beginning and steady, precise moves later are basics of the growth. When you paddle you should start first 10 times as good as you can, then give 70% of your energy, then 100% and later just paddle with normal speed, but precise. If you won’t put enough effort into setting the basics, first steps (like planning) you won’t be able to go fast. Your team will get tired and your money will run out. If you start properly, later you’ll have to just turn top gear and enjoy the views.

Wonder what you think about those points. Do they work for you? Share your thoughts.

If you need help forming your dream team write to me directly or find out Hire Poles Remote.

Build great team with ethics

There are some things we take for granted. Once we hire people we expect them to be loyal to the limits. Problems start when we drive between cultures, with distant teams and when we do some little sins on our end. Spiral of mistrust can grow fast and kill your startup. Ethics is something more viral for your company, than extreme skill set. To be honest resources lacks you can fill in with good outsource or SaaS. Lack of trust is fail, fail.

Introduction

One important difference between West European and Central European cultures is attitude to documents. If you start your communication with potential contractors from Poland or Ukraine with showing them NDA, expect more negative reaction than normally. It’s because documents, as well as any bureaucracy on East has very pejorative meaning. Asking people to sign NDA, without any details often is read as “you think I am a cheater”. Be a bit more descriptive. Even if your project is unique, narrow and replaceable, you won’t lose much sharing an overall picture. Make it mystic, make is blurred, make it interesting, but say it. First of all you will check, if you candidates are really interested in the idea. Second, you won’t offend them, what would be shoot in a foot before you start.

Cooperation

Be clear about the rules. If you expect, make expectations clear. Less ownership you delegate to contractors, more precise you have to be with requirements. And be honest. Mostly they will know better, you have to listen. Seriously. In over decade in industry I don’t remember single project when team was frustrated with silly or naive decisions of directors. Were directors stupid? No. They had no tools, experience or information to make proper decisions. Good things about “slavic-school” is that most people are very competitive. When on West contractors often treat each deal as any other, Slavs like to make project “theirs'”. It seems risky, but is it? That is a very powerful trick.By making people decide, you draw them  into the focus game. They live and think with your project. They spend most of the time on it and enjoy it. Of course, if you measure success right.

And here is the other side of the coin. Expectation management is one of the hardest things for each project. You have to face the truth that delivery is a summary of your budget, team skills and communication. Enlarging team from one to twenty in single day is no solution, development doesn’t scale like that. Adding tasks in the middle of the process does affect delivery. Running tests by unexperienced people in the middle is even worse. Solution? Discuss. Even if your team are offshore contractors you have to be very clear about your goals. You have to express limits and deal breakers. You have to expect them showing risks and challenging your opinion about MVP. You should find with them very minimal deliverable product and ask them to plan work to make it. Work should be chunked to small milestones (weekly the best, let them choose what methodology they use, Scrum, Kanban or similar). Make updates with them regular, never at hoc, never in the middle of the progress. Make them have their sandbox, staging environment which works against real-a-like data, and live where you deploy tested thing. If you take a look back on what I just said. All of these good practices, can be named under ethic – be fair, to expect, expect from you first, but also judge.

Conflicts and delays

Do what you can not to ask people for staying late or working on weekends. Sounds ridiculous? If you do so they will start to feel unsure. They will feel tired, will introduce bugs and you will get nervous. You will expect more and more, and that will not bring any result. If you have delays first find the reason. Check, if you haven’t broke any rules, check if estimations were done, if process wasn’t interrupted. Leave “I don’t like and I changed my mind” from “what isn’t finished”. Deliver, then improve.

Thing that you may meet, if you go right or wrong, is feeling of people losing focus. As they are hundred miles from you, you don’t know, if they really do your project or run their own visions, or worse, do a couple of various works at the same time. You won’t benefit too much from installing CCTV (except some frustration). You will really kill productivity checking what guys are doing during the day via Skype. Still you can do morning and evening checks, but make them more like “what you succeed, what issues you had”, rather than “how many JIRAs have you ticked off and why not more?”.

To be sure people do not cheat you, you have to make sure they feel safe and rewarded (but not spoiled by unequal and random rewards). You can also encourage them. Many Polish developers are all stack programmers. Often they have skills and attitude to try their own ideas. Make a deal, support them, but give very clear rules. Ask them about their progress, so you control it, be their mentor. It will payoff sooner.

But wait…

Weren’t we talking about outsourcing, freelancers, offshore mercenaries? Well… why not build a great team offshore. Real team. Team of winners? Want to try?

Basing of decade experience of mine, almost same of SIELAY.com and SIELAY Coworking Team my colleagues have founded Hire Poles Remote. If you want to build a great team, please contact us. We can help you. Well, my colleagues can. I  following own principles I focus on my current project, as well my contractor tries to learn from my experiences. 

 

Development out of the box

A Friend of friend of mine had a great idea for business. He found an artificial flowers factory in China and decided to import them to Europe. He sent a request for a huge cargo container. After a month he got it shipped. Full container of… leaves. He forgot to specify that he needed whole plants. And for the Chinese part of a flower still was a flower.

I don’t write that to blame Chinese producers. No. I think that this mistake was made by my friend. Why? Because he forgot about two things. First – he ignored cultural differences between Europe and Asia.  Second – he didn’t specify clearly what he wanted.

Of course when it comes to IT processes very often we don’t know what we want. We don’t know what client wants or what our target group would accept. Repeating Guy Kawasaki we should say “don’t worry be crappy” and release early to see what market will buy. Do, run, measure, learn. That is everyday of typical IT business (as long as you understand that and are not trying for years to build Dr Who machine in the garage).

Anyhow it happens that we have to – or are willing to ship our tasks to more cost efficient groups. Again I can recommend here great Polish, Czech or Belarusian developers. Still, even if you outsource your works to talented experts,  you should be aware of another proverb “Master eye feeds the horse” (pol. Pańskie oko konia tuczy). It doesn’t only mean that, if you look after your business no one will cheat you. It also means that proper engagement (even) in (outsourced) project is extremely important foundation of any success.

Observing many international developer teams I have found common bad practice. In most cases business (who by default knows less about IT, and more about making money) hires offshore team (who knows more about buttons and triggers, than charts and cash flows) and try to manage them with own hands. It is difficult, because it requires often flights, spending much time away from your main role. Then such business hires project manager. Choice is very rarely proper. Often such project manager worked in (some) IT company (as non PM usually). More often had no experience with culture where your outsourced resources are from. Such PM lacks also purely technical knowledge, so ends up as an annoying visitor who makes scope creep all the time and (of course you won’t blame him/her) increases delays.

Sometimes choice is even worse. Company hires purely technical coordinator who sits with developers speaking their language, but lose in translation most of your goals. Of course he don’t know about most of them. He is not aware of dependencies and deadlines on your side, as your business puts him into tray labeled “strange IT people”. Again. No communication, no delivery – fail.

It seems that to get fully satisfactory result in such fragile matter as development, you have to setup kind of filtering team between your two worlds. If we say business in west bank and developers are on east – you need a bridge team who will secure it from both sides. Bridge team needs to fully understand your goals and issues (also budget limitations). They need to understand a full big picture of your needs and capacity. Their job is to bind that information with their technical experience and velocity feedback from development supplying team. They need to be your translator and filter that would tell you that “no, you won’t get that done in two days”. Building such a team which has your full trust, and developers’ full respect, will be the first step to proper offshore development process.