freelancer-programmierer

Freelance developers act alone and are not always reliable. However they cost less than a permanent employee and are flexible. But what should you pay attention to when hiring a freelance developer?

Skills

When selecting a freelance developer you should ensure that they are experienced in the programming language and with the connection systems to your company software. References will also give you a good impression of the quality of the freelance developer. Read here what you should especially pay attention to when selecting an app developer.

Cooperation

When deciding on a freelance developer, consider the security requirements of your company. Outside access should go through a VPN. In addition, you should consider separating the development environment and the production environment, for example through virtualization.

The development environment should also be looked at: when choosing your development environment, did you consider that it would be used by freelance developers? The development environment should have the following functions:

  • Permission management: permissions are assigned to each user. In this way, an external developer can only see what they should see – the part on which they are working.
  • Versioning and back-up: store old versions and show the latest version. “Are we on version 3 or 4?” – you should never hear this question. In addition, in case errors arise the old functioning versions should be accessible.
  • Repository: a kind of storage that detects if someone works on a section. This prevents two people from working on the same section and the work is done in duplicate.
  • Time measurement function: This is not absolutely necessary. This is to make sure that the freelancer developer really works the agreed amount of hours on your project. One argument against time-tracking is that it creates a kind of monitoring, and you would like to employ someone who works “free”. It then raises the question of whether good developers should use time tracking.

Alternatively you can arrange a fixed budget and a firm deadline with the freelancers. Full cost control is secured and the cooperation is more relaxed.

Work contract

Apart from an hourly rate, or a fixed set of precisely defined achievements, in the work contract you should set out who holds the rights to the development service.

In addition, arrangements should be made for data protection and, where appropriate, a confidentiality agreement should be in the contract.

To ensure that the contracted freelance developer is not only giving off the appearance of fake self-employment, you should speak to other clients of the freelancer.

In principle you should not use the same contract for every freelancer. Every freelancer has different requirements and needs. There is room for negotiation on both sides.

If you do not want to deal with legal issues and other details, use an agent that has market expertise and does a reference check of the candidates. Ask us.