My friend Adam was laughing the other day. I asked him what was so funny because, well… I love a good laugh. He told me, “I just got off the phone with a recruiter representing a company that is looking for a full-time in-house full-stack developer.”
This isn’t unusual… so I asked, “okay? Why so funny?”
“Well,” he continued, “they want someone who knows ColdFusion, HTML 5, CSS, and jQuery.”
Still not unusual. “Okay?”
“I’m not finished… they also need to know .net, PhP, Ruby, Groovy, Node, Vue, Angular, javascript, coffeescript, Bootstrap, Foundation, UI and UX.”
Okay… now you’re starting to ask quite a bit from one person. But; he wasn’t done.
Looking for Superman!
“…they need to have five years Windows Administration and Linux Administration. They need to know MS SQL, MySQL, noSQL, Couchbase, stored procedures, triggers, query optimization, PCI/DSS Compliance, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, REST and SOAP APIs, network administration, and have certifications for all of it.” He paused. “And they’re willing to pay $25 an hour.”
By this point I was laughing out loud. This company wasn’t looking for a “full-stack developer”; they needed to hire an entire IT Department. Which brings me to the subject of this post.
The benefits of outsourcing development.
Outsourcing your application to a company that specializes in ColdFusion development is exceptionally cost-effective considering the amount of expertise that is gained. The average salary for a ColdFusion developer in 2019 was $117,000 in the U.S., or just short of $10,000 per month. Consulting firms like Epicenter generally charge retainer rates for a monthly basis and you retain the expertise of a staff of professionals that are experts in their fields. These are people whose passion is technology and application development; people who stay up to date on trends and changes to web development in a way very few business owners have time for.
Yes, you can try to manage these things on your own, increasing your workload. Yes, you can hire a full-time developer and hope that he doesn’t hit the lottery or find a better opportunity and leave. Yes, you can off-shore your development to a company that is not invested in the success of your business and is difficult to manage… all of these are legitimate solutions to your technical needs; but outsourcing to an established US-based company with a track record of successful application management and development projects is, by far, the most effective solution.
Here’s some questions to ask and things to look for when outsourcing your application.
Expertise
Does the outsourced company have the development team that can handle any kind of technical need your business or application may have? Do they have multiple developers with overlapping skill sets? Have their developers been developing a variety of different applications and have the experience to be able to understand your business? How long have their developers been with the company, and what is their developer turnover rate?
Communication
Can the company communicate clearly and effectively? Do they answer the phone or emails quickly? Are they able to speak to the development of your application in a way you’re able to understand? Is there a time-zone offset, and if so, will it be advantageous to communication? Do they use tools and technology to make sure projects are kept on task and on track?
Discovery
Will the company take the time to learn about my business, what it does, how it works, and provide constructive ways to make it better? Will they analyze and use best practices to not only create what I ask them to create but to understand why these things are being created? Will they invest in the success of my application?
Considering the pace of technology and the development needs of a modern business, outsourcing development to a company like Epicenter is usually the most cost-effective means to reach your technology goals.