Skilled Freelancer or Reliable Freelancer

Programming is hard. Finding developers with the necessary skill set that compliments your is harder. After working with several freelance programmers and freelancing my self, I noticed a couple of things that you should be looking for when selecting your next freelance developer or building your remote team.

The skilled freelancer is a gem to find. They bring abundance of experience, lot of insights to new technological trends and where certain technologies or trends are heading so that you can make informed decisions that will save ton’s of money in the future.

Then there is the reliable freelancer, who might be skilled but might not be over the top. Is quite enthusiastic about the future and learning new things. But most of all is always there to save you when shit comes down.

The ideal hire for any company let it be a freelancer or permanent role is a combination of both skill and reliability. But most freelancers come with either of them and not both. For an instance, imagine you have a skilled freelancer that walks the talk. Can expect to deliver complex tasks in a predictable estimates etc. Most of them, tend to get bored soon or if its a remote contract they just go missing after a while. Leaving you with a shit load of problem and without an engineer to fix them. On the other hand, if you have worked with the reliable freelancers who might not hit the estimates accurately but is available to dig deep and fight any issues that come his way to make sure the programs work they are a life saver.

So if you aren’t in a perfect world and can’t find a freelancer who is both skilled and reliable. Near best option is to hire one of each. That way you honour the balance of nature. How do you find them ? Well , look for the these two simple signs. Freelance contractors with a lot of short term assignments , generally fall under the skilled kind. They quickly move from one project to another. Doesn’t want to stick around the same project for too long. The reliable kind, well they have longer running contracts. Generally, that run over months to years. This is the easiest way to figure this out. If you are lucky, you might find skilled engineers in the reliable kind. Because there are subset intersecting both types.

To summarise, this is just a heads up for anyone who wants to hire a freelance programmer. But, by no means this should be the only metric used to measure the hire. But this could be a start.