There's a lot of interest in Freelance Drupal Developers right now as the market place embraces the technology. You could say there's an explosion of interest and limited resources.
I'm currently receiving a couple of requests per day for quotes. Some of these expressions of interest look very appealing, offering good working conditions, rates and are high profile projects. Some requests for quotes are hard to distinguish from spam, being emails with no salutations or no project details and are sent from hotmail addresses or the like that look slightly suspicious.
If you're currently looking for a Drupal Developer, you really need to sell your idea or project to distinguish it from the rest. Perhaps your project has a team of talented staff and a symbiotic work environment or maybe you're championing a worthy cause. Maybe you're got excellent documentation of your requirements or maybe even free beer (every day). Maybe you're just a really nice person!
I personally, like a productive work environment where all the latest tools are at my disposal and a well resourced management team that function efficiently.
If you're a developer, what appeals to you? Could you offer some advice to a potential project manager?
Comments
Don't bullshit. You'll get
We have that problem weekly
Around here all the Drupal trained developers, even just good PHP people, are already working at full capacity. I don't think there is any Drupal shop not turning work away due to capacity constraints.
Moving from a one person shop to, now, 4 over the last few months I've faced exactly this problem. The solution I chose was to cast a vastly wider net over less skilled people and provide intensive training. Results vary widely from person to person. Right now it seems less that 5% of the people I sit down with both start and stick with it long enough to give me a return on my efforts. Needless to say this process will remove billable hours from your own your plate, causing a multi-month, temporary nosedive in your income.
On top of the training I've layered code reviews using Gessirt, scrums, policies about how long to spend on a problem before calling for help, knowledge sharing via weekly webmeetings, and anything that seems to help without becoming burdensome. It's an intensive process that drains all of my personal time, but now I am seeing the benefits as they are delivering on work with less and less need for me to get involved in every detail of what they do. I can fairly confidently follow the trend line and say it will all pay off.
It's like the late 90's all over again -- if the talent isn't available, you have to find ambitious people with the basic abilities, and teach them from scratch. Accenture, PWC, and KPMG grew fairly large hiring and training english majors with this business model after all.
sounds good
Hey John
This is similar to the business model I'm working towards. Having become aware of the shortage in solid PHP and Drupal developers in Melbourne, my strategy is to take enthusiastic positive junior developers and train them using a combination of project work and classes. My current plan is to set up a combination co-working space and training facility in a couple of months.
I appreciate that investing time in other people seems to adversely affect personal income, but this is only short-term (imho) and the ROI of investing in your team should be considerable since you can then take on larger projects with bigger budgets. Drupal's popularity continues to grow exponentially, yet there aren't many developers around to take advantage of this excellent opportunity.
Shaun
Gessirt ?
Slightly OT on the thread, but you mention "Gessirt" about code reviews and I found no reference to it anywhere. Could you tell us more about this ?
Gerrit, not Gessirt
Sorry, my fingers fumbled the ball there! http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/
It seems to be helping the team overall. The hurdles were
Now I am no longer the only one who can develop effective, professional modules on my team. I think code reviews were a big part of getting us to this point. Even better, lots of my code gets reviewed and improved by the team. It's great not to be alone any longer.
Simpletest training and TDD is well underway ...
A couple per day?
"I'm currently receiving a couple of requests per day for quotes."
How is all this new business just falling into your lap? What kind of marketing are you doing?
Hi lacrosse_20 If you've had
Hi lacrosse_20
If you've had any dealings with an agency, especially if the agency have successfully used you, you'll get follow up offers.
But remember, a lot of work is passed between developers. Rimian is well known in #drupal-au channel, etc, we know what he is capable of, so he's a known entity that I can refer enquiries to.
None
It's a bit out of scope but: None! There's no need at the moment. I'd be happy to help if you contact me, however.
Tell the world up front what you're offering and make it good
I would love to move into Drupal development full time but I have big committments and currently have a good solid job that pays my bills. I have been doing my own Drupal site part time for around a year and a half so I would put myself in the easy to train basket, not a beginner nor an expert - yet. I have seen lots of adverts asking for Drupal people but they all seem very vague and none of them give an hourly rate or even a range of what to expect. Most seem to try to woo you by your love of Drupal rather than your need to have a steady income and the knowledge that the work will last more than just a couple of months.
I think if you're going to attract ambitious and capable people on to jobs that are profitable, tell the world up front what you're offering and build good wages and timeframes into your budget so that your ad doesn't sound like it's trying to gather clever people to make a quick buck out of them and leave them high and dry when it's all finished. If all the Drupal shops in Melbourne are turning work away, surely there is enough money in the projects to build a solid business and a deep pool of happy developers.
What appeals to me
Hi
What appeals to me:
*Clear specification/requirements - If the client has a vague direction I generally work with them to produce a specification as the first project and then the second project is the build. Of course they can shop around.
*Contactable client - no good working with someone who can't give you regular feedback - it will hamstring the project
*Client able to make decisions - no good working with someone who can't make decisions without contacting their boss etc, makes the process very painful. Especially if the boss only gets involved once the site is ready, then you are looking at lots of last minute rewrites.
*Working as a subcontractor - I find it much easier (provided the above three items are met) to work with other developers than with clients, the expectations and goals are much clearer and in general it is easier to get a message across when we both have the technical know-how.
Regards
Lee,
An Australian Drupal Freelancer
briefly
I like to hear your (the client's) budget up front. If you give me a budget I can prioritise your requirements.
I like to hear what your goal is, not your understanding of what the solution should be. Often we can achieve the same goal in a totally different way.
I don't like to hear that you've done 100 pages of specifications without having consulted a drupal developer! Like nickurbits says, pay $2k for a Drupal-oriented requirements document that can then be quoted on.
Work with people you can trust
I've been an IT consultant for a long time. I bring consulting, technical and project management skills to the table; I don't expect the client to have any of those capabilities. So much the better if they do have them, but I don't expect it.
I hold the client responsible for being clear about the business outcome, and being committed to it.
I hold myself responsible for devising and producing a solution that is fit for purpose (with varying degrees of client and third-party assistance).
I expect the client to know:
My job is to determine, sell and deliver:
I believe there are two key requirements for a healthy consulting relationship:
If the client can do that much, then that gives me confidence that I can do the rest.
It is about Partnership
In my opinion there should be one guideline to 'rule them all' ...
Nurture the Relationships!
And with relationships I mean the relationships between the client and the team as well as the members of the team with each other.
Any project has its ups and downs. There will be misunderstandings, delays, refinements, changes in objectives, the list goes on. Each time something happens, the relationship between the people involved becomes strained. The relationship can rapidly degrade to such an extent that things may fall apart alltogether.
Communication is the most important part of nurturing any relationship. I am in fact a civil engineer, most of my work is managing water infrastructure projects. As soon as I start a new project I inform everyone involved that 'if it was not communicated via an email, fax or letter, it was never said'. Thus if something was communicated via phone, skype or SMS texting it still needs to be documented. This may sound harsh, but in effect people get into the habit of thinking about what they say. A verbal promise is just not as strong as a commitment on paper. Imagine getting a request from a client, you add the feature and bill him. Now he refuses to pay, saying that the feature is not what he requested.
A very significant side effect of writing things down is that people are more thorough when they formulate what was said. Often new questions come up, and these can be addressed right away.
People appreciate being informed before and while things go wrong. Why not tell the client that his deadline is simply not practical? Inform the client that his requirements have changed and you have no idea what the repercussions to the project cost and/or deadline have changed.
The point is, as long as there is ongoing communication, nobody can get blind sided.
Enough rambling for now.
Looking for a developer
Can someone help me find a drupal developer in Melbourne Australia?
@Tracenow, you can find a
@Tracenow, you can find a list of Drupal development companies at http://drupal.org/drupal-services/all. The list can be sorted by country.
DSquaredB
Danita Bowman
You can also put a job up on the groups page
Go to the groups page for Australia http://groups.drupal.org/australia and you can make a posting with your requirements for the job or project. We also have a map of people and organisations providing drupal services linked in the group summary. Or go there directly http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=1136312291386197...
Cheers
B