Unbeknownst to clients, many freelancers subcontract the work to other freelancers.
Yes, you outsource the work to someone, and that someone re-outsource the work to someone else!
In this blog post I want to share my view on why this happen, and how to prevent it from happening to you.
- Mention in your contract that subcontracting / reoutsourcing thework is not allowed.
- Make sure you ask a detailed daily report with hourly breakdown. Or request for hourly update via Twitter. And have an IM conversation open during his work hour.
- Log the IP of the code committer if possible.
- But even when you have these measures, a person with intention will always find a way around them. I highly suggest to avoid working with individual freelancers. There are simply too many bad experiences already. I’m not saying that there are no good freelancers, but why not settle with professional development company (who could even offer cheaper prices)?
Note that I did not say which development company you should work with 🙂 You are free to look and choose. I’m not promoting my company here, just trying to disseminate this subcontracting warning message that I know truly happen 🙂
2 comments
Tim Abbott
January 19, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Excuse me guys, but how is reselling the work crooked? We have a nice sized team, but sometimes, we get too busy and people want to use us and follow our process. Why can’t we find good to Great talent to help us. Should we hire new resources when a project may be short term? Then when we don’t have the cash flow during a slow time, should we then fire different team members? That makes no sense. Yes, I agree some of these resellers are HORRIBLE, but really, there is nothing wrong with this practice as long as there is great work being done. I totally disagree with you on this. I was thinking about contacting you about handling some work when we have an overflow, but I’m not sure you would be interested.
admin
January 20, 2010 at 11:15 am
Hi Tim, I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I was actually referring more to individual freelancers. For example you outsource to a person you found on Odesk. You see his profile is all great, and when you interview him everything looks very promising. But when you actually give the work to him, he gives the work to someone else (who is less skilled than he is obviously) without you knowing it.
We do have many IT development companies as our customers, and so, yes, we are interested to work with you!