Hey, this is just my opinion and what I've learned from working for people that run small companies. I don't have direct experience - but here's what I think....
In my opinion $30k projects just aren't that big. They're great to maintain your business, and by all means money is money - so who wouldn't want to take them. But I'd call a $30k project small to low-mid size. Maybe its a large project for you folks, but it will most likely be a small project for a company you outsource to. At that level you probably won't see much difference in the price tag if you folks were to do it in house, or if an outsourcing firm were to do it in house. Once you get into the bigger numbers like $100-$200k, you can at least start marking yourselves up a little more because you landed the project - and still pay the outsourcing firm a decent rate. My recommendation would be to keep the project in-house, but maintain a large rolodex of contractors. $120/hour is probably normal for outsourcing because they'll most likely be hiring a project manager on top of their programmer to manage your project. If you contract a good programmer at like $60-$80 per hour, and use an in house project manager or producer, you can probably achieve the same results. Like I said.....I've never run a company, so this might be bad advice - but its probably what I'd do. ben Pat Buchanan wrote: > > My company is where I like it - small and maintainable - just a few > employees. But sometimes I get some BIG projects thrown at me that > are nearly guaranteed. The problem is, I don't want to hire anyone > and it's too hard to keep a good group of reserve programmers busy > 100% of the time. > > I've turned away at least 3 > $30,000 projects in the last few months > alone - and I hate it. I want to be involved, I want to grow the > company, but I think the best solution might be to use an outsourcing > house. Eventually these clients will stop coming to me and go > elsewhere - and I don't want that to happen. > > So --- who have YOU used to outsource your projects to? Someone that > does it all - Flex, CF, .NET, SQL Server, etc. > > I don't have the money to blow to try out places to find out they suck > pondwater or never return phone calls. I want to manage the project > and I want to be involved in everything, but I need a group that can > continue to work even though they run into a roadblock on a separate > piece. > > Now there are some INCREDIBLE groups out there that we all know and > love (I won't name names, but one of them trained me in Flex) but > $120/hour in this economy isn't going to cut it. > > So - who have you used that you like, that won't break the bank? And > do they communicate well? (It's WAAAY to hard for me to express what > I want to someone that doesn't understand English, so I need to be > careful there too) > > Any recommendations/thoughts/examples? > > If you ARE one of these groups, PLEASE don't respond on this list - > just reply to me directly. There is already WAY too much traffic on > this list to begin with (I even hesitated sending this message) > > But what I'm REALLY looking for is someone who has EXPERIENCE with > some of these groups - good or bad. > > Thanks for listening! > >
