hiring, team, sole-proprietorship, leadership, human-resourcesI am a full time freelance e-commerce web developer works for a few clients. The number of tasks increases day by day, so I realized I need a few more hands. I tried remote outsourcing but managing them was bit difficult and sometimes out of my control.
So I started a small IT firm and recruited some 5 freshers trained them for 3 months with fundamentals of web development and started with small tasks. But again managing them was difficult for me. Because I’ve been doing multiple things by myself right from getting projects to delivering the project. More over 2 of my employees who were irregular but productive comparing to their colleagues just absconded our office after a few months learning things and with the remaining employees, one of them is less productive but regular, one of them is irregular but productive and one of them is regular and some what helpful. To be on safer side and not to be fooled again I asked them to sign a service contract for the minimum period of 2 years but none of them showed up after this. Please note I paid them regulary with out fail and a good salary scale for freshers along with good number of holidays and standard 8 working hours. So I realized I basically missed some / many essential things for a small IT development startup.
Before I make another crucial decision could you please point me to the right direction that what I’ve missed. For an example, should I have hired a Team Lead and HR before hiring freshers?
I had a similar experience (from freelancer to studio). There’s something I realized.
It is really hard to get anything done by someone else. It is really hard to find good people and have them stay.
If you don’t have a team consisting of 100% of top talents, you’ll have to manage them. You’ll have to re-read their code and fix/debug lots of things. And in the end of the day, you should be very grateful that anything works at all.
It will take time and effort in order to have good enough processes and key people so that you have to solve fewer and fewer problems yourself.
Managing people (e.g. having them be more and more autonomous to get things done) is difficult and long.
Of course the golden solution is to have only top tech talents (that will need much less management), but that’ not always an option. Because top talents are people like you, who might want to have their own studio and their own employees.
Then, when you hire someone, you have no way to know if they’ll stay or not.
People won’t stay for their salary (unless it’s really high) they’ll stay because they like you. They like your team, they like what they’re doing and they are happy staying with you. Their work have to make them achieve themselves in a way.
Reaching this is really hard as well, and needs much more than just money.
Hire your engineers one at a time (not 5 in the same time) and make sure that there’s a good ambiance before moving on to the next hire.
Don’t hesitate to train your team, but not for 3 months, this mean you take too much risk on yourself. Two weeks, one month maximum should be enough. (or you should hire some more skilled engineers)
One way of having people stick around is to give them shares, with a vesting (e.g. their earn their shares over time) but that doesn’t quite work for a studio.
You started as a freelancer, went to a freelancer having other people with your projects and became an employer. All three roles require different skills, tasks and responsibilities. I went the same path in the last years and basically went into the same “issues” as you described.
At some point (hiring people who do work for their salary, not for their personal project result and income and company’s success is just an abstract figure) you have to become a leader, not a team mate with some people doing their projects. This was the exact point where I failed the first time. You need to manage acquisition for your team, training your team, organizing coffee, salaries, taxes - i.e. bureaucracy in general…
I went back to the point where I have people working with me for their own benefit. I gave them a small base salary plus a bundle based on the company’s success and other factors.
People not willing to work this way are just looking for a safe job, the others are working for both, the success of your company (because they will get their additional income out this these figures) and on the other hand they have a fixed salary to handle their base needs.
You (usually) cannot bind people by giving them a two year contract, but you can share your business success with them.
I’ve spent bonuses based on projects result, company’s success and on how long they worked with me.
From time to time you have to review this payment model especially if you grow and employ people who do not have direct effects on income (administration, support stuff, …).
Another point is leadership itself. I recognized very fast that if I’m a good manager (at least this is what the customer’s have said), you have to learn to become a leader.
I do not know if this is a problem for you but I’ve learned that being a leader is something more difficult as you have to make people following you and your vision.
In addition you should take Taiko’s recommendations related to hiring people.
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