If you want to throw away your money, pay someone by the hour.

Just like you would if you pay someone to mow your lawn, by the hour it will cost you twice as much as by the job.

Simply because you loose your ability and leverage as a buyer, if you depend on someone to do work by the hour the one thing you can count on is that they will have no motivation to finish the job quickly, in fact they will likely take twice as long to do the same work.

Out sourcing by the hour is bad, then you will never, have to worry about who these people are…

Because in reality these guys will do nothing but take your money and rip you off.

Now on to the topic at hand and this is a good topic and one that I can tell you from experience is full of danger for the developer because frankly the idea that you can trust a developer to do the right thing is almost non existent. What I mean here is the idea that an outsourced developer will work by the hour and will do the job for which they are being paid.

So this brings up the idea of working by the job as opposed to working by the hour.

Which is better and how can you get it right the first time.

Well for sure it is better to work by the job, why, well for one thing it is better for both the developer and the customer or client. Think about it say you are an experienced and a talented developer or designer, you know your job, you can do in one hour what it takes others four hours to do, you do it because you have done it so many time before that you could do it in your sleep. Working by the job makes sense to you, so why do platforms, like base camp, provide hourly services, well they do it for the money, and we dont say this to be mean to base camp, they are a good company, but beware of a developer that wants you to pay upfront, on an hourly project because, eventually you will find that they have no incentive to do anything but take your money and find as many reasons to bill you more by the hour.

Just like an attorney will bill you for the lunch they have with you, (working lunch) these guys are worse than an attorney.

Recently I hired a company on base camp, we had an agreement to fix a scripting problem, they wanted a deposit to begin the work, I said, ok, so I paid the deposit, three days later, they apologize that they have not been able to get around to working on the project, keep in mind that this is a maximum of 2 hours to fix this problem.

So, we go through two weeks of sending messages back and forth, and we come to the conclusion that it all needs to be re done because it just is no good, ( surprise surprise surprise ) now its going to be 20 plus hours to fix it, see what I mean, If I had gone to a pay by the job I could have had it fixed by now, and it would have only taken 2 hours to fix.

But these clowns, take three weeks, to tell me what I already knew, and then had the Balls, to ask for another deposit, so they could re do the entire project by the hour, let me tell you that they would never have finished the project, why?

Because they had no incentive to fix the project, because they are getting paid by the hour, there is not need to finish the project, they just keep billing and billing and billing, I can tell you from experience, never hire anyone to do anything by the hour because you are wasting your money.

Need you house painted, it will take them a month to paint it.

Hire them to paint it by the job, and they can get it done in a weekend.

Get the picture. I sure do, hope you can learn by my mistake, never hire a developer by the hour, because all you are doing is wasting you money. So let me tell you from my own experience never ever, hire a developer by the hour because they will never do what they say they will do, they will never perform, because they have no need to.