Any experience hiring a programmer? Where should I look?

[Howard]

Yes...I am a programmer. I hired a programmer on UpWork to help with a platform I was not familiar with. He got the project going but he was overlooking some bugs so I terminated the project before completion and finished the job myself. Send me a PM with some more info on the project. If I cannot help because of budgetary concerns or for any other reasons, I would be happy to help screen some candidates for you on UpWork.

Hi,

I probably will later tonight as I'm late for work now.

Now, budgetary concerns is one thing, but my largest concern is probably sharing my work with others, especially on a forum with traders. I do believe I have some unique ideas and perspectives. Maybe I'm slow, but it's taken me quite a long while to figure out a lot of what I already have. So, I find that I have some issues sharing this...

The advantage with those I'm currently using is that they don't seem to give a sh*t about trading. Also, the solution requires discretion to use (it's not some black box system that generates trading signals), so that's an added advantage in terms of people stealing my ideas...

 

[Howard]

I only tried once, so take it for what it's worth. I got an impression that they want a cookie-cutter type of jobs - something they might have done already and now can easily re-use for other clients (cut-and-paste). When I explained to the guy what I need and that I myself am a developer, I never heard back from him again. It's very nice of fan27 to offer help with screening the candidates, but I suspect they will be immediately turned off by this.

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for you. Someone suggested talking to local college professors, which I think is a great idea as the students may need experience and references to put on a resume.

BTW, when I say coding is not expensive, I mean the process of taking detailed spec and converting it to code. Understanding what customer needs (often completely different from what he/she asks for), figuring out the best way to accomplish it (keeping client's long term interests in mind), and translating it to technical requirements, is the expensive part. Not much different from other professions, including yours I presume.

If you do find a solution, being it upwork or whatever, please share your experience. Good luck.

Understand.

Thanks!

I'll say that for my current application, 90% + is already accomplished. At this point, it's more about optimizing it (it's slow) and possibly creating a better layout/front end.

There shouldn't be any major changes with regards to logic or functionality.

 

[userque]

Hi all,

Would anyone here have any experience hiring a programmer to create trading applications? Any advice on how to proceed? Where would I find one?

Long story short, I used a company I found on Guru many years back now. This was a start up company and I was very happy then since they probably underbid the project and also really put in an effort to impress me.

A few years later, I chose to update what they created, but they were now 10 times larger and didn't really need my business. So, as a compromise with pricing, I was left with one of their youngest programmers and it was a disaster in comparison. Monkey see, monkey do. I had to write out all the logic very detailed and we would always had misunderstandings and a lot of back and forth with beta 1-100 before closing in on something workable.

I now find myself interested in upgrading this application and I'm considering other venues. Alternatively, simply pay up and use one of their top programmers.

Any thoughts?

PS: This is not a very sophisticated software. Merely a statistical tool which automates a lot of stuff I used to do for hand. I could probably have done it myself in MATLAB if I were any good using that.

PPS: Long term plan is to learn programming myself, but it will probably take me a while.

Regards.

I used rent-a-coder before they became freelancer.com . I used them to find someone to update old code in a website I co-administered. I prefered to pay someone that already knew that particular language rather than learn it myself...even though I'd been coding since my teens. (I believe time was of the essence.) I had no problems.

 

[Howard]

There's been some development.

I got a reply from the CEO with an apology for not answering sooner and telling me he would help out with support during the next project. In fact, I was pissed because I've gotten the impression of being ignored as a not-so-important (i.e., small) customer and was preparing to leave ship.

I will for sure complete this project with them and possibly also do the second I had in mind, but I'm certainly open for other options in the future (both short-term/long-term).

Getting someone completely new now would involve having to spend a lot of time getting them up to speed, revealing 'business secrets' and also risk actually getting a worse job done. One other benefit with this company is that they're held liable and actually give me a 3 month guarantee. They always made good on this in the past and correct any mistakes I point out.

The frustration lately has been mostly that I feel the current programmer is sub-par to the ones I first had in the company and mostly language issues. But, maybe that could be evened out if I could get some support inside the company.

 

[Humpy]

Can any of you guys with hand on heart tell me that you have a consistently profitable system ?
It may imho be impossible. After all consider what you are trying to do. Forecasting what some unknown people will do in the next few minutes/hours/days in terms of trading the instrument you have picked ? It's a tall order. Maybe we will have to wait till quantum computers are available as desktops.

 

[InvBox]

I do believe I have some unique ideas and perspectives.

In this case no any problem to get some money and hire Q&A team into your own office

Like many programmers some traders believe they idea has a price. But the true is idea without implementation has a price = $0.

Firstly, proove. Espesially for your self. And you will surprice how quckly other specialists will appear around you.

You cannot find right guys because only one reason - no enough money (witch mean no successful trading).

 

[sle]

You cannot find right guys because only one reason - no enough money (witch mean no successful trading).

Right guys are hard to find, even with the "right" amount of money. That's the nature of the game - the really good people are always in demand, have multiple offers and are hiding. Bad guys are all over the place.

 

[schweiz]

Right guys are hard to find, even with the "right" amount of money. That's the nature of the game - the really good people are always in demand, have multiple offers and are hiding. Bad guys are all over the place.

A bit like good fundmanagers. Same problem.

 

[schweiz]

Can any of you guys with hand on heart tell me that you have a consistently profitable system ?
It may imho be impossible. After all consider what you are trying to do. Forecasting what some unknown people will do in the next few minutes/hours/days in terms of trading the instrument you have picked ? It's a tall order. Maybe we will have to wait till quantum computers are available as desktops.

There are many possible answers; some of them:

1. You can only be profitable if you can what the mass cannot achieve. If not there would be too many winners and not enough losers. That would be mathematical impossible because the winners in general make lots of money and the losers lose smaller. So we need lost of losers to feed the winners.
2. What looks impossible to you, can be possible for someone else.
3. What looks impossible to you now, can be possible for you in futur.
4. What looks impossible to you can be impossible for the entire world.

 

[newwurldmn]

I hired a freelance programmer to do work for me in the past.
The quality of the code you can vary a lot. In my experience, a good programmer will understand the business reason for your programming. Many programmers just want to start coding, but don't have any interest in understanding why the project exists in the first place. You must ensure your developer understands your business/intentions so that they know the real problem they are solving and not just the narrow scope of the project.