My hunt for a Magento Developer

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1

Not so long back, the following post was created on here: Where to find a Magento 2 developer?

I responded with something of an emotional rant about my experience working with freelance developers :disappointed:

Well, Iā€™ve been putting it off long enough. So, itā€™s time to start the hunt for what seems like a hundredth timeā€¦

What are my options?

Iā€™ve given this some thought, and I think I have 3 viable options to explore:

1. Local Magento Development Agency

I spoke to a good friend of mine this morning, who use a local Magento Development Agency. I was tinkering with the idea of approaching an agency and I wanted to know what it was like to work with one.

Long story short, unless you have deep pockets and need an all-on-one package then itā€™s not worth it. It would only be a viable option if I owned an eCommerce business and had no IT expertise of in-house developers. This is not the case in my situation.

2. Reach out to Magento Extension Store to explore their Development Services

This is something Iā€™ve done before, with some success. The biggest issues I had included:

  • Very long delays with communication due to time zone differences
  • Low-Priority services as they have lots of other clients

3. Jump back on UpWork and find another freelancer

Read my rant about my experiences here.

4. Reach out to a local University and propose something to get their students involved

Initially, this seems like a good idea. But Iā€™m not sure where this will take me. An IT student is unlikely to have any experience working with Magento 2ā€¦ However, that lack of knowledge might be made up by their coding skills and large pool of IT oriented classmates.

What am I looking for?

There are some key attributes that I want ticked if Iā€™m going to work with someone again. This includes:

  • Excellent communication skills - Both in the time it takes to respond during business hours and a clear understanding of the project.
  • Excellent skills - A clear methodology of how to tackle a problem and create a working solution.
  • Accountability - Someone who isnā€™t able to simply stop communicating if something goes wrong or takes too long to complete

I will not that some of these points are very hard to judge at face value and can only be determined during a probationary period.

Some of my thoughts and feelings on how to get what Iā€™m looking for include:

  • Hire people from my own timezone (communication)
  • Avoid the cheapest bids (skill)
  • Pay a little more (skill)
  • Get their contact number (accountability)
  • Write very detailed briefs (skill, communication)
  • Check in once a day (accountability, communication)
  • Have a good conversation during the interview (trust, skill, communication)

Letā€™s see where this journey takes meā€¦

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3

I reached out to a Magento Extension Store today (I wonā€™t name anyone just yet). The initial conversation seemed to go well. However, communicating over a Ticket System did feel a bit clunky - Although, I do understand why this system is used.

With the introductions out of the way, Iā€™ll be composing some business drafts for them next week. Hopefully, Iā€™ll get a better understanding of costs and timescales.

If all goes well in the upcoming weeks, Iā€™d love to be able to recommend them. In fact, Iā€™d love to be able to recommend anyone at all.

5

I too faced tough times finding someone, and I am not really happy with the present developer.

They take forever to spot the bug, and then the bug re-appears when they fix something else. So I decided to learn Magento, started with HTML, and then will move to CSS, JS, then PHP and then maybe Magento.

I am using online sites to learn like solo learn etcā€¦:). Wish you all the best for your endeavour.

6

Itā€™s taken a few weeks to get to this stage now, but hereā€™s the latest update.

I sent the company a couple of very detailed briefs about a week ago, to get some quotes on both Price and Timescales. The timescales quoted were reasonable (within a few days).

Originally, I considered the price to be ā€œhighā€ but in actual fact it was realistic. And that goes back to what I said before that ā€œyou get what you pay forā€. Or at least thatā€™s the hope.

The price did make me re-evaluate the Return-on-Investment for my projects though. So, I benched one of my projects because it wouldnā€™t actually help to increase revenue as it was more about Quality of Life.

So, today I paid for the project to go ahead on the one brief. I built them a Development Server that Mirrors my Production site. This will ultimately help them:

  • To understand the context of my project
  • With real-world testing (rather than on a Vanilla install)

Iā€™ll come back in about a week with my thoughts. Iā€™m hoping all goes well because Iā€™m so eager to build up another working relationship.

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7

They completed my first brief this week. Which was a nice easy one to help establish a rapport and understand how the workflow went before continuing any further. We seem to understand each other well based on the fact that weā€™ve not have any misunderstandings.

So, I went ahead and gave them a more complicated brief. This includes working proof-of-concepts for them to view and play with. And I was able to give them real-world examples of how everything should fit together with the help of the Development Server I created for them - That has a copy of the Production site.

Iā€™ve already been given a price and a time-scale. Itā€™ll be a couple of weeks before itā€™s finished and Iā€™ll update this journal then.

My only gripe so far is related to Communication. Rather than depend on emails and wait a day or two for a reply, I wish I could have a conversation via online chat. Itā€™s a caveat when working with an agency, especially one in a different time zone. Other than that, itā€™s been a very positive experience.

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8

Despite the date of this post, I actually received my completed project back in late May. It simply took me till now to update the post.

So, I received the completed project. And as expected there were some fine-tuning that needed to be addressed due to some bugs I found and some things that werenā€™t exactly what I highlighted in my original brief (which was my fault). It took a few days of bouncing changes backwards and forwards until I was happy. But we got there in the end, and it wasnā€™t a very painful experience.

The new feature was pushed into the Production site about a month ago and Iā€™ve had no complaints. So Iā€™m extremely pleased.

The beauty of going to a company (as opposed to a freelancer) is the peace of mind that if the module every breaks to so a future Magento upgrade (or something like that), that they will still be around to assist.

Due to my overall experience, I submitted 3 additional briefs to them last week for a quote on costs and timescales. If the costs are realistic and lead to a positive Return-on-Investment then Iā€™ll definitely be using them again.

And now that Iā€™m able to condone the company that did the work for me, Iā€™ll go right ahead and say that it was Amasty. If youā€™re looking for a developer, take into consideration that they charge about $40/hr (at the time of writing this) and havenā€™t yet charged me for anything less than 8 hours work. Cost is subjective so this will seem cheap to some and expensive for others. I guess it all comes down to what the project is worth to you.

Review

I wasnā€™t going to add a review, but I figured my opinion may be of use to some.

Area Rating Notes
Availability 4/5 Timezone difference obviously plays a big part. Only only being able to contact each other by email isnā€™t great if you need an immediate response. Plus, I did have to send a chase-up email at some point.
Communication 5/5 They understood my brief just fine. Plus, I didnā€™t have any communication breakdown due to broken English.
Skill 5/5 Iā€™m not a developer, but the code looks clean. And the mode has all of the features that I asked of them.
Price 4/5 As I mentioned, cost is relative. I think the hourly rates are ok, but the time required to complete it could be shorter (therefore cheaper)

Iā€™ll leave this post open if you have any questions about my experience with Amasty. Any off-topic posts will be removed.

9

I am currently dealing with Amasty support due to one of their extensions (Request A Quote) not functioning as expected. I must say, their support is terribly slow.

I wish there were other options.

Very disappointed.