You pay peanuts, you get monkeys
I heard this phrase from the CEO of a startup a few years ago, after he realized he chose an unprofessional company to develop his app. How did it end? Wait until the end of the post.
I can understand it. You start building something, there’s too little money and too many things to do. The immediate solution — find someone to do it cheaply.
Do you need someone to work for you — develop an app, build your website, write the terms & conditions, renovate your bathroom?
Do you know those stories where someone hired a contractor to renovate the bathroom, promised it would take a week, took two months and after finishing the work, you had to bring in a new professional to redo everything?
Well, this is exactly the case.
Is someone more expensive necessarily better?
No. But I argue that in many cases there is a correlation between especially low prices and the level of the result.
The hidden cost
The painful problem is that there is a high hidden cost to poor results — your time and energy are wasted, and you don’t measure them!
The less professional the worker, the more iterations (of a product, document, shower) you will need, including more cycles of testing and corrections, not to mention the time it takes to explain the rejects to someone who is not so professional.
Your time, your nerves, and the longer calendar time (especially when you have a deadline!) are not weighed when you receive the price offer.
By the way, if you’re paying by the hour, then you might be paying a low price per hour (for unskilled workers), but for more hours and still getting poor output. On the other hand, some professionals do in one hour the work of four people and know their job. Sometimes it’s worth paying them for it…
Quality has another aspect
Did the guy who renovated your bathroom use the best plaster under the tiles, so the tiles will last 20 years?
At a low price, there’s a compromise on raw materials and work quality. Does the lawyer who writes your privacy policy really understand your system and the challenges relevant to you, or because he’s cheap, just copies it from somewhere else and doesn’t include clauses that protect you? (And you don’t need to do four iterations and two long phone calls to make him do his job properly?)
Yes, there are situations where you can say — the quality doesn’t matter, I need something quick and dirty, and I’m willing to compromise on quality.
It’s a kind of pay now or pay later — and you prefer to pay later. Fine, no argument. Just please make sure that even this quick and dirty work doesn’t waste your time and extra money.
What’s the solution?
There is no magic solution. But before you choose someone — do your homework. Ask to speak with past customers and recommenders, and make sure you’re getting someone who understands the work and therefore will make you work less, and deliver quality output. Don’t know how to check? Ask a friend who’s been there.
And one more thing… The post started with “there’s too little money and too many things to do” — the solution is to use the money wisely. Sometimes it’s better to do less (there’s a post on this topic too…) and do the little correctly.
And finally
How did the story I started with end? The guy (yes, the same one who told me that phrase), realized that this software house just doesn’t do the work, and he suffers exactly from the same phenomena I mentioned and decided to choose another company. But contrary to my advice… he chose a cheaper and worse company… Go figure…
