There is an Art to Being ✅ Cheap, ✅ Fast, and ✅ Good
This is why we ditched the unreliable freelance model and managed to offer access to a talent pool that checks all three boxes
We know what you’re thinking: Nooooot possible. Right? Ha. We thought so.
Pro tip: It is, with a slight twist.
We’ve been riding that twist to build our clients’ tech-side strategy for many, many moons.
Make no mistake: There’s an art to it. The not-so-secret secret is that it’s a collaborative art.
The Starts
Lots of art starts with the equivalent of a stick figure, and ours is certainly one of them. Specifically, our art started with the drawing of a single line, right down the middle of talent. After all, bringing on and managing great software engineers was previously done in two ways: (a) bringing in mercenary freelancers or (b) hiring folks into an employee relationship for the long haul.
Both models have shown significant points of failure at this point in the continual evolution of software eating the world. An evolution was urgently required, and that evolution can be envisaged just like so:
Well, to understand where Clearview flips the table on developer talent, change the identifying information of the three rings in play to read like this instead…
- Flexible
- Reliable
- Cost-efficient
… and take a look at where the previous two iterations of scaling — the freelance model and the employee model — fall on the diagram.
The Freelance Model
First, is the freelance model. Freelancers are flexible and — at least more so than employees — cost-effective. They are not, however, reliable. They are legendarily unreliable. We don’t need to tell you that freelancer disappearing acts have left an army of projects dead on the field. We’re guessing you want yours to fight another day. Right?
Employee Model
Then, the employee model. Employees, for their part, are reliable, but they certainly aren’t cost-effective. And they’re only scalable if you have the cash and infrastructure to invest in not only their initial onboarding but also their ongoing career development. If you have those kinds of resources, more power to you — but, since you’re here, we’re guessing you don’t. And that’s okay.
The Clearview Model
What Clearview offers is access to a talent pool that actually checks all three boxes. For a growing operation, there’s no better way to find and onboard flexible talent efficiently without sacrificing quality or dropping any balls. The monthly cost of working with Clearview developers is often on par with that of bringing in individual freelancers. Still, the benefits far outstrip that of the revolving-door freelance circus:
● Freelancers are singular. Clearview is plural. When you work with Clearview, the entire team stands behind each teammate — knowledge-sharing and pitching in to iterate each project.
● Freelancers disappear. Clearviewers persist. When life happens, freelancers often drift into radio silence. Clearviewers back each other up to prevent interruptions and costly delays.
● Freelancers lean on your guidance. Clearview self-manages. We bring processes and systems for everything from onboarding to project management, lifting significant weight from your operational shoulders. The result is that there’s less oversight needed from your side and that you’re freer to do the big thinking your project requires.
This works. Reliably.
It is not, however, the kind of magic that happens without collaboration. Working with Clearview helps you to engage in a process that bubbles with the kind of synergistic success you’re aiming for.
How to Get Clear: A Three-Step Process
When someone from a scaling company first reaches out to us, it’s very commonplace that they haven’t worked with contract engineers before. It’s our consultancy on all this product and software engineering that sets us apart, and we’ll be right there with you from step one.
1. We’ll help determine your first-level needs.
These are the easy-to-point-at requirements of the job — the bullet points that would (or already do) appear on a job listing.
We’ll start here:
● Do you already know what roles you need to fill, or do you need help determining what actors will march out onto the stage of your startup?
● Do you need someone to design the product’s entire architecture? A UI designer to wireframe the interface? Data engineering?
● What’s your tech stack? (We can help even — especially — if you haven’t decided.)
Having a solid framework here sets proper expectations right from the start. Our team is ready to help with this:
2. We’ll help determine your all-important second-level needs.
These are the subtler criteria that set a distinctive tone for each role: the organizational structure within which the developers are meant to fit, the self-direction they are meant to express, and the processes they are meant to either engage or build.
● Do you need developers to step in and own a repeatable process that you or your team has already built, or someone to do a one-off project with no established processes?
● Do you already have management in place for this role/these roles, or do you need to bring in a fully-fledged small, self-directed team?
● What persons or groups of persons will be decision-making for the project, and how are they going to communicate those needs to the new team (or teammate/s)? Figure out where your new teammates will sit on your org chart.
These “second-level” considerations will have a major impact on who you bring in, at what budget, and with what timeline expectation. The determinations here will set our search parameters as much as the choice of tech stack. We will help guide you through.
3. We’ll help determine your monthly budget.
Since Clearview works based on monthly resources, you’ll need to know how much to budget for each month of developer work. Again, this is something that Clearview can help you plan — especially if we’ve been involved from the needs-determination stage. Here, you’ll find that a healthy dose of realism helps — but we’re very sure that you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the quality-price matrix of our Clearview team — — and the guardrails we’re able to help you set.