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Actual cost of hiring low-cost developers
To run a business in today’s tech-advanced market, elements like functional and secure servers, websites, and applications are vital. For that, you need a good developer equipped with the latest tools, a finer skillset, and a flair for independent innovation.
But looking for areas to cut down costs is a usual phenomenon across industries. While that may come across as the more viable option, you will see that in hindsight, the cost of hiring cheap developers generates a bigger bill.
Specialists are paid more because they bring certain qualities like problem-solving skills, programming language proficiency, debugging, testing, code review capability, performance optimization, etc. into their work. Such professional nuance may not come with low-cost software developers. The result of cutting corners while hiring developers results in a poor user interface, more bugs, and an all-around waste of time, energy, and resources in terms of technical debt left in the system.
In today’s article, we will look into the monetary pitfalls of hiring a low-cost developer and why you should invest more while hiring one early on.
Table of Contents
Pitfalls of hiring cheap developers
Limited experience
When you find a developer willing to work with lower rates, you should take that as the first hint that their experience and expertise are limited. While your team should have individuals with different experience levels, the lead of the team should be proficient enough to handle the job skillfully.
While inexperienced developers can deliver a huge number of code lines quickly, poorly constructed codes may result in numerous bugs. The additional maintenance and rewrite increase expenditure. Outcomes of hiring inexperienced developers include–
- Badly readable code
- Frequent need for code refactoring
- Poor communication
- Entails constant mentoring
- Lower productivity
Outdated practices
Technology is advancing rapidly. Thus, it would be fair to say that staying up-to-date with the current standard of practices and new technical tools is vital to providing the best services in the technical space.
When you hire a low-cost developer to build your website, it is no surprise that they won’t work with the best or current tools. Outdated methods can’t keep up with the new coding pace and thus, will not suffice to deliver what your business needs or your consumers expect.
On the other hand, eager and talented developers keep themselves up-to-date with current practices. If anyone in your software development team lacks knowledge of the current tools and methods, consider incentivizing them to update their expertise.
Slower work
Lack of experience and outdated approach can amount to inadequate productivity. One incompetent member can seriously hamper the workflow of the whole team. A study suggests that bad hires can amount to a 41% loss of worker productivity.
Cheap and inexperienced developers need constant mentoring. That means the experienced developers on the team need to take time out of their schedules to guide such members and fix the mistakes. This will create roadblocks in the collective workflow. The money you save by hiring cheap developers will go into supporting the project for longer than necessary.
Delayed deadlines
Low-cost software developers tend to accept multiple projects at once to support themselves financially. This can naturally result in missed deadlines. Prioritizing multiple projects is likely to reduce the pace of workflow, which is also a cause of delayed delivery of the project, costing you even more resources.
Inferior project quality
Guaranteed low prices are a major indicator of poor work quality and lower output. Inadequately skilled software developers try to lure clients with cheaper rates. But building quality software takes expertise, commitment, and necessary tools, which you can’t get by paying less than the industry standards. It may look like a financially viable option. However, in the long run, inferior project quality will only cost you more money.
Recruitment costs
On average, it takes about 8.8 weeks to dismiss an incompetent software developer. Now, the average recruitment process costs about $31,940. In addition, there is also the average onboarding expenses ($7,546.5), salary ($23,311.48), rent ($1,184.62), office supplies ($33.85). Moreover, the productivity loss can be estimated to be roughly the same as the salary. This is because we can presume an incompetent software developer will not be moving towards good efficiency. This estimate leaves you with about 15 weeks into the year along with a bill of $87,327.91, and that’s also without any significant ROI.
Hence, while it may seem like you are saving your company’s expenditure by cutting costs with a cheap developer, such decisions will cost you far more than your estimate in terms of recruitment.
Project disruption costs
Even if you fill the position quickly by hiring an expert developer in the future, you also need to take into account the disruption cost of the project. Going through the whole hiring process will again cost you recruitment and onboarding expenditure of about $39,486.5.
On top of that, there are also the salary and other employment costs of about $82,649.78, rent of almost $4,200, office supplies ($120), and productivity loss ($38,410.96), which amounts to a whopping $164,867.24. And this much investment will only bring about 2 weeks of peak efficiency from a good developer. Thus, it is critical not to cut costs and choose an expert developer early on.
Reputation cost
A poorly designed software not only hinders your business operations but also costs you your reputation. Users will face problems if the software does not run properly due to bad coding. Mending that damage, especially for a growing company, involves even higher expenditures.
Importance of good developers
They provide expertise to your projects and the best possible output. Here are some reasons why it’s better to pay the experts more instead of hiring a low-cost developer.
- Good developers provide increased efficiency and productivity
- Thanks to their years of experience, expert software developers gauge an intuitive understanding of the project
- They come with finer expertise, resulting in top-quality code lines
- They are more equipped to deal with roadblocks that may come up in the project
- Expert developers bring innovative solutions to the table
Summing up
Based on the above-mentioned insights, hiring a cheap developer will not justify the final bill. Before hiring a software developer, you have to remember that quality services come at a cost. A good developer may cost you 2-3x more than a low-cost hire, but the final output will be 10x if you choose a skilled developer.
But how do you find the balance between your budget and hiring a developer with impressive expertise? The answer is – thorough research on average industry rates and the skill set that comes with it. That involves sorting through numerous profiles and investing a lot of time and energy.
To rid yourself of such repetitive and stressful tasks, ellow.io is here to the rescue. We are a global platform where you can connect and hire vetted talent without going through the hassle of examining hundreds of applications.
Moreover, the platform handles payroll and tracks the availability of developers. That means you don’t have to deal with unnecessary issues like unavailability and payment confusion. We help you fast-track your remote hiring process with a high-quality, global talent pool.
To hire the best developers and other skilled individuals, choose ellow.io today.
Suvankar Das
