[LRUG] Who are those super short-term contractors?

[Chris Mear]

On 20 Nov 2012, at 13:39, Priit Tamboom <priit at gitlab.eu> wrote:

> About super-short-term contracting[1], I haven't solved a puzzle about clients who are looking for super short-term, say 2-3 weeks custom development contractors.

<snip>

> Therefore I wonder who are those contractors who are willing to jump into a domain and hack there only for few weeks or even few days?

I've done this kind of job before, as an individual contractor coming in to provide some extra personpower to an existing team.

> It looks immensely wasteful for a developer to set up a new environment, learn all the project specific requirements, new work-flow tweaks, new people and new goals. Just for a few weeks, can't be productive!

I've found it usually takes me a day or so to get set up, and to understand enough that I can start producing useful code. Complete knowledge of the problem domain isn't necessary if, for example, you're just picking off smallish bugs that have been well reported.

That sort of work can be useful for a team that finds themselves up against a tight deadline. The 'Mythical Man Month' adage that 'throwing more developers at a project is counter-productive' may be true if you're expecting those developers to design and produce major new features from nothing; but if there are well-defined tasks to be done, a short-term contractor can be productive.

Chris