[LRUG] No agencies please

[Louis Goff-Beardsley]

I get approached by agencies all the time asking me to get work for them. I’ve tried numerous times, to find some way of making it work, but the stumbling block I’ve found is that most companies have existing teams and require extra developers to join the their team. What companies want is people who will become part of their tribe (usually onsite), not someone temporarily from someone else’s tribe (often remote).

Companies want to be able to invest in an employee, rather than commission a piece of work where they do not benefit from the long term professional development gained from the completion of the task.

Monetarily wise, employees and even contractors are usually cheaper.

Where I see agencies pick up the most work from start-ups is from getting in with VCs/Investors/Funds and being involved in the early stages with building the first versions of products. If it goes well, they are usually transitioned out and a permanent team is built.

I would suggest looking into larger corporate entities, identifying who commissions tech projects and pitching yourselves as an alternative to the large consultancies they usually use. Depending on the job  I think many small agencies could do a better job than the usual suspects, the challenge is breaking into the corporate culture and changing their old ways of thinking about commissioning work.

Best, Louis

From: Chat [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] On Behalf Of nicolas alpi
Sent: 20 January 2017 10:27
To: London Ruby Users Group <chat at lists.lrug.org>
Subject: [LRUG] No agencies please

Good morning all,

I was wondering if some here on the list could help?

I run CookiesHQ, a Bristol based Ruby/JavaScript small development team. Growing over the years we're still small but have a few developers, pm, q&a and strategy in-house.

The team is distributed by default.

When we started, 6 years ago, we were only helping people with ideas creating new saas product, but, over the years, we found that our real strength lies in working on existing codebases, scaling apps, helping teams pushing more feature for short period of time. I know it's strange, but we quite like it.

Now, I know a few people here have been looking for freelancers in the past, but a strong No Agencies Please as their opening and last sentences.

I'm trying to reach to those people and just understand why they would not consider a small agency at all (that would effectively act as a freelance + pm).

I would be happy to continue this discussion on the list if people think it's relevant or take it more personal via email (nicolas at cookieshq.co.uk<mailto:nicolas at cookieshq.co.uk>).

Thanks for your help.

Nic

--
Nicolas Alpi, cookies eater
Ruby on Rails, Javascript developer at CookiesHQ
@spyou<http://www.twitter.com/spyou> :: nicolas.alpi<http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=28535699> :: http://www.cookieshq.co.uk<http://www.cookieshq.co.uk/>
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