you are a technology driven company, hire a technical person
 

almost everybody here runs a technology driven company.
i beg you to hire a technical person that you pay monthly for their help.
i'm not saying it should be me and my team, although this is our expertise, but someone.
most people in this industry see programmers as someone that they pay once to do a small job, and then maybe pay them for another job. if you dont already have someone on staff you pay monthly, please readjust your thinking. having someone you can rely on that has a vested interest in your company can be a great boon to you.
too often in this industry i see people rely on the nats programmers and the sysadmins at the data center. and where this works, i urge you to find a technical person to have on staff to manage technical things.
I have been doing contract programming in the adult industry long time, and never once have i seen a few thousand dollar per month retainer as not being made up for by having one of my team members on staff and on call.

yeah good luck dude!!!!

Sorry to say but you just killed your ad spot there with a " few thousand dollar per month retainer "

One of the reasons they hire people per job is its hard finding people that will stick with even the 1 time jobs. they grab the money and run. Not all mind you. Some.

thats the reason to pay someone monthly like a salary. that person will stick around and will always be available. if a drive crashes, they will wake up and fix everything and get you making money much faster than if you didnt have that person.
if you are US based, and you hire a contract programmer to be available to you for 2k/month. thats like hiring a programmer for a salary of 24k per year and you dont have to pay for medical or unemployment or anything. Thats pretty cheap.
and there are plenty of others out there that will take a monthly retainer less than my company does.

Where are these people found?

I think a lot of people are concerned with paying out X amount of money every month without needing anything, and then when they do need something that person is nowhere to be found. I could see doing a retainer with an actual company of some sort, but a private individual seems risky?

those people are found right here :)
i have a company and a handful of senior level developers and have been contract programming in the adult industry for the last 8 years.
I've run into a handful of others over the years that work cheaper than my rates but are individuals.

i do urge everyone to find someone they trust, and for new contacts check references and other work they've done.
I also meet people in person quite often. I think it makes things a bit better to see eachother face to face.

Have an inhouse programmer and will never go back, ever

myneid is right, you get $100k+/year level tech expert for $20-30k/year, you can't beat it...
hiring someone fulltime is ideal, but realistically not many companies have enough workload to justify paying $100k+/year for an experienced developer...
I'm doing similar setup with quite a few companies, it works out great for everyone involved... :thumbsup

good. at least you have realized the benefits of having a technical person at your ready.

the problem i have is with people running a technology company without a techy at hand, which seems to happen quite often.

woj: thats exactly the case and it shocks me how many people do not realize this :thumbsup

You'd think your point would be obvious, Tanguy. Thousands of companies all over the world employ development and operations teams to bring their ideas to life and keep them healthy and growing.

Are they fools? No, they know that their success is driven by the talent on their payrolls.

They don't troll for $10/hr rentacoders who promise FIAW ("Facebook in a Week").

When a company does not have the budget to stock talent full-time, they can ensure operational standards by having that talent on retainer. Or they can flail about with dolts, who, to their credit at least, charge exactly what they're worth.

Bottom line: You get what you pay for. It's that simple, but it's one of those little life lessons that some people seem to ignore, and ignore, and ignore until it's too late.

makes me weep...

remote based programmers - rentacoders - are notoriously unreliable. If you want to hire a programmer, go to craigslist or something and put someone's ass in a chair right there in your office.

not necessarily. there are a large number of reliable outside contract programmers that especially if you pay them a monthly retainer are very reliable.
myself and my team are always available and have been for many years.
I can get more work done sitting at home for 3 hours than i can in an office environment for 8. For most programming work, gathering the specs may take some back and forth, but the actual work is best left to letting the programmer focus his attention and get the job done.

Agree with this. As long as the programmer has proven to be available (when agreed upon) and reliable, most will be more productive in their own environment, at their own hours (for example, I often used to be a much more productive coder after midnight).

However, you also have those who cannot eliminate distraction and must be in an office-environment to stay on track.

Every case (programmer) must be reviewed independently.

[QUOTE=Varius;17393335
Every case (programmer) must be reviewed independently.[/QUOTE]

very true. i've worked with many programmers that just cannot function outside of an office environment. its like when the clock strikes 5pm, they turn from coder into joe shmoe.

Careful here, "rentacoders" does not in ANY way mean "remote."

"Rentacoders" means $10/hr for FIAW.

blah blah whatever. I've used dozens of 'remote programmers'. It hardly ever works out, the only time I actually move ahead and get shit built that stays built is when I have a guy in the office. Just my personal experience, your mileage may vary.

i guess it also warrants mentioning that sometimes its not the programmer but the person needing the programming. they need to be able to properly articulate in text what it is they want and then they have to be willing to pay for it. i do run across a lot of people that all i ask for is a brief written description of what they want and they just will not do it. most of the times it is because they do not know what it is they want and can only make it up as they go along in a quite unproductive way.