How to choose a developer and not lose money

Finding a technical specialist is hard. Especially if you don't understand code yourself. You post a task, get 50 replies, and have no idea who to trust with your project and money.

Over my years in development, I've seen many failed projects. Here are a few markers that will help you weed out incompetent contractors right at the negotiation stage.

1. They agree to everything

If your request is "build an Amazon clone in two weeks for $1,000" and the developer replies "no problem, starting now" — run.

A professional always asks questions. They will try to understand why you need this functionality, how it should work in detail, and explain why an Amazon clone cannot be built in two weeks. If a person does not delve into business logic before receiving a deposit, they will not build a working product.

2. No public cases or they are not clickable

Pictures in a Behance portfolio are good for a designer. For a developer, pictures mean nothing. The code must work.

Demand links to live projects. Visit them. Click the buttons. Do the pages load quickly? Do the forms work? Does the layout break on a mobile phone? If the developer says all projects are under NDA and they can't show anything — look for someone else. A professional always has pet projects or open-source code on GitHub.

3. They speak in technical jargon

A developer who showers you with incomprehensible terms ("we will deploy a Kubernetes cluster for your landing page because Node SSR requires a load balancer") either doesn't know how to communicate with business or is trying to drive up the price.

A good engineer can explain complex things in simple language. They talk about solutions in the context of your business goals, not in the context of frameworks.

4. Estimating deadlines in one day

Development is a process with a high degree of uncertainty. A professional always builds in a time buffer for testing, edits, and unforeseen bugs. Someone who promises to build a complex service "by tomorrow evening" will likely miss the deadline by at least a month.

How to verify a contractor?

Ask them to describe the architecture of the solution in text. How do they plan to store data? What technologies will they choose and why? If the answer is logical, understandable to you, and contains reasoning — you can work with this person.