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Trends in Freelance Software Development

2009-05-27T18:23:00Z

A little summary of my findings on the software development freelance market. You’ll find rate trends, skill trends comparison, what skills are hot or not, etc …

Context

This overview focuses on the freelance software development market specifically. I’m trying to get a better understanding of the market by combining multiple sources of information. I gathered statistics from several job sites, freelance market places and from open database of government funded projects (NIH, NSF etc…).

Overall Industry trend

According to the job site Indeed, overall Information Technology job postings have decreased 36% since April 2008.

So far nothing surprising given the morosity of the economy. Software jobs represent around 15% of all job posting on Indeed a little less on SimplyHired.

According to IEEE:

Based on conversations with more than 9,000 hiring managers in over 15 US metropolitan areas, the skills most in demand include: .net/C+ developer, Java developer, project manager, SAP consultant, quality assurance, Oracle, clinical research associate, biostatistician, network engineer, and software engineer. “While the market for technology workers remains sluggish, we are starting to see stability in pay rates,” said Bill Yoh, president and CEO. “Companies are continuing to hold steady, adopting a wait-and-see attitude.” He predicts that as economic recovery takes hold, wages should gradually increase.

Full Time vs Freelance by the numbers

Now, let’s get some comparison between full time and freelance work. For this, I’m going to use the trend feature of two job sites, Indeed and SimplyHired. Both provide an easy to use trending tool that lets you display the percentage of jobs that contains a search term. I’m going to search for “contract software” and “full time software”, this is far from perfect but the idea is to get a feeling of the different trends.

First notice the scale of the graph, with the terms above, we’re finding less than 0.1% of the job posting – I don’t know if we can make conclusion based on such low percentages. Anyhow, according to the two sites, the beginning of 2009 was terrible, but things seem to be picking up again in the more recent months. According to SimplyHired, freelance jobs increased 140% since September 2007, see SimplyHired trend , while full time jobs decreased 48%.

Freelance Rates

I don’t have a lot of information on rates, but I found the following result published by ODesk interesting. It seems that in the United States–despite the recession–software developers are now charging an average of 35% more than they did in 2008. As noted on Odesk’s blog: The exact reasons for the incredible rate increase in the face of America’s much-beleaguered economy may remain a mystery. However, it’s good news for those with software skills. And honestly – these days – we need the good news.

Skills – what’s hot and what’s not ?

Here, I’m going to look at seven major programming languages, because trends from Indeed and SimplyHired are consistent, I’m only going to display the charts from Indeed.

According to Indeed, “C” is still ahead of the pack, followed by “Java” and “C++” in terms of number of jobs openings. It is interesting at this point to look at the relative growth of the different languages:

Here, “Ruby” and “Groovy” turn to be the most dynamic languages on the job market. Both are interpreted languages that are also at the foundation of two web development frameworks : Ruby On Rails and Grails.

Conclusion

My feeling and from my experience on the job market, it seems easier these days to find a full time job than a freelance one. If you’re on the market, the trend tools provided by Indeed and SimplyHired can help you decide on how to market your self or on what skill to acquire next.

How to design and deploy an R&D portal to augment productivity of a software development team ?

2008-03-04T20:00:00Z

Knowledge, if it doesn’t determine action, is dead. 1st Ennead, Plotinus, 205-270 C.E.

Software is knowledge. How can you leverage open source tools to encourage positive behaviors and discourage negative ones in a distributed software development team ? What processes and tools can be deploy to augment productivity and optimize information flow?

Software is knowledge

In the Laws of software process, Philip G. Armour, argues that the product of software development is not the software but the knowledge contained in the software. Taking this perspective on software development, coding (the transcription into a language) is only one small part of the software development activity, the real work occurs when we try to translate knowledge into requirements and when later we discover that this knowledge is incomplete ( testing and bug discovery ).

If your company is passed the stage of “Angel Funding”, then your software development team is most likely relying on a combination of the following pieces:

software control management system
build system
testing sytem
project management system

Different functions collaborate and use these tools to specify, develop, test, integrate and deliver successive releases of the software. Some of these functions are: project management, software development, researcher, tester, integrator.

Each of these functions brings and accumulates a tone of knowledge about the different aspects of the product. How can we optimize the flow of information between the different parties? How can we make sure we retain this important knowledge ? How can we put in place a system that enhances productivity ?

Open-source to the rescue …

Open-Source software teams are composed of coders that contribute to projects in parallel to their professional life. They have very little time and have to optimize the way they collaborate and work on project. Linux is being developed by a team of volunteers scattered on five continents with very little face to face time, how do they manage to deliver a rock solid product ? There is a great collection of tools developed by the open source community that are used by developers worldwide. But tools are not the panacea and redesigning or designing processes to better take knowledge management and team collaboration into account will help us a great deal. We will first review behaviors and processes and then present a set of tools that can be combined for the best results.

Positive and negative behaviors

Positive behaviors you want to encourage:

information sharing
event driven development
code reviews, not necessarily in a strict and systematic way
specifying acceptance unit and functional test before writing the code
individual contributor should focus on the tasks they’ve assigned
sens of ownership of continuous integration process
sens of ownership of the code developers write

Negative behaviors you want to discourage

large, organizationally focused, cold-blooded dinosaur processes ( when processes are designed by people who are more driven by politics or their career than by efficiency)
lack of accountability (I didn’t know that test was failing, I didn’t know that bug had been assigned to me etc …)
distrust across management layers, between functional teams, development, QA, project management (always assume the other is doing his/her best)
miscommunication caused by functional, cultural barrier
knowledge is power (when team members or managers refrain from sharing information to secure their position)

The conclusion of this is that processes should be focused around people, around customers and very important around learning. We must take every opportunity to let the developer learn from the software and store it’s knowledge to share with the current and future employees. Note: If you’re familiar with Agile methodologies, you’ll have recognize many of the driving ideas behind adaptive development.

R&D Portal

This is where we get to the tools that can be used to help our team analyze, code and deliver with efficiency and passion. Let me start with a side but important note, don’t let your IT sponsored SAP consultant design and deploy this, you’ll end up with a system that doesn’t use the language, doesn’t fit the processes, has a huge learning curve and that every body will hate. Pick a couple of senior developers people with passion and efficiency in mind, not politics and let them drive. Let’s review what we’re trying to achieve: we’re trying to design and deploy a system that will glue together all the pieces and processes that make our development environment.

The fastest and cheapest way of deploying such a system is to customize a web based content management or project management system (open-source obviously). Your choice will be driven by the expertise you have available and the amount of integration with your existing systems you’ll need. You want this portal to provide the following views:

roadmap view = management view (milestones, open bugs, open features)
code view ( viewing of code and code changes)
bug tracking view
continuous or not-continuous integration view (build status)
my page for each developer (my bugs, my features, my failing tests)

All this can be implemented from scratch by combining a web development language (php/rails) with unix scripting and cron jobs. The cron job are used to collect, analyse and prepare reports that are stored in a database and then properly presented by the web layer.

If you don’t to start from scratch, here’s a summary of tools and framework that can be used to deploy a software development portal.

Tool	Category	Effort	Features	Skills	Customization
Rails	Framework	High	High(plugins)	RubyOnRails	Excellent
Joomla	CMS	High	Rich	LAMP	Difficult
Drupal	CMS	High	Rich	LAMP	fair (modules)
SimpleCMS	CMS	High	low	LAMP	Easy
Trac	PM	Low	High	LAMP	Easy
RedMine	PM	Low	High	Rails	Easy

I’ll try adding more details in this section in the coming weeks.

Why do Contractors become contractors or why I think the employee/employer relationship is flawed ?

2008-02-22T00:08:00Z

As a software professional working for a corporation, you’re giving away your your main asset : your brain … you’re also at risk of loosing your soul !

What’s your main asset as a coder ? Your brain !

You use your brain to analyze problems, to design innovative solutions, to come up with business value adding ideas … The sad thing is that as an employee, your ideas, basically your brain your most valuable asset is owned by by your employer.

Why is your brain your main asset ?

You’ve invested a lot in your brain. Countless hours studying, and learning new subjects. You and/or your parents have spent a great deal on your education and training. Accounting for all the hours and tuition money you may well have invested over $300,000 building the right synapses that make you the professional you are today. The same way muscles are the major factor of success in the career of a football player, your brain will decide of your future as a coder or software professional. You’ve been taking good care of it, nurturing it and protecting it. As a coder, you are a knowledge worker. Your knowledge, your experience, your skills is what you rent or sell for a living.

So if your brain is your main asset , why are you giving it away for free ?

Why doesn’t your brain belong to you anymore ?

Have you read the fine prints on your formal employment agreement or offer letter. It refers to a document that you’ve signed on the first day of employment: Non Disclosure and Invention Assignment Agreement also called Proprietary Information and Invention Agreement.

I have nothing against the non disclosure clause. I consider non-disclosure of information you’re entrusted with by a third party, the corner stone of any relationship, personal or professional. Integrity is built on non-disclosure .

Now, on the other hand, from the stand point of a software developer, proprietary and invention agreement is a rip-off agreement !

The proprietary and invention agreement basically assigns to the company all rights to any invention that results from work performed for the employer or work that relates to the employer’s current business or demonstrably anticipated research and development.

It is the worst type of agreement you can signed as a knowledge worker. You’ve been investing and improving this beautiful house that is your brain and your just handing out the keys to your employer. Ho, but wait, I’m getting a rent in return, my salary . Yes, you are getting a rent but your also giving away your property title … remember the Invention Agreement, you’re not getting a return on your investment, your employer is !

Let’s illustrate this with an example. As a direct result of you hard work and passion, you’re in a position to file a patent. You go ahead and according to the agreement you signed, your name is on the patent but the patent belongs to your employer. If you’re lucky, your employer has incentives in place and you get a couple of thousand dollars. On the other hand, your employer, gets all future rights to the invention and its lucrative derivatives. In addition, having an additional patent in its portfolio increases its competitive advantages and its valuation. Guess who wins ?

But enough with materialistic consideration, what about your soul ?

Loosing your soul … corporate politics

I their great study of knowledge contractors in the Silicon Valley, S. Barley and G. Kunda, interviewed several contractors to understand why in the first place they had decided to “escape the world of full time employment”. They report that “politics” is cited as the most common motif for moving into the world of contracting. “Politics” , they say, “is best understood as a cover term for the myriad ways in which personal agendas and interests undermine technical rationality as a a criterion for action Contractors’ complaints about politics often targeted managers. The perception that managers acted to further their own interests was so wide spread that contractors frequently portrayed technical professionals as pawns in management’s political game” .

On his blog, Marc Dangeard, a Senior Advisor dedicated to Entrepreneurs as he describes himself, writes about politics within the corporation. Taking the recent example of Societe Generale he explains why “the whole corporate system is conceived to promote people who do not take risk” and how “in such an environment doing nothing also means letting your reports do things that may not be 100% ethical as long as you can maintain an ability to claim ignorance”. He finishes on a bright note “let’s hope that the changes brought by Social Networking and Peer-to-peer collaboration will bring us better systems to organize how we work together…“

What can you do about it ?

If you decide to stay an employee, not much, unfortunately. It is your employer who has the lawyers, the cash and who is making the rules of the game, and guess what, the rules are not drafted in your favor ;-( .

Ok, this was a little overstated and on the dark side, I admit it.

There are actually a couple of things you can do to protect your self and your investment:

legal: make sure you disclose, in writing in the proprietary agreement, all invention from prior to your employment. In this way your employer will not be able to claim rights on work/research you did prior to joining,
intellectual property: make sure you never, ever use your employer time/facilities/computers/network/pen to work on an idea you have, wait until you live the company to file a patent,
education/training: make your employer pay for as much training and education as possible.

But if you really want to cash on your investment, escape to contracting !

Health Care for Software Consultants

2008-02-11T17:38:00Z

You just started your life as a freelance aka self employed aka President MySmallBiz Inc. Or maybe you’re just planning on doing so …

The first thing that you’ll need to plan for, is health coverage. This is critical especially if you have a family … and if you’ve recently watched M. Moore’s Sicko you know it’s going to be a pain …

Plan	Individual	Individual + Family
Corba	$900/mo	$1,500/mo
Individual Plan	$800	$1,200
Small Business Plan	$230	$700

The thing is, there isn’t any easy, straightforward ways of getting health coverage for an individual. In this article I’ll be walking you through the process of getting health coverage at the best rates. Rates vary considerably depending on the plans and your application status.

Corba

So you use to be on Employer Health Plan, in most cases you’ll be entitled to coverage under a Corba Plan

Corba Plans are usually extremely expensive but they provide a guaranty under federal law, to continue receiving your health benefits. Usually you have 60 days to decide to get coverage under a Corba Plan. Don’t neglect the Corba option, it is very expensive, around $1500/month for a family of five, but the advantage is that you can’t be denied coverage as it might well happen if you decide to go on your own and shop for better rates. Also, be very careful with your payments, one payment missed could mean a termination of your contract and ineligibility to Corba.

Self Insured

Either you missed the deadline or you decided that the rates are outrageous, you’re now looking for a plan that could cover you and/or your family. You’re going to apply personally as an individual.

Shopping around for a plan

I found the best way to shop around for plans is to use a site like: EHealth You’ll be able to search for plans that meet your criteria and compare side by side the features of the different plans. I also found their tutorials to be very helpful.

Applying … and getting rejected ;-(

On to the next step: after countless hours looking at plans and plan options you’ve decided on one. You download the (10 page long) application, you fill it out carefully – there I recommend making no omissions of previous health conditions. It is preferable to be rejected upfront than to find out that a claim is rejected because of a non disclosed medical condition. (Health care companies have armies of MDs that sole occupation is to dig into customer medical files so to deny a claim) ... don’t play that game, you’ll loose ! Unfortunately, chances that you get rejected are fairly high, I got rejected twice although I consider my family and my medical history as close to flawless as it can be … the mysteries of risk management !

Corporate plan through your business

This is by far the best option of all. You’ll get the best deals and your chances to be denied are very low. Now, the catch is that you’ll have to qualify for Small Business Plans, first of all, you’ll have to be incorporated. Your company will probably be eligible for a small business plan if it meets the following criteria:

Your company consists of at least two full-time owners, officers, partners and/or employees, as verified by officially-filed state quarterly wage and tax statements (e.g., NYS-45 in New York and DE-6 in California) or annual federal tax return documents;

Your company is a legitimate business entity (i.e., your company was formed for a purpose other than to obtain insurance), as verified by one of the following documents:

A business license or fictitious name filing (proprietorships and partnerships);

Articles of incorporation (corporations); or

Articles of organization (limited liability company).

Your company meets the minimum employer contribution percentage set by the insurance company.

Again, EHealth is the best place to shop and compare plans. Ounce you’ve identified a plan you can either apply through them or get in touch with a broker that will assist you with your application.

I also found the following plans to be worth the attention:

Costco , offers a Small Business Plan for health and Dental care

IEEE , also offers a set of financial and health plans , but you need to first qualify for an IEEE membership.

Here are some resources on the Web for individuals and small businesses in the USA who are seeking health insurance.