How difficult is it to find a PHP coder?

CrazyCohan said:

I am looking for a PHP coder but most the coders have totally unrealistic expectations and also want to have prepayment.

How are you guys dealing with that? Do you really do prepayment even if the project can be done on the coders server?

I just cannot trust some coder guy on the internet with prepayment and then have to beg for updates.

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Someone just took my script and stopped responding like literally today. I made it in 2 days. I took pre payment previous time but this time I shared the script with him thinking he will pay

Well no where to be seen after sharing final script.

By the way I am a full stack developer and have worked in 2 well established companies as a php developer.

CrazyCohan said:

No, that's why I posted here. I Just can't use freelancer.com or upwork and thus I have only access to coders who proably arent coders themselves and reselling from upwork and this creates unrealistic offers.

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One more thing I want to share there is a way to only use upwork escrow to take payment while you work outside of upwork.

akaseo said:

One more thing I want to share there is a way to only use upwork escrow to take payment while you work outside of upwork.

View attachment 315557

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Pretty good info, thanks!

CrazyCohan said:

I know already what its worth as the trusted coder I use gave me his quote but he does not have time and the other newly trusted guy I found here on bhw doesnt have time either but also gave me a low triple digit quote.

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Maybe the 2 trusted coders claiming they've got no time are actually thinking it's not worth it. Offer them 2K and they might become available of a sudden. 2k is still 50% cheaper than BHW.

blogmen said:

Maybe the 2 trusted coders claiming they've got no time are actually thinking it's not worth it. Offer them 2K and they might become available of a sudden. 2k is still 50% cheaper than BHW.

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Why would they give me a low offer then? Are they dumb? Or didn't you read correctly what I wrote, that they gave me their quotes?

it also depends on what kind of coder you want to hire. of course the price will be different.
if you hire some hobby coder, well you might get it for cheap, but that will also show in the delivered code, you will likely get some clumsy half arsed code (or chatGPT generated lol).
if you want to hire a senior developer, they charge you more, but you also get higher quality.
its normal that there is an upfront payment btw, at least personally i would ask 50% and the rest on delivery.

CrazyCohan said:

Why would they give me a low offer then? Are they dumb? Or didn't you read correctly what I wrote, that they gave me their quotes?

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They gave you the fair price but it's not worth it to them, that's why you need to pay a premium to convince them to prioritize you over their current project.

Lmfao I thought you came here for advice. Instead you're just arguing with everyone. Definitely would not work with you.

Just as a client you cannot trust a random coder, a random client can be trusted either they can abandon the project if they find someone cheaper or maybe drop the project idea.

One solution here is to either coder or client to risk it.

Regarding pricing there will always be a difference in quotes because there are coders from across the globe, with different economies.

Also not everyone quotes for the project alone, it may include the skill level expertise, years of experience etc.

Some people have a lot of regular work they won't quote you low.

Most coders charge you more are experienced ones so you're paying more here for the skills & experience they bring.

Some people with little to no experience will charge you less just to get the work.

And then there are people looking to scam & make easy money.

The only way to stay safe is to interview your coder prior to hiring & use something like escrow/upwork.

You pay around 20% extra on most of these platforms but that's worth keeping things safe.

Honestly, I'm on @CrazyCohan side.

I remember the time when trying to hire a coder to update an outdated python script.

Hired 4 guys in the range of $300-$500, the job never done, always excuses. The work can be done only in 1 hour for an experienced python coder. How do I know that? Because I ended up learning python and fix it myself lol

Had no acknowledge in python, spent 40 days only on that script and made it to work as I wanted. It's funny, thinking about it, I can write the whole script from scratch in 1 hour now.

What I won? Gained experience, not only in python, but I can develop anything I want on any programming language.

The time you spent looking for a coder, spend it on your own script. You will fix it yourself. Now it's easy than before, you can simply use Chatgpt to help you out while learning.

mrnixdorf said:

Honestly, I'm in @CrazyCohan side.

I remember the time when trying to hire a coder to update an outdated python script.

Hired 4 guys in the range of $300-$500, the job never done, always excuses. The work can be done only in 1 hour for an experienced python coder. How do I know that? Because I ended up learning python and fix it myself lol

Had no acknowledge in python, spent 40 days only on that script and made it to work as I wanted. It's funny, thinking about it, I can write the whole script from scratch in 1 hour now.

What I won? Gained experience, not only in python, but I can develop anything I want on any programming language.

The time you spent looking for a coder, spend it on your own script. You will fix it yourself. Now it's easy than before, you can simply use Chatgpt to help you out while learning.

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Understandable. However, others have mentioned sites that have escrow (e.g., upwork | freelancer has it by default). You pay for the project and they hold it in escrow so if the freelancer completes the work and you both agree they get paid. You must release the payment. They have dispute resolution that protects both sides. If everything is good you release the money and the freelancer gets paid. If you're not happy with it you open a dispute and if they didn't deliver or the end product doesn't work as promised you can have the project cancelled and find someone else.

One of my businesses is a software development company and outside of escrow I've had several people try to scam me out of payment. Largest loss was almost $20,000. They paid previously (in the tens of thousands) and didn't think there would be an issue.

I have a much better system in place now with milestones. All require prepayment. I also have verifiable reviews with Fortune 1000 companies. Let's just say the days of dealing with projects in the hundreds of dollars are long gone. I do however run more SaaS products now and those can be low, but add up since it's much more scalable.

frozen_yoda said:

One of my businesses is a software development company and outside of escrow I've had several people try to scam me out of payment. Largest loss was almost $20,000. They paid previously (in the tens of thousands) and didn't think there would be an issue.

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Good luck with your business, and sorry to hear that part of the story.

For my side, I only code my own projects, I know the client bad sides too that's why never tried to interact with any paid tasks. I can work for free for people I know if I'm in good mood.

Yes those guys I hired before where all from freelancer. No problem with Hold and release funds when job not done. Didn't try upwork or other services, so no clue. Im talking about 5 years back. I'm sure if I post a similar project now, I will be quoted between 2k-4k

The bad part here isn't about money, but the time it takes to get the job done, and get disappointed when it's not. Waiting 3-7 days everytime for nothing when it can be done "for my example in 1 hour"

That's why I suggested to OP to try learning and fix it, he won't regret the time he wasted on one project.

mrnixdorf said:

Good luck with your business, and sorry to hear that part of the story.

For my side, I only code my own projects, I know the client bad sides too that's why never tried to interact with any paid tasks. I can work for free for people I know if I'm in good mood.

Yes those guys I hired before where all from freelancer. No problem with Hold and release funds when job not done. Didn't try upwork or other services, so no clue. Im talking about 5 years back. I'm sure if I post a similar project now, I will be quoted between 2k-4k

The bad part here isn't about money, but the time it takes to get the job done, and get disappointed when it's not. Waiting 3-7 days everytime for nothing when it can be done "for my example in 1 hour"

That's why I suggested to OP to try learning and fix it, he won't regret the time he wasted on one project.

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Thanks. It was a rocky start, but it's growing and never have down time which is good. I have a couple of contractors now to help so I can get some of my time back. I always get the project started since it's easy for me to setup and get the architecture out of the way.

I agree that it doesn't hurt to teach yourself and yes, ChatGPT or other LLMs can certainly help get the ball rolling much faster than before. PHP is a little harder to get the nuances since it's backend, but again, much easier today than it was in previous years.

I'm a self-taught programmer as well and actually started more in design with very basic HTML/CSS/JS a little over 10 years ago for a marketing agency. PHP was my first backend language and I worked my way up the latter before venturing on my own.

Definitely quite a few options. It depends on how much time you have available to commit which is one of the barriers. The freelancing sites with escrow is a good option if you would rather just pay someone to do it.

The biggest thing is even asking some friends if they know anyone. I've helped out friends and others for free. I'm actually helping one of my friends that is a fellow inventor (albeit, I am investing in his company) for free right now He wanted to offer equity, but he's a doctor and has worked hard on his product. I told him it was a mistake to give away equity for someone just to help put up a site with a payment gateway and FBA orders.

Most developers will take a deposit or a portion of payment to know that you are serious. The same reason why you don't them, they don't trust you. How do they know that you're going to actually pay for their work once they write the code?

frozen_yoda said:

Lmfao I thought you came here for advice. Instead you're just arguing with everyone. Definitely would not work with you.

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Everybody who quoted me deserves an answer! Even nasty ones like yours

Many low skilled coders here who think the client needs to shut up. Impressive.

Good that you warned everybody about your work ethics.

Dunston said:

The same reason why you don't trust them, they don't trust you.

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Exactly. It seems it takes high IQ to understand that. Most coders who talk in this post don't even understand this. At least they show their true faces so potential clients can understand how they will be treated.

What I learned at this lesson @ BHW. Never deal with coders who want prepayment because they are nasty. They will treat you badly, like seen in this thread. Always use platforms who offer escrow.

Also you have to use platforms because they offer unbiased quotes as there is a competition and they have to give real prices. Most coders here think they can get more money because the project will make money and they think they are entitled to that.

I have hired coders in the past and for a fact, in the start of the project which involves a crazy level of automation I paid no less than $400. Any additional features involved paying $160 to $300. Till date, I have paid one of my best coders about $1500 on the same project.

Why? Because he's a busy freelancer. Always on the move, working. People hire him globally left and right. I saw bis reviews and discussed on Zoom for a proper understanding of my project before he would write a single line of code.

Is the project much more valuable to me than the amount spent so far? Absolute yes.

But that's the kind of coder you should look for. You get what you pay for.

You can at least start with some features and ifthe deal goes smooth you may be surprised he will like working with you and actually give you discounted rates overtime.

When you pay like a pro to the "right coder" , you become a respected client, and the coder CAN'T fuck up because now he's indebted to you. Then you get a pro deliverable.

What's the problem with that?

speedie said:

What's the problem with that?

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Or just go to Upwork and get safety and quality. No need to deal with the ego of the coders.

CrazyCohan said:

Upwork and get safety and quality

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That can't be assured not all is the quality you might be looking for.
I outsource a lot of stuff there and over years what I have experienced is unless you know how to grill the person with right questions in interview you are always at risk of losing something.
Hiring and finding the right person is a skill

And PHP is very much overcrowded idk why you cannot find a developer on internet that fits your budget.
You can even find them on Facebook dev groups and github.
Just be sure to have video interview.

Just because you have the trust factor, I think the best option for you is not to go online rather hire a developer to work for you in your locality like an in-house developer.

Its not too complicated the reason many people ask for a pre payment is because they dont trust you just like you dont trust them.

My advice to you is, get a middle man service to hold the money until u see what u want to see and then release it. Its basically what upwork does until u submit the initial milestone or w/e

On top of that you have this specific case where you are unable to use freelancer or upwork the major platforms in the area.

Why can't you use upwork thou?