On 18 June 2012 15:41, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:
One of my experiences in around the last 18 months is that smaller companies (which we are, lets face it) start out contracting technical work because it is significantly cheaper.
Is it? I don't know about developers specifically, but generally speaking contractors are a lot more expensive than salaried staff because you have to compensate them for the lack of job security. Contractors are good if it's a temporary position or if you think it might be a temporary position, so you're willing to pay a premium not to be stuck with someone after the work is done. WMUK is going to need a tech person permanently, so should hire an employee.
The only reason I can see that WMUK might want to hire a contractor is if it is going to be a part-time role, which might be possible if we could get volunteers to do the work. We haven't done particularly well with getting volunteers to do the work so far, though, and I'm not sure having someone coordinating the volunteers would actually result in any more volunteers crawling out of the woodwork. There is also an issue that a lot of WMUK's tech work will need to be done on a tight deadline, which is where volunteers tend not to be the best choice.