Ask HN: How risky is it to hire a Product Designer on contract?
What has worked for you in the past and where have you faced issues? Have you found sites like Upwork to be reliable?
Thanks!
6 comments
What is your definition of this role? Product designer could be anything from a web designer to mechanical engineer to business development focused. What’s the key thing you need this role to do?
In general if you care about your product hiring based on lowest cost bidder isn’t smart. I get cost is always a factor but race to the bottom sites like upwork are generally not the place to start. With some exceptions.
Last point if you don’t have super solid and thorough requirements documentation already then avoid using someone in too different a time zone or culturally so you don’t lose time in translation or time zone waiting. There are awesome people all over the world it isn’t a talent situation but a communication one to avoid a learning curve on what can be such an important role.
Edit: contractor is totally fine and very common.
In general if you care about your product hiring based on lowest cost bidder isn’t smart. I get cost is always a factor but race to the bottom sites like upwork are generally not the place to start. With some exceptions.
Last point if you don’t have super solid and thorough requirements documentation already then avoid using someone in too different a time zone or culturally so you don’t lose time in translation or time zone waiting. There are awesome people all over the world it isn’t a talent situation but a communication one to avoid a learning curve on what can be such an important role.
Edit: contractor is totally fine and very common.
Thanks for the detailed response. To answer your questions
Looking for someone with a design background (strong creative + Figma + wire frame) skills to help build a prototype for web based software.
Have a detailed PRD/requirements doc so ideally would work together with this person to translate the requirements into a high fidelity MVP
Looking for someone with a design background (strong creative + Figma + wire frame) skills to help build a prototype for web based software.
Have a detailed PRD/requirements doc so ideally would work together with this person to translate the requirements into a high fidelity MVP
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