How to source phpBB dev work in Dublin

ggt657

Hi,

I've a site but a component of it has got messed up during an upgrade and the backups failed. I need some phpBB dev work done. If you know what you are dong it should be less than an hours work (I think). I just don't have time to do it myself. How would I go about getting a company to fix this, preferably based in Dublin. I've googled (only a little I suppose) and haven't seen much. It's likely that I'll need some more work done over the next year depending on what that company can do.

Does anyone know of a dublin based company that can take on this type of work?

Thanks,

Gav.

fl4pj4ck

If you know what you are dong it should be less than an hours work (I think)

Every time I hear that from a potential customer I walk away.

ggt657

fl4pj4ck wrote: »

Every time I hear that from a potential customer I walk away.

I know what you mean but I would stress that I only think it could be a quick fix.

moycullen14

I'm intrigued. You know enough to estimate it's an hours work - do you think you could do it in an hour if you had time? If so, you will spend far more than an hour organising someone else to do the work, check it, pay for it, blah, blah, blah. I mean you've spent at least an hour so far, googling companies, posting here, etc?

On the other hand if you can't do it yourself, how do you know how long it will take?

If I had a euro for every 'Shur, twill only take you a few minutes to .....' conversations, I'd be a wealthy boy!

Meant for OP

fl4pj4ck

you lost me here ??

Graham

fl4pj4ck wrote: »

you lost me here ??

I suspect that comment was meant for the OP.

moycullen14

Graham wrote: »

I suspect that comment was meant for the OP.

Sorry, it was, my bad

mrbubbles

I had an even better one this morning:

Client asked me for a quote for a fairly hefty project - a huge Ruby on Rails build with integration to a back office system, maps system etc. I quoted, say, €2K and sent it over to him. I hear back a few hours later with "well, €2K is a big spend for us but we're keen. I've re-written the spec to make sure we get our monies worth". Ha! It's now like 3 times as long and WAYYYYY more complicated - he was genuinely surprised when I said I'd have to re-quote it.

I might try that next time I go to the garage - "sure, you quoted me €300 for a new radiator but I want to get my monies worth so I think you should also replace the wheels, fix the electrics, pull out that dent on the side, give it a wash..."

Jokers

ChRoMe

mrbubbles wrote: »

I had an even better one this morning:

Client asked me for a quote for a fairly hefty project - a huge Ruby on Rails build with integration to a back office system, maps system etc. I quoted, say, €2K and sent it over to him. I hear back a few hours later with "well, €2K is a big spend for us but we're keen. I've re-written the spec to make sure we get our monies worth". Ha! It's now like 3 times as long and WAYYYYY more complicated - he was genuinely surprised when I said I'd have to re-quote it.

I might try that next time I go to the garage - "sure, you quoted me €300 for a new radiator but I want to get my monies worth so I think you should also replace the wheels, fix the electrics, pull out that dent on the side, give it a wash..."

Jokers

You would do all that for 2k!?! Is this a side job to make some extra money?

mrbubbles

€2K was an arbitrary figure for the example... I didn't want to mention real numbers on a public forum

It's €399 really ;0)

moycullen14

mrbubbles wrote: »

I had an even better one this morning:

Client asked me for a quote for a fairly hefty project - a huge Ruby on Rails build with integration to a back office system, maps system etc. I quoted, say, €2K and sent it over to him. I hear back a few hours later with "well, €2K is a big spend for us but we're keen. I've re-written the spec to make sure we get our monies worth". Ha! It's now like 3 times as long and WAYYYYY more complicated - he was genuinely surprised when I said I'd have to re-quote it.

I might try that next time I go to the garage - "sure, you quoted me €300 for a new radiator but I want to get my monies worth so I think you should also replace the wheels, fix the electrics, pull out that dent on the side, give it a wash..."

Jokers

My heart is broken from crap like this. As far as I can see, it is a complete lack of financial understanding amongst project managers/gatekeepers in companies.

As soon as it comes to outsourcing a piece of work and spending some real money, they get all horrified at how much development costs. The fact that they have developers sitting there at 40K salary, costing 4 times as much, fully loaded on a per project basis, is not their responsibility.

If you can't ask or get sensible answers to the following questions, you are on a hiding to nothing:

What's your average developer salary?
What is the overhead factor? (PRSI, holidays, Management contribution)
What is the utilisation factor? (What percentage of their time are they developing?)

Unless they know or are aware of these factors then, chances are, they can not accurately cost a project. You end up with 'Shur, Jimmy could do it in a week, and we pay him 800 a week so that's all we will pay anyone else'

Graham

moycullen14 wrote: »

You end up with 'Shur, Jimmy could do it in a week, and we pay him 800 a week so that's all we will pay anyone else'

File them right next to the 'if you write my Amazon for frogwidgets website I'll give you 0.7% of the equity' opportunities

moycullen14

Graham wrote: »

File them right next to the 'if you write my Amazon for frogwidgets website I'll give you 0.7% of the equity' opportunities

1% and some pizza and you have a deal! I'll just go off and knock up a caching subsystem and we'll be ready to go next week :-)

mrbubbles

Graham wrote: »

File them right next to the 'if you write my Amazon for frogwidgets website I'll give you 0.7% of the equity' opportunities

"I can't pay you on this occasion but when my business takes off I'll be able to send lots of paid work your way..."

The excellent David Thorne has a great take on this

http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html

(his whole website is amazing, if you haven't already seen it)

fl4pj4ck

typical:

Blocked by URL filtering: Profanity

Graham

Please be aware that by reading or responding to this thread subsequent to my posted response at 13:14, you are deemed to have entered into a NDA and and acknowledged my full intellectual property rights surrounding the 'Amazon for frogwidgets' concept.

mrbubbles

Haha aah, give him a quick Google it's worth a peek...

ggt657

Hi,

This thread has taken on a life of its own it seems. Fair points mostly too. I've a tech background doing WebSphere automation with jython and also lots of shell scripting. We've 10 week old twins in the house and I barely get time to think let alone look at a computer when I'm at home (hence the large gaps replying to this). The site had a phpbb portal page which after a site upgrade had to be disabled and the backups failed (my bad I'm sure). I was thinking that the site upgrade was straightforward and the portal mainstream enough that the errors I'm seeing would be recognised by somebody with experience. Granted an hour is very optimistic though. I'm taking it that apart form you guys getting this type of work done on a per hour basis is not actually that straight forward.

Is anyone interested in taking this on? Based on my ultra-optimistic sizing and non-descriptive description? The site is pretty important to a community of users and a working portal (hell it could be a different one to the one that failed) would be a real win for us. I'm also funding this out of my own pocket and need it completed quickly (so lower cost). With the twins I just don't have the time to do it myself but would understand the feedback from a developer if another person was dong it.

Thanks for the replies though.

Gav.

returnNull

mrbubbles wrote: »

http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html

Not once did the secretary there call me a wanker or have her grotty old g-strings poking out the top of her fat arse everyday making me feel ill."

LOL

EDIT: the email exchange is priceless