Any experience hiring a programmer? Where should I look?

Yeah, thought it was obvious that I was talking high-level since the non-programmer client would be the one creating it.

 

That's exactly what I've been doing

 

I personally had some very good experience with programmers from Ukraine and Belarus. (Have you noticed that at some quant shops they all speak Russian?) They charge around 40% less than some also very good ones from Ireland, 100 usd per hour could get you the very best ones to pick from. Just make sure they can understand you perfectly via email or chat. In pseudocode or what ever. Also their specialties should roughly fit your needs. Their economies are struggling so you are also doing them a favor.

If you don't have a preference, you can also use a language that are easy to interpret so you can modify it later yourself.

Serbian programmers may be good too, but I have no experience with them.

 

Just a note.

The ethnicity/native-tongue/location of a programmer has little to do with whether a programmer is competent (imo), but it may have something to do with how much they charge.

For example, I would never tell (nor insinuate to) someone who is looking to hire a programmer, that all programmers in the USA (or wherever) are competent. I would consider that bad advice.

 

Anyone used toptal, or are they pricing themselves to cater to larger companies?

 

Professionals has a high price. And google pay every time good price for hired people.

Professional never do non interesting work. Never. So it has zero correlation with total price.

Guys you are on financial markets. You MUST to know cost of the money))

 

I have interviewed a guy that decided to go to Google (or was it FB, I don’t recall) for less than half of what my firm was going to offer. We offered 250 total and he went to google for 120. Over 5-6 years of the “expected life” the difference adds up to a fair bit of money. Over the lifetime it’s literally the difference between becoming a millionaire by the age of 35-40 or not. Yet for him the content was just or even more important than pay.

 

Are you still interviewing for that $250k per year position?

 

Fooled by Ramdomness for you )

 

Could be a very rational choice imo. The guy maybe just thinking long term career path. Also being promised 250k of total comp is NOT the same as actually getting it. Not to mention that Wall Street gets a bad rap nowadays, deservedly so imo. For most creative people, after some threshold, money alone is a poor motivator.