Whether you've been awarded your first job recently or just climbed up to a Level 10 ranking, Elance users are showing time and time again that the online work movement is the future. As part of our continuing efforts to highlight members of our community, we’re reaching out to you—the ones whose talents drive Elance—to share your stories.
The HireRussians team has been active on Elance for years and has worked with hundreds of software development clients. We interviewed HireRussians’ team member Anie Taskaeva to discuss how the team leverages Elance today and how their application development business has evolved over time.
Elance: Hello Anie! Tell me how HireRussians came to work online through Elance.
HireRussians has been using Elance for nearly 10 years, and before that we worked as official contract workers for 3COM Corporation handling its programming needs. We needed to get new customers when no one in the world knew about Siberia and Novosibirsk, and Elance acted like a universal globalization tool for us. We were small among much bigger competing companies as there were about 5,500 Contractors in Software & Technology category.
So why did we start using Elance? After the Dot-com bubble burst, we lost our main customer 3COM. Though we still had some other U.S.-based customers, Elance helped us to move borders between our skilled programmers from cold Siberia to customers worldwide.
Where is HireRussians located?
All 4 of our development offices are located in Russia and the ex-USSR, and our headquarters is in Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk – a scientific town in Siberia. To support our worldwide clients, we have a legal office in Los Angeles, and sales and project management representatives in Germany and Australia.
Tell us about how your team is structured and how work gets divided. On how many projects does your team work on at once?
HireRussians team consists of eight departments, from Development to Sales and Customer Care Management. Within the Development department, there are 8 technical teams: .NET (C# and C++ Windows), PHP, Unix, Java, Mobile (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Bada), Flash, Design and Quality Assurance.
Every project in development is managed by Project and Customer Care Managers and can be developed by any necessary number of developers from different technical teams. On large projects there is a Project Technical Team Leader that makes sure work is synchronized from a programming point of view and every developer’s work adheres to common practices on code structure, commenting, etc.
The PM is the member of the project team responsible for planning, tracking, reporting the development of the project and its’ successful completion. The Customer Care Manager represents customer’s interests in our team concerning all the non-technical issues and establishes effective communication between a customer and PM. This specialist is in the know of the project and looks after implementation of the agreements.
Usually we have about 60 ongoing projects in development, and about 30 more part-time projects.
What are the key benefits you’ve seen from using Elance?
- Our potential customers can see most of our company's experience
- Customers are confident about Elance and are ready to make a fast decision to hire online
- There are always a large number of new jobs posted, and even on holidays and during slow times we can find new customers
- With almost 10 years of history on Elance, we have built a reliable profile that proves our expertise for customers
Why should a company or entrepreneur consider hiring a software development team to further their business goals? What can they accomplish by having a desktop, web or mobile app built?
Almost every company now understands that a great number of its customers are online – they are more or less experienced computer users, have accounts on Facebook, use Twitter and bank online. To reach that audience, businesses must also come online and accommodate users’ needs for mobile services. Since every Elance project is unique, we established specialty practices focused on exact needs based on each type of client we have: startups, middlemen (software development companies, tier1 providers) and established businesses outsourcing their IT.
What should someone have in mind when looking for a desktop, web or mobile application developer?
Common sense. There are lots of great developers who can share your ideas and make them come true. Although only a very small percentage of ideas become profitable, they all require passion, patience and money. Even if your project is a next step of development for an already successful business, the requirements remain the same. We believe that great developers should combine discipline with initiative. They should be professional enough to execute customers’ requests together with applying their own experience in suggesting ideas and optimizing the product.
Tell us about three projects you’ve recently completed on Elance:
- A web 2.0 tool for everyone who wants to invite lots of people to their event. It gives its users simple but powerful tools to manage, promote and sell out their events.
- An iPhone application for an American actor and comedian. The app allows users to get photo, audio, video galleries, quotes spoken with the actor's voice, and a fun arcade game with him as a hero.
- A "Family Management Software" – Imagine you’ve got a huge house with a lot of kids and loving parents. How would you all stay connected with each other? With a tablet device that has a touch screen keyboard and gadgets like Sticky Notes, Calendar with notifications, simplified e-mail client, cookbook, and shopping lists, your family will always feel like you are all together.
If you could provide one “top tip” for finding success on Elance, what would it be?
Your success on Elance is closely related to the success of each of your project—you should do your best for every customer you have. Your success on Elance will surely build itself from such small effort.
To visit HireRussians' profile page, please click here.