THE 4 QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE HIRING A CUSTOM DEVELOPER

Hiring a custom developer is one of the highest-stakes purchases a small business makes. A bad fit isn't just expensive; it sets your roadmap back six months and burns the team relationship you'll need for whoever picks up the pieces.

Four questions filter out 80% of bad-fit developers before you sign anything. None of them are about tech stack. None of them are about cost. They're about how the work will actually happen.

1. "WHAT WILL I SEE EVERY WEEK?"

A good answer names a specific cadence and a specific deliverable: "You'll see a working demo of last week's features every Friday at 4pm. You can change direction every week."

A bad answer is some version of "we'll send updates as needed." That sentence is what 2-month silences are made of. If you can't see software running by week 1, the project is already in trouble.

2. "WHO ACTUALLY WRITES THE CODE?"

At an agency, the answer is often "our team" — which can mean anyone from a senior engineer to a junior who got hired yesterday. At a single-operator studio, the answer is the person sitting across from you.

Both can work. What can't work is "we'll figure that out after you sign." You should know names. You should know whether they're full-time. You should be able to email them directly.

3. "WHO OWNS THE CODE WHEN WE'RE DONE?"

The right answer is "you do, end of conversation." The code is in your GitHub. The deployments are in your Vercel / AWS / Railway. The database is in your Supabase. You can hire anyone else to take over and they won't need permission from us.

If the answer involves their proprietary platform, their white-labeled CMS, or a license you have to keep paying for, you're not buying software — you're renting a relationship. That's fine if you understand it. It's a disaster if you don't.

4. "WHAT HAPPENS IF I'M NOT HAPPY AFTER 2 WEEKS?"

Best answer: there's an exit, and it doesn't cost you the full price. Real example: we work week-by-week with a clear kill switch. If after the first 2 weeks the work isn't what you expected, you pay only for the work delivered and we hand over whatever exists.

Worst answer: a long contract with milestones that all happen at the end. By the time you can prove you're unhappy, you've already paid most of the bill.

ONE BONUS QUESTION

"Can you tell me about a project that went wrong, and what you did about it?"Anyone who's shipped software has a story. If they say "we've never had a problem" — they've never shipped. What you're testing is the response, not the war story.