Ask HN: How to pay contractor per GitHub issue solved?

[tomabe]

I have a small llc which develops a software solution for a certain company. In the same time there is an older product already in their production systems which needs support: bug fixing, little new features, etc. This older product was almost entirely made by me during the time I was an employee (only recently I switched to my own llc).

I would like to "hire" someone for taking care of this older product. The amount of work needed would suit a part time job but because of varying load I would like another form of payment instead of monthly salary. This person, being a friend, would work remote and I would like to find a fair form of payment somehow based on fee/price per github issue.

Have you experienced this kind of employer/employee contract? What are some pieces of advice which can help?

[brudgers]

The idea 'what gets measured is what gets done' suggests that paying per issue closed or per feature developed incentivizes work on the easiest issues and most trivial features. Likewise it disincentivizes work on the thorniest issues and development of features that require significant work.

One way to handle this is time and materials. Simply pay the subcontractor for their time and reimburse their expenses, then add your overhead and profit on top of the subcontractor's invoice when invoicing your client.

To put it another way, the important way for contractors to make money is invoicing their clients. Adding overhead and profit to the subcontractor's invoice means that the more the subcontractor charges, the larger your gross profit, more work gets done on the code base, and solving hard problems is economically tenable.

Some people might say that this is 'nickel and diming' the client. They are right, nickel and diming is what contractors do.

Good luck.

[tomabe]

'Simply pay the subcontractor for their time'

I had previously experiences where I paid for their time. And in turned out that having the monthly salary and working remote it's not enough to keep a minimum pace on advancing through tickets. I want to avoid this situation.

[brudgers]

Curious if the previous experiences were working with a friend. This seems more like a case where just paying your friend's professional rate, and invoicing the client for that work [after markup] is a better fit for the relationship.

I mean, the goal isn't to profit at the expense of your friend.

[borplk]

My piece of advice is go with a "normal" method of payment of either fixed-pricing style or hourly/daily payments or salary.

Unusual payment arrangements don't work well.