Where to find decent Drupal developers?

K

killerbobjr

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
282
A customer of mine is desperately looking for a decent Drupal developer to rework their website. I've suggested to them the various freelance sites like Odesk and Freelancer, but they say they get inundated with resumes of vastly under-qualified people hoping that their resume spam will score some work.

Does anyone know where I can point them to?

My google-fu brings up a few sites dedicated to Drupal devs, but I have no way of vouching for their ability, so I am hesitant to recommend any of them.

P.S. If you're a Drupal dev yourself, PM me and I'll put you in touch. They've budgeted several grand for about 2-3 weeks of work, so it's not like they're trying to do this on the cheap.
 
How is your customer evaluating the quality of the resumes they are reviewing -- do they currently have staffed Drupal devs, or are non-technical employees doing the screenings?

Regardless, have your customer look at IT contracting service companies for short-term "hired gun" jobs like this. Other options include looking through the Drupal Marketplace for vendors, or even reaching out to the Drupal community for guidance on who to speak with about finding vendors for their needs (though Drupal's org chart doesn't really give information on who that would be).
 
The other engineer on this project (that I'm involved in) is doing the server side of things and has thrown up a basic Drupal site to integrate with the server code. He's the one who's been evaluating resumes since he knows the qualifications needed, but he's swamped with his own work and can't really spend anymore time on a search. I believe he's already gone through http://drupal.org/paid-services, plus his own contacts, without much luck.

I've suggested a few contracting services to look into, but since I deal mostly with the client app side of things, I really haven't any worthwhile leads.
 
killerbobjr it really depends on what he wants done. it really doesnt have to be a drupal developer. however would be a little eaiser if someone wrote a plugin for drupal before to know how to write plugins but that is about it.
 
It actually has to be a Drupal developer who can write modules that interface with back-end server code and write themes that integrate smoothly and consistently across the website. No PHP needed, but the dev has to be able to include current PHP code. The other engineer could do it, but he just doesn't have the time. I could probably do it (after studying Drupal a bit), but I am swamped as well. And yes, they could hire a developer with no Drupal experience, but then the other engineer would have to train him on what needs to be done, negating the intent, which is to reduce the workload.
 
I'm biting my tongue and will just offer craigslist as a possible suggestion.

Though if I unbite a little bit I'll say that so many of these companies are way too damn picky. Why not just hire a solid software engineer (who knows drupal) instead of looking for a drupal developer? This buzzword alphabet soup fad stuff is not making it easier for either party to come together. And when you hear "this had to be done three months ago so there's no time to do anything but wait for THE ONE to come along" you know you're talking about a company that isn't planning ahead.

Otherwise, yeah... craigslist.
 
"vastly under-qualified people"

not to be a wiseguy but we're talking about drupal here... how hard could it be? it'd be like saying a carpenter wouldn't know how to make a baseball bat.
 
The company is based outside of Chicago. I'm in California. The other engineer is in Pennsylvania. Locally searching, either for me or the other engineer, is not an option since that takes us away from our primary tasks (which are now time critical). The head of the company doesn't have the qualifications to judge whether or not a dev has general software qualifications to write for Drupal, but he's the only one with enough time availability to do the search, hence the desire for a Drupal specific dev.

(And as an aside, no the company hasn't been very good at planning ahead, but that's mostly because they were taken by surprise from customers in a market they hadn't even considered who want their product "now!").
 
i dont think a freelancer will just work on drupal only projects. he most likely will work on multiple types of projects
 
killerbobjr said:
It actually has to be a Drupal developer who can write modules that interface with back-end server code and write themes that integrate smoothly and consistently across the website. No PHP needed, but the dev has to be able to include current PHP code. The other engineer could do it, but he just doesn't have the time. I could probably do it (after studying Drupal a bit), but I am swamped as well. And yes, they could hire a developer with no Drupal experience, but then the other engineer would have to train him on what needs to be done, negating the intent, which is to reduce the workload.
Click to expand...

If no PHP is needed, you should have absolutely no problem finding a qualified developer. That said, it's very difficult to develop a Drupal site and not use PHP. Sure, it's more then possible, but it's definitely not the intended method of development within Drupal.

Honestly, I find it very surprising you're having trouble finding a qualified developer. There are companies that focus specifically on Drupal development. A quick google search for "Drupal Experts" (i know, a horrible search) came up with at least one company I personally know to be very capable Drupal developers.

jwcalla said:
"vastly under-qualified people"

not to be a wiseguy but we're talking about drupal here... how hard could it be? it'd be like saying a carpenter wouldn't know how to make a baseball bat.
Click to expand...

IMO, Drupal has the steepest learning curve out of most of the popular CMS's out there. Do you actually have experience developing Drupal sites? The fact that I get a good portion of my freelance referrals from other programmers that thought they'd had no trouble developing a site using Drupal, tells me that it's not that easy.
 
Shyne151 said:
Acquia. End of story. They are the go to drupal gurus. We are switching over to Drupal and hired them as support(public institution)... amazing group of folks.

http://www.acquia.com/
Click to expand...

It's worth noting that Acquia's CTO is also the creator of Drupal.

I'm sure they're absolutely amazing Drupal developers. It's hard not to be when they have the Drupal creator on their team. But personally, I don't like them.

I went to DrupalCon Denver last year, and they walked around like they owned the place. They ended up hijacking more then one session I was in from the original presenter because they disagreed with what was being discussed.

Granted they were also the largest sponsor of that convention... so... I guess they did own it.
 
I've passed on all the information I've gotten here (and in PMs) and asked the company head if he was able to use any of it. He said he passed it on to the other engineer to evaluate, so I won't know if anything comes of it for a while.

I think though that they may have resigned themselves to using the current website for now. It's a bit clunky and slow, but their clients aren't complaining, I think it's mostly because the clients only need to go there to sign in and select a session, then use the client side app afterwards.
 
killerbobjr said:
I've passed on all the information I've gotten here (and in PMs) and asked the company head if he was able to use any of it. He said he passed it on to the other engineer to evaluate, so I won't know if anything comes of it for a while.

I think though that they may have resigned themselves to using the current website for now. It's a bit clunky and slow, but their clients aren't complaining, I think it's mostly because the clients only need to go there to sign in and select a session, then use the client side app afterwards.
Click to expand...

If that's all that's necessary why even use Drupal in the first place?
 
It's what the other engineer choose to get a basic site up and running and interfacing with the backend server. I'm not privy to all the decisions behind it, but from what I gather the intent was to create a site that could coordinate all the interacting users and allow control over the sessions. Eventually, the client app stuff will move over to a mostly HTML5/javascript base instead of pure native code, so some sort of master portal is needed. For now, in the current pilot program, the end users are merely using the web site for signing in and managing sessions.
 
PTNL said:
Huh? What "native code" are the site visitors currently receiving?
Click to expand...

He said the client app, not visitors. The client app is probably some native app that gets data from the back end and they want to move to html5 in the future.
 
Native code = an application run on native Windows/OSX/iOS/Android platforms, written mostly in C++. Native code also = not portable, = different code bases for different platforms, and = redundant effort.

So in an effort to get this thread back on the tracks before it plows into that herd of cows ahead, what they need is a dev with Drupal experience to write modules that: A. they don't have to train (heh, heh, "train" -- see what I did there?); B. doesn't have to divert the other engineer in order to coordinate interaction of modules with the backend server; C. doesn't engage in wholesale recoding of already working PHP code; and D. can also create Drupal themes that work consistently across the entire site and not trip up as more features are developed in the future. Any further specifics than that you're going to have to forward your CV and talk to them directly since I'm just a middleman doing a limited amount of searching for them as a favor.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top