19 – Working with Developers as a Web Designer: What You Need to Know

[00:00:00] What up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire. Where we share stories and strategies to help you build your web design empire from a side gig to multiple six figs. I’m John. This is Kelly. We’re both full-time freelance web designers. We’ve escaped the real world, broke up with our jobs, our bosses our cubicles, and our commutes over 15 years ago, and we haven’t looked back.
We’re also course creators, web design, business coaches, web design store owners. Kelly owns Airbnbs, and I’m a touring professional musician. All have to say, we are building our empires. Uh, today we’re talking about developers. Do you need one? How to find a good one, and how do you effectively work with them?
But first off, Kelly, how’s it going? Happy, happy. End of summer. I mean, I appreciate the end of summer. It’s funny, I even texted you because, or messaged you. [00:01:00] Because, no lie, the day the kids go back to school here, I’m getting clients outta the woodwork that I haven’t talked to in nine months.
I’m getting new requests. It’s, it just goes back to, yeah, when the kids go back to school, the adults go back to work in their small businesses. And that is on full throttle right now. So. It’s been a busy week. I’m not complaining. And, and yeah, to make it a little busier, I started fostering dogs, so I got my first dog Foster, and it’s my first girl dog I’ve ever had in my house.
And she’s perfect. She’s like potty trained, crate trained. I like totally hit the. Golden ticket with my first foster. Usually they’re not trained in any capacity. So, I got kind of lucky and I wouldn’t mind if she just stays here forever, but, she’s already got some interest.
So , that’s what’s new over here. The Foster place knew like, let’s give the first one, let’s give her a potty trained one. No, that’s not how it, that’s not how it works. Like they [00:02:00] literally post, there’s like this Facebook group, their entire organization runs off of a Facebook group and in a capacity I have never witnessed.
They have different chats for everything, which I don’t, I never used a. Facebook chat my life. And each chat is a different topic. And so there’s ones of dogs that need rescue, one’s about contracts, one’s about, website stuff, which PS I’m involved in their website already.
It’s an Elementor. There’s like 12 different chats. So, anyway, the way you pick your dog is they post in this chat like, hmm. You know, anyone want Fifi, we can save her from euthanasia today. Mm-hmm. And so the first one that I saw that, which of course I want to eat up all of them, so I have to be very careful about even going into that chat.
Yeah. So I saw a boxer mix and I already have a boxer mix, and I was like, well, they’ll get along and they do. Mm. But yeah, her name was, was Princess when she came to me. And I was like, I ain’t calling no dog princess. So we changed her name [00:03:00] and I know how to save a life of a dog. That’s great.
Of a dog coming. Well, yeah. My husband saves human lives at the hospital. I’m like, okay, fine. I will save a dog life. . Ah, saving website live just doesn’t have it. Not emotional connection. Know I know to it. I know. Saving the world one website at a time, just doesn’t sound right.
We’re wrapping up, summer of festivals, touring festivals, playing shows, and, I had to go to the northeast part of the country, like twice in two weeks. And, and dang, it was like, the two shows were a week and a half apart, so yeah. Too long to stay up there. It’s, it’s been fun.
I have a love hate with it. Like the day before, the day of it’s time to get on the plane. I’m like, why did I do this? Why am I, you know? And then when I get, when I get there, I’m like. Even in the middle of the show, it’s like, you like, this is amazing. This is what I live for. I know. I feel like that about so many things.
I’m like, uh, I don’t wanna go to this, this, [00:04:00] whatever. Fill in the blank. And then it’s like, oh, that was great. Um, yeah, I totally feel that hard. I think that’s just being in your forties. Why did I leave the house? Yeah, it’s true. Okay. It was worth it. Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It is like, why am I leaving the comfort and safety in my own home?
Mm-hmm. Let’s, let’s dive in to talking about, let’s dive in developers. Yeah. , First thing I think we should go into is what? I feel like developer, it’s kind of like using the word marketer, mm-hmm. Ai, you ask 10 different people what that is and it could mean 10 different things.
Um, so. I guess, what is our definition of developer that we’re talking about today? I feel like developer used to me even 10 years ago in the web design industry, developer probably had a totally different meaning than it does now. And then I I also think that some people listening that are web designers might be like, well, I’m, I’m a developer.
So how would you define. Developer. Well, back in the day, right when we, when I [00:05:00] first started building websites with WordPress, there were no drag and drop page builders at the time, or none that I knew of anyway. I wasn’t quite using them yet, and so I would use a developer on every project. To take my design and they would code up a custom theme in PHP with a sidebar, PHP.
Well, now you used to do that for me at least on one site, so, yep. You, you used to hire people to do that. Yes, because I would got, I got so busy with projects that I couldn’t Gotcha. Design and develop every single one. So you picked ’cause okay. For the record people, John is. Is like, I consider myself a unicorn with design and dev.
He’s a unicorn times a thousand with he’s a wicked amazing designer, but he’s also extremely savvy with code and developing. And so you basically picked to go the design route as opposed to, to dev even though you could do both. Yes. Thank you for that compliment. That’s very nice thing to say.
But yes, uh, I mean, it’s just stating [00:06:00] facts. Yeah. Uh. Yeah, I’ve been working on receiving compliments by way in, in therapy. Like instead of being Oh, nice, instead of down, instead of downplaying, it was like, here’s this cake, here’s this cake I brought you, and I smash it on the ground. Like, ah, I don’t want that cake.
You’re not gonna gimme another cake. Right? Like, okay, you know, someone compliments you and you’re like, um, and you deflect them. Well, they’re not gonna compliment you again. You gotta be. So thank you Kelly for that compliment. You’re welcome, John. It’s very, very nice of you. Yes. Well, I used to call myself, a diviner, , it was like a developer meets the designer because I remember being like, I’m a designer, but I stick to timelines and I, yes.
Right, but I know what a timeline is in Box zero usually, and my desktop has no folders on it or anything like it’s, you know, very, very developer mindset. But you’re right. If I only had a few projects, then I wouldn’t bring in the developer. I would just do it myself. But, eventually I was bringing in a developer on every single website.
And so I was probably spending So you were doing that for custom design themes? Essentially. That’s all I was, that’s [00:07:00] all I was selling at the time, because I didn’t know any drag and drop builders and I wasn’t, and I wasn’t just gonna sell the 2020 theme or 2018 theme, you know what I’m saying?
Well, well, what I used to do, I used. I think, was it Genesis? Which is some kind of platform, but it wasn’t drag and drop and so I would just use their kind of default and then I would CSS hack the crap out of it to make it look how I wanted. I wouldn’t really call that Dev , okay, there’s question number one for me, developer in this day and age, like for me to call someone today a, a web developer, correct.
Today. Is, any custom coding beyond CSS, that’s what it is to me. Would you? Yeah. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Right. So, so yes. Today, now that we have drag and drop page builders of plenty, um, right. We don’t, we don’t need a developer to come in and. Make the sidebar do php and remember the loop, right?
The WordPress, the, oh God, the loop, the query loop. I blacked that out, but yep, it’s, I do remember we don’t, we don’t need that anymore. So yeah, [00:08:00] the only totally, the only reason, like at artillery, the only reason we would source out a developer now would be. Hey, we need this custom feature added, right?
Something that plugin that’s already out there isn’t quite doing well. Or they can extend a plugin that’s already there, like a filter plugin, let’s say. And we needed to work with a certain, we need a new, uh, post type with this taxonomy to work with this custom plugin. Can you do it? Yeah. You know? Right.
That’s beyond my skillset right there. I was really good with, CSS. Html and like I could, I could get all PHPI was decent at that. JavaScript. I could, yeah, JavaScript, J queer, I could get around and figure stuff out. But beyond that, so early on, every project, most projects, I was probably spending a grand to 1500 bucks on a developer.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. And then the day I discovered Divi I bet 90% of the projects I was doing right before Divi, I was working with the developer on every one and then Gotcha. After I met Divi, it was like, sorry, I’m gonna do this now. [00:09:00] Yep. Yeah, and I, I mean, kind of similar, like I said, I would just kind of hack the cs s of a solid theme.
Back in the day when I first started using WordPress, but before WordPress, I was using, a programmer for his own, like proprietary CSS that he made. And so that was when I first started dipping my toe into CMS. Like content management systems, , so that clients could go in and edit the content.
Like I started getting lots of requests for that. And so that’s when I got this guy and I would make the design. He would turn it into the CMS, I now refer to him as my evil programmer. We don’t speak of him in my house anymore. Long story short, there was one particular project that a good friend gave me
Basically his life savings for, right. And this developer was like, oh yeah, I can do that. And um, and yeah, you’re a developer voice. Cracks me up. But, but yeah, he, he said he could do that. And a year later, you know, it’s still not doing what he promised it would do.
And [00:10:00] I just, I cut all ties with this guy and then I remember looking up his website a few months later and every site of mine on my portfolio, even the ones he didn’t touch. Was now on his portfolio. And I was like, great, you suck.
I didn’t even care. But anyway, , there’s bad programmers. We’ll get in a little bit more to that, , but as far as Yeah, why you might need a developer today. Here’s a question of would you rather, would you rather hire a programmer for a custom plugin or use. A pro plugin that you could find from a good company that you know will support you in the future. Like, which would you rather do?
You kind of like, kind of leading me there, but the pro, the pro plugin that, that, you know, they’re gonna support you in the future. Leading the witness. Okay. Hands down the second one, the pro plugin. And I wanna pay, you know, what I wanna pay annually for it. ’cause that means it’s in their best interest to keep it supported, to keep it going.
I don’t, I don’t wanna pay one time. [00:11:00] Like gravity forms, right? It’s like I’ll happily pay for gravity forms forever and always. Oh, yes. I, I would, and we do , like I think the main ones, you know, gravity forms the, the grid. There’s a grid plugin that we, that we use. Yeah. Quite a lot. , I think and like a team, a team plugin that we use a lot, but yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So that was my first, as far as answering the question, why you might need a developer today, we talked about, how we used them in the past, but why you might need ’em today. I think the preemptive number one there is do you really need a developer or can you find a pro plugin?
I think some people are afraid of the pro paid plugins because, oh my God, why would I spend money on a plugin? When all these other ones are free, there’s a reason there are paid plugins. And it’s for the ongoing support. It’s for the ongoing development. Mm-hmm. Yes. I’m gonna plug be Superly in here because that’s exactly what we do and we have amazing support and so yeah, we, we.
All day long pay for those pro plugins that we know are gonna [00:12:00] continue to be supported as opposed to bringing in, a custom programmer that’s going to customize something like if you bring in someone to create a custom pl. Plugin that works perfect today, right in, in six months, you know, whatever plugin, other plugins that it’s integrating with, those might change and it might break this other pl.
So , that’s the best case scenario is to find a pro plugin that’ll do what you want. But in the cases where you can’t find one, that’s when we bring in, a custom programmer or a, a web developer. And I think the other reason would be, integrations like API kind of stuff. If it’s beyond, what you can handle or like database stuff, that I don’t, I don’t touch with the 10 foot pole. Now some folks might be like, well, but what do I need a developer now? Because we have AI and and I’ve actually used, oh, I’ve actually used ai.
You have to build two plugins. But they were, but they’re plugins that could stop working tomorrow and I would probably not care. They, they’re not vital to the website, right? They’re just nice. A [00:13:00] couple little nice little cool add-on feature things. One of them, one of them integrates with Advanced Custom Fields Pro.
Like one of ’em would’ve cost me probably 3,500 bucks and the other one probably 5,000 bucks if I would’ve had a developer do it. But , they’re not critical for the site to run. And so yeah, let’s say Good point. Advanced Custom Fields updates tomorrow with a brand new major version and that integration breaks.
Mm-hmm. And I was using Claude. I could go back to the AI and say, Hey, they made an update. Fix this. And if it can’t do it, it can’t figure it out, then I’m just gonna be like, okay, fine. We just won’t have that. We won’t have that anymore. No big deal.
So as far as it goes to ai, ai, I feel like any plugin that’s a necessity for the website, either use the pro plug in if you can, that’d be option one, and then mm-hmm. A reliable developer, like someone who knows how the sausage was made. That way when something breaks, they can go in and fix that part of it.
Right. I think that’s the big thing and the pro plugin, they’re gonna have support team that. We usually get back to in a day or two if you’re working with the solo developer. It might be a while. [00:14:00] It might be a year, y’all. Okay, so speaking of, let’s talk about the problems, in our years of experience, that we’ve run into working with developers, and then we’ll go into maybe some best practices of how we would suggest moving forward with programmers.
Or developers, I don’t know what to call ’em, in the future. Right. So, so yeah. You mentioned the one that is the highest on my list of, I hate working with programmers because, and it’s timelines. Programmers, the way their heads are wired, they just. Don’t know, even if they claim they know what a timeline is, they don’t know what a timeline is.
There are unicorns out there mm-hmm. Who do, but that is super rare and that is by far the number one issue I’ve come up with is. Timelines is, would you agree? Oh yeah. A thousand percent. Thousand percent. Time. Time, yeah. Absolutely. Timelines. Yep. I remember back in the day when I would work with my evil programmer, I, whatever [00:15:00] timeline he gave me, I would double it.
Immediately in my head. Yeah. And that’s what I would tell the client and I’d be like, you know, plus or minus. Yeah. Which is, which sucks because as someone who is so customer service centric in my business, to rely on someone else who is so wishy-washy with their, you know, the big piece of the puzzle, which is a timeline, it is super, super frustrating.
To not be able to, you know, get the client what I’m promising. Ugh. Anyway. Yeah, that’s the, and over worst, when you, when you have to, when you don’t build in enough time and you have to go to the client and say, well, it’s gonna be another week now. I hope. You hope. Right. You know, you don’t know. Like, some of the other things that I’ve run into, kind of problems with programmers is a mindset kind of. Like I have to literally flip a switch in my brain when I’m trying to communicate with a developer. Again, I’m making a lot of assumptions and I’m stereotyping the crap at a developer.
So please if, I mean, take this with a grain of salt, [00:16:00] I’m not trying to offend anyone. It can be hard to communicate with people whose minds work so differently.
’cause as designers we’re generally quite creative. I know that I’m, I can be, I can be type A if I have to, but my mind still doesn’t work the way a developer does. And so I think, when communicating a project, for example, if a client’s like, you know, make it pop and as a designer I’m like, okay, I know what they mean even though I don’t know what they mean.
But if you tell a developer something as arbitrary as that, that’s gonna go in one ear and out the other, like you have to be so specific and so straightforward and. So clear. And giving them the what and the where, and the, what you want it to do, and then you gotta let them control the how.
I think. My point is something that it’s , like a control freak kind of issue. On the de designer side, you almost have to give up to the developer that you’re hiring. Is is that how, and I, I bet you have run into this before where you hire a developer and in your head you want it to work this way, but they go about [00:17:00] it a different way.
Totally. Does that drive you nuts? Well, yeah, because they, I’m not talking design. I’m talking actual dev. Okay. We’ll get, we’ll get to design later, but yeah. I remember the original version of mm-hmm. Our mighty header and menu making plugin. Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. The original developer we work with, was so confident that they could do it. Like just so confident that he could do it. And I just assumed that. Okay. Obviously he knows that he’s building, a header menu maker for Divi, so this is going to be in the Divi ecosystem, but I was wrong. Oh. But I was wrong.
And so when you installed the plugin that he had made, it was like. All the controls were outside of Divi to make your header. Then you, oh my gosh, was outside of Divi and there was like all these options for every little thing, but there was no way to see what you were building.
And it was just like, you know what it was, it was function over form. And it was like, yeah. , Which is a big, I mean, that’s, that should have been at the top of the list as well too. Function [00:18:00] over. Yeah. Yep. And I didn’t, design. Here’s what I want the interface to look like.
You gotta do that. I didn’t design that because I was just like, well, he knows it’s in Divi. He’s so confident. And now technically, he had all the settings there. Right. But it was unusable because you, you right. You just, you couldn’t see what you’re building until you had published and you had to go reload the page.
You’d be like, oh, I gotta change all this. It was a nightmare and it was a bummer to have to, I remember the moment when I was testing that first one. I was trying to like, okay, maybe, maybe. But then I was just like, there’s no way. There’s, we have to, there’s no way we have to start over.
Let’s start over. Yeah. Okay. What are the other problems? I think sometimes, there can be scope creep issues because. You know, if you’re hiring the programmer, you kind of become this go-between, between the client and the programmer, maybe unless you let the programmer communicate directly with the client.
But who would do that? No, only, only couple. There’s only like two that would ever let you, that I know, I know there exactly. John and I [00:19:00] both know who we’re talking about. There’s so few programmers we would like communicate directly with our clients. But yeah, for the reason, like this one specifically who I, I got along with great.
This is a different one. This is a, my evil programmer and I knew how to talk to him and communicate with him, but he was the most, just flat line, just blunt. He would offend the crap out of me with absolutely zero intention, you know? And once I figured that out, I, I could communicate with him, but every one of my clients he would’ve talked to would’ve been like, I’m out.
Like he was so condescending. And again, without trying, he had no idea he was like this. But yeah, never in a million years would I let him talk to a client. But he was great at what he did. Uh, you know, communication was not at the top of that list. So oh yeah, scope creep was my point. Because as kind of being that go-between , and then, if you’re giving feedback and it’s like, well, the client was hoping it’d be like this. I’ve had problems before where a programmer will take that and run with it and spend 10 hours on it without [00:20:00] even letting me know, ’cause a lot of times the things that.
That the client thinks are quick and easy, are really not, and vice versa. Sometimes they think, oh, this is gonna be a big deal and it’s real easy. And so anyway, I’ve had scope creep issues with programmers as well. Are there any other problems we need to address? Yeah, I have two more.
One is sometimes they’re so focused on the function aspect that they don’t Oh, yes. They don’t think about how usable it is. So I have an example for this. So, and when you say sometimes that’s being generous because , that’s, it’s usually, so in the current, so the techstar I’m working on, it’s an auction based deal.
And so it’s like, Hey, what do you want the message to be? For the folks that win the auction. And then what do you want the message to be for folks that lose the auction? Okay. And it’s a, and it’s a field, right? And I made the field like bigger, like
I made it look like a paragraph field where you can, you know, but I didn’t put in like the wizzywig controls. I just figured, oh yeah. Okay. It’s a multi-line input box. [00:21:00] All right. And so then we start, I’m not quite sure where this is going yet, but I’m, I’m engaged. We start putting these messages in like the, like, congratulations, you’ve won, blah, blah, blah.
And they’re saving great. They’re saving fine. But then I noticed for some reason, these newer ones that we’re doing, they’re not saving and there’s no error telling me what’s going on. Oh, well, come to find out, the reason why these were failing was because they just used a regular input field, which has a 255 character limit. Oh. We were going over the 255 character limit. It didn’t say anywhere that there was a two zero out of 255 like that wasn’t there. And for like two weeks it was like, why is this not working? And then in the end I’m like, okay, what were you thinking? Like, yeah. But in my head I’m like, yep. But they were thinking of what’s the most efficient and least Right. Consuming way least friction. Yeah. To do this instead of, instead of thinking like, Hey, maybe, [00:22:00] maybe someone is gonna wanna put. You know, a paragraph in there. Yeah. And, uh, they don’t think like that maybe.
No. You know, and then the other thing I have is they only think about how they would do it and that they don’t, and they would know, oh yeah, there’s a 2 55 character limit on that. Well, yeah, we don’t know that. We don’t, the rest of us don’t know that. And then the other thing I put down was, when you do give ’em a design.
And sometimes it’s like, Hey, you see that, that button and that drop shadow, you see how I have it? That was that certain color for a certain reason. Yeah. And then can you see where yours is not even close to what I had. Like, no, they don’t. How can you not, how can you not see that? It’s just like I’ve even had where in my design the button text was bold font capitalized, and then I see what they put and it’s like.
Not bolded and it’s not capitalized, just default. And it’s like, yeah. It’s like, whoa, wait. I, you know, I, and they’re like, it doesn’t matter. I, I mean, I know exactly what they’re thinking. They’re just like, it doesn’t matter. That doesn’t change the function. And I know I’m picky, so I will [00:23:00] like, I would joke you are, he’s so picky. You guys like the funl? The, the, the techstar, it’s called funl, FUNL. But the funl developers, I joke with them and fortunately they will say, oh yeah, this does look a lot better. Yeah. All right, cool. And then on the timeline. Oh, on the timeline one, I’ll say this too. Developers are also really good at making up excuses of why they’re late.
And one thing, oh my gosh. Ones that you can’t argue with, the first time I was a Superfly owner, we were working with this developer, and which we don’t work with anymore. And we were like, Hey, when’s this gonna be done?
It was delay, delay, delay, delay. Mm-hmm. And then finally he wrote back and said, Hey, my cat just died. I’m gonna need like two weeks. I’m gonna be mourning for like two weeks. And it’s like, I wanna be like, send me the picture of the dead cat, or a video. So I know it’s not just sleeping. Like send me a video of the cat not breathing.
Like kick it a couple times. Like, like, yeah. Right. Your cat did not die and you don’t need two weeks to, [00:24:00] to, I mean, losing an animal’s tough. Yes, but the cat one got me. I was like, two weeks. Two weeks. Like, yeah. What this is code for is you haven’t started yet. Yes, exactly. Exactly. I’m not a cat person, but if I lost one of my dogs, I would be devastated, but I would still be working. I mean, that’s just the way life goes. Okay. So let’s talk about best practices for how to collaborate well with a developer. So we just kind of pointed out the problems.
Knowing what we know, how would we move forward working with devs when we have to? To mitigate the issues. I think one big thing is to def define roles clearly. I mean, this is with, this is working with anyone, but to just lay out that scope, who’s in charge of what?
Like, you know, the designer’s in charge of what the thing is, where it’s placed, what it looks like, and then the developer gets to do the how, right? Mm-hmm. But , they have to make it look how it’s supposed to look. You gotta stick with my design. You do your dev. So yeah, clearly [00:25:00] defining roles, I think communication is, is a really, really big one. Obviously around timelines, which are hopeless in my mind, but to just over communicate things, not only about timelines but also, like I was just talking about with, design stuff. Like the problems you ran into with, oh, I, I didn’t specifically say this Divi plugin should be in the Divi framework. Mm-hmm.
Just over communicating those types of things, that might be inherent. To a designer, not to a developer. What else, John, what else are they? Yeah, I wrote down, be clear with them on deadlines in price and also it’s good if you can know enough to maybe kind of check on their work, you know?
Oh, nice. I put, have regular checkups on progress in ETA and if it was the first time I was working with someone, I would probably apologize beforehand, but I’d be like, Hey, I wanna see your progress. Like, show me. Where you’re at. Show me the, show me where you’re at, or if it’s a brand new dev, I think, you know, that you haven’t worked with before.
Start with a [00:26:00] small, simple project in your head anyway. Starting with a smaller thing as opposed to, Hey, we need this entire app, this, you know, multi six figure. Start with something small and make sure that y’all get along and can communicate well. And that goes both ways. I’m sure, you know, I communicate poorly to,
from the developer’s perspective, he probably thinks I’m crazy. You know what I mean? It’s communication styles and just making sure you can at least figure out how to communicate with one another. And you can usually tell after a small project if you’re able to continue working with someone or not.
Yeah. Yeah. You,, You already mentioned, testing and making sure that, you’re checking in , on progress, on each other’s progress even, but. but , don’t assume something’s done and client ready until you’re testing it. And again, you wanna check the progress along the way as opposed to just letting them run the whole thing , and get to the end and be like, oh, dear God, we are so on.
Not the same page. . If I had to work with a new developer now, especially the first [00:27:00] project or two, I would design out what I want the interface to be and then the first, yeah. The first meeting with them before they get started would be, Hey, lemme just, lemme just explain to you how I envision this working.
Yeah. And, I’ll be open to feedback if they have a better way. And that’s happened on the tech startup side. They’re like, well, we could do this, right? And a function that I didn’t even know was possible that they’re like, oh, we could do it this way. And I was like, oh yeah, that’s better.
Okay, fine. Let me redesign that and I’ll send this to you tomorrow. Yeah, treat it like that partnership as opposed to, one person gets all the control over their own piece. , It’s like a collaborative process and you want them, again, if they do have a better idea of a better way of doing it. The way their mind works, if you try to give them the how, their mind will try to make it that way. So if you give them that opportunity to, if you have a better idea or if there’s a better way.
I have another example. So on the startup, it’s a bidding platform. And so let’s say you’re bidding for a ticket. Let’s say you’re bidding, uh, how many in your family? There’s five of you, right? Let’s say you’re bidding on five tickets, and it’s for this VIP for this [00:28:00] artist that you really love.
And so let’s say you’re willing to spend $500 a ticket on this artist. And so in the bidding box, you’d put, my max bid is 500. For five tickets. And then , I had said, Hey, under the bid box, can we have the total, you know, five tickets at $500 equals 2,500 bucks?
It would be $2,500. Yeah. And I, I was just thinking it would be like, smaller, you know, maybe like 16 point fonts. Cause some people don’t get like, oh, is this per ticket or Yeah.
Or is it total, or is it, I’m willing to pay 500 for five tickets, so it’s a hundred dollars a ticket. Right. You know, and so I just wanted a clue, a little clue, a little hint to let ’em know, and I get it back and in like heading font, like probably 30, 30 pixels big, like five tickets times 520, $500.
And I was like, we can’t have, we can’t have the price that big. That looks scary. That looks like, do I really want to do this? I don’t know. It’s 2,500 bucks, right? Look how much 2,500 is, [00:29:00] you know, and but to be fair, I didn’t send over what I wanted. You didn’t, you didn’t explain it.
Great. Yeah. And they thought, they were solving the problem for me, not for the end user. Right? Oh, John’s worried that they won’t get that. It’s five tickets for 2,500, so let’s make that super huge, where it’s like, Hey, I want that.
That’s why they did it. They did it to be like, okay, you wanna see the pro? Fine, fine. Funny guy. Here it is.
Oh, you’re an idiot. Can you, can you see math now? No, I’m kidding. Can you see that? You’re pretty little designer. I mean, that’s a good example. We have lots more of those examples. Anyway, mad respect to developers. I know. We’re like totally. Oh, I’m sure they rail. You know, we, we have our quirks too, de as designers. Uh, yeah. And we understand that we’re, we’re not.
Yeah. We get it [00:30:00] Anyway. I think we need to talk about how to find and keep good developers because they are hard to find and keep, mm-hmm. I’m not sure I have a great solution here. I, I mean. I think true to John and my, overarching theme of partnership , , and your network and, you know, I will always, 10 times out of 10 I’m going to.
Go with a recommendation to me as, as opposed to hunting someone down on my own through Upwork or whatever. But even so, it gets, it gets hard, you know, especially the devs, the great devs that we have used have realized how good they are and then they get really picky about what they’ll take on and then they won’t take on your stuff anymore ’cause it’s not big enough or whatever.
So it is kind of a constant struggle and battle to find those devs. Which makes the pro plugins, I think, even that much more important. Because again, I, I will pick a pro plugin any day so that I don’t have to deal with the broken plugin later that [00:31:00] was custom designed. I have, I know I have found ones that I’ve liked on.
I found one that I liked on Upwork. But that was, whew. That was a swing in a, ’cause I was desperate, ’cause it was a very specific thing. But the other programmers that I’ve worked with that have been great, have all come from recommendations from, and it’s because.
Asking. You know, I will go to John and ask, I know some app developers, I will go to them and ask, and I’ll go back to those same people and be like, Hey, you know, anyone now, or I’ve even put it out on Facebook before on a Facebook post. Like, Hey, my 500 Facebook friends, one of you must know developers somewhere.
So those are the ways I’ve found them. I’m guessing yours is quite similar, John. Yeah, I wrote referrals. I always good. And I was thinking about the two specific developers , that are my go-to. One’s name is Cam. I, I’m pretty sure I met him because I was doing design on an agency project and then he was doing the development and this agency was the client, I think it might have been [00:32:00] Swanson Russell, oh, yes. ’cause he used to work there. He used to work there at Swanson. And I was like, this guy’s amazing. And I remember, oh yes, it’s all coming back to me now. All coming back to me. ‘Cause, I would tell him like, dude, you need to go freelance. Like, you were really good. And then the other guy, Jeremy, I’m pretty sure. I Googled like developers, Midwest, ’cause they’re outta Kansas City. And I just saw their website and I was like, there’s two, there are two brothers.
Small shop. I, I bet they’re good. And their websites were nice. And so I have two. . Criteria one you’re really gonna like. But, any developer that I’ve ever worked with that’s had an eye for a design has been an amazing developer, huge bonus. Yes. Because they get, and that is so rare because they get it because they, they can think like a user and they, yeah.
So I’ve never had a bad experience with a developer that had a good eye for design. I’ve had bad experience with the developers that have a horrible I for design or no, I, for design, not all of ’em, [00:33:00] but, right. The problems that I’ve had have been from developers because of that, that do not have a good I for design.
Yeah. And then one thing I have or that don’t even respect the design or don’t even try to acknowledge it. Right. That’s, I think that’s the bigger, then they, then they respect it. Yeah. And, and it’s gonna be way easier to communicate because they’re gonna Yes. And if they have a good eye for design, if you’re a good designer, they’ll appreciate you too.
Like that. It’s true. The whole, the whole pretentious thing will be there. A mutual perspective. Now, this, one is an assumption and this is a stereotype. I would bet that you might have better.
Success with a female developer. Actually, I’m working with her right now on the tech startup. I’m working with one right now and she’s great. One of the developers is a female and she’s great and , she asked me stuff. Very collaborative. Amazing. , So yeah. Yeah.
No, I’ve said that to John so often. Yeah. Yeah. When we’ve been looking for developers, I’m like, man, I just wish I could find a girl one because they’re better at communication in general. In general. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Female developers, if you’re listening, hit me up. I would [00:34:00] love to work with you. So yeah, communication, respect on both sides. I know we were kind of disrespectful today to developers, but Yeah. It was all in good fun.
You can hate on us anytime. We’ll take it. I have more stories from working with other designers too, so. Oh my gosh. Me too. Me too, me too. When I first went freelance, there was this big project and they had a designer doing all the designing and Photoshop, and then they had a hardcore backend devs, like building in like c plus or whatever it was. Oh geez. And then they needed, they needed me to take the designs from the designer.
Code them up in H Tm, L and CSS and then pass it on to the backend developers. Okay. That’s a scary place. And so, this designer, number one, he would touch my screen. , Which is, which I, I don’t like. I don’t like that. I don’t like that when someone takes their greasy fingers and touches my computer string.
But he would go, he would tell me stuff that he wants done. That wasn’t my job. It was the back. He’d be like, okay, yeah, when this shows up, I want it to go. [00:35:00] Boop. Like he would make noises like that and I’d be like, yeah, hey, that’s cool, but that’s, that’s the backend people job.
Like that’s what they’re gonna noise. So then, so then we, and the way, oh man, this drove me nuts. The way we had it set up was there was a Dropbox folder and it was called, I was like, Hey, when, when you have a design done, put it in the Dropbox folder. Okay. So he starts putting big designs in there. I start working on them.
Cool. And then I notice one day I kid you not, you’re think this is made up. I had noticed a final folder inside the Dropbox folder that he had put other Photoshop files in. So then all of a sudden this final folder shows up and he starts putting some of the same name Photoshop files that I’ve already worked on in this final folder.
And they’re different. From the ones that I had that I worked on already. And so I’m like, okay, whatever. Maybe just some minor updates. So I do a couple, uh, well then he keeps putting them in there and I’m like, ah. And then I kid you not then I notice a final final folder.
Final, final. It was named final, final. Alongside [00:36:00] the final. So you had final folder, and then you had final. Final. And he started putting stuff in there and it was just minor stuff. So I’m like, okay, whatever. Not worth it. Like, and I’d be like, well, I would say, Hey, are you sure? So I’m like, so the, the final, final folder, right?
Not, not the final folder, the final. Final. What about final? Final, final, you know, no, the last one, the last folder that showed up was, and on a map, you can even choose the color of the label, what the folder is. So he chose a yellow. Yellow label for this folder, and in all caps it said gold standard. Oh. And I was like, I was like, bro, you gotta stop.
I’m like, once something goes in the gold standard, that’s it. That’s the end of the train ride. Like, well, they shouldn’t even be going into the folder at all until they were final. I agree. I, I agree. And you know what? He’s an amazing designer. He’s amazing. He’s amazing at it. But I remember thinking this is probably what looking like Steve Jobs is like, , ’cause he was so good. Yeah, I remember and I remember. This camaraderie between me [00:37:00] as the front end dev and the backend guy. Just, I’m, I’m, I’d be like, look at this.
Look at it. You know, like, and, and we would just like bad talk him. ’cause I’m like, this is ridiculous. Like, I never, so, so you were siding with the backend dev. Okay. I was, I find that fascinating. So there was a designer, designer. And then a front end designer. And then a backend developer. Yep. Like that’s, that’s a full house man.
I don’t know how I would full stack. Full stack that. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of, that’s a lot of egos. Oh, man. That’s awesome. Well everyone, thanks for tuning in. Joining us today. As we talk about all things developers and developers, we do love you. Be sure to check out be superfly.com where you can check out some of our products and courses, learn how you can break away from your daily grind, and join us as freelance web designer, four developers.
Cheers y’all.
Uh, touche. Great, [00:38:00] great, great. I forgot about the guy. I forgot.