As a designer, how do you find a developer when you want to launch your own project? Do you have enough personal connections to just find collaborators easily? Or have you tried hiring someone via oDesk or other platforms?

Everyone I've worked with started with a personal connection. I think you have to have that first to collaborate. And I do believe working with a developer is a collaboration. I think you need to work with people who have similar tastes as you. Whether that's in programming, design, quality, or life in general. I've been fortunate to work in a Coworking group in Greenville, SC called CoWork where everyone does have similar tastes. And I have some guys that are good friends that are my go-to developers. And we work great together.

This is a hard one. I know many great devs, but most of them are too tied up to help me out with my own stuff. As well, I've gone down the hiring route and that didn't pan out either. If it's not a full-time "real" job it's pretty tough to get someone good.

My solution (still in progress, so the jury is out) is to learn how to program and re-up my own dev skills. If you can't get someone to help on your passion projects, DIY.

It's been fun so far, but I've a long way to go before I can tackle one of my own projects. Still, it's helped quite a bit in my day job, so there's an ancillary benefit.

I think most designers love learning. Learning to program is fun and can make you a better, more valuable, designer. So there's that. :)

I would love to hear more people chime in on this. So far I have mostly been not so successful at this. I know a lot of great engineers, but most of them are busy doing their own thing or with the work.
The other big hurdle is that if I am collaborating with someone I would really want the person to have similar taste, approach to life and goals. This last point is really important to me. Probably more than the skills, to be honest. The other hurdle is I like to do few things and do them well, which means I am never looking for collaboration on small one off projects. So it becomes all the more hard.

For now the best solution I have found is to learn programming.

I wonder if developers approach designers that (at least attempted to) learn programming with more sympathy. Maybe that not only helps you get your project off the ground, but also increases your chances of finding a collaborator.

+1 Cemre.

I'm in the same boat, I've also realized that coding my own projects is the most direct way to seeing them get off the ground.

I have never come across a good developer that also has free time to spend on somebody else's projects. The ones I know are either too busy with client work, or working on projects of their own.

I've tried hiring freelancers, but hiring somebody good requires a lot of money, so unless you have $10000 lying around it will probably not work out.

In theory you *can* hire cheaper freelancers for a couple thousand bucks, but if you're not a developer yourself you really need to be lucky to find someone good at that price.

I've also tried exchanging design time for coding time. That can work, but it's a pain if you're not also interested in the other person's project.

Lastly, apart from simply coding yourself, the only way I successfully got to collaborate with great developers was by starting my own open source project (telesc.pe).

So if there's any way you can open-source your project, do it. Paradoxically, it seems easier to find people willing to help you out for free on an open source project than collaborators for a commercial enterprise.

Probably because when you say you're going to build the next Facebook and get rich, nobody believes you ;)

I bet developers commonly ask the opposite question.

I think the simple answer is to try to get to regular meet-ups where developers are going to be. Be part of the developer community. Spend time understanding their part in building great software — most engineers enjoy designers who have a good understanding of their role.

Above all, if you want a partner for a project, ensure they are a partner — they should share a similar motivation, should share royalties, and they should be able to contribute ideas. If you just want someone to build *your* thing without being able to take some ownership, you’ll probably struggle.

I've had a rough time finding developers in Nicaragua to work with me at Marca Labs (I want Nicaraguan talent right now), but I found the best way was to organize (very) informal meetups at coffee shops or happy hour spots. Informal convo led to shared interests and to working relationships, usually progressing from a one-off project test to a recurring freelance role. The main things soft skills I look out for during that one-off project test is reliability and communication skills. Hope that helps?

I love the quote in this article; can totally associate with it.

“You need to learn to sing. Because if you don’t, you’re always going to be at the mercy of some asshole singer.”

sivers.org

I don't trust most people, so I learned how to build stuff myself.

Every once in a while I meet an engineer that knows what they're doing and knows how to build things with a really high quality/polish bar, and I keep those people on tap for future projects. Most of the time though, I operate alone.

Everything Justin said with the following tweak:

I don't trust most people's skills and taste (I know that makes me sound arrogant and rude), so I am learning how to build stuff myself.

I had the same problem but the other way round, I was (am) a developer with plenty of ideas and no design skills. So luckily, I managed to get talking to some designers on Twitter who were interested in collaborating. These designers are now the designers I trust to produce pure quality every time. By working with them each time, I slowly managed to learn from them and see why/how they did things. And now (not sounding arrogant) I can hold my own when designing. However, I will still call upon them when I have a larger project and need to focus more on developing.

I think it's easier for a developer to find a designer than the other way around.

As a designer, I can reasonably invest 5 hours of my time in a project and produce something decent. Hell, I've even done a landing page design in one hour and it converted 400,000 people (codeyear.com).

On the other hand, even the simplest possible development project usually takes more time than that. So it's a much bigger time investment on the developer's part (or money investment for the designer).

Finding a right partner for your start-up and finding a good developer to work with are, I think, so far the toughest things in start-up world.
Years ago, when I started my web design, development firm, I had to learn PHP in my search for a good developer and get the job done myself.

If you have read Jason Fried's REWORK, there's one thing he suggests that I follow blindly - Hire someone for a job that you have yourself done first.

I have collaborated with many devs and have been disappointed too! There has to be a sense of ownership and accountability missing in them, which could also be my fault when I look back now.

Learning is never a bad thing. Do it.