Prelude Interactive

Amounts paid to Contractors - 2009

It’s one of our core beliefs that all the effort which goes into building data systems is wasted unless you are prepared to study and learn from what you collect.  Thus, it was well past time we started drinking our own Kool-aid ® in this regard.

The above graph charts the dollar amounts paid to Prelude Interactive contractors throughout the year.  Color and X-axis labels are absent, of course, but I will share that contractors were about 21% of the revenue we brought in, and full time staff (moi!) were around 54%. Actually, I think Prelude became Dark Green’s primary source of income starting in October, which is interesting.

SamaSource is dark pink.  oDesk is the avacado green/yellow at the top of October’s peak.  Together they comprise 10 distinct contractors, so all told we worked with at least 20 other people this year.

Why do we refer to ourselves as we?  It’s a good habit to be in when, as you see starting in July, contractors started having a huge role in Prelude’s output.  It’s safe to say that at this point the business would not be possible without them.

Can we learn anything from this graph?  It tells an accurate picture of the year, I think.  May and the start of June were a long vacation, and to achieve that I really had to ramp down and get back going again through the summer.  In September I wrote “Say No To New Projects!” on my whiteboard.  In early December I wrote it again, bigger, and more in my line of sight.

It took a long time to learn how to use contractors effectively.  Giving up control is hard.  Not doing everything yourself is hard.  Spending 30 minutes documenting something that would take you 30 minutes to do doesn’t make sense at first, but if you’re handing it off to someone who can do it better, now and down the road, it starts to.

I would not have been able to handle any of the major projects this year solo.  My role is no longer that of a PHP/SalesForce/MySQL programmer, but an assembler and planner of resources, a project manager.   I am deeply indebted to (not literally), and highly appreciative of each of the individual colors of the mismatched rainbow above.

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