Solit 2014, Freelance and Nearshoring from a Dutch Perspective, Peter Reitsma

www.plance.nl

Peter Reitsma

www.plance.nl

Speaking about

Myself

Freelancing in Netherlands

Nearshoring from Netherlands

My Nearshoring projects

My Company

www.plance.nl

Netherlands

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Netherlands

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Netherlands

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Netherlands

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Rotterdam

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Rotterdam

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Rotterdam

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My Street

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My Office

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study nuclear Physics in Delft University1991 - 1997

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work at Oracle Netherlands 1999-2001

SQL

PL/SQL

RDBMS

FormsDesigner

JDBCJSPJava

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work at Finalist java company 2001-2006

Java

Hibernate

HTML

CSSStruts

JDBCJSPJEE

MySQL

Ant

Maven

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in 2006 start work as Freelancer

HTML5

PHPJavaRuby-on-Rails

JDBC

JSP CSS3Javascript

XUL

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What is Freelancer in Netherlands?

freelancer == one person company

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Benefits for freelancer

No Boss!

No things like hour registration, review processes, politics, internal bureaucracy

Choose you own tools and technologies

No costs for salesguy, manager, office building etc.

more happiness!

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Benefits for freelancer

Tax reduction for car, telephone, computer

Tax reduction for small companies

Tax reduction for starting companies (till 3 years)

No costs for salesguy, manager, office building etc.

higher earnings!

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Challenges for freelancer

More paperwork, bureaucracy

No colleagues to ask for help Proof that you are a real company!

Find (online) administrator

Stackoverflow

> 1200 hours/year> 3 customers/year should be marketing and risk

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Challenges for freelancer

How to find good customers and interesting work?

your own network, people you know online market places

hiring sites

intermediary companies

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Intermediary Company = Agency = Broker

= InBetween = BodyShoppers

= Sourcer = Recruiter

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Intermediary Companies

freelancers can subscribe create pools of CV’s make lot of phone calls make contracts with big companies take margin forever sometimes provide extra services

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Overview Website

www.opdrachtaanbieders.nl

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Happy Flow Hiring Process

1. agency guy calls

2. you send CV

3. you go to intake conversation

4. you get contract!

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Statistics

Netherlands:

- population: 16,8 million - working people: 7,3 million - IT sector: ~300.000 - freelancers: 780.000 - IT freelancers: ~ 50.000

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More and more freelancers in NL

• freelancers are better motivated and skilled• greater flexibility with freelancers• our society gets more individualistic• freelancers do self-organize • freelancers have unions that lobby • companies start direct hiring of freelancers, without intermediary company

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reasons for growth

• freelancers are better motivated and skilled• greater flexibility with freelancers• our society gets more individualistic• freelancers do self-organize • freelancers have unions that lobby • companies start direct hiring of freelancers, without intermediary company

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Future...

-> Talent can be more easily found through internet

-> IT knowledge becomes more easily available

-> Transactions, administration, dealmaking, insurance become available as web services

-> Collaboration becomes more easy

More opportunities for Freelancers to take control!

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My Freelance Jobs

2007 - Insurance Company – Oracle/Java/Struts/Javascript

2008 - Marketing Company – JEE/JBPM

2009 – KPN Dutch Telecom – BPM Processes Design

2010 – Startup ValuedProfessionals.nl – Product Owner

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Why nearshoring?

-> not enough developers in NL-> developers too expensive-> not too much timezone difference-> two/three hours flight-> not too much cultural difference

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What is wrong with India and China?

-> bigger cultural difference-> unable to say “no”-> long distance, different timezone-> more effort needed to explain

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Nearshoring countries for NL

Newer EU countries:-> Chech Republic, Poland

Old but ‘poor’ EU countries:-> Spain, Portugal, Greece

Newest EU countries:-> Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia,

Outside EU countries:

-> Ukraine, Belarus, Russia

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But also....Netherlands colony:-> Antilles

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and....Previous colony:-> Suriname

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and....-> State of Palestine

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NL Nearshoring Companies

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How did I start with Nearshoring?

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My Hobby: Автостоп

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в Кузбассе

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in Taiga

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на товарняке

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in newspaper

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in Minsk

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what projects?-> Firefox browser extension with A. Grakou-> Java JBoss Seam app with devs from Minsk-> Website Flash2HTML.NL with devs from Kiev-> Flash -> HTML conversion of Floorbase.nl -> Web App and Back-end for Dutch Rail-> Remote team coaching-> Lots of websites and webshops, design and development-> Test automation with XML2Selenium, JazzTeam

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what collaboration models ?

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Peter

Team

Functional Specs

Functional Specs

QAQA

Customer communication

Customer communication

Find Customer and Project

Find Customer and Project

for small projectsTechnical

DesignTechnical

Design

DevelopmentDevelopmentTestingTesting

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small projects Fixed price

No fixed date, too hard

QA done by me

WebDesign can be problematic

Online collaboration tool like Basecamp, Google Docs

Weekly progress meeting

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Peter

Team

Functional Specs

Functional Specs

QAQA

Customer communication

Customer communication

Find Customer and Project

Find Customer and Project

for big projectsTechnical

DesignTechnical

Design

DevelopmentDevelopmentTestingTesting

www.plance.nl

big projects Not fixed price, price per iteration

More management and communication needed Need for agile methodology: Scrum

QA, Testing automated as much as possible (XML2Selenium)

Online collaboration tools like Pivotal Tracker, InVision, Jira, GitHub

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Lessons learned

Scrum very useful in offshore project

Always be open/online for communication

Retrospective/Evaluation maybe most important

Smartly divide work between local and remote

Work on trust and long term relations

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Smart division of work

divide work along components with API contract.

make specification by tests (unit, FitNesse)

have one senior team-member on-premise with customer

try to have sprint demo with entire team

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Plance Propositon for customers

Nearshore IT Staffing

Nearshore Agile Team

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Plance Propositon for Belarusian IT Freelancers

Get into contact with me if you are interested in working for dutch customer.

I would like to know you and discuss possibilites!

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Plance Propositon for Netherlands IT Freelancers

Get into contact with me if you are interested in working with great Belarusian IT Teams!

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Plance Propositon for Belarusian IT Companies

Get into contact with me if you need local help with dutch or german customers!

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соединяйтесь!

IT freelancers всех стран

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Plance Propositon for Belarusian IT Companies

Get into contact with me if you need local help with dutch or german customers!

www.plance.nl

Future looks bright!

Even during crisis, shortage of developers, now economy growing again. IT sector keeps growing, software is everywhere Collaboration tools improve World becomes more global

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More information:

www.plance.nl - company

010-vladok.reitsma.ru - автостоп

www.opdrachtaanbieders.nl – посредники

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Thanks!

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Questions?