Freelancer contracts
Hi all,
I'm a full stack developer working on a bootstrapped product since a few weeks full time. I've reached a place where I now need some help with certain features of the web application I'm building and am interested in hiring a freelancer for the same.
I already have a list of people I'd like to request , so sourcing freelancers will not be an issue. However, I'm not sure about what kind of paperwork one should engage in with freelancers. I'm mostly concerned about protecting my source code.
What kind of contracts do you sign with freelancers working on your code?
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Hi Raunaq,
I'm a freelance/contract based software engineer. Generally, when someone asks me to do some freelance work for them, I'll send over a contract for them to sign with my daily rate, timeframe, handing over Intellectual Property and ownership to them for anything I build etc.
It is important to read through these contracts that you receive and check them for important clauses. This is a good laymans guide to the sort of stuff you should be looking for:
https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/contracts/protect-yourself-with-these-contract-samples/
As the employer, you may want your freelancer/contractor to agree to some terms based specifically around your idea, product or domain. For example, a non-disclosure agreement if it's sensitive. Even speaking from a contractors perspective, I think it would be a little reckless to produce any legally binding documents like this without input from a legal professional.
TLDR; I like to think (hope?) most people have integrity and can be trusted, but better safe than sorry. If you aren't sure or are hesitant, pay the money and ask a legal professional to help you draw up a contract based around the conditions that YOU want. There are plenty of templates online for this sort of stuff, but there are too many variables to just guess or hope for the best if you are unsure.
Best of luck with your business!
Hi Martin,
Thanks for the information and your wishes. Do you mind sharing your area of expertise and the stack you work on?
Thanks again.
Sure, no problem. I'm a full stack web developer who specialises in the modern front end stack (React, Redux, SSR, etc) but I'm comfortable working with any JS (vanilla or frameworks). I have quite a bit of server side experience with Ruby/Rails, Python and Node and I like to work on cloud based applications so I love working with AWS on the devops side of things as well.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
Apart from requiring an NDA , I am not sure what other agreements you may require. Checkout https://www.pandadoc.com/templates/ , you get a ton of contract templates which you can edit accordingly and use.