Cost of Hiring a Full Team

Hiring a Full Team

Building a full team to develop the project is the hardest and most expensive part of all. Before we go into the development team, let’s talk about the problems in hiring developers. Choosing the right tech stack is extremely important not only for the scalability of the app but also for building the team.

We at Voxyard regularly run studies on the development job market to understand the supply and demand. React Native and Flutter are very high in demand for hybrid development than the supply of good developers is lower than demand. The same goes for NodeJS developers where the supply is lower than demand. Crazy salaries are being paid by companies to attract good talents. This is due to the increased number of startups which is being funded by Venture Capitalists which raised huge funds and these startups are offering a very high salary for developers. This leaves us no chance but to increase and adapt to the market.

This is a very huge driving cost in any app development project. You also might have to mitigate issues of members leaving your team and you must have backup developers who are willing to work with you. Any good development team needs at least one HR Manager who keeps sourcing and interviewing developers out there to keep an eye on opportunities to hire good developers. This point might look irrelevant, but a big part of in-house development fails because of not having enough developers or not having the right developers or developers leaving the team during crucial times, do not underestimate this issue, this may even bring the project to failure.

Once you have planned the requirements of your projects, you need to identify the type of developers required to work on your project. There are 2 ways you can build a mobile app, native app development, and hybrid app development.

Quality of the source code

Maintaining a good and clean source codes is very important for the long term of any software. Often time, we will get inquiries from companies who already have web applications or mobile apps built internally or by another outsourced software development vendor and we always audit the source codes of projects before taking over. We are almost certain we would stumble upon very bad and poorly written codes which will resulting we not able to pick up the project.

The sad thing is these clients paid hundreds of thousands of ringgit to outsource their development. This is a problem since the clients only see what’s happening in front and not how it is made behind the scene. There was a time we took over a project from another company and the client asked us to add a very simple module which usually takes one or two days. While doing the works, we encountered a lot of issues on the code, ends up taking more than a week to do so.

Team Costs

Lets talk about the people we will need and their salary range in our team to handle the project. Their salary may vary depending on their experience, skills set they have, and etc.

1. App Developer

Assuming the project will be develop using Flutter (Hybrid development).
Flutter is new technology by Google on May 2017.

Fresh graduate Level with zero Experience
RM 3,000 – RM 4,000

Junior Level:
1-2 Years Experience in Flutter
RM 3,500 – RM 6,000

Middle Level:
3-6 Years Experience in Mobile App Development
Plus 1-2 Years Experience Flutter
RM 6,000.00 – RM 12,000.00

Senior Level:
7 Years and above Experience in Mobile App Development
Plus 2-4 Years Experience Flutter
RM 10,000.00 – RM 20,000.00

Companies out there who are willing to pay more for these similar positions but it depends on the applicants themselves. If you have an applicant who has 2 years of Flutter development experience but 6 total years of experience in software development in other languages/frameworks, then you might need to pay more in this case, if he/she has native mobile app (ios/android) development experience, you will need to pay even more.

If you have an applicant who has 2 years of Flutter experience since he starts on Flutter right after college, then this person’s salary might be lower than the applicant above.

A lot of app projects usually consist of 2 or 3 apps. For example, if you are going to build a food delivery app, you will need to build a user app for users to order food, a merchant app for the seller to list their food and receive orders, and a rider app for riders to get jobs and deliver food. This kind of project will require a minimum of at least 2 app developers to handle the work load.

2. Web Backend Developer

The project will need a web backend developer to write the Backend system and the APIs. Here you need to really make a very important decision since the backend will be the brain of your app.

You can use many different frameworks/languages to make the web backend, such as PHP Laravel, NodeJS, Java, .Net, etc. Each backend framework/language has its own pros and cons. PHP with Laravel is our choice on the backend framework because of the scalability and reliability it is providing.

Fresh graduate Level with zero Experience
RM 3,000 – RM 4,000

Junior Level:
1-3 Years Experience
RM 4,000 – RM 8,000

Middle Level:
3-6 Years Experience
RM 7,000.00 – RM 12,000.00

Senior Level:
7 Years and above Experience
RM 12,000.00 and above

You will need a really experienced backend developer for an app project because he must be able to quickly understand the requirements and put them in a logical flow. A good backend developer will think and develop in a way where when a large number of people trying to use your app, there won’t be any issues.

You also need to ensure your backend developer also knows some DevOps to set up the server and do the deployment. You probably won’t need a DevOps Engineer on your team for the beginning stage.

3. Web Frontend Developer

Every app also has a web admin panel that is used for management purposes. Every time user or seller sign up, you can see their information on the panel where you can do changes if you want. You can see all the transactions that took place on the transaction list, all the orders, and who are buying what. You can see whatever going through in the eCommerce in the admin panel with analytics and statistics.

You will need a front-end developer to build an admin panel. There are many languages/frameworks you can use to build a web front-end. ReactJS, VueJS, Core HTML CSS JS and etc.

Fresh graduate level with zero Experience
RM 3,000 – RM 4,000

Junior Level:
1-3 Years Experience
RM 4,000 – RM 8,000

Middle Level:
3-6 Years Experience
RM 7,000.00 – RM 12,000.00

Senior Level:
7 Years and above Experience
RM 12,000.00 and above

You will need a really experienced backend developer for an app project because he must be able to quickly understand the requirements and put them in a logical flow. A good backend developer will think and develop in a way where when a large number of people trying to use your app, there won’t be any issues.

You also need to ensure your backend developer also knows some DevOps to set up the server and do the deployment. You probably won’t need a DevOps Engineer on your team for the beginning stage.

4. Team Lead

An experienced developer who is able to understand the business requirements, very well versed with both front end (web/app) and backend development will really ensure the success of your project. Not having one is a big risk to the project.

5-10 Years Experience
RM 10,000.00 – RM 20,000.00

10 Years and above Experience
RM 18,000.00 and above

There will be some experienced app or backend developer who wants to take up the team lead role. Many times what happens is that this person’s time will be occupied in doing the development works and how is this person going to be able to review codes from other members and guide and execute the development based on the project? The focus will not be on managing the project. This is a cost-saving mechanism most companies with in-house developers do, but it only works for very few.

Team lead also should be someone who must be able to guide the developers in case of any issues in the codes or unable to find a solution to fit the requirements.

5. UI/UX Designer

You will need to make sure to design the full UI of the entire app before you even start the development. This will make sure the members involved in the development project know how the app will work and the app developer’s works will be easy if the UI is handed over to him in the early stage.

Fresh graduate Level with zero Experience
RM 3,000 – RM 4,000

Junior Level:
1-2 Years Experience
RM 3,500 – RM 6,000

Middle Level:
3-6 Years Experience
RM 6,000.00 – RM 8,000.00

Senior Level:
7 Years and above Experience
RM 8,000.00 – RM 12,000.00

Usually the project won’t require a full-time UI designer, you can hire one on a contract basis or outsource which might cost you around RM 120.00 - RM 200.00 per screen.

An average app has around 40-50 screens, which brings to the cost of RM 5,000.00 to RM 10,000.00.

Mobile App Development Team Cost

After we understand how many team members we need in the team, we can roughly estimate the cost for the development team monthly basis.

Assuming the project will be a middle level size project which required middle level of skill sets, we will have the following members as minimum requirements:

• 1 Middle Level App Developer: RM 8,000.00
• 1 Middle Level Web Backend Developer: RM 10,000.00
• 1 Middle Level Web Frontend Developer: RM 7,000.00
• 1 Team Lead with 6 years experience: RM 12,000.00

Estimated monthly cost would be around RM 37,000.00 per month.

There are possibility that the project might need more talents, so do keep that in mind that this should be a bare minimum cost estimation.

Other talent you might need would be business analyst, QA, tester, copy writer, support, project manager, and etc. We will leave this out for now.

Assuming the project will outsource or hire one UI/UX Designer on a contract basis the cost would be between RM 4,000.00 to RM 10,000.00.

Equipment Cost & Work Place Necessity Items

Your team will need a place and equipments such as computer, software to work on the project, so lets take that into consideration as well.

Since nowadays we can work remotely, lets skip the office, assuming your team will be working remotely, which save you a lot of money initially and long term. However, you will still need to purchase minimum equipments, software, and pay allowance for the team to work remotely such as electricity and internet access.

• 4x MacBook Pro 13" - RM 5,599.00 = RM 22,396.00
  (Cheapest MacBook Pro 13" as of 2021 December)
• Other accessories - External monitors, adapters, mouses, keyboards, etc.
  RM 10,000 - RM 20,000.00
• Software Rough Cost - RM 2,000.00 to RM 4,000.00
  (Some one off, and some subscription basis)
• Allowance for their electricity and internet
  RM 1,500.00 - RM 3,000.00 per month

Estimated starting purchase cost would be around RM 30,000.00 to RM 45,000.00.
Estimated monthly cost for allowance would be around RM 1,500.00 to RM 3,000.00 per month.

Additionally - Office Work Place

If you need the team to work at office, you will need to rent an office with equipments setup for the team to work in.

Based on location, the rental cost may vary. Depends on different office setup, the cost may vary. A rough estimation would be around RM 1,500.00 to RM 2,500.00 per month for rental.

Then RM 30,000.00- RM 50.000.00 for very basic office equipments initial setup, such as air conditioner, tables, chairs, printer, modem router, water dispenser, power adaptors, coffee machine, light, and etc.

There are also monthly cost to maintain the office, supplies, internet, water dispenser/coffee machine servicing, part time cleaning service, toilet paper, pens, paper, file, and etc. Lets just say around RM 2,000.00 to RM 4,000.00.

We will leave this part for you to calculate the cost as different situation the costs may vary.

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