Hiring electrical engineer

bdaa6eb6 · ‎10-10-2017

I am hiring electrical engeer and I have tough time to select right engineer person since I am not tech person at all.

1st candidate can do the task for 1 week and 2nd candidate do it for 2 months.

Why one takes only 1 week and the other take 2 months to make same device? The bellow is schedule of 2nd one.

1. assembly of the prototype, writing the basic firmware, development of the protocol - 2-3 weeks.
2. Prototype testing and fine tuning - 1-2 weeks
3. Order the required modules and receive them - 3-4 weeks
4. Build two devices and send them to you 1-2 weeks.

To me, above looks quite reasonable, but then I don't understand how the 1st one can do all for 1 week.

I will move forward to sample production which should be exactly same as real product in near future. But for now, I just need a prototype which just show it's function.

Why you take 1 week and the other take 2 months to make same device?
I will make samples which should be exactly same as real product. But for now, I just need a prototype which just show it's function.
Does the other guy try to make samples?Why you take 1 week and the other take 2 months to make same device?
I will make samples which should be exactly same as real product. But for now, I just need a prototype which just show it's function.
Does the other guy try to make samples?

prestonhunter · ‎10-10-2017

Are you asking us why two different people are not identical?

Every freelancer on Upwork is different.

If you want to know how these freelancers will work out, you need to hire them and find out. There is no way we can tell you ahead of time.

lysis10 · ‎10-11-2017

This post really scares me. Electricity can kill people and things.

prestonhunter · ‎10-13-2017

re: "Electricity can kill people and things."

Which is why it makes sense to hire people on Upwork to do this kind of work... If you hire people who live and work far enough away from you, you won't get zapped if they connect a wire the wrong way.

lysis10 · ‎10-13-2017

lol that's true. No lawsuits when some guy in a far off land zaps a bunch of people cuz he put a masters degree in his profile of course.

tta192 · ‎10-16-2017

@Preston H wrote:
re: "Electricity can kill people and things."

Which is why it makes sense to hire people on Upwork to do this kind of work... If you hire people who live and work far enough away from you, you won't get zapped if they connect a wire the wrong way.

Actually, they're just sending a picture of how YOU will connect the wire yourself.

I bet you need to pay in advance, too!

hilltechnology · ‎10-13-2017

Mainly I come to the community page for the laughs.

"Remote Electrical work" that just sounds scary. People have a hard time rebooting a cable box over the phone. I can just imagine rewiring a generator or anything electrical.

avaselaar · ‎11-30-2017

This might be a little late, but I have an opinion!

As with anything engineering, "it depends" applies here.

If you're designing from scratch; 2 months might be reasonable depending on the complexity of the project.

On the other hand, many designs in EE are reusable, and if the 1 week candidate already had something sitting on the shelf that would fit your project, then 1 week might also be reasonable. But, they should probably tell you that they're reusing something.

For these kinds of projects, I would suggest paying a potential engineer for at least 8 hours of work to put together a detailed proposal that lays out exactly how they intend to approach your project. There are a ton of details to be understood when planning a project that can really be a headache later if they aren't fleshed out at the beginning (ie things like power consumption, GPIO pin assignments and anything analog). As a bonus, you also get a preview of what kind of work they do, which is extremely useful given the duration of some electrical projects.

dyumnin · ‎12-12-2017

For me the 2 months quote looks reasonable, but Remember Step #3 he is just waiting for parts to be delivered so that month does not count for payment purposes.