Red Flags When Hiring External Development Teams

You've decided to hire external developers. Maybe your internal team is underwater, or you need specialized expertise, or you're trying to accelerate a critical project. Whatever the reason, the decision to bring in outside help is sound—but the execution often isn't.

I've been on both sides of this equation for 15 years. Here are the red flags that predict failure before the contract is signed.

Red Flag #1: They Promise Everything

What you hear: "Of course we can do that. We've done dozens of .NET migrations. Umbraco? No problem. React? We're experts. We can definitely hit that timeline."

What it means: They're not evaluating risk—they're closing a sale. Good consultants push back on unrealistic timelines and highlight risks upfront. If they're not pointing out potential problems during the sales process, they're either inexperienced or dishonest.

What to ask: "What's the biggest risk to this timeline?" and "What assumptions would need to be true for this estimate to hold?"

If they can't articulate specific risks, walk away.

Red Flag #2: You Never Meet the Actual Team

What you see: Smooth-talking sales rep and maybe a VP of Engineering. Great presentation, impressive credentials on the company website.

What it means: The people you're talking to won't be the ones writing code. You'll get whoever is available, often junior developers from offshore teams who are still learning the technology stack.

What to demand: "I want to meet the actual developers who will be on my project before signing anything."

If they resist this, you already know the answer. The team they showed you in the sales pitch isn't the team you're getting.

Red Flag #3: They Pad the Team Without Justification

What they propose: "We'll need a project manager, a senior architect, three developers, a QA specialist, a DevOps engineer, and a business analyst."

What it means: They're optimizing for billable hours, not for getting your project done. A focused team of 2-3 skilled developers can often move faster than a 8-person team spending half their time in coordination meetings.

What to ask: "Walk me through why we need each of these roles and what specifically they'll be doing."

If the answer is vague or defensive, they're padding the team.

Red Flag #4: The Contract Is All Their Liability Protection

What you read: Pages of limitations, caveats, and clauses about what they're not responsible for. Very little about what they are committing to deliver.

What it means: They've been burned before because they don't deliver, and they've crafted a contract to protect themselves from the consequences.

What to look for: Specific deliverables, acceptance criteria, and remedies if they fail to deliver. The contract should protect both parties, not just them.

Red Flag #5: They're Invisible Between Signing and Starting

What happens: You sign the contract. Then... silence. Two weeks later they're "ramping up." Another week to "get familiar with the codebase."

What it means: They oversold their capacity and are scrambling to assemble a team. Or they're juggling too many clients and you're not actually a priority.

What to demand: "What happens in the first week?" Get a specific plan before signing. If they can't start immediately or within a few days, they don't have actual capacity.

Red Flag #6: They Don't Ask Hard Questions

What's missing: Questions about your deployment process, technical debt, team dynamics, stakeholder alignment, or why the last vendor failed.

What it means: They're not trying to understand the actual problem—they're just trying to get hired and figure it out later.

What you should hear: "Who owns this project internally?" "What happened with the last attempt?" "Where's the technical documentation?" "What's your risk tolerance?"

If they're not asking questions that make you slightly uncomfortable, they're not thinking deeply about your problem.

Red Flag #7: Junior Developers on Senior Rates

What happens: You're paying $200/hour but the code reviews reveal junior-level mistakes, basic architecture problems, and a lot of "learning on the job."

What it means: They're billing you senior rates while training their junior staff.

What to do: Demand profiles and portfolios upfront. Interview the actual developers. Check their GitHub or Stack Overflow profiles. If they won't share this information, that's your answer.

Red Flag #8: They Disappear When Problems Arise

What happens: Things are going great during the easy parts. Then you hit a complex problem, and suddenly they're "looking into it" for days or weeks. Response times get slower. Progress stops.

What it means: They don't actually have the expertise they claimed. They're Googling solutions or hoping the problem resolves itself.

How to test this: Ask a hard technical question during the interview. "How would you handle eventually consistent data in a distributed system?" A real expert will talk through tradeoffs. A fake will give buzzwords.

Red Flag #9: Scope Creep on Day One

What they say: "Well actually, to do what you want, we'll need to refactor this entire module first. That's additional scope."

What it means: They underbid to win the contract, and now they're trying to increase the budget through scope expansion.

What to establish: Clear scope in writing with explicit examples. "Moving the login flow from Framework to Core" means exactly that—not "rebuilding the entire authentication system."

Red Flag #10: No Transition Plan

What's missing: Any discussion of knowledge transfer, documentation, or how your team will maintain the code after they're gone.

What it means: They plan to become a permanent dependency. Every change will require calling them back, and they know it.

What to demand: "What's the handoff plan?" There should be documentation, code reviews with your team, and a deliberate transfer of knowledge.

Green Flags to Look For

Since we've covered what to avoid, here's what good consultants do:

• They ask more questions than they answer in the first meeting
• They show you real code samples from similar projects
• They're honest about what they don't know
• They recommend solutions that reduce future dependency on them
• They have references you can actually call (and those references are enthusiastic)
• They provide a clear escalation path when problems arise
• They document everything as they build

The Bottom Line

Hiring external developers should reduce your risk and accelerate your timeline. If it's doing the opposite—adding chaos, burning budget, and creating more problems than it solves—you hired the wrong team.

Trust your instincts during the sales process. If something feels off, it probably is. The smooth pitch and impressive portfolio mean nothing if they can't execute on your specific project.

Better to spend extra time finding the right team than spending extra budget fixing the wrong team's mistakes.

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