Lawrina

lawrina

Lawrina, a synergy of technologies that make law accessible to everyone, is transforming the way legal documentation is managed. This all-in-one online legal space integrates an interactive interview system, a user-friendly PDF tool for legal templates, and an advanced electronic signature feature. Lawrina guarantees a more efficient and streamlined workflow for both individuals and businesses by reducing the necessity for manual edits. Lawrina Sign Digital transactions have become the standard, and Lawrina Sign offers a secure, efficient solution for electronic signatures. This tool allows users to digitally sign contracts and legal forms while ensuring full compliance with U.S. legal standards. Whether creating new agreements on Lawrina or uploading existing documents, users can finalize contracts quickly and seamlessly with just a few clicks. Lawrina Sign include: Speed and Efficiency – Complete and sign documents up to five times faster than traditional methods.
Legally Recognized – E-signatures on Lawrina are valid and binding, ensuring compliance with electronic signature laws.
Remote Accessibility – Documents can be signed and exchanged from anywhere, facilitating collaboration between parties without the need for in-person meetings. Interactive Interview System Creating legal contracts has never been easier. Instead of drafting agreements from scratch, Lawrina’s interview system guides users through a step-by-step process, allowing users to generate fully customized documents tailored to their needs. How it works: Users answer a series of simple, structured questions.
The system automatically integrates responses into the contract, ensuring clarity and legal accuracy.
All documents are reviewed by professional lawyers, guaranteeing reliability and compliance with legal standards. This approach simplifies the contract creation process, reducing errors and making legal documentation accessible to individuals and businesses without legal expertise. PDF Tool for the Forms Beyond contracts, Lawrina offers an intuitive PDF tool for completing legal forms effortlessly. This built-in feature enhances document management by allowing individuals to easily fill in forms, add visual elements, and insert electronic signatures. To further support users, Lawrina provides comprehensive guidelines and help articles for every document template. These resources serve as practical instructions for filling out forms while also offering insights into the legal aspects of contracts and agreements. Lawrina , a synergy of technologies that make law accessible to everyone, is transforming the way legal documentation is managed. This all-in-one online legal space integrates an interactive interview system, a user-friendly PDF tool for legal templates, and an advanced electronic signature feature. Lawrina guarantees a more efficient and streamlined workflow for both individuals and businesses by reducing the necessity for manual edits. Lawrina Lawrina Lawrina Sign Lawrina Sign Digital transactions have become the standard, and Lawrina Sign offers a secure, efficient solution for electronic signatures. This tool allows users to digitally sign contracts and legal forms while ensuring full compliance with U.S. legal standards. Whether creating new agreements on Lawrina or uploading existing documents, users can finalize contracts quickly and seamlessly with just a few clicks. Lawrina Sign include: Speed and Efficiency – Complete and sign documents up to five times faster than traditional methods. Legally Recognized – E-signatures on Lawrina are valid and binding, ensuring compliance with electronic signature laws. Remote Accessibility – Documents can be signed and exchanged from anywhere, facilitating collaboration between parties without the need for in-person meetings. Speed and Efficiency – Complete and sign documents up to five times faster than traditional methods. Speed and Efficiency Legally Recognized – E-signatures on Lawrina are valid and binding, ensuring compliance with electronic signature laws. Legally Recognized Remote Accessibility – Documents can be signed and exchanged from anywhere, facilitating collaboration between parties without the need for in-person meetings. Remote Accessibility Interactive Interview System Interactive Interview System Creating legal contracts has never been easier. Instead of drafting agreements from scratch, Lawrina’s interview system guides users through a step-by-step process, allowing users to generate fully customized documents tailored to their needs. How it works: How it works: Users answer a series of simple, structured questions. The system automatically integrates responses into the contract, ensuring clarity and legal accuracy. All documents are reviewed by professional lawyers, guaranteeing reliability and compliance with legal standards. Users answer a series of simple, structured questions. The system automatically integrates responses into the contract, ensuring clarity and legal accuracy. All documents are reviewed by professional lawyers, guaranteeing reliability and compliance with legal standards. This approach simplifies the contract creation process, reducing errors and making legal documentation accessible to individuals and businesses without legal expertise. PDF Tool for the Forms PDF Tool for the Forms Beyond contracts, Lawrina offers an intuitive PDF tool for completing legal forms effortlessly. This built-in feature enhances document management by allowing individuals to easily fill in forms, add visual elements, and insert electronic signatures. To further support users, Lawrina provides comprehensive guidelines and help articles for every document template. These resources serve as practical instructions for filling out forms while also offering insights into the legal aspects of contracts and agreements.

No More Manual Edits: Lawrina’s Smart System Streamlines Legal Document Workflow

ተጨማሪ የእጅ ማሻሻያ የለም፡ የላውሪና ስማርት ስርዓት የህግ ሰነድ የስራ ፍሰትን ያመቻቻል

No más ediciones manuales: el sistema inteligente de Lawrina agiliza el flujo de trabajo de documentos legales

Ei enää manuaalisia muokkauksia: Lawrinan älykäs järjestelmä virtaviivaistaa juridisten asiakirjojen työnkulkua

אין עוד עריכות ידניות: המערכת החכמה של לורינה מייעלת את זרימת העבודה של מסמכים משפטיים

अब मैन्युअल संपादन की ज़रूरत नहीं: लॉरीना की स्मार्ट प्रणाली कानूनी दस्तावेज़ वर्कफ़्लो को सरल बनाती है

手動編集はもう不要: Lawrina のスマート システムが法務文書のワークフローを効率化

ບໍ່ມີການແກ້ໄຂຄູ່ມືເພີ່ມເຕີມ: ລະບົບອັດສະລິຍະຂອງ Lawrina ປັບປຸງຂະບວນການເອກະສານທາງກົດໝາຍ

Nebereikia redaguoti rankiniu būdu: „Lawrina“ išmanioji sistema supaprastina teisinių dokumentų darbo eigą

Нема повеќе рачни уредувања: Паметниот систем на Lawrina го насочува работниот тек на правните документи

Ga go sa na Diphetošo tša Puku: Lawrina’s Smart System e Nolofatša Tshepetšo ya Mošomo ya Tokomane ya Molao

තවත් අතින් සංස්කරණ නොමැත: ලෝරිනාගේ ස්මාර්ට් පද්ධතිය නීති ලේඛන කාර්ය ප්‍රවාහය විධිමත් කරයි

无需再手动编辑：Lawrina 的智能系统简化了法律文件工作流程

With the spread of the Internet, a vast grey area has formed, since digital content is so simple to copy and paste. Although two modern directives ( and the ) have improved the situation in relation to authorship, there are still very few tools available for automatically tracking copyright infringement. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act EU Copyright Directive Plagiarism scandals occur on Blockchain too It's quite challenging to create something by yourself without copying other products. Some companies take each other's technologies and change them a bit. However, others make a 100% copy of an already existing platform or instrument. A recent example of this is the conflict between the crypto exchange BitMEX and its fellow exchange Binance. BitMEX blamed Binance for plagiarizing documents. On 2019, September 4, the platform a sarcastic tweet, saying: published "Congrats on the Testnet Futures launches . Glad to see you enjoyed reading our documentation as much as we enjoyed writing it!" @binance The tweet included screenshots of Binance's overview of the Auto Deleveraging system for its new futures contracts. The text is word-for-word identical to . Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao reacted to this tweet, owned up to the mistake, and promised to fix it. that of BitMEX The conflict between Binance and BitMEX was not that resonant. However, some Blockchain conflicts can cost companies huge amounts of money. As happened to TRON. TRON is the $2.8 billion project aiming to put the media and the entertainment sphere on Blockchain. Now it is under fire for its whitepaper, which looks to have plagiarized the whitepapers of two other crypto projects: at least nine pages copy the whitepapers of FileCoin and IPFS. Sometimes the text is written word for word, and sometimes it's carelessly copied. The whitepaper also copies key ideas without citations, including IPFS and BitSwap concepts. Moreover, the TRON team also stole code from their competitors' papers. There's no crime in using sources for reference, but the TRON team offers no citations for these reproductions in their whitepaper. If they had quoted FileCoin and IPFS, then the company could have avoided such a catastrophe. Although we may expect to see plagiarism and scam projects in the crypto world, seeing this happen to a cryptocurrency that has entered Coin Market Cap's Top 10 is unprecedented. Blockchain Solutions Currently, people can not always prove the connection between themselves and their creations. However, with blockchain, the author can create this evidence in just 3 clicks for cents and transfer the rights via a token, signing the transaction with their private key. The token contains a timestamped copyright registration, which can serve as proof of authenticity. This is the most straightforward and most evident example of the tokenization of digital assets. This breakthrough system can make copyright registration easier, more convenient, transparent, and far cheaper. On top of that, another feature of blockchain is that it is impossible to delete the registered work even if it is a matter of censorship. By making it easier to access copyrighted content legally, blockchain can suppress copyright violations. Moreover, blockchain allows you to create continuously updated metadata that makes it easier to reward copyright holders. This also fits perfectly with the European Directive that every author is entitled to royalties. Authors can benefit from transparency and the ability to track the use of their work that can lead to increased revenue due to a reduction in intermediaries: no third party, just the author and the person who used their work. Often the media and authors think, what's wrong with my content being used? After all, this means more coverage! But this coverage won't help the media business because it doesn't lead to a media site link. One more thing to mention, copyright also prohibits the processing of other people's works without permission. It often happens that when someone takes your work, they can change the facts beyond recognition and replace them with exactly the opposite. Just a few examples of what can happen if someone takes your work without permission: they can take your text and attach an ethically incorrect illustration. they can use a paragraph or a quote out of context and distort the meaning, so the author and the publisher will have to deny any false accusations and deal with any reputational losses. they can enter your name, position, or the company name incorrectly. Presumption of Authorship and the Problems it Brings The presumption of authorship is a legal concept. It means that the author is the one listed as the author of the work unless the court has established otherwise. To comply with the legal requirements, it is enough to indicate the author's first and last name on an article, the cover of a book, or at the bottom of a site. All this led to the establishment of a whole industry of ghostwriters – people who write texts instead of a public person and subsequently renounce ownership of the material. This means that the owner can change and reissue the work any way they want. Blockchain services suffer from the fact that they do not check with authors before uploading, using the presumption of authorship. According to law, this is true. In fact, it creates a huge field for violations. In the absolute majority of the 3-4 generations of blockchain services, that can store metadata and use blockchain apostille as a base, you can upload any text found on the Internet and get a certificate in your name. For me, as a founder of , it was not easy to take a decision to go a difficult path. The peculiarity of SharpShark is that our service checks the content for uniqueness before uploading and does not allow any material that is already available on the Internet. Yes, this has its flaws – authors won't be able to publish their works retroactively. I understand that we can lose some great authors with fantastic material. But this feature will protect other authors with fresh content as much as possible. in the core, the 4th generation Blockchain technology, suited perfectly for intellectual property. SharpShark Symbol Keeping Content on Blockchain: Pros and Cons There are many content projects on blockchain because content is a reliable way to fill the blockchain with transactions. The most popular project remains , which presented the concept of awards for authors in tokens. Steemit Steemit values unique content: the higher its quality is, the higher the user's reward is. You can earn money by posting and curating (voting and commenting on other users' posts). As everything in life, Steemit has both a good and a bad side. Good: When there was not yet much content, and it was of high quality, the authors got high rewards. Bad: Good news spreads fast. When other authors heard about the opportunity to get good money quickly, many of them started to use cheap and not unique content that ruined the system. And as a result, the network has fewer readers, fewer rewards, fewer good authors, and less network value. Firstly, I saw the idea of monitoring violations on Steemit. Thanks to , a user (unfairly censored on Steemit now) who developed the bot specializing in monitoring content. Anyx, if you're reading this, we didn't use a single line of your code, and we really want you to join the team! @Anyx There were more services inspired by Steemit but none ever reached the same level. For example, and . They both offered journalists and authors tokens in return for posting content on their pages. But the problem was that good authors needed good money. The services didn't have enough resources to attract a significant quantity of good authors. civil po.et Blockchain as an evidence Some courts already accept Blockchain as evidence. For the media is a chance to be extra progressivist and take all the headlines in world media, if Blockchain will be used as evidence in a physical court. Moreover, there are already cases of acceptance of blockchain as legitimate evidence. For example, The Law Commission in the UK . accepts smart contracts as evidence in court “California has its legislation for Blockchain technology. It shows Blockchain as a distributed registry technology that uses a distributed, decentralized, and shared registry. It can be public or private, with access rights management or open, with or without a tokenized crypto economy. Data in the record is protected using cryptography, it is immutable, auditable, and provides total authenticity”  – resuming Vladimir Popov, who, with his company Synergis, provides SharpShark with a legal base. – Between 2021-2025, data from blockchain systems will be used as evidence in all developed judicial systems: both at a national and international level, – says Popov. What's next? In we’re creating a use case of interaction between EUCD, DMCA and authorship evidence based on Blockchain. Stay tuned. SharpShark How Blockchain authorship evidence for this article looks like Written by Yana Larina, Edited by Sasha Ivanova & Valeriia Panina, proofreaded by Martin Sorohan, illustrations by Alex Kaz, project management by Tatiana Fuf

Intellectual Property on The Blockchain - Trends 2020

Confession time: I’m the queen of procrastinators. I’ve turned the act of putting things off into an art form. You might think that’s not something to brag about — and you’d be right. But it does give me a certain expertise when it comes to understanding the procrastinator’s mind. My struggles with productivity are the stuff of legends. In college, my study ‘technique’ was a blend of fervent hope and caffeine-fueled all-nighters. I’ve tried every trick in the book to get my focus on track. Rising with the birds at 5 a.m. only turned me into a sleep-deprived grouch. Meditation led to some impressive mental gymnastics, but calmness and focus? Not so much. And bullet journaling felt like I needed a Ph.D. in stationery. But through this haze of half-starts and near-misses, a few strategies did shine through: Pomodoro method Pomodoro is as simple as a door handle: you set a timer for 25 minutes, focus on deep work, and when the timer rings — take a 5-minute break. I’ve discovered there are several reasons why Pomodoro got so insanely popular and why it actually works: 25 minutes is never as scary as your never-ending to-do list. 25 minutes are manageable. You know you can do 25 minutes. Something called “ ”. psychological priming Humans are a little simpler creatures than we like to think of ourselves, which is good news. Because you can actually teach yourself to get triggered to work, like Pavlov’s dog, setting a timer can be one of the cues your body uses to get into hard focus mode. Time awareness. One of the things you’ll often hear from chronic procrastinators is, “I’ve been putting this thing off for weeks, and it actually took me 15 minutes to do it”. Once you learn how much you can actually accomplish in just 25 minutes of focused work, every next Pomodoro session will feel even easier. Planning for failure No matter how motivated I am, there are still times I will experience extremely strong resistance to doing things I know I have to do but don’t want to do. In those cases, you’ll see me straying off to check email, getting into an argument on Twitter, or staring at my phone. But knowing yourself and what you’ll do when you’re about to give up can actually be helpful: it’ll make it easier for you to cut off those back exits. The easiest thing you can do is set up obstacles in the way of doing things you don’t want to be doing: Use a website blocker so you won’t be able to access funny cat videos while you’re working. turn off your phone and quit all the messaging apps so you won’t be tempted to work on your co-workers’ problems when you should be solving your own. log out of your inbox, so it’s not too easy for you to get lost in those back-and-forths The possibilities are endless, but the bottom line is you need a safety net to fall onto, and it shouldn’t be too easy for you to get distracted and lose focus. Reward vs. Punishment systems Humans are notoriously bad at delayed gratification. If you’re working on something that does not bring immediate results, a sense of accomplishment, or joy, you have to know: long-term goals simply mean nothing to your brain in the moment. And that’s why you’re struggling so much: working without an anticipation of a reward that’s coming soon is hard and unpleasant; no one actually enjoys that, and no one is good at it. The good news is that you can build yourself an artificial system of rewards and “punishments” that will reinforce your brain’s perception of the things that bring you positive results and those that hurt you. ( Important thing: both rewards and punishments have to come quickly.) If you fight delayed gratification with a slightly less delayed gratification, . it won’t work The reward/punishment systems that I’ve found to be working best for me were often based on monetary incentives. Positive reinforcements would often include celebratory purchases of things that aren’t necessary but wanted. They don’t have to be big or expensive. Sometimes, I go for a fancy dessert or a new vinyl record after checking off everything I planned for the day. Other times, I’d celebrate launching a project with a new Lego set (which is a passion of mine). Anything that can give you that extra boost at the moment and that feels easy to reach will do. The second tactic is loss aversion. Or, in simpler terms, paying in case of failing to do what you wanted to do. Loss aversion also usually works best because, in most cases, it requires some sort of public commitment. E.g., make a bet with a friend that you’ll stick to a gym routine or that you’ll launch something by an agreed deadline. If you’re not too keen on bets or making your friends richer, promise to donate to a charity if you fail to deliver on your commitments. Can we Eureka tomorrow? And then, finally, it clicked. When I was a few months into my sabbatical, licking wounds after the worst burnout I’ve had so far, I’ve been thinking about building something from scratch, something I’d know people would use. Something I could use. Because at the end of the day — I’m a very regular person with very common problems. But I’m also a try-hard, so the idea that I could actually bring something new to the world wasn’t that outrageous. the things I’ve implemented manually in my own life can actually be packed into a simple product. I wanted to start with something that would be easy to build in a relatively short time and budget so we could get a proof of concept and build upon that foundation. And that’s how I realized That’s how I came up with the concept of — a productivity Chrome extension that combines my best productivity tactics: Pomodollar — for easier dives into deep work — to make getting distracted much harder and put some obstacles on your way — if you decide to get distracted, you still can, but it’s not going to be free. Pomodoro timer Website blocker Loss aversion The way it’s going to work is simple: You start a work session, and Pomodollar will block all the “naughty” websites until the work session is over. If you still want to go ahead and watch a cat video instead of working, you’ll have to either end the session earlier or add the website to a whitelist, but both of these actions will cost you $1. As of now, our launch is planned for November 30. But what I’m wondering is: Will we launch on time? and Is anyone on here willing to bet a $100 we won’t? :) P.S. If you’re invested by now and want to see if we actually manage to deliver on time, subscribe to our . beta waitlist here Also published . here

I'm Making an App to Help Procrastinators, as a Procrastinator

Those who never (but caught themselves thinking about this option from time to time) might have various assumptions about such an experience. As if a challenge to find an affordable developer was not enough. Now companies also need to decide between a full-time professional at their disposal and a freelancer. Are offshore contractors a more lucrative alternative or not is the key question. After all, when we say “the real cost of working with a freelance developer,” do we mean money only? hired a senior freelance developer Freelance pricing model deconstructed Freelance pricing model deconstructed The price paid when hiring a freelancer is defined by an hourly rate and a few other behind-the-scenes variables that may directly influence the result. It means that companies can pay less even with a higher hourly rate. Or pay more, even with a lower one. The variables are the following: Corporate information security Compromising sensitive corporate information can cost the owners a lot. The fears that dealing with a freelancer can involve issues with confidentiality or reliability may overshadow initial rationale. It cannot be said that there is no ground behind this biased attitude, but luckily, this variable can be easily excluded from the end price. As long as the company uses freelance platforms that offer vetted professionals, it will be able to find a reliable dream contractor. Signing an NDA and direct communication with the developer without third parties will also warrant corporate information security. So it is all about companies learning to navigate between major freelance platforms and readiness to choose a  well-trodden way from bias to trust. Solution: Quality It is directly dependent on the contractor's real hard and soft skills. Phony professional competency can often be “sold” to the company by giving vivid promises and lowering the hourly rate. It can result in wasted time and inconsistency between demand and expertise, making up extra expenses the company will have to pay for cooperation with such a specialist. Avoiding the negative outcomes of this variable is possible with the help of reviews and ratings, which are superpowers in today’s gig economy, not to mention the job done by vetted freelance platforms. Ideally, they should create the ground for a highly professional and ethical freelance community with developers of any narrow specialization. However, it makes sense to pay attention to the algorithms the platforms use to match the task with the right specialist or the way they do that manually by support specialists. Solution: Communication barriers Unfortunately, it can make any cost-effective cooperation impossible. Using platforms that perceive good speaking English as an essential part of a skills profile is the only way to save money and time. Solution: Only when those variables are considered, it makes sense to talk about an hourly rate - the basis of the pricing model. IT freelancers' average time working on their tasks is 43 hours/week, or 2,236 hours/year ( ). However, this time covers both the actual work on the client’s project and other business tasks such as sourcing for a job. According to the pricing model, the net time-on-work, or billable time, is just 60% of the total time, or 1342 hours/year. This figure is the average freelancer work hours baseline, which will be applied below. Freelancermap Upwork Geography class: top countries with high-skilled developers and their hourly rate With the research by , , and , we can rediscover different parts of the world in terms of senior developers’ talent market and their hourly rates. SkillsValue FreelancerMap SalaryExpert Europe Some Easters and Central European countries are in the list of countries with the best developers in the world. But what about their hourly rate? Top 20 an hourly rate of $27.9/hour translates to $37,560 yearly for senior freelance developers, while in-house senior developers charge $41,718 a year. Russia: with an hourly rate of $19.03/hour, freelance seniors get $25,538/year, while their in-house colleagues earn an average gross salary of $49,092. Poland: freelance senior’s yearly income is $21,163/year at a $15.77 hourly rate, while in-house developers charge $40,792/year. Hungary: Western and Northern Europe is another key player on the market, who, however, charge more than their colleagues from Eastern and Central Europe. A senior freelance developer will cost a company $51,036/year at an hourly rate of $38.03, which is still less than $98,259.90/year for a full-house developer. The United Kingdom: The average salary of an in-house developer and freelance senior is $82,546/year and $42,931 ($31.99/hour), respectively. Sweden: The expertise of a freelance senior will cost $35.29/hour or $47,359/year. Compare it with $89,616/year for an in-house specialist. France: Southern Europe also does not lag behind. Freelancers get $36,798/year at $27.42/hour, while in-house employees - $70,726/year. Spain: To hire a full-time senior software developer, the company will have to be ready to pay  $59,238/year, while a freelancer of the same level will cost $32,208/year (or $24/hour). Greece: Here, hiring freelance app developers cost $32.94 per hour, totaling $44,206 in annual earnings. In-house, you will have to churn out $83,678/yr. Italy: Asia The archetypical Asian IT labor market, represented mainly by China and  India, gets extended with some new emerging markets in countries like Vietnam, Turkey, and the Philippines. The hourly rate here is $22.36/hour for freelancers, with the corresponding sum of $30,007/year. An in-house professional earns $58,447/year. China: An hourly rate of $7.80 translates to $10,468/year for freelancers, while full-time seniors get $20,489/year. India: Freelance developers’ hourly rate is just $5.47 ($7341 year), while hiring an in-house developer will cost a company $14,255/year. The Philippines: America Latin America follows similar patterns when it comes to the difference between freelancers’ hourly rate versus that of full-time developers. The top countries with seniors here are Mexico and Brazil, with Columbia being ready to pick up the slack as the emerging market. Seasoned developers get on average $10.48/hour, which translates to the yearly salary of $14,064. A full-time tech-savvy costs $27,199. Mexico: With an hourly rate of $13.25/hour, Brazilian freelancers get an annual net salary of $17,782. In comparison, full-timers earn 34,494/year. Brazil: A freelance professional will charge $6.29/hour, or $8,441/year, while their in-house colleagues get no less than $16,324/year. Colombia: Developers in North America make companies stretch their budgets for high-quality work more than in other regions. Especially if a company wants an experienced in-house senior. Freelancers work for an hourly rate of $51.15 here, which makes up $68,643/year. But it is much less than $132,145/year charged by a full-time developer. The United States: An hourly rate of $42.11, set by freelancers, sums up to $56,512/year. But almost doubles, reaching $108,781/year if the company wants its own full-time developer. Canada: Australia Freelance seniors charge $45.14/hour, earning $60,578/year. Companies should have $116,825/year to afford a full-time developer. The figures above demonstrate a quite articulate tendency of pricing for the high-quality work among freelancers and full-time developers and those across various regions. Figures are telling, and however surprising they may be, they just reflect our reality. And so what? The decision to work with a senior freelance developer may become a start of a long-term, cost-effective, mutually beneficial collaboration. But only if to nip the potential issues in the bud. Considering hourly rate and other variables, resolved through the use of reliable freelance platforms, will help companies turn the “real cost of working with a freelancer” question into the “real gain from working with a freelancer” experience. And this is basically the kind of relations companies should strive for.

The Real Cost of Working with a Freelance Developer: Revising Basic Assumptions

You’ve probably never heard about us. We’re lemon.io — a marketplace of vetted developers for startups. If you know anything about marketplaces (and you do), you know that marketplaces like ours earn money from the commission paid either by the sellers or by the buyers. Ours is not an exception. Just like any other vetted freelance platform, we add a commission atop of the developers’ hourly rates. That’s the cost clients pay for our services which include finding the experienced programmers with proven work record, testing their skills, reviewing previous projects, interviewing them, gathering a diverse talent pool, assigning them only to those project they would complement the most, and then making sure the project goes smoothly, and the projects get delivered as expected. That’s what happens . But nothing is usual these days. usually The entire world is under the lockdown, not just one city, not one country, not even one continent. The entire planet has stopped. Businesses are forced to cut their costs, some let their employees go, startups lose the deals they were counting on, and no one knows what to expect anymore. Except, everyone seems to be expecting the worst. If you’re a part of a startup these days and still do the things as usual pretending nothing’s happening, you’re either delusional or… nope, sorry, can’t think of another possible reason. We’ve realized this as soon as we saw these 3 things: Our clients closing their projectsNew clients switching to us from more expensive alternatives (which is nice, but we’d still prefer other circumstances) Developers applying to join our network after losing their full-time jobs Everyone is feeling the crisis, no matter how big or small the business is. But, wherever there is something is going on, there are marketers. Businesses tip the situation to make it look like an opportunity to promote and advertise their products. We have a name for it — . situational marketing “Sounds reasonable, sounds like a good idea, let’s ride the wave!” That’s what I imagine big corp executives saying before doing… ? this If you remember the three weeks ago when the lockdown still felt novel and everyone was genuinely thrilled about all the amazing free books, online courses, and extended trials, you should also remember the moment when you stopped reading all the COVID-19 response emails from companies you don’t even remember giving your address to. I stopped reading them too. The last email I read was the one from — a domain registration and web hosting company. They wanted to update me about their reaction to the crisis and pandemic. In case you’re wondering, here’s what they’re going to do: Godaddy : They’re doing all they can — work as usual. TLDR Because, why not after all? It’s not their business they are going to close, not their former employees filing jobless claims, not their industry that’s been wiped out. Our clients? Startups. All trying to cut their costs, to lower their burn rate. We get them, we’re doing exactly the same too. Choosing people over marketing budgets and fun projects. If we all don’t do this, don’t pile up enough cash to last for at least 18 months, we’re done. And everyone knows the next couple of months are going to be the hardest. Not everyone is going to get through them. And the thing with our business is this: if our clients don’t weather this storm, neither will we. Discounts in the time of pandemic? Yeah… ? how about no Instead of giving a 10% discount, or a thousand bucks to spend on development, or bonus hours, or whatever else a freelance platform might have offered, we’ve decided to… drop our profits. We waived our commission entirely. Poof! Gone. added on top of developers’ rates. Zero dollars Still . So we went and talked to our contractors, asked them to lower their rates. Some said no, some agreed, we’ve made sure we have enough people on our side to cover the demand and rolled out the offer. Called it “Don’t Panic” — a nod to the beloved Because in some way, doesn’t it feel like we all lost the sense of home and desperately hope to restore the normality as soon as possible? not good enough Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, we couldn’t give this offer to everyone. But for all the startups that really do suffer from the crisis or are currently on the frontlines of fighting the pandemic — 60 days of reduced pricing for all new hires before the 1st of July. No commitment, no questions asked. If you fall into that category or know someone who does — here’s the link to our Don’t Panic offer. Share with anyone who might find it relevant. And for Christ’s sake, don’t “social distance” your logo. If you want to be a part of the world coming together, bring something real to the table. Know other good B2B offers? Share them in the comments. It’s the time we do want to see them. Stay safe, cut the costs.

We're Saying Goodbye to Our Profits For the Next 60 days: Here's Why

There is no such thing as perfect relationships. Especially in business. Especially between startups and freelancers. They meet, they fall in love, they argue, they make up, they fall in love again, and at the end the day they depend on each other badly. But who is the ‘bad guy’ in this story: contractors or entrepreneurs? Who is using whom? Is there a right answer at all? As always, there are two sides to every story. Startup’s Side Even though Silicon Valley is the capital of IT startups with Tech Talent Centres around the state, it has one major problem — an expensive workforce. What is the point of being surrounded by the best specialists from all over the world if you cannot have them working on your project? 350K When you are a young startup with a very limited budget, hiring a developer is the first challenge to face. You are lucky if you can do everything on your own. Otherwise, you will have to make a choice between two imperfect options. The first one is to search for someone from Silicon Valley to help you with the prototypes in the early stages. In this case, no further payment is needed, but be ready to give up part of your company shares as there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Once you succeed, this person will be entitled to part of your income (sometimes, it could be millions of dollars) and even have a right to make important decisions. Another option is to hire a freelance developer, who would do the same work, but for a reasonable price. But, here is one major BUT... Michael Seibel, CEO of , a business incubator, which sponsored many startups unicorns, including Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash and many others, the next words: Y Combinator tweeted Michael and other from Silicon Valley believe that founders should never hire freelancers at the early stages. They lack commitment, they never truly care about your ideas or your business, and they follow different goals than you do. Therefore, if you want to succeed, you better ‘wear every hat’ and do all the jobs on your own, no matter how long it takes. startup gurus Freelancer’s Side Times are changing and returning to a nine-to-five work lifestyle seems unthinkable. Nothing can compare with the freedom of freelancing: wake up in Paris and go to bed in Hong Kong, work at nights when you feel inspired and sleep in till lunchtime, go to every party you want and never miss your family members’ birthdays anymore! ...It sounds like a fairytale for grown-ups. Of course, in real life, you give up one thing to get something more valuable for you. Freelancers trade social benefits, social security, paid day leaves, bonuses, and career promotions for their freedom of choice. In addition, companies can fire a freelancer as easily as they hire them. No regrets and no commitments. However, things for freelancers are even more complicated. In 2009, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration disclosure : reported ‘There are employers who deliberately misclassify workers to cut costs and to gain a greater competitive edge. These employers avoid paying their share of employment taxes as well as other expenses such as workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and other benefits. Misclassifying employees as independent contractors and not incurring the related costs can give these employers a competitive advantage over employers who treat their workers as employees.’ In 2019, the situation did not change. It is not uncommon to see a “full-time freelance” job on offer. Typically, it is a full-time position in all but name. You are expected to work forty hours per week while ‘no benefits, no health insurance, no guaranteed overtime pay or FMLA leave, and limited protection from labor and nondiscrimination laws’. receiving After similar to the one above, the contradictive about freelancers has been implemented. AB5 law aims to protect independent contractors’ interests by forcing businesses to either hire freelancers as employees or to lay them off. However, others are seeing this law as a major obstacle to the development of the gig economy, as it makes impossible the existence of such companies like Uber and Lyft. numerous cases California Law What is next? It is hard to predict how startup-freelancers relationships will develop in the future. But not impossible. What are your thoughts about this? Are you for or against hiring freelance developers? Tell which side you are on! Contribute to our research by completing a short . Promise to send you the most interesting findings via email. us survey

Freelance Developers and Startups: A Love-Hate Relationship in the Silicon Valley

BIG ADVANTAGES OF SMALL TEAMS is a business that has grown twice in the past 12 months. Our team has also grown twice but we still employ less than 15 people and aim to remain tiny for as long as possible. CodignNinjas The approach to hiring and operating a small team even when you grow into a multi-million dollar money-making machine is not as delusional as it may seem. One of everyone’s favorite businesses to point at when talking the big small is . AKA the company behind Ruby on Rails, New York Times bestseller (and three other awesome books), and, of course, their flagman product that’s made task management easier for millions of people worldwide — . Basecamp Remote Basecamp They’ve been around for twenty years, they’ve brought so much value to tech and creative industries and even secured their (not really). All this while employing how many people? As of early 2019–54. company evaluation at $100 billion dollars The idea behind keeping your team as small as it gets is bound to break the intuitive . Because, in reality, what matters is how much value your team makes, and how much revenue per person you get. stereotype that makes us think that the more people we hire the better the business is going But even if remaining small isn’t your intentional business goal, you’re still going through the stage of hiring your first 10 employees whether you want it or not. HOW TO HIRE Hiring for small teams is very different from hiring for big companies. The main difference is that every hire you make is unique, and, as a new business, you don’t have to worry about following a specific well-designed process, but rather focus on hiring the best talent you can possibly get at this point, while maintaining a great company image and reputation. You might have heard a lot about recruiting routine at corporations like Google or The Big Four, where they spend months before making a job offer for a junior position to their perfect candidate with Ivy League education. These scalable processes that go exactly by the script to ensure the best possible outcome every time hold the big corps together. But hiring for small businesses is not the same. And unless your business model is outstaffing for the same or similar roles, and you need to constantly hire people with the same skillsets, every recruit for a small team is going to be not like the others. And here’s what we’ve learned on how to handle hiring for a small business in the past two years at CodingNinjas. FIRST 10 HIRES When to start hiring for as long as possible. Rule number 1 of a small business is to remain founders-only Not to mention the opportunity to cut down the operational costs (the fragile spot of every new business), doing everything on your own will teach you to prioritize and optimize. When you can only do so little, you will have to choose the most important things to work on. The first weeks, sometimes months, of your business is when you have to learn how it’s done by hand, think of the way how to do things better and faster, and then pass the framework on to someone else. And only when you can’t take care of all the work that’s coming at ya, then it’s time to make your first hire. What position to fill in first Judging by our own experience, the first position you fill is likely not to have a name at all. Instead, you should be looking for the person who could take not a position, but a part in your company. And it’s best if they understand from the very beginning, that with time, their role may, and, most probably, will change. In the end, there are only : two cases in which you should hire You need to . That implies, that you are absolutely certain that you’ve found something that helps your business grow. : we’ve been struggling for a while to find a lead-generating source for acquiring new clients. We’ve spent thousands of dollars on Google Ads that brought zero clients, we’ve paid freelance authors to write for our blog and hired an SEO agency to tell us what to do, but none of those things worked. Until we tried creating content on , and our first non-referral customers fled to us. We repeated experiments and saw that the more we did — the more leads we got. We learned everything we could, found the ways to optimize content, and started looking for the person who could take it from there. scale what’s already working Here’s a real-life example Quora You need to . When you’re just starting out with your business, you do everything on your own. Chances are, you will be focused on sales, marketing and polishing your business model and operations — something you can’t scale or pass on to an employee in early days. But there will also be a category of tasks that are essential easy to delegate. Like warehouse operations or delivery, or cold messaging. Our very first hire at CodingNinjas was actually the person that was all about customer support and problem-solving for existing clients and contractors, allowing the founders to focus on sales and strategic decisions. take care of the things that bring you down but After all, our main advice for hiring first employees is to only. If you need to do something that you don’t know how to scale at the moment, do it yourself first or outsource to a freelancer. hire for repeatable operations How to find your first employees The worst part of hiring awesome talent for a new business is that . You don’t yet have a name, reputation or yummy corporate bonuses that make people want to work for you. no one knows you, and no one cares That’s why your best shot will be to find the first employees in your network. Your priorities should be looking among people you know and those who they refer. If you’re hiring for a position you know nothing about, e.g. you’re a tech founder hiring for marketing, or vice versa, ask the most experienced in that field person from your network to help you with screening the candidates. And, unless they are your best friend ever, think of a way to pay them back for the hustle. It doesn’t have to be money, think of the best value you can give them. A shoutout on your super-popular social media account, or helping them with their personal website CRO can be a much better way to thank someone. Early-stage recruiting Recruiting process As we’ve already mentioned, you can’t consider following a big corp recruiting routine to be the best fit for smaller companies. First of all, you are not going to hire the same people. Also, you have to realize that in most cases with big-name companies, there is always a final boss who decides to hire or not to hire. The decision makers are usually the busiest people, and complicated hiring processes reflect exactly that. In other words, their frameworks exist to eliminate everyone who isn’t the best fit from the first glance and narrow down the pool of candidates. But with a small business, you don’t have to make your own life harder. You are the one behind the final call anyway, so if you know you want to work with the person, there is really no need to make them go the extra mile neither of you needs. In the very beginning, with our first couple hires, we didn’t have any framework at all. As time went by, we realized it wasn’t the best tactic of all, but we still think it was really a great place to start because the process we’ve developed and continued to follow is based entirely on dos and don’ts we’ve faced in real life, not some imaginary restrictions. And while we have built a framework we try to follow, there are also the rules we stick to when in every case, even if we feel like breaking the usual pattern: The first impression still counts, and it’s still unlikely you change your mind dramatically about someone you didn’t like at your first meeting. But, unfortunately, it works the other way: as you grow to know someone better, you may discover something you won’t be comfortable with. No love from the first sight. Written communication is important, and tells a lot about the person and their style. Sooner or later, anyone you hire is going to communicate with others on behalf of your company, so if you don’t like their emails, maybe your clients or partners won’t like them too. At least 5 emails. Don’t get us wrong, just like any other business we do have budget restrictions for hiring people. But that just means we wouldn’t hire someone we couldn’t afford working with instead of talking them into working with us for less than they think they are worth. Otherwise…well, you just end up with someone who isn’t satisfied with their paycheck from the start. No price negotiations. Our test task policy is to ask our candidates to solve a real-life problem they’ll have to face if we decide to work together. It helps us to understand whether they are a good fit for the position (obviously), and it helps them to see if that’s what they want to be doing and if they’re actually good at this. Makes sense, right? The tricky part is that their completed test task could later be used by you regardless of whether you hire them or not. That may put your potential employees at risk of not getting paid for the work they’ve done. No one wants it. The easy solution is to pay for every test task and agree on your rights to use the completed task for your business purposes, regardless of the end result and final decision. Such tactics will not only eliminate all the risks for the person you’re interviewing but will also make your test task stand out among the rest. We pay everyone who submits their projects on time. They tell us how much time they’ve spent on the task, and then these hours are multiplied by their hourly rate. And if you’re worried about spending the fortune on test tasks, just make them the last step of your framework. Paid test tasks. We usually have two or three meetings before we hire someone. We usually do the intro call with everyone who applies for the position where we tell them about CodingNinjas, what we do, and who we are looking for. Then we meet in person to discuss all the details about work and position. And our final meetings before the job offer are usually informal. We take people out for lunch or dinner, or it can be as simple as grabbing coffee or falafel together. We do these informal meetings to see whether we are comfortable with a person and whether they are someone who we trust to influence our company culture. Like it or not, the people you hire first are the ones who define the future of your business baby. So why not take a look at who they really are. Take them on a date! In a professional way, not a creepy one. Informal meetings too. As for itself, here’s the roadmap we’ve developed: the framework CV. Background check. We always look people up online. A basic search and a look through the social media accounts are really helpful. Of course, you can’t judge the book by its cover, but if their Facebook feed is all about hate speech and voting for someone you can’t stand it’s best to know it from the start. Intro-call. To speed things up, we usually ask for a 20-minute call to make a short introduction and see if the first impressions are nice for both parties. Reference. The next step is always to ask for at least 2 contacts from their previous jobs and call them. If they have some sorts of reference letters — great! But call anyways. It doesn’t have to be their boss, a coworker, a friend, a person from another department who they didn’t really know but who still agreed to give them a reference are all fine. We believe that anyone who we’d want to work with would have made at least a couple friends in places they’ve worked before. Meeting in person. Your chance to get each other better. Ask and tell everything you find important. Paid test task. Remember, real tasks only. Informal meetings. AKA a formal reason to get another one of da best kebabs in town. Perfect candidate portrait If you were looking for the most contradictory advice ever, you’re in the right place. Because when it comes to hiring your first employees, there are only two things we want to say: Don’t settle for less Lower your expectations First people you hire will shape the overall look of your company. That’s why you need to hire the best talent you can reach. They have to be smart, skilled, professional, hardworking, and you have to like them. It’s best if they are great at several things and eager to learn and do new things. Once you grow into a stage when your company structure can’t be flat any longer, your first 10 hires will become your personal ambassadors. In other words, the best quote that comes to mind: . A’s hire A’s, and B’s hire C’s On the other hand, you have to realize that to hire good employees for a small business, you will have to look in places other than Google campus or third wave coffee shops for rockstar programmers and growth hackers. You will need to look past all of the glam to find the gem. Your best shots are people who are underappreciated or don’t network that much. First interviews We haven’t seen and haven’t come up with anything better than the shared by David Cancel from . The only other questions we ask candidates are the ones that have something to do with our business or position specifically. hiring checklist Drift But the other important thing about interviews are the things you say. Be honest about them. We all know that you’d have to sell your soul to pay employees in a small business the same money they’d get working in a big corp. So, don’t promise them that! Don’t promise anything you know is going to happen. not When I came in for my first interview with CodingNinjas, the first thing Alex and Vasyl, our co-founders, told me was that CodignNinjas is a startup. And with startups things can happen, that there could be a situation when something bad happens and we’re all out of jobs the next day. Did it throw me off? It made we want to work with them so bad, I didn’t want any other job! I knew from that moment I’d be working with people who are responsible and real about their business. Everyone who works at CodingNinjas knows the risks, and that’s what keeps us moving. Red flags and reasons not to hire Ours are: You can’t retain employees in a small business by competing with anyone who pays more. It’s important to appreciate the work they do in dollar equivalent, but there has to be more to what they care about. For some, it’s the experience they can only get with you, for others, it’s the chance to grow you’re giving them, and for introverts, a promise to let them work quietly in a dark room with a tiny fridge can make the best offer they ever had. The person only cares about money. They can be the best professional in the field, but if they think too much of themselves, we can’t bring them home. If you absolutely have to work with someone like that, maybe think about a temporary position. Bloated ego. Don’t get us wrong, we love a good party! But there’s also in work-life balance. Work meh, party hard. work We’ve all had bad experiences. But if they blame everyone else and are very negative about their boss, coworkers, and clients, they will bring the same attitude to your business as well. It’s just a matter of time now. Their previous job “was the worst”. ONBOARDING IN SMALL BUSINESSES The onboarding process is your chance to cause self-inflicted pain on your business. If you screw this up, the great talent you hired can turn into a pumpkin with irrelevant information and unrealistic ideas about what they really should be doing right now. And even worse, they will pass the wrong information on to people they hire, and next thing you know, your company is a complete mess. That’s why we start onboarding even before we hire someone. Here are the save points you can use for onboarding: Your first intro-call. Prepare a pitch about your company. It should be short but integral. Strive to cover all the basic info about what you do, who are your clients, what’s your business model, how you operate, hire, manage and pay your employees, and what you’re expecting from them. Face-to-face meeting. Repeat, dive into details, answer their questions and make sure they got you right. Test task. Giving your candidates a real-life project is also a form of onboarding. In fact, we don’t know a better way to introduce someone to their range of responsibilities. Once you make a job offer and they sign it, send them as much information as you can. It can be all the docs on what you’ve done and learned about the things they will take up from you, any references, books or videos they should watch, anything that may concern them and be helpful. Ask what tools they’ll need for their work, and arrange their corporate email, accesses, and subscriptions they need to be ready by the time they come in for their first day. EMPLOYER BRANDING Being small has its ups and downs. The biggest challenge is to compete against the big sharks for the talent. There aren’t as many benefits for small business employees, so don’t expect people to ecstatic by default when you contact them about your position. But don’t worry there is something you can do about it! You know how you market yourself to your prospect customers? Yeah, do the same for your prospect employees. Being visible and open about your company culture, inner kitchen and in-house expertise will make it much easier for you to hire your 10th employee. We’ve invested a little time into writing a couple of articles that would make a statement about the expertise of the team members who we supposed would be the first to grow their teams. This also helped us increase awareness about CodingNinjas on the market where we source developers for our network. Turning a two weeks work into a double-kill. HIRING WITH TRAINING WHEELS When not sure — hire a freelancer! We know how it sounds from the people who run a freelance platform, but we promise it has nothing to do with the advice itself. I’ll tell you more. If we’re not talking about an executive or managing position, before we hire anyone, we delegate our tasks to freelancers first. This approach allows us to check whether we really need an in-house person or not for that position. Here are just a few ways such experiment can go: You outsource some tasks to a freelancer and discover the ideas you had about the outcomes were not true, and you shouldn’t waste your time doing it (happened for us with a few PPC experts in the beginning) You find a great freelancer who does the job but you realize there wouldn’t be enough work if you hired someone full-time (we still outsource our occasional front-end tasks to a developer from CodingNinjas network) You find a great freelancer and end up making them an offer for the full-time position (that’s how we found our first CTO) Hiring a freelancer like any other business decision has its pros and cons. It’s definitely a bad idea to hire a freelancer when what you really need is a manager unless you hire them full-time for a project. But it’s difficult to find a better solution for a small company with unstable workloads. This was originally posted on . guide on hiring for small businesses CodingNinjas blog

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Stories, News & Mentions about LAWRINA

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