Seattle Lacks Computer People

On Thursday, May 31, 2012 National Public Radio posted a story on the Seattle Area Lacks Computer Science Majors.

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National Public Radio interviewed a business owner that was actively seeking full time computer programmers to work at his company. He was having difficulty finding qualified personnel. While it may be necessary to employ full time computer programmers in many situations, many times it is not. Winning Solutions, Inc. is a contract programming company head quartered in Ames, Iowa. We have done large and small programming projects for companies all over the United States. Several years ago we did a large multi-year programming project for an organization in Seattle, Washington.

There are several reasons full time developers may not be necessary:

1. The programming cycle. When programming work is being performed it periodically needs to be reviewed. When the reviews take place it may be necessary to halt programming until the review is completed in order to avoid wasting time going down the wrong path. This leads to programmers sitting idle. Idle programmers still have to paid if the programmers are salaried employees of your organization.

2. Full time employees and contractors working at an hourly rate have a strong dis-incentive to bring a project to an early or on time completion. They could be laid off or their contract ended if they do their job well.

3. Working on a single project may be boring and can cause highly creative people, which most programmers are, to be less than fully productive.

4. Full time developers are not needed to ensure ongoing support and the ability to update and patch existing software. Winning Solutions, Inc. has been in business continuously since 1996. We are based in the same community as Iowa State University. Many very talented ISU programming students have hung out a shingle and started offering programming services in our community. More often than not, they move on to bigger opportunities. But WSI has been here year after year. Almost every year we acquire one or more programming projects that were worked on by these students from organizations that are in need of a stable, reliable company to provide on-going support and enhancements to their software. WSI has a carefully designed business model that allows us to work on large software projects while supporting numerous projects that are stable and working but just need minor adjustments. Most of the time we can turn software updates around the same week they are requested, sometimes they are turned around the same day. This variety of work addresses the productivity concern raised in item 3. above.

There are cost effective alternatives to employing full time computer programmers and software developers. Winning Solutions, Inc. is a provider of such alternatives, we offer the ability for your organization to have software programmed, which will be fully owned by your company. You can choose to work with WSI on a project basis. This means that you provide us with a specification for your software program or database. Winning Solutions, Inc. provides you with a written estimate to complete the project including a delivery date. You only pay for work on a percent complete basis. You can stop or restart the project at any time you choose. You own all the programming work performed by Winning Solutions, Inc. up to the point where you stopped the project and paid for the percentage of work completed at that time. If you do not like the way we are working you can always hire a full time programmer and have them take over the project. Or if you can’t find a suitable full time programmer and want to begin a project now, this flexibility allows you to transition the project back to your full time programmer or programmers at any point, should you find one.

Naturally when you are have this type of programming relationship, you do not need to worry about how long it is taking you to review the progress that has been made on your programming project. The concern mentioned in item 1. above. It is up to Winning Solutions, Inc. to find other work for programmers to do while you are reviewing and providing feedback on the project.

We perform work for clients all over the country. Today’s technologies for sharing screens give Winning Solutions, Inc. the ability to serve clients all over the country and around the world.

So if you cannot find the programmers you need or the programmers you have are not cost effective, we would encourage you to give Winning Solutions, Inc. a try. Please contact us today.