One good developer can carry a product for a surprisingly long time. Then, quietly, they start doing three jobs: building, testing their own work, and making design decisions nobody else is making. That is the moment to stop adding hours and start adding people.
The signals it is time to add QA
- Releases slip because testing happens at the end, if at all.
- Customers find bugs before your team does.
- The developer tests their own work, and misses what any author misses in their own writing.
- Everyone is nervous about a release day that should be routine.
A QA engineer, working in the sprint alongside the developer, changes the shape of the work. Bugs get caught while they are small, and releases go out on schedule.
The signals it is time to add a designer
- The developer is making interface decisions by default.
- Every new screen looks slightly different from the last.
- Customer feedback is about confusion, not missing features.
- You keep saying “we’ll clean up the UI later”.
What a product pod is
A developer, a QA engineer and a designer, working together on one product, in one office. That is a product pod. It is not a new kind of contract. Each person is a seat, priced like any other seat, sitting together in your satellite office.
| Seat | Mid level, per month, all-inclusive |
|---|---|
| Full-stack developer | $2,800 to $4,200 |
| QA engineer | $2,200 to $3,200 |
| Designer | See /pricing |
Why a pod feels different from three hires
With freelancers or contractors, going from one person to three feels like adding vendors: three contracts, three ways of working, three things to manage.
In a satellite office, it feels like your India office growing. The second and third people sit next to the first. They share an office, an employer and one invoice. The developer who has learned your product helps the new people learn it faster.
That is the whole idea of a satellite office: you grow the office, not the headcount.
When not to build a pod
If your developer is still finding product-market fit and the product changes shape every week, keep it to one person and a tight loop with you. A pod pays off once there is a product stable enough to test and design properly. Not before.
See the scenario in releases on schedule, tested, the startup view on /startups, or talk to us.