Hiring a developer
Eight questions to ask before you pay a deposit
Finding a developer is easy now. Knowing who you are handing money to is the hard part. This page is the eight questions I think you should ask, and my own answer to each one — in things you can open and check, not promises.
If you are here — weighing a payment to someone you have never met — then the first thing you need is not a list of sellers. It is a list of questions.
The eight questions
Not one of these requires you to take anyone's word. Each is a lookup you can do with public tools in a few minutes, and most of the bad outcomes are blocked right here.
01
Does this person actually exist?
Name, address, phone. It sounds obvious, but it filters the most, and it takes ten seconds: look the name up on the national tax portal, then send a Zalo message and see whether a human answers.
02
Can this person invoice me and sign a contract?
This is the most practical question on the list and the one most often skipped. A registered household business has a tax code, can sign a contract and can issue a VAT invoice — which matters when your own accountant has to justify the spend.
03
Can I turn up at the address?
An address that is only a screenshot proves nothing. A real address gives you a way to check — and it filters out the cases where there is nothing behind them.
04
Can I read this person's code?
A normal project portfolio gives you exactly one thing: ask for a reference. A public source account gives you more — you read how they write tests, whether they package carefully, before you hand over any money.
05
Has this person done this kind of work before?
This is the one of the eight I answer worst, and saying so plainly beats hiding it: I have not handed over a project to a client. What I have is eight years of software development, an MSc in Computer Science, and public repositories.
06
Can I see how this person works?
Ask once, and watch how the questions are framed and whether the answer to something they do not know is “I do not know, let me check”. Someone who answers that honestly is more trustworthy than someone who answers everything identically.
07
Where does my money go, and against which milestones?
This has to be in the contract before you sign, not after. If someone wants everything up front, you have nothing to hold them to — and “where has my money gone” is a question you cannot ask once it has gone.
08
Is the communication itself odd in any way?
Telegram only, no call, no contract, no address you could visit — all four at once is reason enough to stop. Not because any one of them is proof of fraud, but because all four together usually means the explanation is somewhere else.
The last two are not about skill. They are about how you lose money — and in twenty jobs that fail, losing money is how the software fails. Swapping the order of those two is fine. Dropping them is not.
My answer, one question at a time
The same eight questions, in the same order. I am not marking my own homework — you open the links and check. Where I have nothing, it says “nothing”, not a promise.
- 01Does this person actually exist?
- Nguyen Minh Tam, a registered household business in Vinh Long. I am in this city, I answer this phone number, and a Zalo message gets a human reply — usually during working hours.
- 02Can this person invoice me and sign a contract?
- Yes. I am registered as a household business, I issue VAT invoices, and the contract carries the name NGUYEN MINH TAM, matching my registration. The name on the invoice has to match the name on the register — which is why I state it rather than letting you guess.
- 03Can I turn up at the address?
- Yes — I am in Vinh Long, same timezone as Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh City. But I do this work online: an in-person meeting can be arranged, but it needs notice and carries an extra cost, so I do not treat it as the normal way to work.
- 04Can I read this person's code?
- Yes, and it is the only evidence I can offer without asking anyone's permission. My account is entirely public: open `viact` for a system that actually runs, `OptimizedGASDemo` for the C++ side.Open github.com/ngmitam →
- 05Has this person done this kind of work before?
- Not yet — no project has been handed to a client. I have no client names to put here and I will not invent them. Everything I use day to day (TypeScript, NestJS, React, Next.js, MySQL, TypeORM, Docker, Jest, Cypress) is in the public repositories, visible immediately.See the repositories →
- 06Can I see how this person works?
- Yes, and it is free. The first conversation carries no consulting fee, and it ends in a priced scope document — including when the conclusion is “I am not the right fit”.
- 07Where does my money go, and against which milestones?
- 30 / 40 / 30: deposit at signature, second tranche when the first working build is live on your infrastructure, third on handover of source. Anything outside the scope is quoted separately and waits for your written agreement before I start.
- 08Is the communication itself odd in any way?
- Nothing odd about it: a real phone number, a real Zalo account, a contract with a name on it, and a real address in Vinh Long. I work online, but I do not agree to work through a channel where I cannot check who I am dealing with.
What I do not take on
These four are refusals, written down so you do not spend a month finding out. They are here because a lot of people searching “hire a developer” are searching for exactly these — and I would rather say no early than say no late.
IT staff augmentation
No. I do not supply people by the month and I do not staff a team of my own inside your project. If you want someone sitting inside your existing team, that is a different model and I am not able to deliver it.
Projects needing three or more people
No. Two projects in parallel is the most I can still write, test and hand over myself. From three upward a larger company does it better than I do — and for less than you are probably assuming.
Security, ISO 27001, SOC 2
No. That is a certification-and-team business, not a one-person business. If your supplier-selection process makes that line mandatory, I am the wrong supplier and I will point you at the right people.
24/7 cover
No. I do not sell a one-hour response commitment for a system with one maintainer. What I sell is a system that runs and one person who replies within one business day, and I am telling you plainly that this is the whole of what one person can promise.
If you clear those eight
This part is what you would actually be buying. It is short, because it is the entire working model.
01
One conversation
You describe what runs on a spreadsheet today and the outcome you need. I ask questions; I do not send a generic quote. Reply within one business day.
02
Scope and price in writing
No scope document, no start. That document says what is in, what is out, and a fixed price for exactly that list.
03
Three payments at 30 / 40 / 30
Deposit on signature. Second tranche when you see a working build on your own infrastructure. Third on handover of source and documentation. The money follows something running, not a date on a calendar.
04
The source is yours from the start
That right is effective when the project begins, not at handover. I do not hold your source code against a final invoice.
05
30-day defect warranty
Bugs inside the delivered scope, free for 30 days. Third-party services — hosting, SMS, e-invoicing — you contract with them directly; I do not sit in the middle.
My evidence
A testimonial needs somebody else's permission. A repository does not — you open it and there is real code, real tests and a real Dockerfile. These are the ones worth opening in my account.
- viact2023
A full-stack system that actually runs: a NestJS REST API with JWT and Swagger, a React interface, MySQL with TypeORM migrations, Jest and Cypress tests, running under Docker. This is the one to open if you need an internal system.
- OptimizedGASDemo2025
A Gameplay Ability System written in C++ for Unreal Engine 5, focused on performance and module structure.
Common questions
- What deposit should I pay?
- 30% on signature, 40% when the first working build is live on your infrastructure, 30% on handover of source and documentation. If someone asks for 100% up front, that is your answer.
- What if I stop halfway?
- The source is yours from the beginning — you do not wait for handover. One commit at a milestone gives you a running version. Being honest, though: most abandoned projects are scope that was never fixed at the start, which is exactly why the scope document exists before I write the first line.
- Do I need to know how to code to work with you?
- No. You need to know that the job you want is not the job you are doing now. The rest is mine. What I need from you is a description of the current process and the outcome you want — in your own words, the way you would explain it in a meeting.
- Do you work with overseas clients?
- Yes, with two conditions. Timezone: APAC and Europe work, the US does not — one person cannot survive that. And I read and write English better than I speak it, so before accepting I need to see the English part of what you send, to know whether we can actually talk.
- Are you a company?
- No. I trade as a registered household business — a “hộ kinh doanh” is a real legal form in Vietnam, with a tax code, contract rights and the ability to issue VAT invoices. It is not a company, and I do not pretend it is. If your process requires a corporate entity, I am not the right supplier.
Send me a description of the work and you will get a written scope and price back. If I am not a fit, I will say so in the first line rather than leave you waiting.