Oftentimes, when we’re exploring a possible engagement with a potential client, the client asks if they can technically assess the Amplifiers who will be assigned to their team.

3 Reasons Why We Don’t Allow Technical Assessments

You are engaging Amplified, not individual contractors.

First, please understand that you are hiring Amplified, the startup studio, and not individual contractors. Amplified as a whole is the development partner, and we are in the business of mobilizing great teams. An advantage of this team-first approach is that clients benefit from Amplified’s entire base of resources (human and otherwise), whether or not certain individuals directly support your startup.

Also, it’s important to note that sometimes it’s necessary to swap team members that are working on a project or to increase or decrease headcount. Rotations don’t happen very often — we believe in keeping teams as stable as possible so they can build great executional rhythm — but we do reserve the right to rotate contributors (either to support their own development goals or to manage allocations across the entire client base) and thus the team configuration is not permanently fixed. Accordingly, you may end up conducting a technical assessment on specific Amplifiers but end up working with others as the engagement progresses.

You can trust that we have mobilized a capable team.

Amplified conducts a robust technical assessment for each prospective job applicant. We are highly selective: approximately 2% of the candidates that we screen end up receiving a job offer. Whatever assessment you are thinking of doing — we’ve likely already done some version of that ourselves, if not more.

Moreover, we would never assign an individual to a project if we didn’t believe they would productively contribute. That means that either they have a track record of successfully working with clients and/or they have experience with a particular technology stack. Or, they have been training to take on a new set of responsibilities that your project could offer. (Our newest and youngest Amplifiers are placed into an internal rotational development program where they get full-stack development opportunities, take supplemental courses, and are mentored by senior colleagues.)

Whatever the case, you can trust that Amplified puts its professional reputation behind each team and individual team member. And if that trust is not there, the partnership will likely struggle. We place a lot of value on honest collaboration, after all.

Technical assessments often don’t yield a fair representation of what our team is capable of.

Briefly place yourself in the position of an Amplified engineer: it’s the end of a long workday, and you’re ready to sign off for the evening. Instead, you have to perform a technical evaluation, for a team that you are not very familiar with, in a non-native language. You’ve already gone through a round of technical assessments to get hired by Amplified in the first place. You’ve repeatedly proven yourself to your colleagues and to other Amplified clients. But that doesn’t matter. If you don’t WOW this new, prospective client, Amplified may lose a business opportunity — and it would be your fault.

Why is this not an ideal environment for a technical assessment?

• They enter the assessment feeling tired, stressed, nervous, and demotivated.
• Many software developers are introverted and aren’t necessarily the best at portraying themselves and presenting their full potential, especially under pressure.
• They tell themselves that if they don’t do well, Amplified will lose the business opportunity, and so they put unfair pressure on themselves.

We have had instances in the past where we did allow clients to technically assess contributors. And yet, for some combination of the aforementioned reasons, the conversations didn’t go well. This outcome is unfortunate for both sides because we knew that these specific Amplifiers would have been a great addition to their team.

What DO we allow?

We will allow clients to meet the extended team for informal conversation and pre-project planning. Through that, clients can learn more about their backgrounds, experiences, and strengths/weaknesses.

The assigned team members, however many there are, are also in constant contact with the client throughout the project, whether through written updates or regular calls. Even if the client doesn’t do an assessment beforehand, they’ll be able to see Amplifiers in action and check on their skills and progress from the very beginning of an engagement.

Additionally, we can provide referrals and testimonials from previous Amplified clients. We can also provide resumes and a list of established skills for each contributor. Because our client projects are protected by NDAs, however, we cannot provide code samples.

What if a team member isn’t performing well?

We take our client relationship very seriously, which includes being reliable no matter what. If it were ever the case that a contributor assigned to a project struggled to deliver or proved to be a poor fit, then we would absolutely work to resolve the issue.

We’d either work with the individual to address his or her shortcomings and provide more support, or we would rotate another contributor into that role. However, it’s worth noting that we’ve never had this issue with any of our client engagements.

Every Amplified engagement has ended to our partner-client’s satisfaction. That’s possible only by mobilizing and assigning great teams. If we do enter into an engagement, you can trust that we’ll have a great team ready for your startup, too.