Body shopping or a senior developer in your team?

When the team can't keep up, a CTO needs delivered roadmap tasks, not one more person to manage. Body shopping gives you developer hours you manage yourself. A senior in your team gives you delivered tasks and a team that learns to work with AI along the way.

One question decides it. Are you short of hands, or of a way of working? Body shopping and hiring both add hands. Neither adds a way of working.

Below is a comparison of the three options a CTO usually weighs. We write it from our own practice:

What is body shopping and what do you get for it?

Body shopping is renting a developer by the hour or day. The agency supplies a person and bills the time. Tasks, priorities, onboarding and quality control stay with you.

It works when you have clearly described tasks and a senior with time to manage one more person. Then it is a quick way to add hands.

When the team can't keep up because review piles up, CI stops nothing and specs are vague, another person on hours will not fix it. They load your seniors with onboarding and more review. And quality depends on the specific person, not the agency's brand.

Outsourcing a whole project is something else. The agency takes a spec and delivers the result outside your team. That can fit a separate project. For a product that changes every week, you cannot write the spec up front.

Body shopping, a senior in the team, or hiring: a comparison

These options do not exclude each other. Most often a senior now plus hiring in parallel makes sense. When you find the new person, they join a team that already has rules, review and tests.

How do you decide: short of hands, or of a way of working?

Tick what your team already has. Every unticked item is a way of working you are missing.

Need capacity for years and have time to wait? Hire. Is a key person leaving? A senior now, hiring in parallel, knowledge into the repository.

What does a senior in the team look like in practice?

We once offered our team, instead of a hire, to companies looking for a React developer. The answer was silence. We understand it: a stranger in the code is a risk for a CTO first, not a relief. So we do not start with a black box, but with one task that goes through your review.

The collaboration has four steps:

AI writes all of our code today, and a senior is accountable for the result. So we add the rules and tests to the repository right at the start, not after the first bug. We cover how in How to introduce AI into a development team. Why the harness matters more than the tool is in Harness engineering in practice: from issue to PR.

If you want an intensive start, the workshop for a development team means work on real tasks with an agent, not demos.

When we don't recommend it

• You have clear tasks, a strong lead and only want cheap hours. Body shopping or a freelancer will cost less. You do not need a senior.
• You need a whole new team at once. That is not us. We join an existing team as a senior, not as a staffing agency.
• You want someone to work outside your repository and hand over a finished package. We don't do that. We work in your code and through your review.

Want a senior who plugs in from day one?

You do not need more hours to manage. You need a senior who takes the task, finishes it and answers for it. And a team that gains something from it. That is exactly how we work as an external developer for product teams.

Tell us where your team can't keep up. We get back to you within two business days, and together we pick what to fix first.

If you'd rather talk first, book a 15-minute meeting with Filip.

Is your team short of hands, or of a way of working?

Frequently asked questions

What is body shopping?

Renting a developer from an agency by the hour or day. The agency supplies the person, you give them tasks, manage them and answer for the result. You pay for time, not for delivered tasks.

Body shopping or software development outsourcing?

With body shopping you manage the work, inside your team. With project outsourcing the agency manages it against a spec, outside your team. For a product that changes every week, you cannot write the spec up front.

When is an external senior better than hiring?

When you need the capacity now, not in a few months. Or when what is missing is a way of working, such as review, tests and rules for AI. Hiring makes sense for a long-term need and can run in parallel.

How fast does an external senior get going?

From the first pull request, once they have repository access and one real task. The first month shows whether the collaboration fits. The subscription can be cancelled in any month.