Why does XF not hire developers or raise VC fund?

turtile said:
The OP wants the software to be developed faster so my point was that it can actually slow them down initially.
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I don't see how it would. They don't sit chained at their desks 24/7 coding. I'm sure headhunting an excellent addition to their team could be done around the hours they spend coding. Not to mention they've been in the business long enough to recognise good quality coders quickly.

Have faith... when it's time, I'm sure it'll happen.
 
turtile said:
The OP wants the software to be developed faster so my point was that it can actually slow them down initially.
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I don't think it would, necessarily.

Good developers rise to the top in their field and stick out, so you wouldn't waste time interviewing someone you had no idea of how competent they were, nor had any background.
 
It isn't uncommon for staff to have discussions related to the development of XenForo, add-ons, etc. and it has yet to negatively impact XenForo's development, in fact, it may even be beneficial.

I know I've discussed features with staff and when discussing implementation a better method is suggested.
 
I think my post is being taken as my dissatisfaction with the current pace of development or support. Let me clarify - I'm perfectly happy with the current pace of development and support. Mike himself has helped fixed a few tickets I raised in the past and he's blazing fast!

I do want to see XF dominating the whole online discussion space. If XF sells X copies of their software every day; they'll have to be prepared for the day when they sell 10X or 100X copies a day.

I do not agree that adding a new developer would result into loss of quality. I think initial screening of the candidate can be based on his/her experience and the mod staff can help eliminating the potential hires to just one or two; who Mike and Kier can interview over the weekend.

At CrazyEngineers, we've been all 'virtual' for almost 6 years and it's only since last one year that we've built a team to sit together and take up responsibilities. It works just great!
 
TheBigK said:
I do want to see XF dominating the whole online discussion space.
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I'm sure XF do too... but you won't move people across platforms so readily. In fact VB proved the opposite of this, by doing exactly what you have cited, they pushed their customers away from their platform, to the competition, because money needed to be made over a quality product provided. Lots of people left, having really only IPB to go too at that time, or wait to see what Kier and Mike were going to do... thus here we are.

As directors, you can pay yourself accordingly based on what's coming in the door vs expenses... you can't do this with employee's. There's a huge indifference between the two.
 
TheBigK said:
I do not agree that adding a new developer would result into loss of quality.
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I'm not so sure that's the real issue. The real issue would be -how do you pay that developer?

The XF accounts at companies house show they've got a bit of a money surplus, but if you start adding in other developers, that vanishes pretty quickly.

They're not making enough money yet to take on extra people with a comfortable margin from the looks of it. Granted the accounts are fro 2013 but not much has changed since then.
 
RickM said:
Granted the accounts are fro 2013 but not much has changed since then.
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That is hugely relevant.

So much has changed since June 2013 when the accounts were last filed.

The lawsuit had only been over for a matter of months. XenForo 1.2 was only just being released. We're talking about an accounting period which mostly encompasses a hugely unstable time for the company where development updates were not happening and many customers were unsure what was going to happen next. I would envisage that not many people were renewing their support; and indeed there was even a license extension granted which would have slowed renewals down even more. The Resource Manager had only just been released and was being sold around that time with a massive discount. XenForo itself was discounted for a short time.

So much has changed and all for the better. Naturally, one can only guess that these massive changes made a difference to the company's finances, but certainly one would expect that to be the case.
 
Hiring to speed up the creation of new products would be great (CMS, gallery) but these days hiring is very expensive. The way they do it now is cheap and they're sure of the quality.

But hiring is no guarantee for growth or success, as seen with vB.
 
The only thing in this thread that made sense to me was the guy who said put some more attention to the importers. Certainly having more and better importers will help XF win more market share. AFAIK, there's no importer for SMF yet, as an example.
 
That's somewhat debatable.

Although there will always be someone who eventually wants to come from software A to software B, you do have to somewhat balance the business justification of spending X amount of time developing importer plus Y amount of time supporting the importer plus perhaps even Z cost of purchasing a license to develop an importer.

Especially when there are potentially other import paths that work such as doing multiple imports via other software which I believe most SMF people are doing.

If creating one importer from software A to software B only results in a relatively small number of licenses sold then arguably it's just not worth it.
 
which forum software has the most importers?

cause there are xenforo addons that do other forum softwares as well like better blogs and xenmediagallery
 
Hire me to swat flies, water your plants and to be a personal fan servant, for pay all I require is WoW time, im addicted again.
 
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