Hiring my first programmer - but I'm concerned

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dsiomtw

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Mar 12, 2007
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End of the rainbow
So I've decided that in order to take things to the next level I need to hire myself a full-time techie. I just can't grow or scale anything any more with me doing everything myself. I already have a full-time "project manager" and 3 customer service people, but I've never had a programmer before.

I'm actually leaning towards hiring a full on "LAMP developer". They can take care of my servers, mess with Apache, develop web apps, custom tools that I need, etc. My mind is actually racing thinking of all the possibilities.

My only concern at this point is that I've never given this kind of access or control to someone before. With root access they will obviously have full access to everything, including all of my stats and financials, etc.

If the shit ever hit the fan I have nightly offsite backups so I'm not worried so much about that, but mainly I'm thinking about the fact that they would easily be able to see how much money I'm making, etc. This seems weird but I can't really think of a way to prevent it, short of getting rid of all the custom stats and admin pages that I need/use daily. It's not like I can really hide anything on the server ...

Well obviously I'm not the first one going through this for the first time. I was hoping to hear what others have done in this situation ...
 


Because I have very extensive web-based stats/admin pages that show me every item of income and expense updated 24/7. All of this information is stored in a mysql db on the main server. I need all of this to manage offers and campaigns, and run my business.
 
Actually, a PHP developer won't necessarily have experience with Server management. It only means that the platform used is MySQL & Apache on a Linux box.
 
That's cool - 98% of what I want them for is just mysql/perl development, not so much server stuff. But thanks for the reminder.

Anyone have any ideas about somehow keeping them from being able to access *my* admin stuff, but let them access everything else? Sure I could just setup a dev box for them to do everything on, and don't even give them access to my main server, but that sort of defeats the purpose since I'll still need to do a bunch of stuff myself.
 
Uh don't give them access to the database or files containing your financials and other sensitive info?

Am I missing something?
 
Well the plan was to give them root access to the box so they can do all sorts of server related stuff. Both of the top 2 candidates I'm leaning towards have pretty extensive admin backgrounds as well so they could do a lot of little things if I needed them to. Or maybe not. After thinking about it I wouldn't even give root to my wife or business partner lol.
 
zip up the shit you want preserved from shell, download the zip, then delete the files from there? When he's done, put it back up?

Do you have cpanel where you could give him no-shell FTP-only access to a new account for testing using a MySQL database that has private shit removed (except for one or two records to play with)?

These are ideas off the top of my head. There has to be a way
 
Sorry for the confusion. I am hiring a full-time employee. This isn't just a one-time project they are going to work on. I'm hiring a local guy who I've met and he seems like a great guy, and over time who knows maybe I'll trust him 110%, but I won't trust him 100% right out of the gate. But at the same time I'd love to be able to give them root so they can do all the things I'm wasting my time on now, on a daily basis. What is a guy to do ...
 
remote the stats db, then make a seperate login pass that only allows updating of the info from the server the guy is working on. So he can't pull the stats/data
 
i've outsourced some my programming stuff early on, but only on a project per project basis, and never again will i do that. when i want something done i want it done now, not later. i'm willing and able to pay what it costs, but i want it done now. since i've learned to program, i've found that their estimate time to get something and to actually get it done isn't worth the hassle to me. as far as your database, create another db and give him access only to that one.
 
Yeah I'm the same way, which is why I pretty much do everything myself. But you can only go so far when you are doing everything yourself... so I'm going to try something new and see how it works. It will be tough because I'm a control freak, but if it allows me to make twice as much money I'm sure I can get used to it lol.

Thanks for the replies, especially smaxor who's idea will work. Don't know why I didn't think of that. That is really the only way I think.
 
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