I’m within a few weeks of leaving Xojo consulting for good. This last client is in Eastern Tennessee. They have 3 projects (2 Windows only and 1 iOS). Clients are easy to work with and with stable products it’s mostly bug fixes and minor enhancements. The iOS project is a little challenging in that it’s a scanner application (so it has hardware the iPod touch plugs into) and the communicates via TCP socket to the base station (also a Xojo project). I really like these clients and would continue doing work for them but working full-time AND doing consulting work isn’t fair to them since I can’t be all that responsive as I used to be.
If you are interested in an introduction I will be happy to do so. Definitely need Xojo desktop and Xojo iOS experience.
Oh, I’m still using Xojo for the day job for the foreseeable future. I’ve been paring down clients this year and down to my last one. Just want to find a Xojo developer that can help them out.
Been contacted by a few developers. 1 in the UK, 1 in South America, and 1 the USA (Pacific Northwest). Since this client needs onsite visits because of hardware I don’t think the non-North American developers are in the running.
I’m frustrated by the lack of response but given the state of the Xojo consulting market it doesn’t surprise me. When I was consulting I answered practically every one of the leads and while I didn’t land all of them I at least got to the point of giving them a bid.
I understood that this customer wants to stay with Xojo … he might change his mind now as he is facing the cruel reality of the current state of the product and the ecosystem
I assume they are willing to pay for a consultant to fly in 2, 3, 4 times a year then or something to that effect; understandable since hardware is involved. Unfortunately I am not open to significant on-site. I was on-site once, at most twice a year for 12 years (annual company meeting and a rare tech support presence for sales calls) and then since my client I’m captive to was acquired, have had zero on-site since the pandemic and want to keep it that way. Factors like that are in the mix too; it is not just Xojo-related. Even ignoring Covid, for various reasons air travel has deteriorated to the point that if I can avoid it I would, lol.
Hardware can be on two places on earth. We could with my hardware laboratory and out hardware development and our firmware development exist without direct meetings. But most customers don’t want to. One Customer more or less would not be such a scene. As I have enough employees which can handle it I guess that all would be possible. But flying to Tennessee destroys at least three working days. And I have to ask my self: would it be worth of it to do? No.
I’m sorry to read that you did not get a healthy number of responses.
Did Xojo Inc look into their extensive list of consultants i.o. to provide some leads?
We do have a similar situation with FileMaker here in Europe. Over a decade of overly constraining licenses, unfortunate technical choices, snubbing of independent developers and atrociously bad marketing took its toll. The developer base is rapidly shrinking and aging.
Companies here are abandoning the product because of the risk and difficulty to find developers. Only recently Claris seems to have developed an understanding of how bad the situation has become.
The reassuring thing is that Claris is backed by its parent Apple. Who will back Xojo?
Your customer may need to think about a migration scenario for their Xojo-based code.
Even if they charge for that in the PRO licence, the Consulting Leads is just puplish the “Lead” in the forum, a special chanel for the one with a PRO licence. However, when the scarse leads have no response there, they put them in the general forum, dana did just that 2 weeks ago
When and if they do not find anybody they may have to get out of the Xojo world. Another lost one. The problem is: as more devs Xojo has as more people can take Jobs like that. But there are no people that want to. Sadly the developer community is melting like ice in the sun. Before years you could get freelancers for such Jobs. Today it becomes impossible.
