WyeWorks

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of the Research Cores program at Northwestern University.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?

We have a custom web application called NUcore that we developed to manage the program here. It's a large, fairly complex application that is actually used by four different universities. Our previous developers had already been working with WyeWorks, but they decided that they weren’t going to support the app anymore, so they transferred all of the development to WyeWorks.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

WyeWorks has taken over the development and support of our web application. The app is a transaction processing platform written in Ruby on Rails and running over several different database systems at different locations. For example, we use Oracle here, but some of the other universities that use the software use other database applications.

In terms of features, the app is similar to a storefront but much more complex and tailored to the specific needs of the university and the core facilities. People can purchase things, order services, or make reservations. The facilities that provide those services use the app to manage their activity and billing.

What is the team composition?

We have a lead developer, two other developers, and a project manager from WyeWorks.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?

Our previous developers had already been working with WyeWorks, so we came to them through our prior developers.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in December 2024, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The transition was pretty seamless because they were already involved in the project. WyeWorks’ primary metric is the speed with which they develop features and the quality of the code they write, which is reflected in the application's performance. They’re very efficient and code faster than our previous developers. We’ve had no issues whatsoever with the code they’ve written. 

Overall, WyeWorks is about 50% more efficient than our previous developers in terms of feature turnaround, and they're also 50% less expensive. Although we're spending the same amount of money, the team gets more done through their hourly rate.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re always on time. They can be a little bit over budget, but nothing unreasonable. We use Jira for project management and Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and email for communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re really impressed with their efficiency. They grasp concepts very quickly and build solutions much faster than we’ve experienced in the past. Moreover, they don’t rush and develop bad code; they write very good code efficiently.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really. We’ve been very impressed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear with them about what you need. They’re capable of delivering almost anything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of technical operations of a SaaS software startup specializing in hiring software. I oversee work across all of our engineering and product groups.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?
We needed to augment our development teams with additional resources.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?
WyeWorks provides a team of full stack developers mainly focused on Ruby on Rails, and they also work with TypeScript, JavaScript, and React. The team works on our current product suites, specifically on custom bespoke requests for our big customers. Large customers require custom work, and we ask the WyeWorks team to focus on new features and layouts.

What is the team composition?
We work with a team of 7–8 developers and have one primary contact for staffing needs.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?
We found WyeWorks on Clutch. I contacted and assessed several different development companies, and WyeWorks was the best fit. The team won in several categories. We needed to work with a service provider from Latin America for a time zone overlap. Additionally, WyeWorks specialized in Ruby on Rails and JavaScript, which was the tech stack I needed. 

One of the things I liked was that WyeWorks had a stable team of developers with whom they had long-term relationships and didn't hire new staff like other providers did. 

How much have you invested with them?
We've spent around $500,000 so far.
 
What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with WyeWorks in March 2024, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
WyeWorks has provided value right out of the gate as soon as we started working together. The team writes good code, and we've been able to ship work on time and with good quality, which has been encouraging. Some of our key development leaders and engineering directors who have reviewed the code provided by WyeWorks have given good feedback about the work. 

We've had past experiences with other contractors where we had to rewrite code, but this hasn't happened with WyeWorks.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

WyeWorks' team is integrated with our developers and works directly with our engineering managers. All teammates join our meetings on Zoom. WyeWorks' developers have been treated as part of our team, and their performance is on par with our internal team's. 

We had some communication issues at first to get the team set up and build norms to get them into our everyday workflow. But once we got there, the team has been fantastic. WyeWorks is on top of communication and has been easy to work with. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I love that WyeWorks' teammates are long-term employees. Every teammate we work with has worked with WyeWorks for at least a year, most of them for two years. The team has a wide range of developers, which is really important for me because I need to work closely with a team I can trust. Another strength of WyeWorks is their communication in general. Anytime I have a problem, I reach out to the team and quickly receive a response. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

The current state of the global market makes it hard for Latin American companies to compete with service providers from Ukraine or India regarding prices. Although this isn't a direct issue of WyeWorks, their prices can't compete with those of other cheaper companies. However, once we compare their work, WyeWorks' price is competitive because they offer good work value. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I suggest hiring WyeWorks and being as transparent as possible. The team is willing to work with you and wants to help you succeed. WyeWorks offers a partnership, which is what I look for when working with a nearshore company. I like to work with a team that will integrate with our team and not just someone looking for our money.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering at HMBradley. I’ve been with the company for three and a half years and started as a regular frontend software engineer.

We’re a bank, and our mission is to encourage customers to save money. We reward them with a higher interest rate on their deposit accounts, so the more they save, the more they earn. We offer a deposit account and a credit card and have features built to help automate money movement.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?

Around the spring of 2022, we had to migrate our underlying banking core to a new one. The CTO and company leadership decided to have Elixir as the new language. We were entirely written in Go, so we didn’t have any Elixir developers at the time. In summary, we were changing out the engine of the airplane while learning how to read the manual.

As we were getting through the process, we realized that we needed developers who were already up to speed on the language so they could write code for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

WyeWorks provided software engineers to write code. We treated them like any other engineer; we just gave them the work and general outline. They integrated well with the internal team. We partnered with full-time engineers on various projects, and they worked remotely from Uruguay and Argentina.

What is the team composition?

We always had three developers at the same time, but in total, we worked with six developers. As one rotated off the project, another one would come as a replacement.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?

Our CEO was very involved in the Ruby on Rails community. WyeWorks’ co-founder was on the Ruby on Rails core team, so he found them through his network.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We took them on in July 2022, and the partnership ended in November 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

WyeWorks wrote code and delivered features independently. We gave them sensitive work, and they took on an entire flow unsupervised. Moreover, the engineers had to learn about the inner workings of the US banking system, which was probably more challenging because they weren’t from the US. However, they consistently shipped features from the data they landed.

Overall, they were happy to do more work if needed, and if they took a problem that was foreign to them, they just ran with it.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

All engineering projects can go a little over time, but there wasn’t anything that WyeWorks couldn’t work on. The only project that went over was the one I was working on, and it went over because we didn’t know what we were doing. We rebuilt the feature three times because we didn’t have a good conception of the requirements.

We communicated via Slack and Zoom, and WyeWorks’ engineers were present at stand-up meetings. They asked questions or asked for code reviews through Slack or regular meetings.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review? 

Julian (Software Developer) was super smart and very patient. We really enjoyed working with him; he was with us for nearly six months.

Gastón (Senior Software Engineer) was with us probably the longest time; he left 2–3 months ago. It was really nice to see him grow from a junior developer to a super solid senior-level engineer.

Lastly, Ignacio (Software Developer) always wanted to challenge himself. He actually came into the office because he had a working vacation in the US. I met him when he was in Los Angeles; he was super friendly.

Overall, everyone we worked with was fantastic, but those three developers probably made the biggest impact during their time with us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were great at keeping their cool in a chaotic environment. WyeWorks joined us at a turbulent time in our history. We were doing a big core migration and switching a language, which alienated a lot of our existing staff. We had 4–5 engineers leave within a month, so the morale was rocky.

On top of that, there was a staff member who had a knack for upsetting their colleagues, and WyeWorks’ team was very patient with him. Overall, their resilience and tenacity in our chaotic startup environment gave them a lot of credit. Their colleagues respected them just for keeping their cool throughout the process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our particular architectural style wasn’t a common practice in software engineering; it was a solid pattern, so it was easy to understand. However, it required a bit of ramp-up time and training. Our only feedback was that we had to train the new developer all over again whenever an engineer left.

In the grand scheme of things, a month of training was pretty disruptive. Although every engineer stuck around as long as possible, WyeWorks could have a minimum commitment time from the engineers before they move on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you don’t want to invest much time in training, get a minimum commitment for how long an engineer is around. However, it can be a double-edged sword. Many of our full-time developers get to a point of exhaustion because the architecture is a pattern, and they want to work on something different and try new things.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at a technology consulting firm as a senior organizational growth associate. We work with other companies to help them craft their digital products, which include strategy, design, and development. In my role, I’m involved in our staffing and recruiting efforts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?

We didn’t have the resources we needed, so we required an additional engineer to keep one of our projects going and ensure we didn’t pause it to avoid missing our delivery goal.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We currently work with one of WyeWorks’ engineers — Andrés (Software Developer) — to augment our team. He works remotely for us to support one of our projects.

When we were looking for an additional developer, one of our main requirements has to have someone dependable and adaptable. Additionally, React is part of our technology stack, so we needed someone with strong skills in React and Node.js development.

What is the team composition?

Besides Andrés, I’ve communicated with the head of their business.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?

We’ve been partners with WyeWorks for quite some time, so I wasn’t part of the discovery process.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $10,000–$25,000. However, I’m not entirely sure.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with WyeWorks on this project in March 2023, and our engagement is ongoing. However, it’ll wrap up in May 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The main reason we continue going to WyeWorks to get support is that we’re always very pleased with their work. Andrés has demonstrated excellent skills in React and Node.js, and he’s been hitting all of our goals.

Moreover, I’ve heard nothing but good things from our delivery manager about the quality of his work. Recently, our delivery manager reached out to me out of the blue to tell me how incredible Andrés was.

The client has also been very happy with us; in fact, they extended our engagement several weeks ago. Part of the reason why our client extended the engagement was due to Andrés’ high-quality work and dedication, so we’re now looking at a long-term relationship with the client.

In addition to that, I’ve noticed greater levels of consistency across our development team. They’ve been working really well and more cohesively as a result of our engagement with WyeWorks.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

WyeWorks is one of the easiest partners I’ve been able to work with. They’re very accommodating, quick, and responsive, so our engagement has been very smooth. Additionally, they’ve helped us work on a reasonable rate that works for all parties, which I really love. As for collaboration tools, our development team uses Slack and Zoom to communicate. Additionally, they use Miro to collaborate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

WyeWorks is a very professional team. They’re very responsive, and I’ve had a great customer experience collaborating with the head of their business. We have a smooth and strong working relationship, and he has been very accommodating and understanding.

In addition to that, I really appreciate WyeWorks’ commitment to our work and to helping us be as successful as possible. The quality of the engineers they have on their team is very impressive. They’ve become our go-to partner when we seek engineers to join our projects.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I haven’t been working with WyeWorks enough time to identify areas of improvement. I’ll probably have constructive feedback for them if I continue working with them for more months.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be specific about what you’re looking for from the engineer you’re looking for to join your team — it’s very important to be specific about your needs. Additionally, if you’re looking to work with WyeWorks for a long-term partnership, I encourage you to be very responsive. They’re incredibly responsive and friendly, so it’s important to reciprocate that responsiveness.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a company focusing on improving communication between doctors and patients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?

We needed help with our software development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

WyeWorks is in charge of all of our software development. They’ve developed our entire platform, from idea to deployment. Now, we have a fleshed-out product ready for alpha testing with doctors. Moving forward, WyeWorks will be in charge of continuous maintenance.

This product is an interactive workspace that doctors would use while they’re talking to their patients. As for the technology stack, WyeWorks has used PHP, JavaScript, and HTML.

What is the team composition?

We work with three full-time software developers and a part-time project manager from WyeWorks.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?

Back in 2007, we had worked with WyeWorks’ founders on a different project, and they were fantastic. Thus, when this new project arose, we reconnected with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Throughout the last year, WyeWorks has worked with us on taking our idea and translating it into a functional and great platform — our collaboration has been fantastic. I can talk with them about certain feature goals and have my designers define how those features will look. Their team is very capable of translating very rough sketches into smooth and functional features.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been an evolving process; we’ve been collaborating and learning about the different personality types within our teams. Now, we’re in a fantastic phase where we’re defining details, sprints, and milestones. Additionally, there’s a new teammate who’s contributing a lot to elevating the project management side of our engagement.

During our company’s initial stage, we didn’t need a lot of accuracy regarding milestone deadlines because everything was messier. However, that had to do with the stage our company was at. Now, everything is working incredibly well in that regard.

WyeWorks is highly engaged and solves problems effectively and collaboratively with me. Whenever something goes wrong, they’re incredibly responsive. As for collaboration tools, we use Kanban, Jira, Slack, Google Meet, Google Docs, Google Slides, and Figma. We have three regular calls per week. For example, we do a review at the end of each week, as well as a weekly refinement to define what will be done next week.

What did you find most impressive about them?

WyeWorks’ most visible skills for me are their collaboration skills, which are great. However, I can’t place them above their technical skills because, as a non-technical person, I can’t judge myself. I know that everything they’ve developed has worked well, so development is probably their strongest suit.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although collaboration has been one of their biggest strengths, it has also been their biggest improvement. As mentioned before, we’re now working under more defined processes than initially.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate a lot and be honest.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of an Educational Platform company, serving Higher Education and K-12 with innovative online courses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire WyeWorks, and what were your goals?

We needed to make rapid progress on a complex Elixir code base. We had to launch our online course product within 2 months and then continuously enhance functionality while refactoring for scale and stability.

SOLUTION

How did you select WyeWorks and what were the deciding factors?

WyeWorks was recommended for their deep Elixir expertise by experts in the field. After interviewing them, it was clear that they also provide coherent, dedicated teams who care deeply about the outcome of the project and have strong expertise in Agile development practices.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They quickly came up to speed on an existing Elixir codebase, and immediately drove improvement of code structure and design patterns while implementing key roadmap features. The team tackled several scaling issues, including database query optimization and clustering of the deployment architecture.

They also implemented numerous features with Phoenix LiveView and the pub / sub framework to handle realtime messaging within the application.

How many people from the WyeWorks team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were 3 engineers total, one of whom was tech lead / engineering manager helping to balance workload and elaborate on development stories.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The deliverables were of excellent quality, with solid documentation of code and pull requests. The WyeWorks team also drove significant improvement of our coding and code review practices which raised the overall quality of our releases.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The project management philosophy was strongly based in Agile, and fit well with our organization. The WyeWorks engineers were true members and leaders within our teams and placed value on understanding the business context and broader picture of all the work the contributed to.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

WyeWorks has a solid model for engagement that makes them highly productive and aligned with the rest of our organization. Their ethos of continuous improvement is powerful and helpful in our context as a startup who is pulling together several development streams into a coherent platform.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

WyeWorks has been a strong participant in Sprint retrospectives and have responded quickly to any feedback, and been a source of insightful suggestions that have made a big difference. Their flexibility has made it possible to change direction based on conditions and shifts in stakeholder priorities.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m head of product at a custom packaging supplier. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?

We needed help building out our platform from an engineering perspective.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They sourced really good people and put a fantastic team together for us that’s the core of our background engineering efforts. The team works in Elixir and React. They also took over another project that’s in GraphQL with a Postgres stack.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five people at the maximum.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?

We talked with other providers in our search but WyeWorks really stood head and shoulders above the others in terms of their willingness to work with us. We’re a remote organization to start with and while we’re based in the United States, we also have the wonderful flexibility to find the best people to work on a project regardless of where they are, physically.

 We were looking for teams that could provide the skillset that we needed, and we needed people that could onboard quickly and efficiently as well as be affordable. WyeWorks met all of those criteria beautifully.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2020, and our work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The end result has been a much more stable and organized codebase than when they started working with it, which is an unexpected pleasure. The team has really implemented a lot from a process improvement standpoint.

They’ve been very thoughtful in terms of how they’ve approached the project. They were also able to be fully integrated team members and we’ve been able to increase the velocity of our projects in a really solid way.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Slack, Jira, and Github for communication and project management. The team is very committed to good project management hygiene, in the sense that I don’t have to bug them about that aspect. They’re very engaged participants in the sprint planning process. Their record-keeping has been great and it’s been a real delight to work with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their overall staffing process is quite good. They’ve been able to find people who mesh with the team from both a process and a personality perspective, just as much as having sound technical expertise. It takes them beyond a staffing firm and more to the level of partner in what we’re trying to accomplish.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing I can think of at this point.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of Flavorpill. We're an online publisher that focuses on culture news and events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?

We were looking for a vendor to build the next generation website for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were relaunching our website and turning it more into a dynamic publishing platform, so we needed to add multiple layers of new technical features. WyeWorks developed a new web-based portal, improving the functionality and adding new features.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 3–4 members of their team.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?

We were looking for a company in South America because of the convenient time zone and the affordable prices. We liked the fact that WyeWorks was very collaborative and creative, so we chose them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in December 2015 and the project was completed in May 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The functionality of the new platform has improved dramatically.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

They're creative problem-solvers, so we could trust them. They're based in Uruguay, but they were always available and their English was top-notch.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're very efficient and reliable. Our internal team enjoyed working with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former CTO of a healthcare technology company. We created a platform that focuses on quality of care metrics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WyeWorks?

I’ve collaborated with WyeWorks on separate occasions for two different companies. For both cases, I hired them as a way to extend my development team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

WyeWorks provided staff augmentation services. Their engineers integrated themselves with our existing development teams. Each project required them to create and ship software via agile processes. They primarily use Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, and other database technologies.

What is the team composition?

They’ve allocated as many as eight individuals at one time. Overall, I’ve worked with 12–16 different resources from WyeWorks.

How did you come to work with WyeWorks?

An internal staff member recommended them as a potential resource.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly $50,000–200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

My most recent engagement with them took place from June 2014–April 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Unfortunately, I don’t have specific metrics available. However, they provided me with a reliable way to expand development teams. Acting as an extension each firm, they helped ensure we delivered working software. Their Ruby on Rails and refactoring expertise enabled them to improve a variety of codebases.

How did WyeWorks perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re terrific communicators, so the language barrier isn’t an issue. They’d join us for video conferences, daily stand-ups, and scheduled meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They bring a good mix of agile methodology and flexibility to any project. It has been a pleasure working with their executive team. They’re compassionate and creative individuals, so I hope to work with them again in the future.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Reach out to them. They’re willing to find a great way to work with each client.