People laugh when I tell them I wrote my first mobile app in 2004 — they’re eager to remind me that Apple’s app store didn’t open until four years later. It’s easy to forget the decade of Palm and BlackBerry devices that preceded our current world of iOS and Android. In those days, mobile apps were merely a hobbyist’s pursuit while I earned a living as a Java programmer; it wasn’t until 2009 that I knew I wanted to do iPhone development professionally and not until three years later that Noble Applications was founded. My boss at the time was skeptical that apps were going anywhere, but she let me run with it. A few months later we were in the app store and at the forefront of the mobile revolution.
The success of that app led to one of the biggest disappointments I’ve ever faced in my career. Google’s rival smartphone platform was rising and we knew we needed an Android version of our app fast. Rather than develop it in-house, I decided to outsource to a company that claimed to be experts. Unfortunately, what the “experts” delivered didn’t work — and their code was riddled with the kinds of mistakes I hadn’t seen since my college days. My team ended up rewriting most of it, a process that took longer and cost more than if we had done it ourselves from scratch. Everyone I talked to had similar stories of outsourcing gone bad. I knew there had to be a better way.
Noble Applications is that way. When I founded the company in 2012, I wanted to be an alternative to the kind of assembly-line, cheaper-is-better development offered by the average consulting company. I did it by hiring the best people I could find, starting with the senior software developers I already knew. Today, the average developer at Noble Applications has more than ten years of experience, and 85% of our staff writes code, including myself. When we hire, we prioritize not just experience but a willingness to engage in continuous career development, because we know that technology never stands still and being the best requires a commitment to learning.
Most businesses don’t need full-time mobile app developers. But every business deserves to work with professionals who deliver the kind of software you expect from your in-house team. That’s what you’ll get when you hire Noble Applications.
