Dylan, you got a reply that… well… let me just paste it:
As the superior German programmer I am I’ve already solved the problem in my head as per your specification. I’m able to deliver a solution in source code in any language that can print a line of text. If necessary, I can also provide flowcharts and a solution on solid German-made paper.
ROFL you CANNOT be serious.
Dylan’s experiment is yielding fascinating and amusing results. My personal favorite at the moment:
Dear Sir, You have found the right person to do the job. I am a representative of a company that has recently completed a large enterprise commercial project related to the development of a HaltLib.NET library that is meant specifically to solve the problem of interest to you, and I am ready to share my experiences and code. Note that our library works for a wide variety of programming languages, including, but not limited to, HTML, XML, PNG, CSV, SQL, BNF, Regular Expressions and even Field=Value .property file formats. I guarantee you maximally efficient and clean code on this project.
On the upside, 3 of 11 bids pointed out that the project was impossible. What I’m unclear on is how many of them realized that this wasn’t a serious spec.
Is it just me, or did the biddings disappear?
Please, tell me, you got screenshots!
The one who claimed, he already did it, Gr Gott, Gregor and Turing’s lover were Hilarious!
I’ve had a few hundred projects done on Rentacoder so here is my 2 cents
As a western coder used to tens of bucks an hour you’ve got to realise that when you come onto the site at first there is nothing to distinguish you from the very worst possible coders from hell.
The feedback system is critical here. New coders may be seem smart and hardworking - they may show you an impressive portfolio, accept your bid and then when the deadline comes you will find that they got a real job and can’t finish the project leaving you stranded. This is not just tough on buyers - its tough on new coder.
That means that if you are a programmer in Munich or San Francisco who needs a few hundred bucks a day to pay the rent your first few bids are not going to be very lucrative. They are going to be try-outs amd you will be competing with millions of guys who can hardly code at all all bidding $8 for a 100 hour project.
Here - from about five or six years of Rentacoder projects is the rule of thumb. But don’t panic - there is a way . . .
As the number of successful projects goes up the average amount bidders will pay per hour increases sharply.
The first dozen projects will be give-aways. So check though Rentacoder before you need to make money there and find tiny projects - one liners - from serious looking bidders and bid tiny amounts for them. This builds up a profile - say 10 or 15 10/10s) that shows that you are reliable and can work with a range of people without problems - many coders can’t and have to quibble and sweat the tiniest projects so that will distinguish you.
At this stage your average hourly rate that bidders will pay rises from a few cents or a few bucks to burger flipping money (still don’t take on any large or complex projects at this money). After you have a few dozen projects all with 10/10 you’ll find that you should be bringing in an hourly rate equal to a salaried person with similar skills - but you are in the kitchen working in your underpants.
If you take a look you’ll find there are plenty of coders with 100 projects with 10/10 who are charging full western rates - $100 an hour or more. To get this far you need to have great communication skills and not let their clients down by ignoring deadlines as many coders do - you CAN do that can’t you?
As a buyer or seller there are two more rules - Avoid anyone who has lost an arbitration - and - if you are a professional only bid on coders who have consistently got 10/10 and if you are a coder don’t consider bidding on anyones project who has lower.
With very large number of project this may slip to 9.9/10. These high scorers are the ones who have not failed their clients or for bidder ones who have not messed their coder around. They may be tough negotiators, but they are basically fair.
And I shouldn’t have to say it - but spec your work tightly on Renatacoder -
Looking at mgroves comment
This should be easy if you know what you are doing
points us to a classic - the type of thing where you want some guy to set up an off the shelf PHP/MySQL package and trigger some function in it with a cron
You’ll be surprised how many people who will bid on something like that and then after accepting the bid the first question will be what is a cron? If you are unlucky this question is the first that you hear from them, before they have started the work, half an hour before the deadline.
When I was first graduating college and didn’t have any real world experience, I went to RentACoder to bid extremely low on some of the projects I thought I could handle.
I ended up doing 3 different projects through RentACoder and while I think I only made around $90 on each of the projects even though I spent up to 20 hours on each, I managed to achieve some real world project experience that allowed me to create a much better resume.
For that reason, I will always have a special place in my heart for RentACoder allowing me to get real world experience when I couldn’t find a job due to my lack of experience.
I have used Rent A Coder for a few projects and in general I wasn’t happy with the quality of work I received. I would give a warning to stay away from developers from India. I find them arrogant and are hard headed and they argue a lot. I am the buyer and instead of doing whatever I want them to do, they think they know better. I am a developer myself and I give pretty specific requirements and they end up straying from the specs for no good reason and try to convince me I am wrong!!
I prefer developers from Eastern Europe. They are smart and creative.
In my last project, I wanted a VB.NET app to be converted to C# and mentioned I use VS 2008. I accepted a bid from a developer with high rating (over 9) and gave him the code. A day later, he cancels the bid because he doesn’t use VS2008. Why did he bid when I mentioned it’s for VS 2008 is beyond me. I got pissed off with RAC because I couldn’t contact the guy after the cancellation. I just wanted to tell him he could use VS 2005. RAC didn’t care to help. Cancellation was done within 24 hours from bid acceptance and I have no recourse.
I was pissed off also with the developer because he cancelled without contacting me first. Yeah an idiot who ran off with the code.
I have to say the quality of coders on RAC is subpar. I am talking about the ones with high ratings as I never work with ones with no or low ratings.
Next time I will be using the other sites. Everyone’s mileage will vary.
Do not use these sites. If you need some extra programming work done, go to people you know and ask for some good references. This is always the best option if you can get it. Also, go to your local college and ask some of the professors if they have any talented programming students that would be interested if you need the work done cheap. This way you know the person you are getting and if someone you respect says they are good. I have never been disappointed by using this method.
If I need to farm out some work, it is usually doing a larger project for a client of mine. It is only part of the work. However, you will save your reputation in the long term. It is worth the extra money.
Great post, I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with rent-a-coder. The flexibility of the code and trying to update the site is always a disaster.
I use Rentacoder and Getafreelancer for some side projects. You’re not going to make a living from these sites alone, but they’re nice for a little filler. When working on my normal long-term projects it’s nice to be able to take a break and work on some smaller projects that you can finish in a few days, to break up the monotony, and make an extra $1000-$2000 per month or so extra.
It is true that you’ll be competing against people who will bid $250 to build a MySpace clone, so just don’t bid on MySpace clones or similar projects where you get high volumes of bidders. But if you can find a niche that you can get into then you can have an easier time. i.e. one of my niches for these sites is building plugins for Firefox. They’re usually not big dollar items, but I can do one in 4 hours or so and make about $250, and the competition is small.
And occasionally you can develop a relationship with these people that will lead to more lucrative projects. One client I worked with from Rentacoder started off with a $250 project to build a skeleton out-of-proc COM server, a week later it was a $5500 project to build IE and Firefox plugins, and later led to several other projects over the last 3 years for about $150,000. Another one I did on Getafreelancer was for a small collision detection modification to the Torque Game Engine for $500, which led to a current contract to build a complete RTS game engine.
Many of the projects on there are pilot projects that are used to find competent coders for more long-term work. These are the ones that really pay off.
The other thing to keep in mind is that many of the best projects on these sites you’ll never see unless you’re already well established there. People who are willing to spend a decent amount of money can be more selective, so they will often post private projects and then invite only the coders who have high ratings and/or those who have proven work on similar projects to bid.
There are 2 rules that I would most highly recommend when working with these sites:
Make sure you spell out exactly what the requirements are before you commit to a bid. Even if you think the requirements they gave are clear, put them out there in your own words and have the buyer agree to them.
Always, always, always make the buyer escrow the money for the project before you start working. The only real bad experiences I’ve had on these sites is completing a project to find out that the buyer has no money or just disappeared, or did the project themselves. Rentacoder requires the escrow for most projects but most other sites make it optional.
Price and contracting are just part of a project cycle. The most important thing is the communication between you and your contractors, local or remote, with or without formal specification. Only a handful of categories of projects are suitable for remote contractors of various kinds.
One thing that hasn’t been pointed out anywhere is that many of the lowest-paying buyers expect the coders to be using the latest, most expensive proprietary tools. It doesn’t make sense to me, for example, that anyone would think that a programmer that makes $300 per month would be able to afford his own copy of Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, which costs $700, and his own installation of Windows Vista, complete with IIS and SQL Server. And yet, not only do many of these bottom-dollar projects require the most expensive tools, but remote development on a server that already has these things installed is literally unheard of.
Even more surprising is that these expensive projects actually receive bids. Perhaps these programmers are putting second mortgages on their houses to pay for constant hardware and software upgrades.
If anything, I’d expect every one of those $5/hour programmers to be stuck with third-hand, obsolete hardware, too underpowered to even run the latest version of Windows and Word, and I’d expect their software environments to be either 100% open-source, or Windows 98, with open-source programming tools.
Another observation that I’ve made is that, even though Rent-a-Coder has been around for many years, the majority the buyers posting bid requests today have fewer than 10 previous projects to their names. I’ve never once seen a buyer with (6,000 ratings) next to their username.
I did the site http://www.literamedpublications.com/ through RentACoder (as a coder) and even though the project got delayed, I was satisfied with the service, and I think my client too.
Hey all, I really find this string interesting since we are only weeks away from relaunching a popular social network as a Social Sourcing site for programmers to socialize with their potential project buyers. Your comments have truly helped us answer some of the questions we have had regarding making our system work 100% in favor of both parties. If any of you would share a minute with me to answer a couple of questions, it would be extremely appreciated. craig@scommerce.com Please tell me who you were in the comment string so I can ask the specific questions I have written down.
I wanted to have a real auction website and I posted the project on RAC with a detailed description of what I wanted. I started receiving bids and I have chosen a guy that seemed skilled and had around 10 reviews, some nice other telling very bad things. Nevertheless I continue working with him. He delivered two parts of the project completed which had several bugs, however I sent him some money (around $1500), and asked him to fix the bugs and continue with the remaining parts. After I sent him the funds he never replied me back and I lost my money. RAC never helped. Once again I tried to find a good programmer and I posted again my project, this time on GetACoder.com. I worked with a nice programmer on the project that completed it in less time and for less money than the other crook on RAC. GAC is an excellent platform where you found lots of skilled and professional coders.
Good question.
Only a foolish contracter would expect an entire system to be built this way. However, this is a very good way for a system designer to craft quality software, by delegating the work of somewhat trivial component crafting to others and concentrating on the system code.
Why?
Because it forces the designer to use best practices: Unit tests, written specs, etc. that other industries are already intimately familiar with. Like any other manufacturing task, the blame ultimately falls on the designer if the component supplier lives up to his side of the bargain yet it turns out to be bad.
Believe it or not, this is the future of software development.
From my perspective, RAC is a really nice site - I get to get paid for writing or fixing simple (for me) software every now and then, and the net effort is spending less time doing nothing - the joys of being in a university and not having to support your own ass. Simply by stopping to think before each bid, using correct English and not bidding on anything unreasonable, I’ve managed to complete 30 projects there at this point, and I only lost a bid 3 times, despite not being the cheapest bidder.
It seems that RAC and similar sites are badly in need of talented developers, though - I managed to secure a contract for a hardware I’ve had no experience with and was sent (later given) to me by the buyer just by doing my research before bidding, and sending him a detailed message about my findings. I only had two completed jobs at the time, and the hardware allowed me to secure a small niche market which really pays up every now and then. Most of my clients came back for more code later on, too.
I would definitely recommend RAC for small-to-medium projects if you’re able to select a competent coder, or are a competent coder without a job.
I have used Rent a Coder on more than 300 projects. There has been some pain, but over time you find a good set of developers, graphic designers, and testers. It’s up to me to set the standards that must be followed, and to manage the project. But if I do my job correctly, then I get great results.
I’ve worked in the IT industry for 20 years, and some of the coders on Rent a Coder are every bit as good as anyone I’ve worked with at any firm.
If you are a firm charging $10,000 for a basic website, then Rent a Coder should worry you - and you should probably bash them any chance you get - because they are taking your business and making you look bad.