Inc article on finding freelance programmers using oDesk, Guru, RentACoder, and Elance:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090501/technology-finding-freelance-programmers.html
I think sites like RAC and so forth are great places for people in the software development profession to gain an education about their own skills and where they stand in relation to people from all over the world. If you are a US developer you may think you deserve to be paid mega-bucks for your skills, until you realize that people from other countries can do the same job at a better quality for a much lower bid. Then you might go on to realize why US software companies are hiring from abroad and might stop whining about foreigners taking your jobs. Bottomline: it’s a global economy and you need to stay competitive in order to make a living; stop blaming your woes on cheap foreign labor and instead focus on becoming better at your job.
I am seeing more questionable jobs on these sites. Posting HW is bad enough but someone is looking for an entire IEEE article to submit for publication for $100-300, I’m hoping its a joke.
http://www.getacoder.com/projects/reasearch_paper_ieee_106384.html
Description
I am looking for a reasearch paper that can be submitted to IEEE or other journals.The content should be original.
Required Skills: C++ / C, Network Design, Networking, Wireless
Additional information:
Submitted on 05/31/2009 at 4:21 EDT
The paper sgould be in IEEE format.
Starve, Starve, Starve, Starve, Die! This is like that movie the postman where all the men are forced to kill each other to survive. Yay. Three cheers for free death.
Well said Ben, the economy and the world in general are becoming more globalised as time goes by, whether you like it or not. You can either rolls with the punches or fall behind.
Agrees with Ben as well. In fact, I often tell a few disgruntled workers who um… have a habit of exaggerating employment stories that working on a website like Rentacoder doesn’t give them the opportunity to blame their inabilities on others or other ‘things’ like racism, sexism, local-ism, and my favorite, what-ever-ism. The only thing that stands between the site’s coders is skill.
rent a coder can be a nightmare. If the coder fails, you go through an arbitration process where, even if the coder agrees thay have filed, you go to a page where you release money to them.
You put money in escrow, and it’s supposed to be returned to you, but it looks like that never happens.
Rent-a-coder keeps the money, and they do it by forcing you to follow a set of links that just don’t make sense, and that never let you click on anything that actually ends the project, and ends up returning your money.
BEWARE rent a coder. They are honest, but their system is so complicated that you lose your money when the project fails. They have comments that say that someone had their money returned, but there is no way you can follow their instructions to allow this to happen.
Khalid, I am sure you make a good deal of money on RAC; either as a coder or as an employer, but it does not change the fact that the system is unfair to the coders.
After a couple successful jobs on RAC, I took a job from a buyer that changed her mind about what she wanted. She asked me to wait until she decided which CMS platform to use. So, I waited. Meanwhile, RAC’s system sent me an email every three days saying that my project was past due. Not to worry, I had an agreement with the buyer, all documented on the PMB.
Eventually, RAC staff jumped in and took it to arbitration. They canceled the project and took my escrow money.
Basically, RAC stole my money. You can backpedal and rationalize for them if you want, but I have plenty of success on other boards. To be honest, the better coders don’t use the boards very much because their buyers know good coders when they find them. They typically hire the coder outside the project boards for follow up projects. The best coders only use the boards a few times a year or less to find new projects once their clients finish up their work. I am still serving my original RAC client of two years ago, but RAC is not getting a piece of the pie, ROFL!
I know this is an older article/blog post, but just wanted to voice my experience with Rent A Coder.
I’ve been using Rent A Coder for well over 5 years now, and in that time have had only one bad experience with a programmer, which was handled quickly and professionally by the staff and I was refunded asap.
I now have 3 programmers who I use for just about everything I need created or updated, and we now work together off site. But Rent A Coder was the starting point to finding these professional people who work fast, are honest, hard working people who I have no problem paying a good fee for their services.
If a person uses one of these sites and posts a project that will take 80,000 lines of code to complete, and wants it finished within 3 days for less than $100, then you’ll get what you pay for, period.
On the other hand, if you go to one of these sites with the idea that a good programmer is going to cost you a little money (read that a decent wage for services rendered) and you get realistic about what you’re wanting in the end, you can have an overall great experience, and I believe come out with a programmer you can use in the future for your new projects.
For people with ideas, but no experience in the programming world at all, I would highly recommend that you first do your research and learn how projects are handled in the first place, the costs involved, and the true effort and energy spent by your programmer(s). This way you will be better equipped to understand and be ready for what’s ahead. Don’t go into something thinking you’re going to have the next Windows operating system created for a few hundred bucks within a week, because you WILL get what you pay for.
I’ve used rentacoder many many times to produce websites and although I agree that you have to spend a great deal of time managing your projects and selecting your coders carefully, the cost savings far outweigh the risks. I admit, I always select the more expensive bids and take time to check out the coder but the cost savings are massive and having used UK based web disign companies, the finished product is very often as good or better. Furthermore, once we find a coder that we want to work with we take our future business to them.
Beware though - you must manage the process toroughly. Don’t expect your bid to turn into a peice of finished work without your continued input.
i am coder myself and not only…also good with databases,sw architecture, and well… statistics…
i am just curious of something and i think it is a bit funny… will we ever see projects for COBOL on RAC sites ? :))
Answer this question and you will probably now the the segment RAC sites addresses.
i am coder myself and not only…also good with databases,sw architecture, and well… statistics…
i am just curious of something and i think it is a bit funny… will we ever see projects for COBOL on RAC sites ? :))
Answer this question and you will probably know the segment RAC sites addresses.
Can You Really Rent a Coder?
Yes, No matters its http://Elance.com, http://Guru.com, http://99Desk.com or any other freelance/ outsourcing portal. Once you have proper communication and using Escrow system, you can rent a coder effectively at remote location
I just went through these sites for a side project we don’t have the time to follow. As a developer, I have to agree with the guys that say “it’s too much effort to follow the rented coder, I can just do it by myself”. In my opinion the problem is that sometimes you don’t need an entire project, just some pieces.
I’m wondering whether a service that enables coders to post part of their job can be useful: let’s say I have the need to implement a very efficient video analysis, but I don’t know how: I don’t want to give the whole project to a freelancer, but I also don’t want to post / create a bid for something that can be done in 2 days of work: I want to find just a class that does the job, and nothing else. What if I could find this class already done, available for $20, instead of wasting 2 days of my time?
No problems with missed deadlines (it is already done!), nor spec required (I directly search for the right code…).
What do you think about it?
cghersi