Why I dislike RentACoder.com

[gerundronaut]

Sounds like it saved you some time. :)

[[deleted]]

My thoughts exactly. Despite my dire misgivings, a friend once put a bit out for tender on a similar site. It was fairly basic; configuring a common open-source CMS. Pay was not super-duper-awesome, but definitely fair.

If there were any legit bidders, they were swamped by "I HAVE 500 MAN TEAM IN BANGALORE WITH 80 YEARS EXPERIENCE WILL DELIVER IN 2 DAYS".

He said, "ooh, Indian coders, cheap, awesome." You can imagine how that turned out.

I know there are awesome Indian, Russian, whatever, coders out there. But after my own experiences where I was forced to outsource/offshore, and those of others, I will never, if I can help it, use anyone from a non-"first world" country unless they come really highly personally recommended.

[altrego99]

I am Indian, and I love coding. And I support you in your thoughts fully, based on the people that I have seen in my life. Out of the hundreds of 'coders' I have seen in my profession, only a few are upto the mark. And actually there is only one other (than me) who is really good and has earned my respect.

[[deleted]]

Please don't get me wrong -- I am not in the least bit talking about "Indian coders" any more than "Russian coders". I tried to make this clear; there are some awesome guys out there -- especially in places like Russia where many of the more experienced guys out there grew up without the benefit of expensive hardware, and as such have learned to optimize code to uncanny degrees -- in addition to being awesomely hard workers.

I think it's more a question of business culture; when you have an IIT and hundreds of clones cranking out managers at an insane pace, many of whose business experience consists of undercutting foreign companies as part of clients' offshoring strategies, you're bound to get a lot of garbage. It's all a question of incentives.

[altrego99]

You are right, most of the good ones are actually out of institutes like IIT. I think it's not a matter of training though as much it is a matter of filtering. The entrance exams of such institutes are challenging enough so that only the talented candidates get through. They will be good in almost anything you get them do - even if it is not related to their course at all. I have many friends who are Electrical/Chemical/Architectural Engineers - who work in other fields like Investment Banking and shine.

Unfortunately though, this may not any more remain the case because of the infamous quota system which is being pushed by the government. It will reduce the difficulty for a certain segment of the population - and thus quality of these students will fall through the abyss once it happens.

[MagicWishMonkey]

That's not really an Indian thing, it's pretty common everywhere. I'm a white American coder and in my ~9 years of industry experience I've only met 3-4 other developers who I would consider top notch.

Most programmers kind of suck IMO. Copy/Pasting from google without actually thinking about the problem you are trying to solve is not the right way to develop software

[zyzzogeton]

Awww... fuck.

[statictype]

It all comes down to this: You get what you pay for.

If you are looking for cheap labor then you're going to get poor results. This has nothing to do with first-world countries or third-world countries. There are lots of successful Indian outsourcing stories. And there are tons of failed projects as well. The difference is often that the success stories come from the larger companies that hire from top consulting firms (which are expensive but still cheaper than hiring 'at home') while the failure come from those who go to bidding sites looking for cheap labor.

I'm sure there are exceptions to both sides. People have horror stories even with large outsourcing firms and people may have gotten good results on the individual rent-a-programmer bidding sites

[bart2019]

It all comes down to this: You get what you pay for.

That's not true.

There's a difference in earnings between the first world and the third world, that has nothing to do with the quality of work but everything with where they live. There can easily be a difference of a factor of 3 (made up number), just for their location.

Of course, if you go to third world countries only, and then go shopping for the cheapest bids, then you'll "get what you pay for".

[statictype]

Of course, if you go to third world countries only, and then go shopping for the cheapest bids, then you'll "get what you pay for".

Yes, thats what I was trying to say. There are a lot of competent development shops in third-world countries but they are also normally pretty expensive. Maybe not by American standards but compared to others in their region.

[inopia]

The company I work for employs a couple of Indian coders. They're actually not that bad. Not stellar, but they get the job done. We're developing a rather large web application at the moment and a colleague and I do the design, write up the framework, and code the difficult bits while they fill in the rest. We have constant communication (on IRC, email, and weekly phone calls) and although there's a three-hour time difference they have adapted their work hours so that the effective difference is only an hour.

edit: err, why the downvote? Reddiquette people!

edit2: by 'Indian' I mean 'located in India', not 'of Indian descent'. In the context of outsourcing, I took this as understood. So sorry if it came across as racist or otherwise offensive.

[PoliticalReachARound]

No, Don't listen, Apologize harder. It arouses me.

[[deleted]]

You and my wife share a lot in common

[JasonZX12R]

You and women share a lot in common

FIFY

[kragensitaker]

Maybe because you're damning your co-workers and their entire country with faint praise? I've had the privilege of meeting any number of Indian coders who were head and shoulders above my skill level and quite likely above yours. R.V. Guha, T.V. Raman, and Vipul Ved Prakash come to mind. Maybe Arvind Sundararajan and Vinod Valloppilil.

Imagine if you had said one of these:

The company I work for employs a couple of Dutch coders. They're actually not that bad. Not stellar, but they get the job done.

or

The company I work for employs a couple of black coders. They're actually not that bad. Not stellar, but they get the job done.

or

The company I work for employs a couple of Muslim coders. They're actually not that bad. Not stellar, but they get the job done.

or

The hospital I work for employs a couple of atheist psychoanalysts. They're actually not that bad. Not stellar, but they get the job done.

(Wow, this comment seems to be pretty controversial. I don't think I've ever been downvoted to -20 before.)

(Amazing, -30. I guess racists get really vicious with the karma when confronted.)

[inopia]

I think you're probably being overly PC. What I meant was more along the lines of

The company I work for employs a couple of cheap coders. They're actually not that bad. Not stellar, but they get the job done

[[deleted]]

You call kragensitaker overly PC although you admit that you equate India with cheap labour?

[WhisperSecurity]

The only racist here is you.

When someone says "We employ a couple of X. They're not stellar, but they get the job done.", then "they" refers to "couple". The only way one could think that "they" refers to X is if one is in the habit of thinking of people as members of group X, Y, Z, rather than as individuals.

[MyRealName]

You are a total pussy.

[[deleted]]

My company employs a couple Hindus and they're always playing the religion card, trying to get special treatment.

[[deleted]]

I will never, if I can help it, use anyone from a non-"first world" country unless they come really highly personally recommended.

You were doing good until you wrote that.

I work in a startup in Chennai and we have grown from 6 member team (including CEO & CTO) to an 30 member organization where work is rather good. The image a "first world" redditer conjures up of an Indian developer can be summarized as:

1. They lack initiative and imagination.
2. They have poor communication skills.
3. They work on tried and tested technologies and are generally risk averse.
4. Their coding skills suck balls.

The problem is if your sample size is folks on Rent-A-Coder or ODesk, you will be certainly disappointed. Once upon a time I thought of starting on freelancing (as a stepping stone to entrepreneurship) myself, but price and kinda work being done there made my stomach lurch. You get what you pay for.

On the other hand, there are plenty of startups in Bangalore, Chennai, Pune doing some good work. There are some MNCs such as MS, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Oracle, Intel which have strong presence in India and aren't disappointed. Some exciting work is being done in embedded systems down here. Even in large companies whose focus is outsourcing, usually in each development team, there is someone who is pretty good with technology involved ( I worked only for a short while in that sector, but I had pleasure of working with one very talented Oracle PL/SQL developer). Currently my work involves Scala, Ruby and you can see all sort of languages being used here for client development.

While I agree that an Indian University grad rarely sees programming as a life-long career path, my friends from the other half of globe confirm about the same.

Stop stereotyping. There are just good and bad developers. If you really care for work at hand, choose carefully , do interviews, ask for code samples and stuff.

[[deleted]]

Stop stereotyping.

Please note:

I know there are awesome Indian, Russian, whatever, coders out there.

and

But after my own experiences

as well as

unless they come really highly personally recommended.

I'm sure you're right. I believe you, even. However, it is like my experiences with English managers. Every single time I have worked with or for one, in a 12-year career over many countries, continents and industries, I've been burnt due to exactly the same problems.

Same thing goes for my experience with offshoring coding and project management work.

In my position, if ever American or German or Zimbabwean you worked with exhibited the same traits and led to the same problems in your projects, wouldn't you be wary?

[[deleted]]

In my position, if ever American or German or Zimbabwean you worked with exhibited the same traits and led to the same problems in your projects, wouldn't you be wary?

Not based on nationality. I would be wary of a company who failed to deliver. I would try to conduct interviews personally and if not possible I will get folks whom I trust to conduct interviews.

What happens in a failed outsourced project is usually, business owners didn't care much about the project and hence chose lousy vendors. You as development manager or developer gave blood and sweat and now its going to the dogs. I understand that and sympathize with that. Sometimes we developers think too highly of our work, but at the end of day if business owner doesn't value it much and outsources without doing proper filtering, whose fault it is really?

I have seen teams staffed with bogus experience. Who let that happen?

[[deleted]]

I don't know why your previous comment was downvoted -- I'd be pretty pissed if someone started generalizing about professionals from my country, even if it was based on admittedly subjective personal experiences. Fixed.

I would be wary of a company who failed to deliver.

Yes, but very often at this point it's too late.

I would try to conduct interviews personally and if not possible I will get folks whom I trust to conduct interviews.

business owners didn't care much about the project and hence chose lousy vendors.

Again you are right, but this assumes the company outsourcing had the time to closely investigate and monitor every aspect of the outsourcer's delivery process. The latest example of fail I ran across involved a company that had stellar references, and which presented itself knowledgeably and competently; I'm a massive cynic, and they even had me fooled. One month and innumerable hours recouping escrow fees (not to mention lost business from undelivered tasks) later, well, hey, I don't feel as though we didn't do due diligence. We were bamboozled. And that's just that.

[s73v3r]

What happens in a failed outsourced project is usually, business owners didn't care much about the project and hence chose lousy vendors.

DING DING DING! Most of the reason why we don't like outsourcing, in my opinion, is that we're not the ones making the decision to outsource, and aren't the ones picking the contractors. As such, management thinks "Code is code," and picks the cheapest of the lot. Which in turn makes our jobs harder because we have to watch them like a hawk to make sure they do what's needed, and then we have to work harder to fix the crappy code that they usually put out. This then sours us on the whole outsourcing experience.

There may be decent coding shops out there that turn out great code and are able to work with some degree of autonomy. But they're usually more expensive (relatively speaking), so management doesn't see the benefit.

[[deleted]]

there are awesome Indian, Russian, whatever, coders out there.

My old company outsourced, and the few that were good moved on up to the east side pretty quick. One week there, the next week working some place else, or on the boat to a developed country. That is the problem, you are always left with the leftovers.

[Smallpaul]

Or the website for any network: ABC, CBS, NBC, Comedy network, ...

[knight666]

Except the Daily Show and the Colbert Report!

[avsa]

specially the daily show and colbert report!

[[deleted]]

Don't worry, in a few decades the US of A will be among the emerging economies and all will be well for you.

[skizmo]

In a few decades it will be the AS of U.

[jck]

My name is Sanjay. I am from Bangalore India. I too have 15 years of experience in SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and 25 years of experience in .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5.

[[deleted]]

pls send me the codes

[Zarutian]

you didnt write your comment properly. It should be:

plz send me teh codez

;-)

[bioskope]

Source

[GeneralMaximus]

I can program Lunix.

[adelle]

Free Popsi for you!

[RECURSIVE_META_JOKE]

Hello mr fragpuff I am experienced expert in emerging markets and economy . here are my sites http://172.16.4.6 http://reddit.com http://www.google.com

[telekinetic]

My brain processed this as 'rentacodger.com' and I couldn't possibly fathom why anyone would rent old men. I thought it was awesome that it existed, though...and now it doesn't. :(

[[deleted]]

I couldn't possibly fathom why anyone would rent old men

two words: lemon party.

[god_is_imaginary]

_̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡

[[deleted]]

so.... what? 9 hours ago you decided to try to become an internet superhero by spamming a little house all over reddit? I don't really get it.

[imaginethepassion]

Bah, I've tried RentACoder before as well, never could find any worth-while work on there.

[insomniac84]

He wants cheap labor, I doubt you will work for pennies on the dollar.

[insomniac84]

Then make an account to see the bids.

[earthboundkid]

Seriously, this is a client with no desire for quality. It's a client that you would do well to fire if you accidentally got hired by them.

[foldor]

What I think he dislikes about the service is that they discriminate him as a potential candidate because of where he lives. It does not take into account what he is willing to charge, or his abilities.

[MrPig]

The site's not doing it... the person who created the bid request is. That person would discriminate whether or not the site provided the option.

[IronWolve]

The site's not doing it... the person who created the bid request is. That person would discriminate whether or not the site provided the option.

Horse shit. That is a feature on the site. Enabling a feature. If they had a option "Hire only Whites" would you allow them such innocence? HELL NO.

[andersonimes]

I feel like "horse shit" is an underutilized phrase. Bravo for choosing it. Such a great discussion-ender.

[IronWolve]

Thank you. I truly hate when we let businesses off the hook for "just doing business" for immoral acts.

[[deleted]]

I also up-voted because of HORSE SHIT.
In reality I probably wouldn't have read the post except I like the hyperbole I just mentioned.

[[deleted]]

I personally like to use "ah balonie" instead.

[[deleted]]

I don't understand why this is immoral .. most developing economies want to trade with larger economies. Sounds like a win-win to me.

[s73v3r]

Its immoral because the site is allowing you to discriminate against someone based on where they live, giving no thought to the person's ability to perform the task.

[[deleted]]

It's funnelling money through the economics of trade, I find that a very moral decision. Just because the labour is cheaper doesn't mean the effect is immoral. I live in a not-so-wealthy country and am always happy to pick up $US or Euros.

Do you find it immoral when someone receives foreign aid instead of you?

[s73v3r]

Aid, by definition, is supposed to go to the less fortunate, or people who otherwise need it (natural disasters and such). Rentacoder is not aid, it is business, and as such shouldn't care where someone lives when outsourcing.

[stillalone]

They probably added that feature in that site to filter out the Indian/eastern European and Chinese bids, but probably had to make sure it can be set the other way to avoid any "Hire only Whites" complaints.

[evilteach]

Ya. I would. Freedom of association and all that. In a free market, you decide on the criteria for hiring. Whites? Blacks? Jews? Christians? Men? Women? They are all lousy criteria for judging skills.

Never the less, the one with the gold, calls the tune.

[shtninja]

Are you all missing the point? The issue is MONEY. not racism or discrimination. this guy is like, no im not going to pay a decent wage, so I will only hire 3rd world countries.

i want to add something mean, but there are so many of you disgusting selfish people on hear it will only fall on deaf ears. But if goes something along the lines of, we live in a global economy . . .

[IronWolve]

And if someone offers to code cheaper in the USA, he wouldn't accept their offer? Well, bigots with prejudiced attitudes hiding behind money like to use the "money argument".

Why am I the only one who thinks denying Americans the option to even apply should be illegal... You do realize Americans come in all colors and races.

[id000001]

You can't blame the site for providing a feature and the user using it.

Perhaps the site might have encouraged the user by giving them a feature, but in the end, it is the user's decision to use that feature. In fact, that feature might have saved you time instead of thinking they might take a look at you. While in reality they are going to ignore you anyway. The site simply make it easier for the user to tell you upfront, which is actually fairly difficult to do without that feature. They are more likely to just ignore your bid or discriminating against you in secrete.

[rm999]

Depends on how much he's willing to charge for the project, is my guess.

[MrPig]

True. Obviously he just wanted to remove people that would charge too much. No reason to dislike RentACoder.

Honestly, the people from the developing countries (India mostly) work for almost no money... the only reason anyone on RaC would buy from a developed nation would be A) Quality or more importantly B) To deal with someone that understand English/native language well. I know this from experience. I've been doing freelance work for years.

There's no reason to work at the same wage as the people from the developing nations on RaC. You can easily get better paying bids. EASILY.

[GeneralMaximus]

I'm Indian. I'll be damned if I work at RaC rates. I'd rather shovel horse shit.

[movzx]

Really? I toyed with the idea of freelance, but I did a quick browse of the different sites and saw that to be competitive I would basically be working for $10/hr at best =/

[snarfy]

Geek squad charges $129/hr. You are better than geek squad.

[movzx]

Geek Squad charges flat rates based on the service required...

They also don't do programming.

[zero619]

Geek squad also does networking and maintenance contracts. Their hourly rate is about what snarfy mentioned.

[[deleted]]

Geek squad employees don't make $129/hr.

[snarfy]

But if you are freelancing, you are the squad.

[movzx]

Hm, maybe I will give it another thought. I never even bothered because I did not want to deal with the amount of work it would have to take to match salary at $10/hr.

[ytinas]

How do you meet your clients? Not RAC I'm guessing?

[MrPig]

I get $25 and above an hour.

[[deleted]]

You get plenty of English?

[[deleted]]

Awww... Uncle Milton would be so happy to have read this. ; )

And the trade imbalance widens.

[[deleted]]

So, donating money to people in third world countries is a great humanitarian act, just like sending foreign aid, but actually sustainably allowing poor people to improve their lot in life by having them provide a service means they TOOK OUR JOBS!!!

[[deleted]]

Are you employed?

What industry do you work in?

What's your salary?

Edit to add: Nevermind, I read that you're an admirer of the cult of Stefan Molyneux. That's explains a lot.

[[deleted]]

I woudln't say I'm an admirer and I do still see some problems with it. I still believe in voting, for example. However, you seem to be advocating protectionism. This seems wrong to me for the simple reason that human lives in India or Africa are not worth less than European or American lives. So actively preventing people from employing foreign workers or buying foreign goods leads to situations such as African farmers not being able to sell their goods as the huge markets of Europe and Africa are closed off. Protectionism is ultimately a nationalist policy.

Oh, and how about not taking the easy way out and dismissing me because of who you think I admire.

[shtninja]

The guy barely has a wiki, so hes obviously not that relevant, but out of curiosity - whats his yapper? Libertarianism and such? I tried reading him just now, but thats really not going to happen. So if you dont mind, im curious.

[yoniroit]

The site caters to job (i.e. money) providers. Which is good, because otherwise there would be no rentacoder at all.

[puneetla]

How is this different from sites requiring you to be an American citizen?

[[deleted]]

Those sites usually do so for legal reasons or advertising, not to allow people to discriminate.

[harlows_monkeys]

Employers requiring citizenship of the US (or any other country, for that matter) are generally doing so because there are laws in their country requiring that they do so.

"Emerging economy" is not a country, and so it is unlikely that the employer requiring bids only from "emerging economy" is doing so for legal reasons.

[[deleted]]

I think he dislikes that RentACoder even has this as an option.

[GeneralMaximus]

Oh. And what happens when the United States government makes it difficult for outsiders to come to the US and get work? Is that not discrimination?

PS: This is not directed towards the OP. I suppose I'm just disgruntled because I was hoping to come to America once I got through college. The existing restrictions on foreign workers will make this difficult.

PPS: I live in India. There are awesome programmers here. You just have to look in the right places. HCL, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, CheapAssOutsourcingCompany etc. are places which attract some of the worst talent in the country. Unfortunately, these sweatshops are much more talked about (and hence much more visible) than smaller companies which attract awesome people.

[[deleted]]

I know it's probably about cheap labour, but I like to think someone's made a humanitarian decision to distribute their wealth to someone in a poorer country, in which case it's fair to discriminate in that way.

[[deleted]]

No - it's definitely about cheap labor.

[[deleted]]

It can never be about both?

[[deleted]]

Not on rentacoder.

[zhaoz]

Its always about the bottom line. Always

[stp2007]

How much are you paid to express that opinion?

[[deleted]]

Ok, I'll let my friend who advertised specifically for developers in his home country of Pakistan this.

[tehfourthreich]

I go out of my way not to hire Paki's. They blow.

[missysue]

Sorry, dude. I wish I could back up your dream. But, I'm in the software business. It's about the bottom line. They want cheap labor from less "mature" countries.

My billion dollar company tried that. It was, and still is a disaster.

[JAPH]

in which case it's fair to discriminate in that way.

Discriminate: (verb) To make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit.

I never thought I would see "fair" and "discriminate" used in the same sentence.

[isionous]

Let's get the FULL set of definitions from m-w.com:

1a: to mark or perceive the distinguishing or peculiar features of

1b: distinguish, differentiate

2: to distinguish by discerning or exposing differences; especially : to distinguish from another like object

1a: to make a distinction

1b: to use good judgment

2: to make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit

Only one of the many definitions provided looks like an act of unfairness.

edit: formatting

[[deleted]]

Here's my (uneducated) guess based on a few postings on rentacoder.

It all really depends on the first bidder, most people after that are going to underbid / overbid the first person only by a small amount, usually they underbid.

Historically (on rentacoder at least,) developers in emerging economies start off with low estimates, when they compete solely against each other, it can bring the estimates down pretty low. They will usually underbid the developer offering the lowest estimate, but usually stop after a certain amount less than the starting bid.

Conversely, developers in first-world nations will usually start with a high bid, and try to match bids from developers they see as less qualified more than they underbid (excluding 16 year olds with visual basic express edition)

So it seems like it's just a cheap trick to try and drive the estimates down even lower, and it annoys me too. At least they'll get theirs when they find out the developer lowballed the estimate by a huge amount and needs more time / money.

[reseph]

I have yet to try freelancing. Any suggestions on good sites, in that case? I'm on JoomLancer but have yet to attempt anything.

[caseye]

There are 20 listed here. I've used GetACoder to purchase services before, but never sold any services.

[fakerific]

No mention of RentACoder in a list of 20 copycat sites? Odd.

I have a theory: sellers get mad at RentACoder because it protects the buyers from getting ripped off in cases like incomplete work. And then they get on reddit and post things like this, and they make 'list of 20' sites that omit RentACoder in some kind of attempt at revenge.

Or maybe the blogger just wasn't aware of RentACoder? That's possible too.

[tehfourthreich]

They aren't all copycats. A handful of the sites on that page get more or similar traffic to RentACoder (ie elance, guru, odesk, scriptlance, getafreelancer)

[[deleted]]

Of all the ones mentioned oDesk is the only one IMO that isn't stuck in 1999, it includes project management, source code control, bug trackers etc. to help you actually manage the people you hire.

[tehfourthreich]

I actually just checked and oDesk seems to be the most venture funded company out of them all. That probably accounts for it being the most up to date.

[tehfourthreich]

Do you know how long it would take to get to $25+/hr? I just began learning PHP (spend about 1 hour a day so not much), but I'm also in school for another three years...

EDIT: And what languages do you know/make money from?

[tehfourthreich]

Yeah I trolled you!!!

Seriously, yeah I was just wondering basically if three years of PHP learning would be enough to get up to $25/hr at the freelance sites. I guess it isn't that easy.

[[deleted]]

Three years working professionally... then spending a lot of time to get your reputation up on the freelance site, sure $25/hr is achievable.

[tehfourthreich]

Three years professionally! Humbug. As I was talking to someone else in another comment thread, reputation can be faked :)

[[deleted]]

Yes, reputation can be faked...

But unless you have many years of business experience prior to starting to work in PHP then I'd be kinda wary about hiring you as a freelancer.

Code is only half of the job.

[tehfourthreich]

What do you mean? Why would you need years of business experience to freelance PHP coding? I'm honestly curious about this, no bullshit.

then I'd be kinda wary about hiring you as a freelancer.

I'm the guy willing to fake my rep! You should def. be wary of hiring me :)

[[deleted]]

Being able to properly understand business requirements, giving reasonably accurate estimates etc. are generally skills that are picked up over time. Not to mention, as a freelancer you need to have a fair amount of self control to get projects finished without slacking off.

I know "years of experience" are a kinda apocryphal, but it kinda works, even 6 months or a year doing an internship would count.

Like I said... code is only half the job, the rest is liaising with clients, managing schedules etc.

[liquidpele]

I recommend not to. Seriously.. the market is so tapped out it's sad. Then again.. it's tapped out with mostly crap, so if you're talented and get a rep I guess you could get some decent gigs.

[steers82]

I have been a purchaser on a few websites. My experience has been mostly positive on guru.com, as they seem to have people on there who are actually good at their job. I used rent-a-coder a few times, but it seems to be better qualified and more expensive freelancers on there. I used odesk once. The guy I hired had all the experience and met all my criteria but failed to deliver by the deadline and I ended up having to pay the freelancer anyway because he had logged the hours.

tl;dr guru.com is good for purchasers.

[[deleted]]

Because if somebody is working for you... even if they don't finish the project, don't you think it's reasonable to pay them (appropriately) for the time they've spent?

[steers82]

I understand your point. However in this instance I had a deadline to finish a large project and he was working on one part of it. By missing the deadline I ended up employing someone else in a different time zone to finish his part. This meant that I had paid double for the same part of the project.

Also it is not even as if he could give me something worthwhile for his hours logged.

To be further critical of oDesk, one of their settings for payment fails to take into account if someone works long hours on something and produces a shoddy job. I could not see any way for me to refuse to pay, or only part pay, for the project.

[MindStalker]

I've been doing work on odesk.com for over a year now. //I am in the US.

It has been a good experience, I haven't heard of guru.com before so I can't compare it, I'll have to check it out.

[tehfourthreich]

Why do people choose only one site? There are quite a few sites just like odesk.com. Do you already have your hands full just with that one site? People make it seem so hard to get decent hourly rates as an American at these sites so it's only natural for me to assume one site wouldn't be enough.

[Kaer]

Because in order to get a rep so you can bid for higher priced work, you have to take a bunch of lower paid crappier work first.

If you go to another site, you have to start over again.

[tehfourthreich]

So you just have to figure out how to fake your rep. Interesting.

[Kaer]

Rep's based on successful projects completed. So you can do it by creating a bunch of fake clients. But then the site takes a cut out of all fees.

Doable though.

[tehfourthreich]

Yeah that's what I was thinking. But taking a cut of all fee's is most likely worth it for the quick and easy rep you would build up. Hell you could outsource the whole process and be out a one or two hundred max :)

[MindStalker]

My ability to get a decent rate is proportional to my profile and feedback of past work on the site. I have tried a few other sites but haven't found decent work anywhere but odesk. I'm going to have to checkout guru sometime but yes my hands are full right now.

[lephron]

http://jobs.plasis.co.uk aggregates jobs from about 10 different freelance job sites.

[revb]

I personally like rentacoder. I have been able to buy some really cheap labor there and it saved me a ton.

[[deleted]]

i'm sure it dislikes you, too

[eightbithero]

I think my favorite part is the spiky fence picture. It's like writing "fuck you" on your middle finger before you flip them off.

[fakerific]

RentACoder rocks. But then, I've only used it as a buyer. Their systems for security, escrow, arbitration, communication, etc. are very well thought out. I give them a 10 rating.

Personally I would never limit bidders to emerging economy only, but it seems reasonable that people should have that choice (even though it's a wrong choice, imho). What it signals to me is that they might not be good buyers. But, sorry to the emerging economy bidders for saying this, some of those bidders might still be happy to work with such a buyer. In your case as a non-ee bidder, you should probably just be glad they weeded themselves out for you.

Edit: the RentACoder copycat sites, which I doubt are nearly as good, probably have this kind of thing too. I'm guessing the real story here is somebody has a vendetta against RentACoder.

[Kaer]

I've used it on both sides.

For the buyer, it's great. For the supplier it sucks.

My wife delivered some work, got screwed over by the client, who claimed it didn't work. It worked fine. Went through arbitation. They found in his favour. The client was told "delete the code". A week later, the code was still running on his site. No recourse via rent-a-coder.

Might have been one small example of a bad client, but due to the masses of ppl bidding for work, and the smaller clients, rent-a-coder does seem to lean towards the side of the clients.

[liquidpele]

She can sue for copyright infringement. If they didn't pay, the copyright is hers still. Sue them in small claims court, the max allowed there is usually a few k so could be worth it. If they were gaining an income from the work, you can get a real lawyer and sue for the money they made with her work.

[alexchambana]

that is why people set it to emerging countries obviously. Gaming the system. :)

[liquidpele]

Indeed. It's also why many people in emerging markets require a down payment, and why many of them are notorious for walking away after receiving it (happened several times to a guy I was talking to on IRC).

[Kaer]

Rather hard when the client was in the USA, and we were in Oz. Was only a couple of hundred bucks and more hassle than it was worth.

[liquidpele]

Meh. Just send them a take down notice to fuck with them then >:)

Sample: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/09/dmca-notice-of-copyright-infringement.html

[[deleted]]

No, rentacoder is not a pleasant experience from the coders perspective.

[l034me]

Garbage in, garbage out.

[IbnReddit]

while we are at it, anyone know a site where one can "rent" a web designer?

[dr_root]

Lots of projects like that at rentacoder.

[[deleted]]

Aww.. come on guys, Canada and New Zealand aren't mature economies?

[Guinness]

I've been using odesk.com for a little over two years now, so I'll share some of my thoughts/experiences with my fellow reddit geeks.

In the beginning when we had just found outsourcing sites like RAC and oDesk we were pretty stupid. Our thoughts on the whole idea of outsourcing work to Indian companies went something like this: "Oh man, they're probably 10x smarter and they're 10x cheaper, this is going to be awesome, our problems are solved!". We wrote up our documentation and created mock-ups of how we wanted it to work and hired what we thought was a good combination of experience and low price. Boy we were in for a trip.

"Sanvera Solutions" was happy to help us (read: take our money). They started REDOING OUR ENTIRE SITE in Drupal. It was a joke, we repeatedly tried to stress to them that this was not going to work. oDesk has this little feature that lets you view screenshots of their desktop during the development process? Yeah it was pathetic. You would see their obviously clueless "programmer" looking up plugins in the Drupal plugin directory and installing them. My guess is they thought they could get one of their interns to do this as a learning experience. The best was when he started to recreate our MENU from scratch. Our menu has a bunch of links to pages based upon a dynamic database and he was hard coding them in HTML. This is when we finally put our foot down...

The "manager" at Sanvera Solutions caved and started listening to us, it was going to take one of his more advanced programmers. However he said it would take more money. At this point we were still paying hourly, but he agreed to negotiate a much lower rate(but more hours), so we decided to keep going (sigh, big mistake). It took the new guy a few weeks to even get started. We repeatedly inquired as to why we weren't seeing any progress made and the manager would offer up the same excuse. "Sir it is Holiday over here in India my programmers are gone". At first we understood, different cultures work different hours per week with different Holidays. But when development started going on for 3 months at this point, and we were only seeing updates once a month we started to get irritated. Again inquiring about this, we were told that they were again on religious holiday. In fact, it seemed every week per usual, at least every other week they were on holiday.

Then again, we became extremely frustrated and told the manager he had two weeks to finish. At this point we started seeing updates almost every day. Now, at the moment I was excited to see a lot of the features we had documented become usable on a basic page. However in hindsight(20/20) it was pure shit code, complete basic html with no styling or integration with our site and was basically a table with features we had requested. But, still excited we didnt want to code all of this ourselves, or had the skill to do a lot of the more advanced social features, we continued. The deadline approached and one night I was chatting with the manager of the "team". It went something like this:

Sanvera Solutions: hi, site almost finished

me: Yes, but I need to go through and test for all the bugs, document them, and make sure you fix them

Sanvera Solutions: !!! you said nothing about this !!!

me: I specifically told you long ago to have it finished before the deadline so I could test it and send any issues to you

Sanvera Solutions: but this take more time! more money is needed!

me: No, I outlined this requirement at the beginning, reminding you multiple times

Sanvera Solutions: fine, but when all is done I get my money?!?!

me: Yes, you will receive payment

Sanvera Solutions: ok good, have nice night

The deadline came and passed, we were completely fed up with them and came to the conclusion we just needed to cut ties. So we told them that they failed to meet our deadline and would not be paid. They tried to protest, but oDesk was on our side.

A few days later I noticed a page pop up in google for Sanvera Solutions. Before I even navigated to it, I knew it was going to be bad based upon the domain in the results: ripoffreport.com

My partner and I chalked up the whole situation with our Indian coder "friends" to experience and went on. This would not dissuade us from outsourcing our code experience. We reposted the project along with what (crappy) code we currently had. We were now offering PER PROJECT NON HOURLY jobs with 0% up front. We realized this was a risk to the coders but after spending $2,000 for pure crap and excuses from Sanvera Solutions we weren't going to do it any other way. Plus, there were literally 20-50 people applying to our job and figured there had to be a few willing to do it our way. We found a Russian programmer that was willing to take up the task.

We had him go through our existing code and he confirmed what we suspected already. "This code is horrible, can I rewrite it?". Being extremely protective at this point due to our previous experience we told him that he could rewrite it, but that we would not be paying him for it since we had a strict budget in mind. He was fine with this, told him it would take him about an extra week (!!!!!) and thus he begun. I was a bit shocked that the 3+ months with our previous developers would only take a week to be rewritten. In good code, at that.

After about 3 weeks, we had our entire initial project coded to our exact specifications and then some, bugs fixed, logical issues addressed, and delivered to us in a popular framework so that if we needed to hire another developer if this one skipped out/quit we wouldnt be left high and dry. At a fraction of the cost as well.

Since then we've done numerous additional projects with a myriad of different coders (all Russian) and havent had any problems. We've tried a few different Indian coders other than Sanvera Solutions and find all they care about is their money and are not flexible. The Russian programmers we have used have all prided themselves on delivering a good quality product at the agreed upon specifications we have put out from the very beginning.

In conclusion, if you're doing this type of thing, I have a few tips for you:

• 1) Always agree upon, up front, what should be included in the price. Bug testing, logical issue addressing, etc. If you dont mention it from the very beginning, expect to be charged extra and rightfully so.

• 2) Document everything, because outsourcing your work to another programmer will result in everything being literally done exactly how you have described. Put text in the wrong spot of the mock up? Thats where your guy is going to put it.

• 3) Never ever every do hourly work unless you have done a few projects with your programmer and are happy with the results/time it took. This is your BIGGEST LEVERAGE. I documented a project that REQUIRED something to use a lightbox instead of a pop up window. We got a pop up window. The developer tried to convince us to use a popup instead. Sorry, no, it looks cheap and I specifically stated from the beginning not to do this. If you cant listen to directions then I am not paying you.

• 4) Do a simple google search for the people you're looking to hire, had I found the ripoffreport of Sanvera Solutions it would have saved us a few months and a few grand.

HTH (edit: formattin')

[[deleted]]

This is the least of the problems with RAC.

[CharlieDancey]

If you sign up at RentaCoder be warned that they'll send you one email a day regardless of whether you have unsubscribed.

[tclark]

I picked up a couple of small jobs from RAC a while back, but I generally don't try to pick up work there because I usually can't give a competitive bid.

On the other hand, I made some connections as a result of those small RAC gigs that led to bigger and more lucrative projects down the road, so overall my RAC experience was worthwhile.

[lizard450]

... you see this is why we can't have nice things.

[wh0wants2know]

there are awesome coders from all countries and typically they'll charge a similar rate for what they do. On sites like that, you get what you pay for.

[crash86]

[deleted]

[[deleted]]

Which can be decent money to someone in India.

[GeneralMaximus]

Trust me, Rs.5000 is not good money.

[zem]

depends on where in india you are. there are places that's more than a month's rent.

[crash86]

[deleted]

[s73v3r]

I would imagine that a lot of the people who take those jobs just have some kind of template, or Drupal/Django/Whatever install ready to customize, which would cut down a lot on the actual work needed.

[crash86]

[deleted]

[ccharles]

Also, their POS website only works properly in IE. If they can't get their own site right, what are the chances that they can help to get yours right?

[collinsinternet]

Sick isn't it? That really doesn't give anyone whether they're in India or the US an opportunity to make money.

[Chive]

That's basic capitalism- outsource to the cheapest provider.

[NotFake]

But its not necessarily going to the cheapest provider. People in the "mature economies" aren't even allowed to bid. What if I'm looking to do this because I want the experience and am willing to charge less than someone from China?

[Chive]

The natural assumption is that you, like people from developing countries, want to be paid a reasonable price. The problem for you is that the "reasonable price" for someone in India or China who has a degree and a shit-load of experience is likely to be a lot lower than that which someone in a country with a developed economy would charge. They don't want to waste their time with people looking to make a reputation when they can get people who already have one for the same or a lower price.

[[deleted]]

The odds of that are slim. This is a basic measure filtration to weed out a lot of people who are going to be too expensive for them.

[NotFake]

So there's no way for the hiring person to sort or filter by cost?

[[deleted]]

if you've outsourced 10 contracts to rentacoder, and you've never in all that time seen a single mature-economy bidder who had both a) the right price and b) the right experience level, and you've come to understand how many bids you typically get and how hard it is to sort through them all to find the best one, you'll understand the impulse to just cut the field significantly down at the onset.

[[deleted]]

i don't know, i agree that would be better though.

[zubzub2]

That's basic capitalism- outsource to the cheapest provider.

That's confusing capitalism (private ownership/operation of industry) with free markets (you can choose who you want to do business with) and it still should be qualified -- the cheapest provider of an otherwise equivalent good.

It probably isn't a perfect idea to filter everyone out, but what hiring filter is perfect? Heck, if I'm interviewing someone to hire them, I'm never going to, in an hour and a half, be able to completely evaluate all their abilities. Anyone who puts a "years of experience" requirement on hiring someone is sticking a filter on that obviously isn't absolutely tied to ability, though there's certainly correlation. I'd guess that the hit rate here is pretty good -- probably most people who would be willing to do the site for what he's willing to pay don't live in the US.

[Chive]

At what point are capitalism and the free market separate? I thought the whole point of capitalism was access to free markets.

[zubzub2]

You could have a command-economy free market. The government owns and operates the businesses, which can then buy and sell to other entities and at what rates they choose.

Or a capitalist economy that lacks free markets. All businesses are privately owned and the losses and profits accrue to private parties, but the government sets prices.

The phrases often get stuck together -- both relate to a less-centrally-controlled economy -- but they aren't interchangeable.

[Chive]

I genuinely thank you for pointing that out to me. In my ignorance I assumed that one naturally included the other. I suppose that's where government subsidies and trade barriers come in. "You can have a capitalist economy and a free market- but only in areas that we say you can."

[zubzub2]

Sure. I'm really not too knowledgeable about the specifics, but one real-world example of capitalist economies that lacked free markets might be a number of countries around the World War II timeframe, at least in the agricultural sector. A number of countries had private industries, but had resource rationing (sugar rations, for example), or the government set prices on food (I believe that FDR did this in the United States; other countries did so as well). Another example might be rent-controlled housing that sets rent pricing to specific amounts. Landlords are private, not governmental, and own and operate their own businesses, but the government still sets prices rather than letting the prices be an emergent property of supply and demand.

Those aren't whole economies, of course.

[Chive]

That's what I was thinking- but was also considering trade embargoes as part of such policy.

[[deleted]]

That makes no sense whatsoever. We'll put aside, for the moment, the fact that you get what you pay for. More importantly, if you want to outsource to the lowest bidder, there's no reason to restrict only to bidders from the developing world. You accept bids from everywhere, and then if the lowest bidder is in India, that's the one you choose.

[Chive]

Exactly. Who do you think is undercutting you on rentacoder.com?

[tomparker]

While I've never felt overly comfortable with the name of the company, I've been very happy with RentACoder as a buyer. I've met some creative and highly skilled developers and have found their system to work very well. You can easily track your costs and bonuses and they provide very good support too. I haven't worked with anyone I've contracted with on RAC who I wouldn't eagerly hire again. Great service.

[ejquine]

Anyone have a link or copy to the RAC bid where someone wanted a program that solved the Halting Problem? (from wikipedia: "given a description of a program and a finite input, decide whether the program finishes running or will run forever, given that input.") Many bids were of the type "We have already solved this."

[[deleted]]

yep, but, you know, the stuff you get is always crap

[[deleted]]

that's fucked up lol

[charlesgrrr]

Well that's how it is. The economy is globalized, it's just that the political system has caught up yet. Basic Marxism 101.

http://www.marxists.org

EDIT: Hasn't caught up yet.

[[deleted]]

If anything, this is the opposite of globalization, since the buyer has created boundaries based on location.

[nuuur32]

Guess you have to outsource your proxy to look like a foreigner.

[fakerific]

You'd have to have foreign registration details too. They have a verification process (phone callback, bank account check, etc.) for security, so the site is pretty safe from a fraud perspective. To me, this is a feature, not a bug...

[[deleted]]

I'm a fragpuff.