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Businesses Programming The Almighty Buck IT Technology

Finding Coding Work Through Placement Websites? 86

Posted by Cliff from the careful-who-you-work-for dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "Poking around the net, I found a site called RentACoder. As the name implies, it allows people who need a program/web app written to 'hire' a coder to do the work, for a certain amount of money (minus a 15% commission). I was wondering if anyone on Slashdot has written code for this (or a similar) service, and if it's worth the time and skills. I would've evaluated it sooner, however they ask you to provide a social security number at registration. Is the site worth it, or will it just make me bait for ID theives? Is there a similar service that's less intrusive?"
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Finding Coding Work Through Placement Websites? More

Finding Coding Work Through Placement Websites?

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  • SSN (Score:2, Informative)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 )
    I think they need your SSN to send you a IRS 1099 if you are in the US.

    All payments are through them, not directly from the person hiring you. I've not had good experience with the coders on there, I tried to hire some of them once. They all put in lowball bids, then when they realized the project was nontrivial, as I originally said, they all just stopped responding to emails.

    • Re:SSN (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13, 2005 @10:10PM (#13787494)
      Well, you have to learn quickly -- it makes no sense to take a lowball bid that can't do the job; your money is tied up in escrow and you waste a lot of time and don't get the job done.

      Accept a bid that impresses you as coming from someone who can finish it, or don't waste your time. There are other sites, craigslist, or other options -- if you can't find anyone to do it at all, you may just have to figure out how to do business without the product.

      You are the flip side of the American coder who said they looked on there and thought they couldn't compete with the Asians on price, and so never bid on anything.

      This is not ebay, you don't have to take the lowest bid.

      Although in fairness, and without being too stereotypical, it's the Russians on rentacoder who have the most competance and the better skills. Argentina also seems to have more good coders than it's population would warrant. I would not advise selecting bids on nationality though -- get on IM and chat with the guy and figure out if he knows his stuff.

      And if you have a bid that you guess is undercutting it, and the person does make good progress, you should re-offer it at a higher price or bonus them so they can finish it. Remember, this is capitalism -- if you want to keep a sustainable relationship, you can only both win, i.e. you get the project and they get enough money.

      The usual pattern is that after 4 or 5 jobs though the site, for certain types of jobs you start going straight to the person you know will do it best.
      • i agree, i couldn't imagine such a rent-a-coder solution for my own temporary work traffics. at first most of the stuff i have to handle is complicated enough that the 10-20$ asian kiddies just wont cut it, and when they finally do cut it, the project is over out & finished.

        i prefer normal labor right here were i can see it and have someone to poke once my stuff needs some upgrade or fixing. if you let dude X write it, dude Z fix it and dude Y update it, it's most probably a mess cause Y will have no id
        • Exactly. I would prefer having a normal job with actual people involved. Some social stuff mixed in, not just being a lone wolf.

          Moreover, rent-a-coder sounds like programming prostitution, where you don't know who's doing what, and what bugs you might catch.

          • Maybe we need "rent a code reviewer"... Writing code is relatively easy. Finding someone competent that is motivated to really give a good code review is harder.

            We have that problem at our company, because we are a small manufacturing company with only a two coders, myself and one very part time, as he is a college student working just a few hours a week during the semester. I review his code but he doesn't really have time to review mine. I've found that unless someone else reviews code, it generally is

  • I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fished ( 574624 ) <amphigory@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday October 13, 2005 @08:58PM (#13787143)
    I haven't looked at this particular site, but the ones I looked at were dominated by foreign nationals working from foreign locales with absurdly low (by North American standards) bids. There is simply no coding project that I would be willing to undertake for $100--it would take more than that in my time just to get the environment setup. But on the sites I looked at some fairly non-trivial hacks were going for $10-20.

    • Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:4, Informative)

      by flood6 ( 852877 ) on Thursday October 13, 2005 @09:45PM (#13787388) Homepage Journal
      This has been my experience, too. You can try to take a few projects under your cost, build up some good feedback (think eBay), and then bill yourself as the quality alternative to the fast and cheap programmers of eastern Europe and India.

      Nothing against Indians or Eastern Europeans, they just often take the "volume" approach to getting these projects done. They can afford to take these projects at a much lower fee than North Americans, Australians, etc. can.

      These kinds of sites may be worth your time if you're selective and bid what you are worth, it might work out as occasional additional income using the approach I mentioned in the first paragraph, but I can't imagine most programmers in developed nations being able to make much of a living at it.

      I'm worried this will sound racist or elitist. It's not meant to be. I'm just talking economics, here.

      The little experience I've had with these kinds of sites have not raised any privacy issues for me. Just research the site, check the whois info, look for support phone numbers before you offer up your SSN or other sensitive information.

      • Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ibbey ( 27873 ) * on Thursday October 13, 2005 @10:10PM (#13787497) Homepage
        Don't worry about sounding racist, it's simple economics. The annual per capita income of India is $3,100. You're not likely to find many Americans-- except perhaps the occasional high school student-- who would be willing to compete with someone on that sort of a pay scale. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with being able to live on $260 a month
      • The problem is that it's difficult someone will think you are the quality option.
        US programmers are not known by their quality coding skills, at least not overseas.
        The disadvantage the US has with Indian individuals _and_ corporations is not that they can code for less money that you.
        The problem is that they can code, charge less, provide a better service, and the quality of work you need. TCS has a code farm, here in my country, Uruguay, where they pay around $500 a month to locals, and you are not talking
        • I've got the same problem. I'm from the UK.

          I joined the site years ago, but I've never actually bid? The reason being that the bids already made are usually a tenth of what I'd want as a minimum.

          You could make higher bids yes, and hope that the guy decides you're likely to make a better job and pick the higher bid BUT if it's the first project you've done on the site, you have no feedback and show up as having done 0 projects.
          Not the best looking profile.

          So you'd find it hard to get onto the first rung of t
    • And the workload- about 2/3 people obviously looking for offshore workers, 1/6 college students wanting their homework done for 10-15 bucks, and 1/6 actual work

    • Re:I wouldn't hold my breath (Score:5, Funny)

      by xgamer04 ( 248962 ) <xgamer04@NosPam.yahoo.com> on Friday October 14, 2005 @04:31AM (#13788808)
      There is simply no coding project that I would be willing to undertake for $100

      Your loss is my gain:

      public class Hello {
              public static void main(String[] args) {
                      System.out.println("Hello, world!");
              }
      }
    • I'm slightly concerned about the sort of project that's sometimes posted on here. For example, from today:

      "eBanking

      Fully functional, highly sophicated and secured online banking internet site using XML, java as the prime programming language with jdbc in the background connected to oracle or db2 or sql server is urgently needed. The system should have a friendly user-interface with a proffesional feel. It has to allow customers over the internet to open bank accounts, check balance,view account details, acc

  • It (Score:5, Interesting)

    by madstork2000 ( 143169 ) * on Thursday October 13, 2005 @09:00PM (#13787157) Homepage
    I have done work for people and hired people for work through rent-a-coder. Both types of experiences when pretty smoothly. Like anything you have to be able to effectively communicate.

    As a programmer you need to be able to communicate to the potential client what you can do. This is the hardest part in my opinion.

    Overall communication is the biggest key. Do you understand what the bidder wants? Does the bid have enough information for you as the coder to accurately estimate the amount of time.

    Bottom line is can you work with the person at the other end? The few times I have participated it went pretty well because as a coder I knew what they wanted, and if there was a question I come usuallly elicit a clearer response. As a buyer, it was easy for me to define metrics / milestones for the project. I also knew approximately how long and hard the task was because I have done a lot of coding (I just didn't have time to do it myself).

    Anyway, I think rent-a-coder is a pretty good service,
    -MS2k
  • No-one wants to pay for you to spec out the project and no-one has a spec. So no matter what you produce for them it won't be what they want, or you will be vastly underpaid. There's a certain limit to project size where doing consulting becomes non-profitable. Unless, of course, you can find someone who is willing to pay for you to sit on the phone (cause I doubt you'll be going into their office or meeting in person) and nut out exactly what it is they want.

    • What's a "phone" ? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Is that like Skype ? I never use it with customers because it's too hard to record for later reference and demands my full attention at once, so you can only handle one customer at a time. I always use gaim and immediately save the logs in the appropriate directory.

  • University students use it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by emacnabber ( 682085 ) on Thursday October 13, 2005 @09:03PM (#13787174)
    I was a system administrator in the CS department at a large university. We had several students attempt to use the service to get their homework assignments done. Needless to say, it didn't go over well when the professors and T.A.'s found out. If something sounds like a homework assignment, it probably is.

    • Re:University students use it... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Nightlily ( 140378 ) on Thursday October 13, 2005 @09:55PM (#13787426) Homepage Journal
      Yes, there are several homework assignments posted as projects. First, I feel that all students should write their own code, but most of the blame falls solely on the students' shoulders. Personally I would have problems being paid to write a homework assignment, but the coders are just trying to earn a little extra money. Cheating should be handled by universities. Hey if someone is dumb enough to get caught cheating, it's best to get him or her out of the program as quickly as possible.

    • Great for them. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Thursday October 13, 2005 @10:02PM (#13787465) Homepage
      70% of your mark in any Comp Sci class here is usually 20% mid term and 50% final exam. Will rent-a-coder help there?

      How about when you're on the job?

      Maybe in a glorified technical college this would be useful, but at a real University, such slacking would be auto-corrected pretty quickly -- if not, I'm sure the job sites would deal with it :)

      • Re:Great for them. (Score:5, Funny)

        by vbrtrmn ( 62760 ) on Friday October 14, 2005 @12:27AM (#13788127) Homepage
        Yeah, those kids who get their parents to pay to have their homework get done, usually are found out at their 'real' job really quick, then they get promotions to management.
      • All you need is a C or D to pass.

        In my experiences cheating is rampant within U.S. universities.
      • " 70% of your mark in any Comp Sci class here is usually 20% mid term and 50% final exam."

        That may be true for the class, but many CS courses also have corresponding labs. 100% of your grade for the lab is based on projects.
      • 70% of your mark in any Comp Sci class here is usually 20% mid term and 50% final exam. Will rent-a-coder help there?

        I've taken classes where the coding project is largely independent of the tests, meaning that having someone code your project would not necessarily hurt you on the test. If it doesn't hurt you, it will free up lots of time that can be spent preparing for the test.

        As for a work environment, the programming I did in school was never anything more than fuel priming a pump with some oft
    • Why didn't it go over well? The entire country outsources tech work and is rewarded for it while the students are bright enough to emulate that strategy to their own benefit and they're considers cheats?

    • I never understood the CS professors who gave graded homework assignments in the first place. It was almost as bad as those that graded attendance.

      In my opinion the only real use of grades is to show others, outside the university, how well you've mastered a particular subject, and the only way to do that is through testing. This is not to say that homework and attendance aren't important, at least for most students, but they are important in that they help a student to learn. Different students learn i

      • I never understood the CS professors who gave graded homework assignments in the first place.

        ...

        In my opinion the only real use of grades is to show others, outside the university, how well you've mastered a particular subject, and the only way to do that is through testing.

        It's because some students do better in practical work than they do on tests. Also, there are good tests and bad tests. Some instructors have never learned how to create an exam that tests your knowledge with clear, concise questions.

        • It's because some students do better in practical work than they do on tests. Also, there are good tests and bad tests.

          You've answered the problem in your first sentence with your second.

          Some instructors have never learned how to create an exam that tests your knowledge with clear, concise questions.

          Agreed, some instructors suck.

          Coding assignments allow honest students to overcome those limitations.

          There's no reason a test can't involve coding.

          • You've answered the problem in your first sentence with your second.

            No, I haven't. But it does point out that you don't understand the problem. Some students get test anxiety. They can understand the concepts perfectly, but put them in a stressful situation and they can't communicate them properly. It won't affect them in a working environment because rarely are you put in a situation where you have a small number of hours to solve a problem, with no reference materials, and a predetermined solution.

            The men

            • No, I haven't. But it does point out that you don't understand the problem. Some students get test anxiety. They can understand the concepts perfectly, but put them in a stressful situation and they can't communicate them properly.

              I'm sorry, but I have to say "tough shit" to those students. Let them explain to whoever they show their grades to why they didn't score well, but if a student can't figure out how to take a test without getting stressed out then they don't have any sympathy from me.

              It won't

    • I was a system administrator in the CS department at a large university. We had several students attempt to use the service to get their homework assignments done.

      Sounds like they're well on their way to a successful career in management...
  • I've looked at those sites once or twice. Never wrote anything for them or asked for anything from them. Just use craigslist.
  • I had a guy in Colorado put together some stuff for the school I work for (back when I had even less of a clue than I do now) and it worked pretty well for both of us. But as other posters have mentioned, the pricing seems quite low by American standards.

  • I'm a buyer on RAC (Score:3, Informative)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) on Thursday October 13, 2005 @09:38PM (#13787353) Homepage
    I've used rentacoder extensively as a software buyer. I haven't used it as a coder, so I can't attest to it in that regard, but I hire people on there all the time.

    It's completely legit.

  • Global Marketplace (Score:3, Informative)

    by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Thursday October 13, 2005 @09:50PM (#13787407) Homepage Journal
    If you are a US or Canadian citizen, remember that Rent A Coder is worldwide. When I tried to get some gigs from it, people overseas (Rumania, The Orient and Brazil were big) will bid too. For you, a day's pay might be a couple of hundred dollars. For them, it might be $20US. All RAC did for me as a programmer was teach me why outsourcing overseas is cost effective. Never did land a gig on RAC. The cost of living/income ratio was way out of wack for a US citizen.
    • This was my experience as well. I asked for a meager amount of money (equivilent to $15 per hour for the estimated work) on several bids and never got them. After a few tries, I figured it wasn't worth the trouble. As it is, finding work isn't that hard now so I went with a steady job instead of the contract work.
    • You know, RAC-style websites and pay scales might be a neat way for OSS projects to get coding done, particularly those coding projects that receive donations.
    • I wonder how hard it would be to make a nice profit here in the US consulting for US companies and subcontracting the work out to rent-a-coder and the likes. You'd have to have a thorough understanding of software architecture, but you could set yourself up with way too many contracts for you could complete on your own, and make some big bucks.
      • If you're that good of a project manager, you should be able to make serious coin inside a corporation, with a lot less personal accountability (i.e. risk).

        • If you're that good of a project manager, you should be able to make serious coin inside a corporation, with a lot less personal accountability (i.e. risk).

          I doubt it. You see, corporations tend to make a profit. By running your own corporation, you get the benefits of a salary and the profits of the corporation. The risk is really not that much more, assuming you incorporate.

    • I had a similar problem on RAC, but the major thing I kept running into was people who *wanted* things built at those prices; I just couldn't find enough jobs that were willing to pay a decent price for what they wanted. It's one thing if you have some third-world coder underbidding you, but it's another thing when you have a large company on American soil demanding that coders bid no higher than $500 for a month's work... the underbidding coder is a real coder who is really willing to do real work for less
      • I wouldn't say Jamie's an evil genius... he's not evil, OR a genius.
      • I agree, largely because that's what turned me off of rentacoder. I looked around once and saw things with a max bid of $500 for something like two month's worth of work.

        First I thought it was depressing. Now I look there when I need a laugh (though, for my giggles, I usually look at the college kids who want someone to do their assignments for them).
  • I'm working on creating a very similar (but less bureaucratic) service right now, actually. It probably won't be ready for another month or so, though, and even then, I'll probably run a free trial of the site for a month in order to garner users and fix any bugs that come up. I'm still debating whether I want to allow people from any country to sign up, at least initially. Most likely I'll begin with a US rollout, then go international once I've worked out the "balance" of the whole thing.

    I have had some e

    • Buyers can give you clear specs if you ask them to clarify until they are clear;

      I think this is the key to making RAC work; you have to understand what the buyer wants and make them comfortable with you.
      I am actually got up an hour ago to work on a RentACoder project cause I couldn't sleep. I jumped on /. after I'd had enough.
      I stick to specialized work only and avoid the web monkey stuff and I ended up with a TopCoder designation because of it. I've turned down two invitations to private bids this week

  • No its not worth much time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AutopsyReport ( 856852 ) on Thursday October 13, 2005 @11:35PM (#13787901)
    The best advice I can give to you is to get your name out on forums (for job postings), check classifieds (like craigslist), check regular job sites (devbistro, etc.) and pursue every avenue to get your name and skillset in the public eye.

    I tried sites similiar to RentACoder years ago which never amounted to anything. However, I did post my contact information and resume on various websites. To this day, I still get emails for contract opportunities. The little bit of effort I put forth to submit my name to various websites resulted in excellent contracts with clients in the U.S. and Canada (and I reside in Canada). Now I have been working for the same clients for several years -- the business is repeat.

    While my approach may not be the greatest, when clients went looking, they somehow stumbled on me. That beat's bidding against foreigners who can make it seem as if you are overcharging. How can $50 an hour (or whatever your rate is) compete with $8 to 10? It's difficult when you can't accurately sell yourself online.

    • Also I forgot to mention that I emailed hundreds of companies and people looking for developers, and some bit. The hours I spent mass-emailing eventually paid off after my first couple hours of work.

    • Re:No its not worth much time (Score:4, Insightful)

      by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Friday October 14, 2005 @08:55AM (#13789717) Journal

      The best advice I can give to you is to get your name out on forums (for job postings), check classifieds (like craigslist), check regular job sites (devbistro, etc.) and pursue every avenue to get your name and skillset in the public eye.

      Then subcontract out all the work to people on rent-a-coder.

    • It is sad that you are so spoiled that you consider $50/hr to be normal and $10/hr to be "foreigners". $10/hr is above the average wage where I live, a thousand miles from anywhere NOT in the USA. When I bid on RAC jobs I usually bid between $5 and $10 per hour it will take, depending on the difficulty of the job and the research required to complete it.
      • Any decent contract programmer should feel comfortable charging $30 per hour, at least. I have done two contract projects, one for $45 an hour and one for $30 an hour. The $45 / hour contract ended up costing the customer under $2000, and they recouped that expense the very first month of using my software. I could have charged $150 an hour and they still would have made a profit on the project the first year (let alone the subsequent years they will be using the software).

        Similarly, the $30 / hour project
        • That's great if you can get it, but I'm not sure I agree with the reasoning.

          If I buy a hammer from Home Depot, should they charge me $500 because that's how much I'll save over having to bang in nails with a rock?
          • If they have the only hammer in town, then yes, they should. If your business partners all call you up and say that it is the best hammer that they had ever used, it worked great, exceeded their expectations in every way, and saved/earned them tons of money, then you would probably pay a premium for it.

            If you had no idea of an alternative to that hammer and had know knowledge of hammering technology to investigate alternatives, but you know that you are going to lose $1,000-$5,000 a year if you don't buy _s
      • It is not about being spoiled at all. You have to figure for a company to hire a locally established contractor, it may cost them $80-100hr. Or, they can pay me $50 for a similiar result. The downside is that, in the case of U.S. clients, I may not be able to commute. Furthermore, I received some advice from a fellow who runs his own software company. $50 an hour may seem like a lot to build an application, and on the grounds of this alone, it does seem like a lot. However, you need to factor in how much sa
        • The other things you have to consider are Taxes, 401k, savings, and insurance.

          That's over 1/2 of what you charge right there (in the US) if you're doing things above the board.

          For that reason, $100/hour is pretty normal because that makes it more like $40 or $50 that we actually see and then the work isn't necessarily steady, so you put back money for when you're between contracts.

          There's a reason we charge "so much".
      • Why is it sad? I command $75-$100/hr for short to medium-term 1099 work, and $50-60 for w2 employment with benefits. I think your $5-10 is pathetic. If I can't pull down 6 figures, I'd rather start my own business. And I'm several hours' drive from the nearest airport that can land a passenger jet.
  • I guess you are blocking adverts on Slashdot... as Dice is 'the technology leader of tech jobs' :-)

    And no, I do not work for Dice nor use them.
  • I've programmed for a few sites, guru.com being the most recent. I kinda like it (from a programmers point of view) but I don't think any of those sites can compare to one-on-one meetings with whomever is doing X for ya. Why? Its just so much easier to not have to wait for emails to turn around for an answer, and to get a feeling for who you're dealing with. As some pointed out above, a lot of times the going-rate is really cheap, due to foriegn nationals advertising where work is cheaper. This makes it har
  • No one in my office had any experience with Macromedia Flash, so it was easier to use Rent-a-Coder to develop a basic flash application for us that to learn it ourselves. My boss ended up having to re-write a lot of it, but he thought it was still worth the money he paid to get a application that mostly worked.

  • my experience (Score:3, Informative)

    by aero6dof ( 415422 ) <aero6dof@yahoo.com> on Friday October 14, 2005 @03:18PM (#13792846) Homepage
    I've performed jobs on RAC and similar sites before, but went back to full time employment before I received a wide range of experience. My background gave me a slight advantage for engineering/scientific type programming, so I had a few decent paying projects for little utilities in that area. I also delivered some small projects in other areas, but it was more competitive becuause of the greater number of pogrammers who could to "web jockey" type programming.

    My feeling is that it would take a one to two years of competition against the low-cost bidders to get to a point to where you might stand out enough to make it worthwhile. The low-cost guys generally received poorer ratings - so if you can understand customer needs you can work your way up to higher paying clients that wanted not only programming, but problem solving expertise. It wasn't really worth my investment of time to climb that hill, but you have to decide for your own situation.

  • Most of my bids seem to get ignored, I've had only one pay over two years. Quite a few that I gave them so much information on how I'd do the job, they ended up being able to do it themselves, and didn't pay. It's very frustrating!
  • I've been using RentaCoder since January, mostly for freelance writing jobs. I really enjoy it, and have made quite a bit of money with it. My work is protected through the escrow system, and I've never had any problem getting paid my fees. I've heard that some other sites, like Guru.com, pay better, but I like the fact that I don't have to pay RentaCoder anything up front. I have also not had a lot of trouble getting underbid. I've built up a nice reputation through the comments from previous buyers,

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