Experience with RentACoder.com ???
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Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
We're not talking about lowest bid for quality, we're talking lowest bid, period.
Hey, if it works for our government, it should work for coding too, right? ;P Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithYeah, I love the part in the movie Armageddon where they are about to blast off and the guy talks about how complex the ship is all built but the lowest bidder causing you the warm fuzzies ;) While I am posting, I also liked the "Never want to pay taxes again" comment and the "Get off the nuclear weapon" comment :)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: Vista for Web Development, Read this first! Latest Tech Blog Post: USA City Burnt To Death...
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Yeah, I love the part in the movie Armageddon where they are about to blast off and the guy talks about how complex the ship is all built but the lowest bidder causing you the warm fuzzies ;) While I am posting, I also liked the "Never want to pay taxes again" comment and the "Get off the nuclear weapon" comment :)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: Vista for Web Development, Read this first! Latest Tech Blog Post: USA City Burnt To Death...
Rocky Moore wrote:
Armageddon where they are about to blast off and the guy talks about how complex the ship
Rockhound: You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?
Rocky Moore wrote:
"Get off the nuclear weapon" comment
:laugh::laugh: Colonel William Sharp: [In response to Rockhound riding the nuclear warhead] Get off... the nuclear... warhead. Rockhound: Just wanted to feel the power between my legs brother. Colonel William Sharp: NOW!
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Any have experiences with www.rentacoder.com either positive or negative? Ed
I have been on both ends of RentACoder, both purchaser and seller. Most of the programmers on RentACoder are in eastern Europe and India. Make sure you are dealing with an individual not a company. On many of my bids, the responses from companies indicate that they have hardly read the requirements. They will low-ball the price then find ways to raise it after you have committed. Stick with individuals as they don't play that game. Also, don't put out a request for some huge project. You need to slice it up into pieces. You need to be the master architect and carve the job up into pieces that can be done in 5 days or less. If you can't architect it yourself, then don't go there. As to quality, it ranges. If you want something as esoteric as J2ME (Java for cell phones), I have found that anyone who will respond will be really good. If you want an ASPX application, I would be quite leary, unless you are in total control of the architecture. I once worked on a project where the owner of the project knew nothing about programming and jobbed the whole thing out to an Indian company because they were cheap. I had to come in at the end to try to clean up the mess. It was a TicketMaster type application and they were keeping the current order as an ADO table in a session variable!!! Needless to say, the project failed. If you are a North American programmer looking to RentACoder for work, you really only have 2 advantages: you comprehend english very well and you are available during the North American business day. So don't even bother with most of the jobs because you'll only be able make $10-$15 an hour.
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Ed Dixon wrote:
either positive or negative
let's see... the milder response before Christian finds this.... what positive or negative can be said about "lowest bid" work? We're not talking about lowest bid for quality, we're talking lowest bid, period. If you have dent in your car there are two ways to fix it, the slow meticulous and delicate way of trying to pop it out with either suction cups or removing the panel and pushing it in place, or drilling a hole popping a hook in, pulling it out, filling the hole and handing it back to you. The latter one is real cheap, can be done for about $25, and definately "repairs the dent" just adds extra issues. So too rentacoder, cheap quality lacking code offers keeps the costs to the "requestor" down, but so too the quality of the result. Also, similar to our contract here, there is no standard for grading the result, so even if you do quality work, you may get downgraded for any reason. We stopped doing work with one customer on our contract because he didn't believe anyone deserved more than a 75% grade. Now if you do absolutely perfect work, and can at most receive 75%, why bother? So outside of being good for the college student with no experience, and nothing to loose, it is near useless for both customers and experienced programmers.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
This analogy is quite accurate. When I was in College I did a little bit of work on RentACoder ... it wasn't long before I realized, I was better of working at McDonald's for minimum wage. The only was to make decent $$$ on rentacoder is to live in the cheapest country in the world, or produce subquality work. I quickly left the scene. Later, I had an idea to code a couple things that I didn't have time to (non-work related) ... due to my previous experience, I knew going into it that whatever I get will not be the best (or even what I would produce). Yet I figure it will get me started right ... so I got what I paid for a recoded the project after. Another instance, I had a project I had been working on ... I just needed someone to wrap it up. I wrote a detailed specification on what needed to be completed and how ... so they re-wrote the whole thing in a different language and it worked for the most part ... I had to fix several things ... test it to death and reintegrate some of the functionality I had already produced ... this was a complete waste in the end. I even had to question if this was original code. Long story ... so in the end I think it will not benefit anyone about 98% of the time. There's also a real danger in that you don't know where the code is coming from. You may be getting code that will affect your licensing or land you in court eventually. Rentacoder does have very goes technical writers though ... I have found that farming out documentation has been quite good. Good luck! :cool:
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Any have experiences with www.rentacoder.com either positive or negative? Ed
To Ed: I have 783 projects, completed via RentACoder.com I have many repeated buyers, mostly from USA. To coders: If you are expensive for nothing - you can't compete with me. To buyers: If you employ expensive local staff today - you will be bankrupted patriot tomorrow. -- Sergey I.Grachyov [MCDBA, MCAD.NET] My profile at RentACoder.com[^]
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Any have experiences with www.rentacoder.com either positive or negative? Ed
RAC is one of the largest free sites, I personally started freelancing from RAC. Nice site, but too much competition so as a coder, sometime you have to lower your bid amount to get some work. The bad thing is, no mimimum amount for a project which cause the buyers to post even $5 project out of which $3 is deducted by RAC and you get $2 only. Horrible???? BUT sometime, some serious buyers find you and your life is happy. As a buyer, you need to be very careful while selecting someone to do your job. I have both experiences, Buyer and Coder. as a coder, I got some good clients and started working with them and getting good amount to live and eat. As a Buyer, I posted a project there and NO ONE BIDDED on it. Think what? it was a little complex project (Retrieving SPD information). On the other hand, I posted another project and received good bids. Selected one and he didn't completed project within time. It was an article actually of several thousands words. Even it was not completed, service provider added about 25% garbage in that making it fully waste. It doesn't mean RAC is not good for you as a coder or buyer, it could be, if you are careful while choosing coder (if you are a buyer) and if you are lucky enough (as a coder) :rolleyes: Transaction Fee is another point for RAC. If you are a buyer, you dont have to worry about it, but as a coder, you will have to pay 10%-15% (normally 15%) fee of project worth. So, $1,000 project means, you lose $150 and get only $850. If you really want good thing (both as buyer and coder), I will suggest Elance.com. From last couple of years, I have shifted myself to Elance and not using RAC anymore. Sameers
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RAC is one of the largest free sites, I personally started freelancing from RAC. Nice site, but too much competition so as a coder, sometime you have to lower your bid amount to get some work. The bad thing is, no mimimum amount for a project which cause the buyers to post even $5 project out of which $3 is deducted by RAC and you get $2 only. Horrible???? BUT sometime, some serious buyers find you and your life is happy. As a buyer, you need to be very careful while selecting someone to do your job. I have both experiences, Buyer and Coder. as a coder, I got some good clients and started working with them and getting good amount to live and eat. As a Buyer, I posted a project there and NO ONE BIDDED on it. Think what? it was a little complex project (Retrieving SPD information). On the other hand, I posted another project and received good bids. Selected one and he didn't completed project within time. It was an article actually of several thousands words. Even it was not completed, service provider added about 25% garbage in that making it fully waste. It doesn't mean RAC is not good for you as a coder or buyer, it could be, if you are careful while choosing coder (if you are a buyer) and if you are lucky enough (as a coder) :rolleyes: Transaction Fee is another point for RAC. If you are a buyer, you dont have to worry about it, but as a coder, you will have to pay 10%-15% (normally 15%) fee of project worth. So, $1,000 project means, you lose $150 and get only $850. If you really want good thing (both as buyer and coder), I will suggest Elance.com. From last couple of years, I have shifted myself to Elance and not using RAC anymore. Sameers
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>The bad thing is, no mimimum amount for a project which cause the buyers to post even $5 project out of which $3 is deducted by RAC and you get $2 only. Horrible???? Yes! If you care about $5 projects. > So, $1,000 project means, you lose $150 and get only $850. You lose. But I pay $150 for protection against bad buyer. Did you ever hear about arbitration feature at RentACoder.com ? > If you really want good thing (both as buyer and coder), I will suggest Elance.com. I decline all job-related sites where I should pay monthly subscription fee. In fact - you pay $$$ to get possibility to receive some job. -- Sergey I.Grachyov [MCDBA, MCAD.NET] My profile at RentACoder.com[^]
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>The bad thing is, no mimimum amount for a project which cause the buyers to post even $5 project out of which $3 is deducted by RAC and you get $2 only. Horrible???? Yes! If you care about $5 projects. > So, $1,000 project means, you lose $150 and get only $850. You lose. But I pay $150 for protection against bad buyer. Did you ever hear about arbitration feature at RentACoder.com ? > If you really want good thing (both as buyer and coder), I will suggest Elance.com. I decline all job-related sites where I should pay monthly subscription fee. In fact - you pay $$$ to get possibility to receive some job. -- Sergey I.Grachyov [MCDBA, MCAD.NET] My profile at RentACoder.com[^]
upto wrote:
Yes! If you care about $5 projects.
YOU are right, but this actually means, buyer thinks that it is the cheapest place to get work done and when you dont have anything to eat, you may even consider grass. For example, take a look at your profile, all your recent projects done there less than $50 except some which are about $100 or one with $2,000. Despite on Elance, even I have to pay something, but I have to Pay less transaction fee (8.75% if I earned less than $10K in last 6 months, 7.75% If my earning is less than $40K in last 6 months, 6.65% otherwise). Choosing the paid or free site also depends how much worth you have. After analyzing transaction fee I had to pay to site and the projects worth, I decided to use Elance and so far, it is going good (more than 1 and half year). Got good clients, and now I only use Elance for transactions, everything else is done on messengers.
upto wrote:
I decline all job-related sites where I should pay monthly subscription fee. In fact - you pay $$$ to get possibility to receive some job.
If think you should be more confident about yourself, you have good profile on RAC, but you seems to be doing very small works. But this also means, you should have good exposure of programming platforms. So I believe, you should build more confidence about your skills, and try paid site once. BTW, I never meant RAC is bad, its good, for part time work, doing small projects (sometime you can even get big, really big). All depends on your skills and sometime, matter of luck. Sameers
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upto wrote:
Yes! If you care about $5 projects.
YOU are right, but this actually means, buyer thinks that it is the cheapest place to get work done and when you dont have anything to eat, you may even consider grass. For example, take a look at your profile, all your recent projects done there less than $50 except some which are about $100 or one with $2,000. Despite on Elance, even I have to pay something, but I have to Pay less transaction fee (8.75% if I earned less than $10K in last 6 months, 7.75% If my earning is less than $40K in last 6 months, 6.65% otherwise). Choosing the paid or free site also depends how much worth you have. After analyzing transaction fee I had to pay to site and the projects worth, I decided to use Elance and so far, it is going good (more than 1 and half year). Got good clients, and now I only use Elance for transactions, everything else is done on messengers.
upto wrote:
I decline all job-related sites where I should pay monthly subscription fee. In fact - you pay $$$ to get possibility to receive some job.
If think you should be more confident about yourself, you have good profile on RAC, but you seems to be doing very small works. But this also means, you should have good exposure of programming platforms. So I believe, you should build more confidence about your skills, and try paid site once. BTW, I never meant RAC is bad, its good, for part time work, doing small projects (sometime you can even get big, really big). All depends on your skills and sometime, matter of luck. Sameers
Need custom software? Contact DevelopersINN[^] Need to add reminders for your Outlook emails? Try Outlook Personal Assistant[^]
> YOU are right, but this actually means, > buyer thinks that it is the cheapest place to get work done > and when you dont have anything to eat, you may even consider grass. I haven't such experience. > For example, take a look at your profile, > all your recent projects done there less than $50 > except some which are about $100 or one with $2,000. I earn more (per hour) than many other programmers from my country. Each $50 gives me $100 from the same buyer. If you have time to check - "one with $2,000" comes from my old buyer. Our 1st project was $40.00 (October, 2004). > Despite on Elance, even I have to pay something, > but I have to Pay less transaction fee > (8.75% if I earned less than $10K in last 6 months, 7.75% > If my earning is less than $40K in last 6 months, 6.65% otherwise). Did you earn anything? Or - this is just theory? From $2000 I pay 10%, because it is private auction. > So I believe, you should build more confidence about your skills, and try paid site once. Business model for all job-related paid sites: 1. Post advertising "We are good site, bla-bla-bla". 2. Rent 2-3 "senders" 3. They post scam projects 4. Collect monthly subscription fee from credulous programmers 5. Go To 1 Also - no way to check statistics: 1. how many subscribers? 2. how many completed projects? May be 10,000 subscribers compete for 100 projects. Every month. RentACoder's statistics[^] available for everyone. -- Sergey I.Grachyov [MCDBA, MCAD.NET] My profile at RentACoder.com[^]
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> YOU are right, but this actually means, > buyer thinks that it is the cheapest place to get work done > and when you dont have anything to eat, you may even consider grass. I haven't such experience. > For example, take a look at your profile, > all your recent projects done there less than $50 > except some which are about $100 or one with $2,000. I earn more (per hour) than many other programmers from my country. Each $50 gives me $100 from the same buyer. If you have time to check - "one with $2,000" comes from my old buyer. Our 1st project was $40.00 (October, 2004). > Despite on Elance, even I have to pay something, > but I have to Pay less transaction fee > (8.75% if I earned less than $10K in last 6 months, 7.75% > If my earning is less than $40K in last 6 months, 6.65% otherwise). Did you earn anything? Or - this is just theory? From $2000 I pay 10%, because it is private auction. > So I believe, you should build more confidence about your skills, and try paid site once. Business model for all job-related paid sites: 1. Post advertising "We are good site, bla-bla-bla". 2. Rent 2-3 "senders" 3. They post scam projects 4. Collect monthly subscription fee from credulous programmers 5. Go To 1 Also - no way to check statistics: 1. how many subscribers? 2. how many completed projects? May be 10,000 subscribers compete for 100 projects. Every month. RentACoder's statistics[^] available for everyone. -- Sergey I.Grachyov [MCDBA, MCAD.NET] My profile at RentACoder.com[^]
Looks too much fan of RAC. Good thing. I dont dislike though. This is good that you have good "rate" as compared to your fellow country mens. BTW, I am not going to analyze your profile and I believe you better know what to do and what you are. So just sticking with your sayings :)
upto wrote:
Did you earn anything? Or - this is just theory?
Yes, I told you that I am with Elance from last one and half years, before this, I had a good profile on RAC too which is still available. Ok, let me post URLs for you. RAC[^] Elance[^] One bad thing with Elance is, peoples often do not provide feedback.
upto wrote:
From $2000 I pay 10%, because it is private auction
Oh yes, that is why I wrote transaction fee from 10% to 15%. I know it.
upto wrote:
Business model for all job-related paid sites: 1. Post advertising "We are good site, bla-bla-bla". 2. Rent 2-3 "senders" 3. They post scam projects 4. Collect monthly subscription fee from credulous programmers 5. Go To 1
You are right, that it is with most of the paying sites. But hey, its not with Elance. While working on Elance, I had too much work so even had to hire more persons to complete the jobs. and now, I have many clients from Elance which periodically sends me work, and hence, I even dont need to bid any project. Good, no bids and you have work too. Wow
upto wrote:
Also - no way to check statistics: 1. how many subscribers? 2. how many completed projects? May be 10,000 subscribers compete for 100 projects. Every month.
How can you believe that? Maybe, figures are not that correct as posted on site? I think you can find such statistics on Elance too, but who guarantees that it is 100% accurate? Sameers
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Hockey, Check out what I wrote to Ed. It's a mistake to look at an offshore outsourcing situation, see a low $ amount and assume that low quality/effort work is being done. You're appplying U.S. standards for measuring the amount of money to a situation that it doesn't apply to. $100 is a month's salary in Romania...and people will bust their tails and do everything for a month's salary. Remember to take into account different costs of living. Ian RAC
Actually I am from Romania and, honestely, I wouldn't move a finger for $100 on RAC. Like somebody else said, those $100 jobs are made by college people who are not actually living only with that money, and they are looking for high rankings most probably.
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Actually I am from Romania and, honestely, I wouldn't move a finger for $100 on RAC. Like somebody else said, those $100 jobs are made by college people who are not actually living only with that money, and they are looking for high rankings most probably.
Cristian, I'm curious what city in Romania you are from. Most Romanians have told me that $100 can pay a substantial portion (if not all) of the rent for a month (so it's equivalent to $700 here, and about $1600 in San Francisco). As an example: http://www.romtradeconsult.com/Living-expenses.htm Ian
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Cristian, I'm curious what city in Romania you are from. Most Romanians have told me that $100 can pay a substantial portion (if not all) of the rent for a month (so it's equivalent to $700 here, and about $1600 in San Francisco). As an example: http://www.romtradeconsult.com/Living-expenses.htm Ian
I live in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania. I'd pay $300-$500 for an apartment with living-room and one bedroom here. Developers are probably the best paid people in Romania, after managers. An experinced developer would not work for less than $1200 / month, however you can find cheaper developers, but what you pay is what you get. Harghita (the one from the link you gave me) and Covasna are the the poorest zones from Transylvania, also Transylvania is the richest zone in Romania. Students who live in campuses can of course, cover the whole rent. I belive RAC coders are underpaid even for romanians, that's why I don't really use this website.
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I live in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania. I'd pay $300-$500 for an apartment with living-room and one bedroom here. Developers are probably the best paid people in Romania, after managers. An experinced developer would not work for less than $1200 / month, however you can find cheaper developers, but what you pay is what you get. Harghita (the one from the link you gave me) and Covasna are the the poorest zones from Transylvania, also Transylvania is the richest zone in Romania. Students who live in campuses can of course, cover the whole rent. I belive RAC coders are underpaid even for romanians, that's why I don't really use this website.
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Ed Dixon wrote:
either positive or negative
let's see... the milder response before Christian finds this.... what positive or negative can be said about "lowest bid" work? We're not talking about lowest bid for quality, we're talking lowest bid, period. If you have dent in your car there are two ways to fix it, the slow meticulous and delicate way of trying to pop it out with either suction cups or removing the panel and pushing it in place, or drilling a hole popping a hook in, pulling it out, filling the hole and handing it back to you. The latter one is real cheap, can be done for about $25, and definately "repairs the dent" just adds extra issues. So too rentacoder, cheap quality lacking code offers keeps the costs to the "requestor" down, but so too the quality of the result. Also, similar to our contract here, there is no standard for grading the result, so even if you do quality work, you may get downgraded for any reason. We stopped doing work with one customer on our contract because he didn't believe anyone deserved more than a 75% grade. Now if you do absolutely perfect work, and can at most receive 75%, why bother? So outside of being good for the college student with no experience, and nothing to loose, it is near useless for both customers and experienced programmers.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
I am totally agreed. this is how things are working on Rentacoder.com.....
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
Ed Dixon wrote: either positive or negative let's see... the milder response before Christian finds this.... what positive or negative can be said about "lowest bid" work? We're not talking about lowest bid for quality, we're talking lowest bid, period. If you have dent in your car there are two ways to fix it, the slow meticulous and delicate way of trying to pop it out with either suction cups or removing the panel and pushing it in place, or drilling a hole popping a hook in, pulling it out, filling the hole and handing it back to you. The latter one is real cheap, can be done for about $25, and definately "repairs the dent" just adds extra issues. So too rentacoder, cheap quality lacking code offers keeps the costs to the "requestor" down, but so too the quality of the result. Also, similar to our contract here, there is no standard for grading the result, so even if you do quality work, you may get downgraded for any reason. We stopped doing work with one customer on our contract because he didn't believe anyone deserved more than a 75% grade. Now if you do absolutely perfect work, and can at most receive 75%, why bother? So outside of being good for the college student with no experience, and nothing to loose, it is near useless for both customers and experienced programmers.
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From a developer standpoint, I placed many bids on the site, and never received one job from it. Most of the bids seem to be from college kids that will do the work for (next to) nothing. From a client standpoint, I guess it's a good idea if you want cheap help. But, I don't have any experience in this side, so I can't give you any insight on the quality.
do not work with rentacoder , it is a fraud. search google and you will know why. scan thru. first few websites. http://www.google.co.in/search?q=rentacoder+fraud&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a