Buyers perspective on rentacoder?
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Has anyone here used Rentacoder or similar services for small outsourcing projects? I know lots of people don't care for them to try to get work, due to the price pressure from China and India. As I get involved with customers I frequently get pulled into side projects, i.e. 'hey, could you look at doing this for us too?'. This sort of stuff usually could be subcontracted, but we're talking anything from a 1 day database report to a small ASP.NET database front end. Most of the local contractors I've approached don't want to be bothered with anything less than a 3 month project. Right now I have several of these types of requests, but I can't do them myself, as I'm booked up for a couple of months. I'd like to service the business, because you never know when the lean times are going to come and I'd like the customers to think of me every time they need something.
I purchase a lot of things from RAC and Elance for my small business. The quality is definitely spotty though and you have to make sure you define the project exactly so there is no dispute. Generally I hire people at those places to do very basic and more repetitive work but I hire locally to get complicated things done. purchasing code from both those places has generally not gone well, however, I've had great luck purchasing graphics arts work and web stuff from elance.
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I purchase a lot of things from RAC and Elance for my small business. The quality is definitely spotty though and you have to make sure you define the project exactly so there is no dispute. Generally I hire people at those places to do very basic and more repetitive work but I hire locally to get complicated things done. purchasing code from both those places has generally not gone well, however, I've had great luck purchasing graphics arts work and web stuff from elance.
What has not gone well with the code purchases? Poor quality, incomplete projects, comments in Chinese? For example, here is one current request. I have a somewhat complex multi-tier application that is all database driven. The complexity lies in what the application does, the systems it interfaces with, the hardware it uses, etc. It's configuration is relatively simple, that is limited to a handful of tables. The configuration is currently done in a single screen through a fat client application. Reporting for the 4 reports is done in the with Crystal Reports. The customer simply wants to have an ASP.NET front end for the configuration and reports to get away from having to install and manage the fat client app. Login control and audit trail to prevent tampering. I know exactly how I would approach it, but just don't have the time to do it. It seems like a perfect candidate to outsource...
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What has not gone well with the code purchases? Poor quality, incomplete projects, comments in Chinese? For example, here is one current request. I have a somewhat complex multi-tier application that is all database driven. The complexity lies in what the application does, the systems it interfaces with, the hardware it uses, etc. It's configuration is relatively simple, that is limited to a handful of tables. The configuration is currently done in a single screen through a fat client application. Reporting for the 4 reports is done in the with Crystal Reports. The customer simply wants to have an ASP.NET front end for the configuration and reports to get away from having to install and manage the fat client app. Login control and audit trail to prevent tampering. I know exactly how I would approach it, but just don't have the time to do it. It seems like a perfect candidate to outsource...
the thing that has not gone well generally has been the overall knowledge of the people doing work in these forums. What you just spec'd out would be a prime candidate for things to go wrong because it would require a higher skill level than I have observed in most people who do work for RAC and Elance. Remember though, this is just my experience from buying things from both over the past couple years.
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the thing that has not gone well generally has been the overall knowledge of the people doing work in these forums. What you just spec'd out would be a prime candidate for things to go wrong because it would require a higher skill level than I have observed in most people who do work for RAC and Elance. Remember though, this is just my experience from buying things from both over the past couple years.
Allen Anderson wrote: it would require a higher skill level than I have observed in most people who do work for RAC That's kinda scarey... :sigh:
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the thing that has not gone well generally has been the overall knowledge of the people doing work in these forums. What you just spec'd out would be a prime candidate for things to go wrong because it would require a higher skill level than I have observed in most people who do work for RAC and Elance. Remember though, this is just my experience from buying things from both over the past couple years.
Allen Anderson wrote: What you just spec'd out would be a prime candidate for things to go wrong because it would require a higher skill level than I have observed in most people who do work for RAC and Elance. Whoa. That's a chilling observation. That would be something I would drop on someone their first day on the job if they'd listed ASP.NET experience on their application, and expect to come back in a few days to see at least some basic functionality.
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the thing that has not gone well generally has been the overall knowledge of the people doing work in these forums. What you just spec'd out would be a prime candidate for things to go wrong because it would require a higher skill level than I have observed in most people who do work for RAC and Elance. Remember though, this is just my experience from buying things from both over the past couple years.
Allen Anderson wrote: the thing that has not gone well generally has been the overall knowledge of the people doing work in these forums. of course if you select for your 100$ project a bid of 5$ from someone from India who has rating of 3. Let's be fair though. If you expect a job well done, at least give the project to a coder that has experience and whose bid is going to be definetly around 100$. No good coder is going to do work for free because he is afraid of bids from India and China. Mircea Many people spend their life going to sleep when they’re not sleepy and waking up when they still are.
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Allen Anderson wrote: What you just spec'd out would be a prime candidate for things to go wrong because it would require a higher skill level than I have observed in most people who do work for RAC and Elance. Whoa. That's a chilling observation. That would be something I would drop on someone their first day on the job if they'd listed ASP.NET experience on their application, and expect to come back in a few days to see at least some basic functionality.
Why not develop a relationship with a few fellow coders. Ask them if they would be interested in doing some side work every once and a while. This offers many benefits, you develop a repore with them, shouldn’t take long to figure out their habits. Most importantly you will know what type of code they will turn out. -------------------------------
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Why not develop a relationship with a few fellow coders. Ask them if they would be interested in doing some side work every once and a while. This offers many benefits, you develop a repore with them, shouldn’t take long to figure out their habits. Most importantly you will know what type of code they will turn out. -------------------------------
I've tried that in the past. What I've experienced is that unless it's interesting work (most of what I have to outsource isn't), pays $75 or more an hour, and is no more than a few nights work, it doesn't work out. Even if someone agree's to it, life gets in the way, 'I'm busy at my day job, I'll try to work on it this weekend', 'my wife wanted to go {insert excuse here}', etc. My attempts to use some of the folks who pop out of the woodwork saying that they'd love to do the work in response to a question posted online have lead to even greater frustrations. The other thing is that since starting my own business and moving to an area not particularly well known for tech industry, there isn't a lot of opportunity to meet other coders in real life.
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I've tried that in the past. What I've experienced is that unless it's interesting work (most of what I have to outsource isn't), pays $75 or more an hour, and is no more than a few nights work, it doesn't work out. Even if someone agree's to it, life gets in the way, 'I'm busy at my day job, I'll try to work on it this weekend', 'my wife wanted to go {insert excuse here}', etc. My attempts to use some of the folks who pop out of the woodwork saying that they'd love to do the work in response to a question posted online have lead to even greater frustrations. The other thing is that since starting my own business and moving to an area not particularly well known for tech industry, there isn't a lot of opportunity to meet other coders in real life.
Mark Tutt wrote: I've tried that in the past. What I've experienced is that unless it's interesting work (most of what I have to outsource isn't), pays $75 or more an hour, and is no more than a few nights work, it doesn't work out. Even if someone agree's to it, life gets in the way, 'I'm busy at my day job, I'll try to work on it this weekend', 'my wife wanted to go {insert excuse here}', etc. My attempts to use some of the folks who pop out of the woodwork saying that they'd love to do the work in response to a question posted online have lead to even greater frustrations. OIC, I have done some work for a friend of mine. That arrangement has worked out well for both of us. Thought it might help in your circumstances. Mark Tutt wrote: The other thing is that since starting my own business and moving to an area not particularly well known for tech industry, there isn't a lot of opportunity to meet other coders in real life. Yea, it’s difficult working with people known only from the net. There is nothing like face to face to work out some of the minor details. After hearing all of Christian Graus's problems on RAC. Not sure I would want to do buisness with such a company. -------------------------------
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Mark Tutt wrote: I've tried that in the past. What I've experienced is that unless it's interesting work (most of what I have to outsource isn't), pays $75 or more an hour, and is no more than a few nights work, it doesn't work out. Even if someone agree's to it, life gets in the way, 'I'm busy at my day job, I'll try to work on it this weekend', 'my wife wanted to go {insert excuse here}', etc. My attempts to use some of the folks who pop out of the woodwork saying that they'd love to do the work in response to a question posted online have lead to even greater frustrations. OIC, I have done some work for a friend of mine. That arrangement has worked out well for both of us. Thought it might help in your circumstances. Mark Tutt wrote: The other thing is that since starting my own business and moving to an area not particularly well known for tech industry, there isn't a lot of opportunity to meet other coders in real life. Yea, it’s difficult working with people known only from the net. There is nothing like face to face to work out some of the minor details. After hearing all of Christian Graus's problems on RAC. Not sure I would want to do buisness with such a company. -------------------------------
sfdougl wrote: OIC, I have done some work for a friend of mine. That arrangement has worked out well for both of us. Thought it might help in your circumstances. Yes, for the specialized type of work that is my main focus, I have several people that I trade work with when we get busy. That works out well, we're all full time at this, and stand by our committments. We either subcontract each other out for about 80% of what the project runs, or just hand the contract off entirely, depending on the circumstances. I'm grasping at straws, I've booked myself solid until mid July, and have about 6 'minor' projects for ASP.NET and various database and reporting work that I'd told customers I could handle for them back before I got busy, and now they're all saying they want a contract for the work and want it done soon. I need to be able to just toss it to someone else and have it done. I've exhausted the people I know, it's either not in their skillset or they're not interested, so I'm still considering RAC.
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sfdougl wrote: OIC, I have done some work for a friend of mine. That arrangement has worked out well for both of us. Thought it might help in your circumstances. Yes, for the specialized type of work that is my main focus, I have several people that I trade work with when we get busy. That works out well, we're all full time at this, and stand by our committments. We either subcontract each other out for about 80% of what the project runs, or just hand the contract off entirely, depending on the circumstances. I'm grasping at straws, I've booked myself solid until mid July, and have about 6 'minor' projects for ASP.NET and various database and reporting work that I'd told customers I could handle for them back before I got busy, and now they're all saying they want a contract for the work and want it done soon. I need to be able to just toss it to someone else and have it done. I've exhausted the people I know, it's either not in their skillset or they're not interested, so I'm still considering RAC.
for quality your probably better off buying from elance than RAC although neither will generally offer quality that is anywhere near what you are used to seeing or could do yourself.