Slashdot Mirror

I am wondering what exactly they are calling cheating here, since the code says they "will not plagiarize, copy work or get outside help."

Here's a good example of outside help:

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidRequests/ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=1242899

I once saw a RAC posting from someone who wanted all of his job interview pre-screen questions answered for him. It was no surprise, when I had a look at his project history, that he had cheated his way through his degree as well.

who gives a flying F about the red tape, if a developer wont see an actual problem and fix it, hes too stupid.

See a problem? then fix it, regardless of a bug list, report # id.

The other side of that argument is that bug reporters outnumber developers. Not to mention the developers are frequently not getting paid by the bug reporters.

Developers should spend as much of their time as possible fixing bugs and adding features, not fixing poorly written bug reports. If the users want their bugs fixed they should either pay someone to fix them or help out the developers by writing good bug reports.

There are a number of requests out there for simple things, requested by people without any money.

You mean like the multiple requests to do the poster's homework assignments? Or the "I need a clone of $_SITE_X" posts in which they want fully functional sites for the cost of a night at the movies? Or posts like this one asking people to spam forums for them?

Yes there are plenty of legitimate requests on rentacoder but the majority of them require you to leave any scruples you might have at the door. Rentacoder is a nice way to make a quick buck or two but he would be better off contributing to any number of other projects that actually deserve his time and effort.

Sorry if this is already posted, I didn't see it though...

http://www.rentacoder.com/

As others said, keep your job, you need it in this economy. However, if you really do have some skills, go make some money on the side with them. You can get jobs that range from helping some kid setup his first perl IRC bot on a server for a few bucks to helping develop specific programs for a large business. You get to pick and choose, be your own boss kinda thing. It's like EBAY for a nerd, it's not a full time job, but it'll earn you money and experience.

While I like the idea of RentACoder or Guru, the people posting jobs on those sites are mindbogglingly cheap rubes. For example:

You have been invited by the buyer to participate in a project on http://www.rentacoder.com/ for the following bid request:

Title:Java web application, jdbc, jsp, payment integration.
Description:Type: Web app.; Using: Java, J2EE, JDBC, JSP, MySql, Javascripts, all browsers.
Requires completing a non-disclosure agreement, NDA, to obtain full project details and percentage of deposit held in escrow to hedge against and minimize project risk.

Some of the project deliverables are:
* Integration of live/real-time payment processing
* Multi-Account registration
* Various user groups with varying access levels
* Site navigation hyperlinks
* Region specific clock and news updates
* Content management interface
* Administrator console/panel
* Dynamically generated pages and panels with scrolling content
* Password reset utility/Account lockout security feature
* Directories
* Newsletter feature
* Triggers, Auto-notification, Stored procedures
* Built in Node-aware sniffer and product licensing
* Software update-deploy utility
* Packaged executable interfacing with web application
* Search, sorts, queries and data manipulation utilities
* Consistent page design and theme
* Database design normalized for optimal performance
* Language conversion utility
* Thorough documentation

Categories:Web, Microsoft Windows, Database, Language Specific, Java, Requirements, Operating Systems / Platforms, UNIX, Internet Browser, Security, Web Services, Linux, MySQL, Java Server Pages (JSP), Search Engine Optimization, Javascript, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Software Related (Includes Websites)
Max Bid:$250

Like hell. That's a representative sample. Don't even get me started on the requests for clone sites.

replying to myself because I'm an idiot, wrong site.
RentACoder is the site I was thinking of.

I've used - http://www.rentacoder.com/ for a few different projects.

You can put the request out with whatever terms you'd like and the let the market set the price.

When I first discovered Rent-A-Coder back when I was unemployed, it was immediately obvious that 95% of the projects up there were CS assignments/homework. The funny part was, that in my cases, the materials linked back to their professors' web pages, or were easily Google-able.

So what did I do? I decided to be a rat - I contacted all of the professors that I could, and in one case, the professor himself did a sting operation by "bidding" to do the work.

(Of course, I don't do this anymore given how I'm employed once again and the IT job market is as tight as it was in 1999.)

That's a rough hand you've been dealt.

I don't think it's all shit work, but there are definitely a lot of shovels being handed out.

If you liked developing, maybe you could leverage your experience into another full time coding job?

Also, unless you're burned out, you might try something like Rent a Coder and freelance, just to use those programming muscles again.

Over the past few years I've been getting myself into the programming job market. I have done lots of personal projects but it's still difficult to land a job. Where I've had the most luck is doing contract programming. Somebody is more likely to hire you for a short job where they don't pay if you don't deliver and then you build up a reputation others can easily see.

I recommend going to http://rentacoder.com/ and bidding low on a few easy projects and anything that interests you. What has happened to me twice is that while discussing the project with the buyer I'm offered a real job to work full time on it - before even putting in a bid. In fact, I now think this is the best way to find a programming job - way better then responding to ads on job sites, which gets tons of replies.

As far as job sites go, I highly recommend http://www.careerjet.com/ which is a very-inclusive meta-search.

Well... first and foremost I do not think that it is possible to "outsorce" Open source software. By its very nature open source allows people from every place (in the planet!) to contribute to the code.

Now, what I would expect is that, because of the current economy, developers in India would demand lower fares to do the same amount of work as developers in the US or UK. Because of this, I think that companies wanting to do such kinds of offers (to give money to open source products) could do it via coding renting sites where the rules of the market "rule". You could argue that, the quality of the code is not comparable. However, I know there are very good coders who are not from the USA. And the company requesting the work (renting the coders) must state their objectives (imagine, setting a bid request for adding the certain functionality to X program).

Such approach could also be useful for design, documentation and other issues in which open source is pretty much fucked up. I know for example that Argentina has really, really good graphical designers. And a market where some of these people could bid to participate in such kinds of software would be good.

Of course, a lot of people here in slashdot suerly would not like that, because It would mean that they could *never* compete with the prices of other countries. However, at the end it would be better for Open Source as it will imply that more work is done for less money! and of course, more contributions to the Open Source code.

This sort of reminds me when people pledge trivial amounts of money on feature bounties for open-source projects, or in bids on rent-a-coder.
While I appreciate Branson's gesture, I can't help by being annoyed. Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere is incredibly difficult.
I can't imagine that his plege would have any real effect on the parties who are striving to solve this problem.

The following was posted to the original Spam Spotter article that started this article. However the response is not being allowed to be posted by the admin (specifically it says "pending moderation"). In case it never is posted and will never see the "light of day"...it is also being posted here.

---
To Spam Spotter,

Libel is the act of writing something which unjustly damages the reputation of another party. It is not just "bad manners"...it is a criminal act. There are MANY incorrect statements in this article on Spam Spotter, including the following:

---
1) Incorrect information: "the arbitrator were claiming that we both broke the TOS agreement (Which was totally false)"

Your project is located at: http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidReque sts/ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=461.
In the arbitration you, yourself, stated:

"the project was to create an auction system similar to Rentacoder.com which would primarily focus on publishers and writers. In this system there would be workflow features implemented that would be of importance to writers and publishers."

The Terms of Service of Rent a Coder (at http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareBuyer s/BidReqestPostingPolicy.asp) state:
"We realize imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this type of flattery is not allowed. This includes clones of sites that are competitors, or work on a service that would be a competitor."

Since Rent a Coder is an auction system which supports publishers and writers (in addition to coders, graphics artists, designers and translators...your service clearly "would be a competitor". As such it violates the RAC TOS.

Your incorrect statement that that TOS violation "was totally false", is unjustly damaging the reputation of Rent a Coder.

---
2) Incorrect/Misleading statement:

"This became a nightmare...so in effect the arbitration was all about the us breaking the TOS rather than ruling on the actual case that I initiated the arbitration on in the first place."

---------------
The above implies that Rent a Coder somehow was diverted off the main point of the arbitration and processed the arbitration incorrectly.

In fact, the process Rent a Coder was supposed to follow (and did follow) had already been pre-agreed upon by you in your contract:

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareBuyer s/SoftwareBuyerLegal.asp
"Illegal Requests. Despite Exhedra's best efforts to prohibit bid requests that violate either Rent a Coder policy or United States law, it cannot prevent all such bid requests from being posted, as no system is perfect. Should a Buyer, against the wishes of Exhedra, post such a bid request, choose a Seller and escrow funds, then Buyer agrees that Exhedra may cancel the project at any time. Buyer also agrees that they forfeit rights to some or all of the funds (as detailed below) as well as forfeit all rights to any deliverables. Additionally, Buyer will be ejected from the site under the terms of 'fraud' and may be reported by Exhedra to the proper authorities.

The forfeited fund amount shall be determined as follows, and is designed to fairly compensate a non-complicit Seller. If Exhedra determines that the Seller is not complicit, then Exhedra will determine the percentage of work completed by the Seller. That amount will be deducted from the Buyer's funds. Exhedra will award the percentage to the Seller (minus any applicable Rent a Coder fee as detailed elsewhere). Any remainder will be returned to the buyer (minus any cancellation fee as detailed elsewhere). The deliverables will NOT be released to the Buyer.

If Exhedra determines the

The following was posted to the original Spam Spotter article that started this article. However the response is not being allowed to be posted by the admin (specifically it says "pending moderation"). In case it never is posted and will never see the "light of day"...it is also being posted here.

---
To Spam Spotter,

Libel is the act of writing something which unjustly damages the reputation of another party. It is not just "bad manners"...it is a criminal act. There are MANY incorrect statements in this article on Spam Spotter, including the following:

---
1) Incorrect information: "the arbitrator were claiming that we both broke the TOS agreement (Which was totally false)"

Your project is located at: http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidReque sts/ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=461.
In the arbitration you, yourself, stated:

"the project was to create an auction system similar to Rentacoder.com which would primarily focus on publishers and writers. In this system there would be workflow features implemented that would be of importance to writers and publishers."

The Terms of Service of Rent a Coder (at http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareBuyer s/BidReqestPostingPolicy.asp) state:
"We realize imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this type of flattery is not allowed. This includes clones of sites that are competitors, or work on a service that would be a competitor."

Since Rent a Coder is an auction system which supports publishers and writers (in addition to coders, graphics artists, designers and translators...your service clearly "would be a competitor". As such it violates the RAC TOS.

Your incorrect statement that that TOS violation "was totally false", is unjustly damaging the reputation of Rent a Coder.

---
2) Incorrect/Misleading statement:

"This became a nightmare...so in effect the arbitration was all about the us breaking the TOS rather than ruling on the actual case that I initiated the arbitration on in the first place."

---------------
The above implies that Rent a Coder somehow was diverted off the main point of the arbitration and processed the arbitration incorrectly.

In fact, the process Rent a Coder was supposed to follow (and did follow) had already been pre-agreed upon by you in your contract:

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareBuyer s/SoftwareBuyerLegal.asp
"Illegal Requests. Despite Exhedra's best efforts to prohibit bid requests that violate either Rent a Coder policy or United States law, it cannot prevent all such bid requests from being posted, as no system is perfect. Should a Buyer, against the wishes of Exhedra, post such a bid request, choose a Seller and escrow funds, then Buyer agrees that Exhedra may cancel the project at any time. Buyer also agrees that they forfeit rights to some or all of the funds (as detailed below) as well as forfeit all rights to any deliverables. Additionally, Buyer will be ejected from the site under the terms of 'fraud' and may be reported by Exhedra to the proper authorities.

The forfeited fund amount shall be determined as follows, and is designed to fairly compensate a non-complicit Seller. If Exhedra determines that the Seller is not complicit, then Exhedra will determine the percentage of work completed by the Seller. That amount will be deducted from the Buyer's funds. Exhedra will award the percentage to the Seller (minus any applicable Rent a Coder fee as detailed elsewhere). Any remainder will be returned to the buyer (minus any cancellation fee as detailed elsewhere). The deliverables will NOT be released to the Buyer.

If Exhedra determines the

The following was posted to the original Spam Spotter article that started this article. However the response is not being allowed to be posted by the admin (specifically it says "pending moderation"). In case it never is posted and will never see the "light of day"...it is also being posted here.

---
To Spam Spotter,

Libel is the act of writing something which unjustly damages the reputation of another party. It is not just "bad manners"...it is a criminal act. There are MANY incorrect statements in this article on Spam Spotter, including the following:

---
1) Incorrect information: "the arbitrator were claiming that we both broke the TOS agreement (Which was totally false)"

Your project is located at: http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidReque sts/ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=461.
In the arbitration you, yourself, stated:

"the project was to create an auction system similar to Rentacoder.com which would primarily focus on publishers and writers. In this system there would be workflow features implemented that would be of importance to writers and publishers."

The Terms of Service of Rent a Coder (at http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareBuyer s/BidReqestPostingPolicy.asp) state:
"We realize imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this type of flattery is not allowed. This includes clones of sites that are competitors, or work on a service that would be a competitor."

Since Rent a Coder is an auction system which supports publishers and writers (in addition to coders, graphics artists, designers and translators...your service clearly "would be a competitor". As such it violates the RAC TOS.

Your incorrect statement that that TOS violation "was totally false", is unjustly damaging the reputation of Rent a Coder.

---
2) Incorrect/Misleading statement:

"This became a nightmare...so in effect the arbitration was all about the us breaking the TOS rather than ruling on the actual case that I initiated the arbitration on in the first place."

---------------
The above implies that Rent a Coder somehow was diverted off the main point of the arbitration and processed the arbitration incorrectly.

In fact, the process Rent a Coder was supposed to follow (and did follow) had already been pre-agreed upon by you in your contract:

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareBuyer s/SoftwareBuyerLegal.asp
"Illegal Requests. Despite Exhedra's best efforts to prohibit bid requests that violate either Rent a Coder policy or United States law, it cannot prevent all such bid requests from being posted, as no system is perfect. Should a Buyer, against the wishes of Exhedra, post such a bid request, choose a Seller and escrow funds, then Buyer agrees that Exhedra may cancel the project at any time. Buyer also agrees that they forfeit rights to some or all of the funds (as detailed below) as well as forfeit all rights to any deliverables. Additionally, Buyer will be ejected from the site under the terms of 'fraud' and may be reported by Exhedra to the proper authorities.

The forfeited fund amount shall be determined as follows, and is designed to fairly compensate a non-complicit Seller. If Exhedra determines that the Seller is not complicit, then Exhedra will determine the percentage of work completed by the Seller. That amount will be deducted from the Buyer's funds. Exhedra will award the percentage to the Seller (minus any applicable Rent a Coder fee as detailed elsewhere). Any remainder will be returned to the buyer (minus any cancellation fee as detailed elsewhere). The deliverables will NOT be released to the Buyer.

If Exhedra determines the

http://www.rentacoder.com?

Rent A Coder.

RentACoder

I've used them for a few projects and always been happy. Some girl in Azerbaijan turned around some PHP code for me in under an hour, and it cost me $18. It was nicely documented and did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was to connect to two separate databases and transfer data from one to the other. Both DB's had different schemas also.

Just post your project, people will bid on it, and select the coder with the best bid/rating combo. Yeah, it's outsourcing since the best bid will likely come from another country, but if you want it done on the cheap, this is the way to go. The way I look at it is that I'm probably helping someone out who is in a less fortunate living situation than I am.

RentaCoder. Well, Maybe.

http://rentacoder.com/?

It is strange that nobody post it before, but there is a website where you can find such a team. Rent a Coder (shameless aff. link). You can post your proyect and then lots of developers bid for it. You could also choose a set of developers first and then submit your proyect to them and start a private bidding.

Then outsource it.

What am I supposed to do for money? I don't want a free ride but odds are that, if I wouldn't hire someone disabled like me, nobody else will either.

My dad always told me to get a profession (lawyer, doctor, etc.), not a job. With a job, say as a manager, you're always dependent on a company being willing to employ you for your income. With a profession, you can work for a company or a firm, or hang out your own shingle and work for yourself. One of the best things about being a skilled developer is that it's more of a profession than a job, and you can hang out your own shingle if a company won't hire you. Sounds like you've got the skills to do so, and now a business degree to help you with the financial/legal/managerial side of running your own business, so why not give it a try?

There are multiple options: contract application development (http://www.dice.com/ http://www.scriptlance.com/ http://www.getafreelancer.com/ http://www.rentacoder.com/ http://www.elance.com/ government & corporate grants for small tech businesses (http://www.technologygrantnews.com/), or various tech-related consulting services (here's one somewhat related to your situation - http://www.adaptivetech.net/).

It's easy to get into the mindset of thinking the only way to make money is by working for a corporation, and to an extent that's probably the most secure way, unless the corporation goes under. But there are other avenues that while initiallly more difficult may give you more control over your own destiny, and hence may prove to be both more secure and more rewarding in the long run. Try to identify a need that your skills and experiences allow you to address in a unique way. For example, your tech skills and long experience, plus MS might allow for some interesting services to people with MS and similar demographics, and would probably be a decent candidate for a government small business grant. Think about it.

There are over 20,000 coders listing Mac and Linux in their areas of expertise at www.RentACoder.com, so you can post a project there and get competitive bids. (Notice: I am the owner of RentACoder.com). Good luck. Ian

http://www.rentacoder.com/

as long as ur able to QA the work urself

http://www.rentacoder.com/ is another alternative that offers a similar service.

Try this site. Open bidding for software projects.

http://www.rentacoder.com/
I've personally used them along with several friends. A great experience every time.

Most people doing internships do so because they plan to go into a field where experience is required to get a job that gets you the experience you need to be considered for the job (vicious how that works). If you are planning to go the startup route with a couple friends, you don't need an internship.

I'd say get together with those friends, figure out what you want to do, check to make sure you really can, and then if everything looks good, get that startup going now. If the problem is seed money (though if you can accept that your company will be paying you $0 until it has a revenue stream, you might not need it) you may want to consider something like http://www.rentacoder.com/ or some other means of getting both money and real world experience on smaller projects that you find interesting.

You might find one here

I suppose you have two simple options....learn the skills you would need to write your own app and release it to the community, or ask the community to write one. Sounds like a realativly simple project to me. You could ask around on dirrent forums or even post the job on http://www.rentacoder.com/ and you could ask people to do it for free.

My Off-Shoring Experience
Friday, January 14, 2005

A lot of talk has been going around about the effect of off-shore programming and us highly overpaid Western programmers. Conventional wisdom dictates that someone in Eastern Europe or India can write great code for a fraction of the price that someone like, say, me, can. We're talking $8-15/hour here, which is what someone working at Starbucks can expect to make (with benefits). Because I had a small project, I figured, what the hell, let's see what this is all about.

ie, Brian's experience with "offshoring" via RentACoder for a piece of the ActiveX work this slashdot article refers to. The security rant is old news.

I think there's a guy in India that'll do it on Rent-a-coder for $20.

Code writing is going to be a cheap, cheap skill in the future

I'm sure that http://www.rentacoder.com/ has sections for photography / artwork. You could probably make a good enough offer (recnogition, free copy, etc) that you don't need to pay anything.

Pick a project from http://www.elance.com/, http://www.rentacoder.com/, or some other freelance platform to test your coding skills. If you have an account, you could even earn some money.

pay someone on rentacoder.com or elance.com to do it.. Like this dude does.

Do you really expect an individual is going to be able to afford this?

Put in a request for bids at RentACoder and find out.

IE is losing marketshare at an amazing rate.

IE's market share has dropped ...from 95.73% to 94.73%. In a free market it wouldn't even register on the chart.

That's untrue. MS pre-selecting IE does not preclude others from competing. That's a blatantly untrue statement. It makes it more difficult. That's a big difference.

It's still immoral, probably illegal and causing incredible amounts of harm to innovation and productivity.

The courts did nothing to MS. So ask yourself. Is there more or less competition than there was in the 90's?

Irrelevant. The issue is whether Microsoft's competitors are allowed to compete fairly in this so-called free market.

How is that possible if MS was able to do what the government allege? If MS had an illegal monopoly on operating systems for x86 computers, how come there are more now than at anytime in history? How come users have dozens more choices than ever?

And if MS leveraged the operating system lock up browsers, how come we have more choice now than ever for browsers? How come on x86 alone there are at least 4 major choices for quality web-browsing?

Because while hardware has advanced in accordance with Moore's Law, the Microsoft-dominated software industry has stagnated. People have got so dissatisfied with your corrupt government and what the monopolised market provides that they actually had to invent a whole new form of production and freely donate huge amounts of time to it.

I've never seen that happen in any other field. The situation is just plain bizarre. No wonder OSS suffers credibility.

The government was wrong. MS had a large marketshare, but short of patenting everything in sight, it is impossible to have a monopoly on intellectual property like software.

No, you are wrong. Every single one of your arguments has been effectively rebutted and your post merely serves to highlight you as the Microsoft lackey that you are.

It's no good where you don't have a rigid, fixed target to aim for. That's pure research and you had better be on a time-based contract rather than a fixed-price one. Doing R&D for a fixed price will lead to disaster if you have to do that for a living. But if you can correctly estimate how much time you need and price the job accordingly you could do this and possibly even make a decent living although it would be difficult. (Working for yourself is always difficult.) But for picking up extra cash for working spare time it's easy to do. In fact, people already are doing this.

I did one myself, made a few hundred dollars for a job I worked part-time on as I felt like it and as I got the inspiration on how to solve the problem over a three month period. I had a lot of fun solving the problem and learned a hell of a lot. It also improved my ability to better estimate how much a job is worth. Had it been something I had to make a living at I couldn't, but for something that was extra money for doing a work-for-hire job on my spare time, it wasn't too bad.

Talk about bidding on a piece of software, a friend of my introduced me to Rent-a-coder. At first I thought the idea was novel, and even though I haven't tried it out yet, I know from her experience that the cash really sucks. But it's relative. It also depends on what region of the world you live and the exchange rate between the bidder and the customer. I'm in North America. Sometimes my friend gets a job for $20 that lasts for 3 days. If she lived in ... (just off the top of my head -- no flames please) ... Cuba for example then that $20 US adds up to a lot more. However my friend is in an odd situation -- which I won't go into the details of here -- that prevents her from working and she needs the cash. Of course she also has a high sense of personal integrity so she always gives the project 100% effort despite the low return.

You could always put a job up for auction at sites like Freelance Auction or Rent A Coder. You put a cap on how much you're willing to pay for your graphics, and let bidders compete for the job.

Surf the net for indie game houses. A lot of them post 'how to be an indie developer' pages, and a lot of indie developers outsource their art and sound development to russia, romania, india, pakistan, vietnam, guatemala, etc.

Post a project on rentacoder or guru and the 'low end' artists from those countries will come to you to bid on your project in droves. Pennies on the dollar, my friend.

Well, I lloked into this and found an a very interesting auction... sounds like a very professional project! NOT! Polynomial C++ which ends up being a class project for CS 124 at UC Alabama! http://www.cs.ua.edu/124/Summer2004/Programs/prog2 .htm hmmm, theres a budding future offshoring project manager!

For those not in the know Rent-A-Coder is a site where people/companies put up software projects, and (get this!) coders bid on the project. Once a coder is selected, the client puts the agreed upon fee in escrow. All communication (in theory) is conducted through the website, so that in cases of despute, there is a clear papertrail. At the end of the project, the escrow company releases the money to the coder. Badabing, badaboom.
It sounds like a good place for young coders to get experience. In practice however, the overwhelming majority of jobs get placed to more experienced coders (read: RAC users with higher ratings). So even in the code-whoring business, the classic experience catch-22 remains in effect.

If you can't code, then go to rentacoder or simular sites and pay somebody to add the features you think you need... chances are it will still be cheaper than paying for an equivalent commercial product. What part of "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness" are you not quite clear on?

You could live anywhere and try to get gigs from sites like ITMoonlighter.com (recently acquired by guru.com, or RentACoder.com, etc., except you may be competing with programmers in Bulgaria and India willing to work for $1500/mo or less, but if the hiree wants an American or someone more local that would give you an advantage.

Definitely, with "Google Optimization" projects like these up for grabs.

You did not address his point. A small business person does not have hundreds of employees by definition. Someone with maybe one or two employees cannot afford a dedicated DBA just so their database can be normalized.