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Freelance Programming Sites?
CarrotLord asks: "I have some small, fairly well-defined programming projects that I need done, but I don't have time to do them myself. So, I've been looking into sites like Get a Freelancer and ScriptLance. Does anybody have any experience of these types of sites? Specifically, I'd like to hear your recommendations and advice, as well as your experiences. My concerns include: getting very poor quality work; communication and language barriers and also losing control over the work that I've paid for -- if I'm paying for some work, I want it licensed on my own terms."
You are already on the right track if the projects are "well defined." I have had several experiences on eLance and the best results happen when you know exactly what you want. I mean, exactly. If you need something in ATL or MFC with specific dependencies (or lack of them), say so. The more specific the better.
Also specify how the project will be tested before being delivered to you. The end of the project can be the most frustrating. I have decided it's often easier to take ownership of the whole thing and do the little items (spelling and grammar in the UI) rather than trying to pass it back to them.
Finally, think about IP issues. If you think the project (or your whole company) will ever be bought by any large company, they will ask questions about where the code came from in due diligence. Get some assurances that the code they created "for you" is not yanked from some open source project.
In my experience these websites are not useful to the serious freelance programmer who wants to pay the bills. However, they are vaulable as a way for students or those lacking in experience/qualifications as a way to find jobs with which to build up a portfolio. Bidding very low or offering to do jobs for free and explaining your situation will win contracts from small companies or individual sole-traders. As an employer, If someone offers to send you a free prototype, you have nothing to lose. I've been doing PHP/SQL freelance work in this manner for about 3 years while doing crap temporary Admin jobs and looking for a proper programming role, seen virtually no money whatsoever from it but have landed a permanent C# software development job largely on the strength of this (mostly unpaid) experience.
I've been working on Rent A Coder for the last couple months, and just finished a large project on it, that took 2 months. I agree that generally the site would work best for small projects. I think I got lucky, and managed to establish a good working relationship with the buyer. What helped most was being very clear about what was in the contract, and finding out what exactly was expected of me. The best advice I can offer is to discuss with any potential coders every point of the contract, and what's expected in the project. As further colloquial evidence that there are some good experiences on the freelance front, I have a further contract with the same buyer coming up. Apparantly, he was rather pleased with how the first project turned out.