Finding Coding Work Through Placement Websites?

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?"

Comments

I wouldn't hold my breath

[Fished]

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

[flood6]

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.

Great for them.

[Inoshiro]

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 :)