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

SSN

[GigsVT]

I think they need your SSN to send you a IRS 1099 if you are in the US.

All payments are through them, not directly from the person hiring you. I've not had good experience with the coders on there, I tried to hire some of them once. They all put in lowball bids, then when they realized the project was nontrivial, as I originally said, they all just stopped responding to emails.

Re:SSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you have to learn quickly -- it makes no sense to take a lowball bid that can't do the job; your money is tied up in escrow and you waste a lot of time and don't get the job done.

Accept a bid that impresses you as coming from someone who can finish it, or don't waste your time. There are other sites, craigslist, or other options -- if you can't find anyone to do it at all, you may just have to figure out how to do business without the product.

You are the flip side of the American coder who said they looked on there and thought they couldn't compete with the Asians on price, and so never bid on anything.

This is not ebay, you don't have to take the lowest bid.

Although in fairness, and without being too stereotypical, it's the Russians on rentacoder who have the most competance and the better skills. Argentina also seems to have more good coders than it's population would warrant. I would not advise selecting bids on nationality though -- get on IM and chat with the guy and figure out if he knows his stuff.

And if you have a bid that you guess is undercutting it, and the person does make good progress, you should re-offer it at a higher price or bonus them so they can finish it. Remember, this is capitalism -- if you want to keep a sustainable relationship, you can only both win, i.e. you get the project and they get enough money.

The usual pattern is that after 4 or 5 jobs though the site, for certain types of jobs you start going straight to the person you know will do it best.

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.

Re:I wouldn't hold my breath

[ibbey]

Don't worry about sounding racist, it's simple economics. The annual per capita income of India is $3,100. You're not likely to find many Americans-- except perhaps the occasional high school student-- who would be willing to compete with someone on that sort of a pay scale. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with being able to live on $260 a month

Re:I wouldn't hold my breath

[xgamer04]

There is simply no coding project that I would be willing to undertake for $100

Your loss is my gain:

public class Hello {
        public static void main(String[] args) {
                System.out.println("Hello, world!");
        }
}

Re:I wouldn't hold my breath

[jrockway]

By the time the VM actually executed your code, though, you'd only be making like $3 an hour. :)

It

[madstork2000]

I have done work for people and hired people for work through rent-a-coder. Both types of experiences when pretty smoothly. Like anything you have to be able to effectively communicate.

As a programmer you need to be able to communicate to the potential client what you can do. This is the hardest part in my opinion.

Overall communication is the biggest key. Do you understand what the bidder wants? Does the bid have enough information for you as the coder to accurately estimate the amount of time.

Bottom line is can you work with the person at the other end? The few times I have participated it went pretty well because as a coder I knew what they wanted, and if there was a question I come usuallly elicit a clearer response. As a buyer, it was easy for me to define metrics / milestones for the project. I also knew approximately how long and hard the task was because I have done a lot of coding (I just didn't have time to do it myself).

Anyway, I think rent-a-coder is a pretty good service,
-MS2k

University students use it...

[emacnabber]

I was a system administrator in the CS department at a large university. We had several students attempt to use the service to get their homework assignments done. Needless to say, it didn't go over well when the professors and T.A.'s found out. If something sounds like a homework assignment, it probably is.

Re:University students use it...

[Nightlily]

Yes, there are several homework assignments posted as projects. First, I feel that all students should write their own code, but most of the blame falls solely on the students' shoulders. Personally I would have problems being paid to write a homework assignment, but the coders are just trying to earn a little extra money. Cheating should be handled by universities. Hey if someone is dumb enough to get caught cheating, it's best to get him or her out of the program as quickly as possible.

Re:University students use it...

[Seumas]

Why didn't it go over well? The entire country outsources tech work and is rewarded for it while the students are bright enough to emulate that strategy to their own benefit and they're considers cheats?

I'm a buyer on RAC

[bergeron76]

I've used rentacoder extensively as a software buyer. I haven't used it as a coder, so I can't attest to it in that regard, but I hire people on there all the time.

It's completely legit.

Global Marketplace

[BrynM]

If you are a US or Canadian citizen, remember that Rent A Coder is worldwide. When I tried to get some gigs from it, people overseas (Rumania, The Orient and Brazil were big) will bid too. For you, a day's pay might be a couple of hundred dollars. For them, it might be $20US. All RAC did for me as a programmer was teach me why outsourcing overseas is cost effective. Never did land a gig on RAC. The cost of living/income ratio was way out of wack for a US citizen.

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 :)

Re:Great for them.

[vbrtrmn]

Yeah, those kids who get their parents to pay to have their homework get done, usually are found out at their 'real' job really quick, then they get promotions to management.

No its not worth much time

[AutopsyReport]

The best advice I can give to you is to get your name out on forums (for job postings), check classifieds (like craigslist), check regular job sites (devbistro, etc.) and pursue every avenue to get your name and skillset in the public eye.

I tried sites similiar to RentACoder years ago which never amounted to anything. However, I did post my contact information and resume on various websites. To this day, I still get emails for contract opportunities. The little bit of effort I put forth to submit my name to various websites resulted in excellent contracts with clients in the U.S. and Canada (and I reside in Canada). Now I have been working for the same clients for several years -- the business is repeat.

While my approach may not be the greatest, when clients went looking, they somehow stumbled on me. That beat's bidding against foreigners who can make it seem as if you are overcharging. How can $50 an hour (or whatever your rate is) compete with $8 to 10? It's difficult when you can't accurately sell yourself online.

Re:No its not worth much time

[anthony_dipierro]

The best advice I can give to you is to get your name out on forums (for job postings), check classifieds (like craigslist), check regular job sites (devbistro, etc.) and pursue every avenue to get your name and skillset in the public eye.

Then subcontract out all the work to people on rent-a-coder.

my experience

[aero6dof]

I've performed jobs on RAC and similar sites before, but went back to full time employment before I received a wide range of experience. My background gave me a slight advantage for engineering/scientific type programming, so I had a few decent paying projects for little utilities in that area. I also delivered some small projects in other areas, but it was more competitive becuause of the greater number of pogrammers who could to "web jockey" type programming.

My feeling is that it would take a one to two years of competition against the low-cost bidders to get to a point to where you might stand out enough to make it worthwhile. The low-cost guys generally received poorer ratings - so if you can understand customer needs you can work your way up to higher paying clients that wanted not only programming, but problem solving expertise. It wasn't really worth my investment of time to climb that hill, but you have to decide for your own situation.

Re:Funny you should mention that

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Buyers can give you clear specs if you ask them to clarify until they are clear;

I think this is the key to making RAC work; you have to understand what the buyer wants and make them comfortable with you.
I am actually got up an hour ago to work on a RentACoder project cause I couldn't sleep. I jumped on /. after I'd had enough.
I stick to specialized work only and avoid the web monkey stuff and I ended up with a TopCoder designation because of it. I've turned down two invitations to private bids this week already.
* Don't do run of the mill stuff like web development, database front ends, etc that every beginning programmer knows. You'll always be underbid. Even though I live in the relatively low cost-of-living Midwestern US, I still can't compete with the overseas programmers on price, so I compete on skills and impressing the buyer that I get it right the first time.
* TALK to the buyer; make him at ease with you, be chatty
* Stick to stuff you can do well and quickly unless you're just taking the project as a way to learn a technology and be paid to do so. The speciality I go after on RAC is hardware interfacing and I've had some cool projects.
* Remember that even simple things can take a long time. I once bid $25 to hand over a code snippet I had written years ago (literally no change required: just cut & paste), then spent half a weekend trying to figure out why it didn't work on the buyer's system but worked perfectly on mine!
* Related to the above is pride. You bid on a job, it's your responsibility to make it work for the price you quoted.

Bottom line: if you're in the US you probably can't make a living at it as a programmer, but it's a good way to get experience in new technologies, dealing with a variety of clients, or just make a few extra bucks when you're bored.