Slashdot Mirror
RentACoder Losing Street Cred?
Itninja writes, "Having used RAC several times in the past (as a buyer), I was shocked by a recent experience. I did a bit of looking around to see if I was the only one having problems with Rent-A-Coder. Apparently, I'm not." From the article: "This unfairness of RAC fees motivates the majority of coders to negotiate payment outside the scope of RAC which amounts to you and coder getting a better deal. For example, I have several coders that I fully trust willing to work on projects on a monthly basis because it is easier for him to deal with established clients than to have to bid for projects all the time. It saves me time and trouble because I can work with a person that I trust and he knows what is expected." A comment to this posting links a discussion of RAC at Google Groups, and there the service has its defenders. What has your experience of RAC been, either as a buyer or as a coder?
I have though never used the services of RAC but I heard about their exhorbitant commission charges they incur on the coders. But some coders have no other choice I guess
First off, both of those links have basically been overtaken by the same two guys throwing feces at each other.
Also, I did try RAC for work during a time when I was unemployed about 4 years ago. Things might have changed since then, but at the time RAC was basically a site where small shops (a lot of spam sites and such) would post projects and get ridiculously low bids from foreign workers. As someone trying to survive in the US at the time, I could not really see myself working on a 10 hour project for $50 or $100, which is indicative of the sorts of bids that were being offered.
...I always try to negotiate deals outside as some of the fees and rules seem pretty damn ridiculous.
Than again I haven't touched that site for at least a year.
Firefox 2.0 - Spell Rightly.
"How can you expect to win an arbitration if the arbitrator is not capable to understand more then 2-3 sentences plain English?"
Heh heh heh.
As a coder living in the US, I looked at RentACoder with some interest back in, oh, 2002. These days there's no way any American coder is going to make beer money - much less a living - when the competition can afford to underbid the way they do.
When you "conservatively" bid $100 on a gig, knowing even that's a low price for all they want done, and within an hour there are 10 other bidders, all of them under $10, some of them even under $5... You just can't compete.
Is after several years of payments you actually own the coder outright. You will have to feed them and find a place for them to sleep in the basement. And when you add everything up, you will find that you overpaid massively.
This sounds like RAC is facing the same problems any other middleman service does eventually. Specifically:
1) People soon start trying to remove the middleman, saving both the client and vendor time and money
2) There are always a few 'bad eggs' in the basket and there's not much you can do about it (and is one reason people start to do #1 above)
I don't think there's anything wrong with RAC establishing relations between coders and buyers, but they shouldn't complain if people stop using them because they've already found a match. I'd much rather find a trustworthy contact for whom I could do freelance development and then stick with them, instead of hunting through offers and making bids.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
I cannot fathom how anyone could survive on the offer/bid proposals out there.
$500 to develop a Data-driven web site?
They're NutZ!!
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
that whole discussion is hilarious. takereal, the guy fighting for RAC, can't speak english at all. it's really amusing and if that's the kind of guy that represents RAC, then i don't think anyone should be using them.
please me, have no regrets.
Did it actually ever have any street cred? For as long as I can remember RAC has been filled with insanely low bids being eaten up by foreign coders. I've gone there several times over the years looking to pick up some extra cash and have never seen a bid I thought was worth my time.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
If you already know the person, and you can trust them, and have worked with them before, you no longer need RAC's services, and you won't get their escrow or mediation help either if something goes wrong. But at that point, the Coder is more like a semi-regular employee for you.
Also, I had a bad experience there. It was partly because I rushed to post the program specs, but also because the Coder was a complete dick. He'd always demand payment despite not making milestones. He'd show he understood the specs with an example, and then two phases in, "forgot" that he had to meet that, and had a solution worked out that precluded it, requiring him to start over. He tried to clarify the specs for one of the phases by putting it in his own words. It looked good, so I just made that the formal contract for that phase. Then, in arbitration, he claimed the requirements were unclear and vague. Yeah -- his own words, vague. He's since been banned since the arbitration.
Btw, what's with U.S. programmers complaining about wages? The task was a simple word-processor that handled stuff similar to html markup. It couldn't have taken a regular programmer more than 10 hours, working from pre-existing solutions (open source stuff was okay) and there were no (trustworthy) bids under $500. And none at any price from America.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
"SiteGround - Hosting Suitable For You!"
/. types understand what's going on, but John Q. Public doesn't.
Well, I know slashdotting can really tax a server, but still. Would you want the name of your hosting service to appear on a server overload error page? Us
I've done contract programming work for people directly before, and that always worked out fairly well. I tried using RAC a few times to find both small and large pieces of contract work, and always had a bad experience - either I'd deliver a working product and the buyer would run off with it without paying (and RAC would ignore my requests for them to actually do their job as an escrow service) or the buyer would continually redefine the requirements so that I could never actually 'complete' the work and 'earn' the payment.
Of course, half the listings on there are so ridiculously underpriced ($25 for a week of work? No thanks!) or utterly brainless (Please write a custom clone of Winamp from scratch for $500) that it's not even worth bothering.
You could literally make better money by releasing an open source app and putting google ads on the website. Seriously.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
10 PRINT 'HELLO WORLD'
20
Awww, CRAP! Gimme a minute, it will come back to me...
Crow T. Trollbot
WTF? So two guys, one hates RAC (kamen...@gmail.com), the other (TakeReal) obviously works for RAC (or owns RAC) --- therefore responds 60 something times to kamen's comments, dukes it out in a forum, and Slashdot concludes that RAC is losing street cred??
Did kamen...@gmail.com submit this story to slashdot?
So use ifreelance.com.
Its free and you and the programmer decide on your own payment method
20 GOTO 10
Glad I could help. That'll be 50% if your revenue please.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I (and friends of mine at http://nonlogic.org/ ) use getacoder.com for various projects. The fees are pretty outrageous. We find it easier to make initial contacts via getacoder and then conduct further business outside of the site.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
I don't understand plain English either, if that's what you're calling English.
What does that gibberish mean anyway?
"Street cred" is slang, short for "on the street credibility." It basically means how well regarded or how much credibility is placed in someone or something by those who actually work with something. For example, you might speak of the "street cred" of a particular brand of product as how normal people value that product compared to others.
Got good PHP coders from Scriptlance.
Good designers from GetAFreelancer or Designoutpost.
Good content people from Guru and Elance...
That's it.
the rentacoder team took to do class in English grading according their total class spent time!!!!11!
http://www.kasamba.com/ (they have more than just a "technical" advice area)
http://elance.com/
http://www.scriptlance.com/
Personally these sites really don't encourage a Buyer/Bidder relationship, and I have had my accounts on elance, and kasamba, banned for initiating direct contact with my clients. Ofcourse talking through the vale of secrecy and the worst e-mail systems ever concocted by a webcoder are always the best means of communications with clients.
As these sites want there Buyers to keep posting more projects so they can continue to leech money from both sides out of either in monthly membership fees, posting fees, and percentage of earnings fees.
Discussion on Google Groups? It looks like it was on USENET to me. alt.computer.consultants to be specific.
Has it come to this?
May the Maths Be with you!
I tried out scriptlance as both a renter and coder. As a coder I always got underbid until someone was willing to do a 20 hour plus project for $10 (with $5 of it going to scriptlance). Then I figured if it's so cheap, I may as well get help with my own projects instead of trying to make extra cash with it. As a renter, I got a bunch of bids from people who clearly didn't read my proposal or have any idea what I was asking for and what it involved.
thanks to www.mirrordot.com:d 6acde1e6268b5a8/index.html
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/751cfc7325effc88
There is a definite and ongoing need for sites that connect coders with project managers (or whomever). My thought of what a site that caters to both would be the following:
None of this is that difficult to do by any stretch. I guess you could always use other escrow services, and the "ideal" site should allow that without penalty. Or maybe it shouldn't offer escrow at all and let other sites handle it. The arbitration and rating systems I think are the biggest things.
I have no idea if there are sites out there that provide this service or not. If not, and anyone is interested, I'd certainly be willing to help build it. The key is to keep all expenses to bidders and buyers low, to encourage more users, but they have to exist to keep away scammers and such.
Perhaps they should Rent-A-Server...
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
public class Message{
public static void main(String[] args) throws NoSuchLanguageException {
String opt1 = "COBOL";
String opt2 = "FORTRAN";
System.out.println("Perhaps he uses "+opt1+" or "+opt2+" as the primary langage and "+opt3+" as his second?");
}
}
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
We prefer the term 'The Service Formerly Known as Usenet.'
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I used to be a big RAC seller. It was great for a while, I hit the top 10 (as #10), had a perfect score, and thousands of $$ earned. As a US-based worker, English was my best tool available. A lot of US-based shops were very xenophobic, and perhaps rightfully so. I made more money off of failed outsourced projects than anything. I rarely saw any good work out of the foreign shops (usually India, although there were some eastern European ones, too). When it did work, it only did what the original project had asked for, and in the shortest, messiest route. Expanding one of their projects was almost impossible -- no scalability or future design in mind.
Rent-a-coder lost it for me when I bid on three projects over the course of three months. Two of them alone would be been fine, however, Rent-a-coder permitted the buyers to accept months-old bids. I was away at the time and missed my 24-hours to decline the project. I ended up with 3 concurrent projects with altered scopes (much larger than the original bid had been for), but Rent-a-coder leans toward the buyers, not the sellers, in disputes.
Despite my attempts, my account's cred was lost within a week due to the stupidity of the RAC system. This was about two years ago, so it may have changed.
On the up side, I did find a few very nice clients through RAC projects. Dazzle the right guy and you won't need to go through RAC anymore. I got a 2-year consulting contract out of a $500 project, made a few good friends, got a few free trips from helping an unnamed travel website, etc.
So, if you're going to do it, beware that you can find yourself royally screwed. If you're a native English speaker, that is your best asset -- advertise it, use it! Do not paste a form letter. Most buyers would rather see a short 1 paragraph response saying "Yeah, I can do that!" rather than a 6 paragraph form letter explaining what should be in your resume section, not your bid forms.
Another thing to be wary of is if you are a college student. Helping another college student on their homework through RAC is likely a violation of your school regulations, e.g., cheating. $50 is not worth possible punishment for both you and the person you're "helping".
I tried using this company- they made me prepay and then all of these useless coders bid on my project, none of these guys have any experience or certs. so I canceled, big hassle with that, and on top of it they kept my credit card info on file forever, you cannot get them to get rid of it. I changed my CC number and have never looked back at this cr*ppy service.
You got it!
How is this scenario different from any coding "headshop" agency, including giant consultancies like IBM?
Except that IBM typically sells consultant hours fulltime (or more), across projects for years, so IBM can tell whether you're circumventing them to go work for the customer? And that IBM's customers typically rent different coders from IBM across projects for months or years, so they don't want to screw IBM and lose their supplier? And generally, which consumers of significant consulting resources want to piss off IBM, and its army of lawyers?
The coders I know who are placed by IBM get paid about half of the $1-200K per year their project pays IBM. So I don't think this has anything to do with how RAC is especially "unfair", except maybe they charge their customers too little, then have too little left to pay their coders. And RAC is a lot easier to scam^Wcircumvent than is IBM.
--
make install -not war
I use these sites as a referral service. They're great for finding new customers/coders, but once I've established a relationship with the other person, it's foolish to keep on using the sites.
That's also why I don't mind RAC's high fees, since the fees are peanuts compared to what I will gain from my new customers/coders in the long run.
http://outcampaign.org/
I've had three good experiences with RAC. Two have been small Ruby on Rails projects which were not to complicated, but far above scaffolding and one WordPress template. In all of the cases the work product was not quite final. But due to the low ball prices I asked and received, I felt it was fair for me to finalize it myself rather than drag the developers through rounds of revisions. I've felt fine using on personal projects which I'd rather have done than sitting in the working on folder for months. That being said, I don't know if I would rely on it for a business critical project. Instead I see it as ideal for hobbyist type projects.
Also not mentioned is http://odesk.com/ this is a site more geared towards hiring people by the hour, rather than project, there most average hourly wages are over $15.
Does anyone know of a setup like this but for media (audio/video)?
... improve the quality of your software, you are mistaken. If you think hiring random guys will help your software, you are badly mistaken. If you think all it takes to build some software are "coders", then you pobably recently had a headshot.
Good software requires people who know the software in questions. Excelent software requires people who positively relate to the software, see it as their baby. It requires people who know the problem domain. Soldier of fortune don't cut it.
Rapping is the cure.
In that way you wouldn't get people going "$500? I can do that for $400" and progressively undercutting each other right out of existence.
This is a big problem, and one that is difficult to address. A lot of inexperienced programmers underestimate the amount of time required to execute a project to an acceptable level of completion. "Text editor? I'll do that for $50".
come on, someone who doesn't know what "street cred" means? ask them if they know what a moisture barrier is for, they apparently live in a basement and they should know the answer to that one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, I get it... But you don't have to use the language perfectly to be comprehensible. There's a big difference between a grammatical/spelling mistake here and there, and completely butchering the language. I think the sentence you quote is better formed than a lot of sentences I hear from native speakers.
Anyway, replace "capable" with "able" and the sentence is perfect. Or, replace "to understand" with "of understanding" and again, perfect. We're talking about nuances of the language here, not terrible errors.
I posted a bid for a relatively simple project for $200 with a one month timeline. Not only did the coder (who had a wonderful rating by numerous people) fail to deliver, they actually used a code generator to spew out the basic framework of the application (which, as explained in my original paperwork was clearly going to invalidate the project and probably violate a few licenses if that were done). At any rate, I extended it out another week, but in the end had to have RAC arbitrate to get my money out of escrow.
Aside from that, RAC itself posted an charge of $200, three times to my bank account causing $95 in overdraft charges even though the original charge did not overdraft the account and the others were "pending" - something I easily cleared up with my bank, but it was still troublesome.
The whole experience made me bite the bullet and do the coding myself...it took longer and a lot more work, but I think it was worth it...
I thought the main point of RentACoder was for students to cheat on their homework....
Aren't there rules with the CC companies that when you tell somebody to get rid of your number, they must. How do you know they're keeping it (never used their services, don't plan to)
Any you usually get what you pay for.
You want to take the low-ball $20 bid on a job worth $100?...prepare for some crap.
People are willing to take coding jobs to make $150 for what amounts to a day of work? If you think that's a lot, you have to estimate some serious overhead into that. So for all practical purposes, you're clearing about $15/hour to code? Or am I reading this wrong?
Ouch. The only way to go is to get long-term contracts and do the work. Or take a staff position. Even if you hate it. You'll at least make decent money if you stick with it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
So the root of the problem is that he wanted an arbitrator and got an arbortrator . He might not have been specific enough, and if he requested Arbortration on his project, that's exactly what he got.
I like music
Pakistans? Read before posting, no competent coder in the first world can afford to work for RAC.
Unless RAC has a binding agreement with the client that prevents the client from hiring any RAC coders RAC is SOL. Unless the client is also outside RACs reach. Or the client has better land sharks. RAC does'nt sound like they have a large legal department.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I have stopped using them altogether, for not paying affiliate earnings, poor layout and other reasons.. I use this: http://www.acecoolco.com/jobs.php
Just because it works, Doesn't make it right. - JTM
> They charge the coders an exuberant amount
Did you mean "exorbitant"?
exuberant [ig-zoo-ber-uhnt]
-adjective
extremely good; overflowing; plentiful:
profuse in growth or production; luxuriant; superabundant:
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
If you could'nt find anybody interested in contracting for you in the USA it's not there fault. That you could'nt get the contract completed overseas is also telling.
You're:
a) paying a bottom feeders rate.
b) telling coders how much time a job will take without a detailed spec and schedule to back it up (in the RFP).
c) hiring in an environment (RAC) that simply will not support first world lifesyles.
d) letting your inner asshole free while writing the RFP and corresponding with overseas coders.
e) more then one of the above.
Like I say I don't know more about you then reading a few posts on /. But I already would'nt respond to your RFP at any price. Don't know why I'm wasting time posting.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But I could not do projects for $7 to $15 per hour when my normal rate is above $50.
Why would I want to come home and compete with people bidding 1/7 th of what I am bidding.
So I just use other methods to find my projects, and I dont have to give up a chunk of the earnings
--
Power to the people, Please... I need lots of power for my systems
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Everything else you say is true however.
What you don't say is IBM has built a reputation and has a history. When you hire them you know what you get. Financially screwed with crunch peanut butter as lube, but with a working project in no more then double the original time estimate (unless you change something).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You're:
/. But I already would'nt respond to your RFP at any price.
... are just another inconvenience.
a) paying a bottom feeders rate.
Actually, asshole who fires off before understanding the situation, I explained the work, and the potential coders placed their bids. A bid is how much they, not I, think they can do the job for. At no point did I suggest that number. I even turned down lower bids.
b) telling coders how much time a job will take without a detailed spec and schedule to back it up (in the RFP).
No. I never told anyone how much time it would take. That was my rough estimate, soley for purposes of gauging complaints about wages. The spec was detailed enough for an intelligent human being to know what program would satisfy it. The Coder asked for a month, and that was set in the contract.
c) hiring in an environment (RAC) that simply will not support first world lifesyles.
The Coder was in Italy and seemed to think that bid supported his lifestyle.
d) letting your inner asshole free while writing the RFP and corresponding with overseas coders.
Your basis for this is?
Like I say I don't know more about you then reading a few posts on
Thanks for not cluttering the bids.
Don't know why I'm wasting time posting.
There's a lot of things you don't know, apparently. You don't know who set the rate. You don't know what a "detailed spec" means. You don't know how much time the Coder was given. You didn't know the Coder was from the first world, beliving his bid would support his lifestyle.
But as for your lack of knowledge as to why you are "wasting your time" posting? That I can rectify. You are posting because you feel that programmers can do no wrong and that it is your obligation to "stand up for your brethren", coupled with a general mentality that, when it comes to forming an opinion, facts
Glad I could help you with that one.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
It's discounting the value of your own work. Crazy idea.
Task Mangler
Street cred is that gooey black stuff that collects on the edge of the street near the storm drains.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I don't view the site as a direct way to make money. It is more of a way to meet potential clients and establish a relationship with them. Having some regular clients with money you can count on getting can make consulting a lot more fun. One nice thing about RAC is that it is a lot easier to get paid for your work than going it alone. The way the site is set up lets people resolve disputes easily with an impartial third party.
Mostly it is a marketing tool for software consultants, or part time consultants looking for a little extra work. The quality of work you get from people on RAC can vary greatly, I'm not so sure I would ever be comfortable using it as a buyer.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Every contract "employer" I have had takes more than that. 25-30 percent is typical for headhunters /contract agencies.
I have experience on both sides of rent a coder.
During a period of low employment I bid on several contracts, and was outbid every time by overseas workers. OK, that's fair, that's why American jobs are going over seas, we are too expensive.
Later when the tides changed I was in a position to put work up for bids. On 3 different projects the winning (overseas) bidders failed to produce anything usable. People who claimed to have direct experience were at best beginning VB programmers without a clue.
My last experience was working for someone locally who had hired through RAC, received (more beginner) VB code from the clueless and was on the hook to deliver to a client by a deadline. I charged and arm and leg to bail him out and he lost $$ in the project, but kept face.
I asked a friend who is a big shot at a large outsourcing company, bearing point, how do they justify outsourcing to their clients. His response was enlightening; you need to control the overseas workers, not just hire them 3rd party. 3rd part outsourcing will always cost you more $$ then having the work done here, but if you own the overseas company you can make it work and save $$.
The bottom line is outsourcing can be ok for very large projects, but it is a waist of $$ for small RAC sized ones. Unfortunately, too many small/med businesses find out the hard way.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
"crap" from an expert coders perspective maybe. But as long as it does everything the project outlines and the buyer is happy, its win-win.
Actually, I think you'd need change a "then" to a "than" and add another "of" near the end of the sentence. It's pretty bad.
I've done a lot of work through RaC. Their rates are very high, and their minimum charges make it very hard to partake in small jobs. I do enjoy RaC and am thankful for all the jobs I got through them and business relations I've made.
Often I'll do one or two jobs for a client on RaC, after which we continue our relationship outside of the site. Usually for three reasons:
Communication. Communicating via the RaC site is inefficient. It's much easier to talk via instant messenger or email. The RaC site is slow and not all that good.
Cost. Although this is the smallest of the points, RaC do charge a lot and it's just much more attractive to make 15% more for doing the same amount of work.
Payment. Even if you choose to get paid by PayPal or similar, it can take weeks for a payment to be made after your work has been accepted.
Some people say that it's too hard to compete with third world coders. I don't think it is, as long as you have the reputation. Take on a few small projects for low pay to get some ratings, get "certified" for $25 and soon you'll get a lot more work. I usually don't take jobs for less than $20 an hour. You can't make a living working off of RaC, but you can make a living working for clients you've met through RaC.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
For them making a few dollars for a days work might be a viable survival model.
For me it's not. I haven't been back since.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
... I'm the buyer and the coder didn't deliver ANYTHING. We've been in "arbitration" for two weeks. The "arbitrator" is telling me _I'm_ at risk of losing the funds because I offered to allow 2 more days for the coder to deliver. How the hell am I supposed to be at fault for offering more time, and recieving NO FINISHED PRODUCT AT ALL? No code, no demos, no anything. How is that my fault exactly?
I will not be using RAC again. If I don't get my money back I will contact AMEX first, since I paid with AMEX and second a lawyer. What a racket. Stay away. FAR AWAY. Use a free coder service, a bunch have been recommended here. Negotiate a pay scale and work direct with the coders. The whole "escrow" business at RAC is a scam. If they were really an escrow I would have gotten my money back 2 weeks ago.
This doesnt sound much different from independent subcontractors in the high-tech fields. On a recent client in Washington DC, most vendors (i.e. pimps who set up an interview) kept 35 (normal case) to 65% (extreme case) of the programmers' wages. I'm talking about 1099s where no tax or anything is due. This was the case across several vendors at the client site, granted the client was a bureaucratic semi-governmental agency. I hear spreads are lower at other client sites, but the sheet thought of a vendor keeping $120,000 to $180,000/yr for setting up an interview is absurd to me.
By these standards, 15% is great.
I hadn't even noticed those errors, which is a testament to their irrelevance.
When did RAC have street cred?
I just don't buy the premise that RAC ever had any cred, besides letting cheap bastards line up to get crappy work from Bangalore.
What kills me is that even half-way decent coders can find stable work in the US. Very few decent coders need to be low-balling their skills, because there are companies lining up to hire them.
Unless you live in an awful part of the US, there is more demand than there is supply.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
They are pretty obvious, as is the fallacy underlying your most recent statement. "Because I didn't notice X, it must not be important." Good point by you.
about a year ago, I did a couple of gigs through RaC. It took a while to dig through absurdly underpriced proposals to find something worth doing, but I bid and won a couple projects that were well suited to my skillset. They didn't pay well, but the competition was stiff, and I mostly won on the merits of my experience in the project's areas.
* It didn't pay well; I did it at the time because I was a bit desperate.
* It didn't pay fast; RaC pays by Paypal twice a month; you could wait a month after your client signs off to actually get paid.
Overall, the experience wasn't great. I would say, however, that it is a decent place to find new clients - once you have proven yourself useful with a few, they will break off from RaC and deal with you direct (even telecommuting), for better pay. The bids are low on RaC because there's no established relationship, and no buyers want to risk much on someone they've not worked with before. Asking for more after you get established is quite reasonable, though.
Shortly after I finished a couple of projects with one buyer, other work picked up, and I had no time for him. I had to beat him off with a stick, including his offers of more money.
There's also a lot to be said for buyers leary of foreign outsourcing. When you're strictly telecommuting (and if you're a small business, you are), you don't want to deal with a language or culture barrier. Being an articulate, clear speaker of English and living in North America did prove to be an edge.
In summary, it's a rough market, but it can be a decent place to find clients that will pay off over long term relationships.
A lot of experienced programmers do that too.
Its the way things go. New coders enter the market, take on 10-20 jobs, deliver them, and if they are responsible and of quality enough, an ongoing relationship starts between many of his/her clients and him. Clients prefer to deal with a person they know and trust, coder prefers to work with people s/he now knows, so after some time coder is off the market catering to his/her own clientele, everyone is happy.
Read radical news here
Well, I've been using the site mostly as a coder and I must say I've never had problems with them. Well, maybe that's because I'm doing small applications (usually under 150$) because my 8 hour job won't allow more. Yes, the fees are also high but in my view the escrow system is worth half of the fees.
I was more upset that RAC couldn't make a deal with iKobo or other payment systems, besides Western Unions and checks. They should really try harder because for most good programmers on that site - russians, romanians and indians - these are at this time the only payment systems that work for them. Western Union takes an additional 10% of the payments, cheques clear in about 5 weeks so it's a bit hard, you just can't rely on payments from RAC to pay rent,taxes, buy food and so on. I see it simply as a once every two month bonus.
I've tried a number of RAC competitors, and always return to RAC when I need coders. (As opposed to graphic designers, web developers, etc.)
If the buyer has done their homework, has a clear and precise specification and knows what a reasonable price should be --then they have few difficulties in selecting decent coders to do the job.
RAC has a pretty good coder rating and feedback system. Arbitration and support HAVE been done by perfect English speakers for any cases I have been involved with. After having processed over 10 projects through them, I have absolutely no complaints with the service at all. (I have made some suggestions for improvements and enhancements though.)
Payment handling is another important aspect of RAC. They seem to be able to work with and pay coders in countries where it would be difficult to handle money in small to medium sized amounts. Russia, for example, has big problems to send and receive money. Even trying to log in to a PayPal account from a Russian IP address will get your account blocked.
Is 15% too much to pay -- well, maybe the cost should be split between the buyer and coder to be more fair -- I don't know, but for the projects I have done, overall, it has been a positive experience working with RAC.
At the beginning of this I was on your side, "Yeah it was probably the coders fault this guy was having all these problems" I was thinking to myself. Now, reading your increasingly foaming at the mouth, aggressive and rude replies I begin to wonder if the real cause of these problems is not your ability to communicate clearly and professionally.
Since when Slashdot became an advertisement platform for ugly sites like RAC?
I gave RAC a shot right out of college when I was trying to find a real job. No one will accept your bid unless you have some positive feedback, so I ended up doing some research project for $5... took me 2 hours. The problem is, its almost a full time job trying to find a project on there. Assuming your skills are limited, you have to read the entire project description to ensure you have the right tools. The bidding process sometimes takes weeks (or even worse, never goes through). After all that waiting you find out you lost to someone that'll work for a buck fitty an hour. Then the process starts all over again.
I'm an engineer working for a contract house. I am a technical prostitute. And damned proud of it.
I've only been in this industry for sixteen years--as a corporate employee, contractor, and small company employee.
If you have been asleep for the past hundred years, please listen: Management f***s workers. The converse is also true.
This is almost universally true. Almost.
Anyone reading this can check out this field if you like. Send your resume to Aerotek, Volt (Manpower), or some similar whorehouse and see what they offer.
These guys are in business to make money in the short term (until the next promotion or management rotation)--loyalty is neither offered nor expected.
When dealing with such an organization, return the loyalty you're shown. You owe nothing more, and you're entitled to nothing more.
The rare business sees the long term rather than the short.
As it turns out, the company I work for today is in it for the long term.
I and my co-workers get better pay, vacation, healthcare and retirement plan than the UAW members we meet in the plants.
My employer treats me with profound respect, and has earned the same from me.
In turn, we bust ass for the company, that we're damned proud to work for.
Our Clients ask for us by name. Our contracts are regularly extended.
Our Clients have one special contract for the company I work for and one for "everyone else" (they have to go through one of the larger whorehouses).
It's not altruism; it's enlightened self interest.
RAC, et. al.--take a lesson.
F*** your employees and they'll F*** you right back and brag about it.
Take care of your employees and they'll take care of you.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
So, then, do you want the transcript of the communications, or would you prefer to just join the others and assume everything incorrectly? ...Yeah, I figured.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
There are few websites very similar to RAC, including GAC. However, there is one I am happy to beta test before general public can, and it's name is cywex.com. Comparing it with others, I simply can say that it resolves all the problems of its ancestors, like RAC or GAC.
Actually if he didn't notice and got the gist of the sentence then it can't be 'important' for understanding. I don't like when native speakers spell things phonetically, but can understand more when English isn't the first language of the poster. The mistakes are obvious, but the actual meaning of the sentence is also obvious.
:/
What I hate most is when Americans say things like "I could give a rat's ass" or "I could care less", when they should really be saying "I COULDN'T give a rat's ass". That reaaaaaaally bugs me
which is totally what she said
I never heard of RAC before this. If it's a viral marketing campaign, it at least reached a single member of its target audience.
If it's not a viral marketing campaign, it's one of the more amusing Engrish flame wars I've perused. My only regret is that I did not get to view it in real time, as I would have popped me some O.Redenbacher and piped in the fight music from Star Trek: dah di da da da da DA DI DI da da oooooweeeep! oooooweeeeeep!
I still think he's being more than fair to someone who's insulting him outright (and they can't spell 'than', which suggests they might not have a great grasp of the english language, and are misinterpreting what he is saying :p ). I would get pretty pissed of too if I asked someone to do something (which they were getting paid for), and they obviously understood what was being asked, but then did something else (on purpose).
which is totally what she said
Nobody was ever talking about whether or not he could be understood. We were talking about how awful his English was, which was ironic because he was criticizing another person's English.
I had a developer build a windows-based tool that extracted the data from a Peachtree install into mysql, so I could write web-based tools for my client. He did fine, and I was pretty happy with the product. The only problem is that RAC seems to stay in between the coder and the client, making communication difficult sometimes. But it worked out for both me and my client.
I can see how RAC could be more of a pain in the butt for more complex things, both for the coder and the client. RAC seems ideal for small, one-off jobs. Once the relationship is made, you could exclude RAC and deal with the coder/client directly. Of course, you lose some of the protections RAC offers, but if you have a good relationship, you should be able to handle that yourself, expecially if RAC arbitration is not very fair.
TossableDigits.com: Temporary Phone Numb
I'd certainly be in a better position to judge if you were to publish the transcript. At the moment I only have your few posts in this thread to judge you by and as I said it seems to me that you become aggressive and unpleasant remarkably quickly when faced with anything you don't agree with.
If everyone here is making incorrect assumptions based the information you have provided then that should be some indication that you could benefit by making your communications a little clearer.
-1, Dick.
Check this : http://www.getacoder.com/projects/engine_24384.htm l
a yer_online_game_32530.html
And if you don't think that's enough, I've got another one :
http://www.getacoder.com/projects/massive_multipl
I WANT MY MMORPG! NOW! ( *stamps-around-widly* )
Wrong: if he got the gist and didn't notice the omissions, its wasn't important to his understanding in that particular case, it doesn't mean that it is more generally unimportant. Of course, people naturally fill in missing words in sentences, and make "corrections" to fit expectations, quite easily (that's well known), but different people don't always plug the same holes, or plug them in the same way, which is why clear and standard use of language is a major aid to effective and reliable communication.
Really, in the latter case, "could" or "couldn't" can make sense and convey the same basic meaning, the implied rest of the sentence that is omitted, of course, is different:
"I could (abstractly, though no actual example exists) care less." vs. "I couldn't (even theoretically) care less (than I do about the topic under discussion)."
In the former case, the same applies with even less difference: "I could (not) give X" is simply a way of saying "this whole subject is (not) worth X". The difference between saying "This whole matter is worth a rat's ass (and nothing more)" and "This whole matter is not worth a rat's ass" is trivial.
Its true that in either case the "not" form that you prefer is slightly more emphatic, but there's not really a whole lot of difference worth getting upset at someone using the one instead of the other.
well I don't know about you, but I don't have any rat's asses lying around to give.. and it would take more than a little effort to acquire some :p
which is totally what she said
When I was unemployed a couple of years ago I eventually had to give up on these sorts of sites. You'd see simply absurdly low bids for large projects, I assume from international companies or programmers? The end result, its better to paint houses or any manual labor you can find than to waste your time with this sort of thing.
From the article: "Rentacoder gives you the illusion that the arbitrators are qualified to make decisions in regarding complex issues. This in not correct whatsoever, and you are slave the people, that have had the title of arbitrator given to them"
OMG! We are slave the people!
On a serious note, maybe instead of arbitrators, we need Arbiters .
The Judicators are clearly the right men aliens for the job.
Then the coder has a vested interest in taking as much time as possible. Or worse yet, finishing the project in 3 hours but have their bot simulate 'work' for another 10. Good times.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
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.
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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:
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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.
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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
Actually if he didn't notice and got the gist of the sentence then it can't be 'important' for understanding.
Eh-hem.
VIOLENT disagreement. Sentences that require an intuitive grasp of -anything- are prone to mis-interpretation. Hell, just yesterday, I was reading a magazine article where the author left out a set of commas. While I don't remember the sentence, itself, I do remember having trouble parsing it... until I realized that the commas were missing, and their absence could make the sentence be read in the manner it was intended, OR ITS EXACT OPPOSITE.
English is an imprecise language; grammar and punctuation exist to help add some precision. Excusing their misuse as "something most people won't notice" is simply inexcusable. There are reasons that programming languages are strongly typed; as far as I'm concerned, these reasons are even more valid for human languages. In programming, at least a good programmer knows when they can be bitten by a mis-interpreted variable, and can usually avoid it. In human languages, there is no such thing as a standard compiler (and/or interpreter), and confusion runs rampant all too often with CORRECTLY written English. An attempt to gloss over mistakes as being irrelevant is Just Plain Dumb.
Don't do it. If you simply don't know English well enough to guarantee you're using it correctly, that can be excused: English is a -hard- language. On the other hand, misuse through laziness is idiotic.
-Slarty
That person didn't know english well enough, and his meaning, in that case, was obvious. Ambiguities would be more likely to creep in in complex sentences rather than simple ones, and if someone doesn't have a firm grasp of English then they would be using fairly simple language. Grammar mistakes are more annoying than spelling ones, but it's still possible to make out what someone is saying, for the exact reason you were talking about - we're not computers, bound by an exact set of rules. We have fuzzier logic, and can derive meaning from context rather than have to rely on everything being perfect. Of course if someone doesn't know the language then that will create problems in understanding, but if someone half knows the language, then it's still usually possible to get the gist of what they say, unless you act all elitist and like you can't understand. In some cases it may be really difficult, of course, or not possible if the person is just really bad at speaking English, but this guy was okay.
which is totally what she said
The first time I heard "Street Cred" is when Kobe Bryant accosted a white maid in a hotel room; among youths who but expensive sneakers like he was pushing for Nike, it supposedly "it made him a man", hence "credibility on the street". Let's hope it doesn't ever require actually killing somebody to get that...
no comment