[thelist] rentacoder.com

bruce bedouglas at earthlink.net
Sun Jul 27 21:50:55 CDT 2003


Pete...

With regards to some projects..... You need to realize that you're competing
with talent from around the world.... Consider this.. a software engineer in
the states can get $50-60K..and the same skillset in India might cost
$15K... And yes there are some guys who will work and produce serious work
at that level...

Will the guy get anything for 300... who knows.. probaby not... would he get
something for 1200... most likely... Welcome to the world of
competition...!!!!

peace

-Bruce


-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of pete
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 7:23 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] rentacoder.com


Hey there, I've been lurking for a while, but I've enjoyed reading
postings from developers working in a variety of languages. I'm primarily
a microsoft technology developer (IIS/ASP/VB/SQL) but I have a working
knowledge of open source development as well, specifically php.

I figured what better way to introduce myself to the list than with a rant
about the site rentacoder.com, which seeks to hook up development talent
buyers with developers, who bid against each other for the work.

In theory, this is great, but a cursory examination of the jobs posted
initially found me totally shocked and angry. Aside from lots of requests
for things like "IP traffic generator", the average buyer seems to list
the development of a complete site - including planning, design and html,
database structure, administrator and testing - as a sub-$500 task. Many
requests are for copies of dating sites or auction/e-commerce sites; total
payment.. $500.

I decided to do a review of just the $5000 and above projects, and my
shock only grew - there was a request for a medical imaging system, an
interface to an MLS network, and an "OCR document scanning and conversion
tool". I sent in my resume for a few of the more realistic sounding ones,
projects that sounded realistically like 12-16 weeks of full time effort
as well as 3-4 for my project manager. I got an angry email back from the
would-be purchaser, who actually swore at me and told me that my claims
that a professional developer would expect at least $1000 a week (this is
low in many cases) were absurd, and that he'd found someone to do the
whole thing for $300.

Obviously this fellow is not going to get anything useful for $300, but it
strikes me as sad that there are no real alternatives that seem to be even
a little realistic.

Someone care to prove me wrong?

Pete Forde
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