[thelist] rentacoder.com

Nan Harbison nansmith at heritageconcord.org
Mon Jul 28 06:39:52 CDT 2003


Pete,
I do some contract work for a small start up that provides
web services in human resources. I thought they wanted me
to create the website for them, but it turned out they
just wanted me to be the liaison to the coders, to tell
them how the website should look, etc. The company that
does their coding is in Bangalore, India, where they
charge $5 an hour for programming. No way I could compete
with that! I am not willing to work for peanuts.
I don't know what this means as far as coding work goes
for those of us in countries where $5 an hour won't pay
for anything.
Nan


-----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 10:23 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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