[thelist] mailing lists for developers/contractors - findingmore opportunities

Michael Dinowitz mdinowit at houseoffusion.com
Mon Oct 27 15:26:14 CST 2003


> What you describe exists in a multitude of formats. Every single one
> of the sucks. This thread has been done to death, but a quick
> overview:
To make such a list not suck you just have to add in some controls.

> 1 - Offshore bidding, high-school student bidding and just good ol'
> American "I'll undercut you til you bleed" bidding means you can have
> any contract you can win...for $5 an hour..or less.
Don't have the discussion of pricing on the list. The list is for job offers
or work requests. Nothing else. Anything else will be bumped off.
Additionally, the default reply to is set to the senders address. Yes, this
means the sender will get some extra mail, but it will not kill the list. A
special 'sublist' per job can easily be set up as an automatic process to
hide the original posters address while allowing him to get email. But this
is all dependant on how deep you want to go in your list coding and support.

> 2 - Most people (I know I don't) don't need another mailing list to
> handle, when most of it WILL end up being spam - or simply other
> developers asking you "hey got any work for me?"
True on the additional list but not necessarily true on the spam part. I've
never been spammed for posting a job offer and no one has complained to me
about it either. On the other hand, an RSS feed might be better here. One
way communication out with a specified contact channel.

> 3 - "Real" companies - i.e, the companies you WANT to work for (not
> have to) don't give out work that way, because they know they won't
> get quality for their admittedly low low dollar. They simply don't
> hire that way.
You'd be surprised. Of course, CF-Jobs is very specific in the jobs and
people it deals in but we've had some really nice contracts come through
including a number of government ones.

> Contracting is TOUGH. There are no two ways around it. There is only
> one viable answer to getting contract work: Networking. The better
> you are at networking and promoting yourself the more work you will
> get.
Totally agree.

> Learn to network and promote yourself. And use every *good* placement
> agency you can find.
There are a few people on the CF-Talk list who post just for that reason.
They want to show that they know the topic and then they email the original
poster with a followup request to make sure everything is covered. A lot of
work comes from that. It's community promoting. Builds the community, helps
everyone and gets work all at once.




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