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18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

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Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#61

Post by tssva »

Bedon292 wrote: post #17
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For commodities, perhaps it works, but for IT you get what you pay for. Is the government bound to accept the lowest bid? When bidding closes, it would make sense to review the lowest bids for noticeable differences in expected quality. If it isn't worth doing that, because expected quality is always high, and prices keep coming low one must consider that the task has become commoditised.

It would depend on the situation. This one, I believe, they were bound to accept the lowest bid. However if the lowest bidder failed to complete the work they could move up the ladder. Most major contracts are, I think, 'Lowest bidder technically acceptable'. Which requires the bidder to meet minimum guidelines in their quality of work. So price is not the only factor, though it is a major one.

Most large federal contracts state the criteria for judgement in the RFP. It is usually some combination of technical solution, cost and past performance with the weight of each varying between RFPs.

Also for large contracts the government will have done some due diligence to determine a range which the contract should cost. If your bid is significantly below this range and your solution doesn't show some innovation to support the lower cost the government is likely to reject it as unrealistic.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#63

Post by Jtsummers »

cortesoft wrote: post #51
ksk wrote: post #20

Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. "Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist. Personally, I think that the goal should be to get paid while you work on open source. But, I know that its not an option for everyone. >I use open source technolo…

So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else.

> So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else.

If you donate things then you're still buying it from someone, but giving it to someone that cannot afford them. So really, you're a surrogate purchaser.

The problem comes in when you're donating time (via work) to a group that can afford to pay for it, and there are people looking for work that are willing to work for the normal wages/rates that would've been paid.

If the people receiving the benefits of the work can't afford to pay, you aren't taking the work from anyone. When there's no one willing to work for the rates being offered, you aren't taking the work from anyone. But when people are willing to work for the rates offered, and you give your time for free, you are taking the work from other people.

The ethics and morality of giving is kind of complicated.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#64

Post by Jtsummers »

kedean wrote: post #59
Jtsummers wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically name-calling, which is unproductive. While I'm not in agreement with OP, some levels and methods of altruism/volunteerism can end up being counterproductive. A certain level of free to a region is useful. Above that, or for too long, and you end up harming local farming and manufacturing, to the point where they may also depend on the free goods. I'm lacking specific articles and lines of research, b…

You may be thinking of this example: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00... TLDR; sending a surplus of tshirts to Africa did nothing but crash local textile industries by introducing a surplus of existing, cheap product. Guy wanted to do good, didn't think about the consequences, and screwed up.

That was exactly the example that was in my mind, but I didn't have time when posting to look it up. Thanks.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#65

Post by orless »

ksk wrote: post #20

Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. "Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist. Personally, I think that the goal should be to get paid while you work on open source. But, I know that its not an option for everyone. >I use open source technolo…

> Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet.

Not necessarily, this may be also a valid profit-oriented strategy. My wife worked for ca. 8 month almost for free (for lowest rate allowed by the law) to get an entry in her CV which landed her on her next real money job.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#66

Post by kbenson »

davideous wrote: post #11

This appears to be working so far. One sample doesn't really establish a "market rate" yet, so I don't worry about the seller not being motivated by financial profit motive. Sometimes the value provided to the seller goes beyond the financial payment. 18F gets a good deal here because of the intangibles they have to offer. If they put out more projects than the amount of work people are willing to do at the "$1 volun…

Yes, what we have here is the volunteer actually being paid in social capital and personal satisfaction, but not directly from 18F. 18F has heavily promoted recently, and that along with them being a part of the government and the project being open source all contributed to the volunteer feeling it was a worthwhile endeavor at that price. It's an interesting case study of how any market pricing function that looks at purely monetary cost is usually a poor pricing function unless the market is extremely liquid.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#67

Post by brownbat »

Jtsummers wrote: post #48
brownbat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switching contexts, you could say the same thing about garage bands. "Why are these amateurs playing all these shows basically for free? They're stealing money from hardworking musicians!" Some disciplines spark addicted, passionate individuals who get other benefits beyond the price. (In contrast, there aren't a lot of enthusiast janitors.) If you want to make a living and you opt to compete with abundance, you shou…

> (In contrast, there aren't a lot of enthusiast janitors.) Totally unrelated, but this is the second time recently I've seen a remark like this. And I agree entirely, but I actually know one. Guy retired, wanted to help out an underfunded school, became their janitor. Retired military so he's essentially got a (much better than) living wage for the rest of his life, the income was irrelevant. He just wanted to see t…

Ha, fun to see the counterexample, totally makes sense.

Definitely more accurate to say that, while volunteerism is pervasive in some fields, it's far less common in others.

I think the fields where it's more common have huge social or moral benefits to go along with the job. Or sometimes they function like a foot in the door in a lucrative field. I can easily see helping out an underfunded school fitting the former categories.

Coal mining will probably be my go to example from now on... ;)

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#68

Post by irl_zebra »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #45
TurboHaskal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such tendency exists, depending on your timezone.

I host a general-interest VBulletin forum, which at one point had something like a hundred people posting. One day, we discovered that via the "groups" functionality, there was a whole parasitic forum co-existing with ours - we didn't know it existed, we didn't know any of the people there, and they didn't know us, and the two groups didn't interact at all . I wonder if it's possible for something similar to happen o…

Can you expand on what you were saying about a co-existing forum? I don't think I understand what you mean, but I'm intrigued.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#69

Post by fineman »

anm89 wrote: post #15
luma wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anybody be against competent coders wanting to donate time to public use? I get that other people were hoping to be paid for this, but would you end all volunteer programs on account of them interfering with paid labor?

No one is. If you want to donate your time there are a million non profits that will gladfully take the donation. There is no reason this process has to devalue everyone else's work on a paid job.

Then get another job. We don't owe you your line of work.

If you literally can't compete with volunteers maybe you should see what they says about your niche and then find a new one.

Once when replacing a server (and fixing the wiring, etc, etc) I also replaced a router and dual-homed the company's site as a freebie because it made my job easier (the new router had diagnostics, managed-switch features, etc). It was a line-item I could have billed for separately, or it was a new level of service.

By the "save the work for the guy feeding the starving children" philosophy we should nickel-and-dime our clients instead of providing our true value. I don't like that.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#70

Post by bobcostas55 »

yellowstuff wrote: post #49
kbenson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist Saying that about someone who wants to help out so essentially volunteers their time to help a government project, which in essence means it helps everyone, seems a bit entitled and ill-informed. I'm sure many people want to get paid to work on open source, but it's a free market, and people will bid what they think a project is worth, and worth isn't always about monetary co…

Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work. The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis. If volunteers do just enough free programming to drive professionals out of the market, it's possible the result will be that less work gets done. I don't think soup kitchens have the same risk.

>Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work.

This makes very little sense. They still have $3,498 left from what they had budgeted, money that can (and will) be spent elsewhere. The money doesn't just disappear into thin air.

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