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The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

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Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#41

Post by patio11 »

lsc wrote: post #38
mrkurt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the prices are the same, the American probably isn't as skilled/experienced.

have you hired anyone from overseas? have you hired an American for overseas wages? I've done both, and the amount of money a person can charge has a lot less to do with skill and experience than you think. Several people who worked for me for sustenance wages now make more money than I do because other people noticed that they are pretty good. Selling yourself is a skill, and it has very little overlap with the skil…

Amen to this comment. I have three engineers who I'm personally awed by. One of them was a graduate student at my university, two of them work for my current employer. You could hire all three for the cost of one definitionally average engineering employee at Google or MS. All three are well-educated, well-credentialed, experienced engineers from two nations that virtually define Rich First World Country.

I'd be honestly embarrassed to tell you what I make at the day job. When I told my bosses I was quitting to pursue other opportunities, they tried to convince me to stay, and the insanity that is salary negotiation reared its ugly head: the value of my labor has increased by easily a factor of ten in the last three years, the best offer they could possibly give was +N%. This follows standard economy-wide employment practices where we pretend that almost everyone (with the exception of salesmen, finance professionals, and very few other white-collar jobs) is an 18th century water loom operator and pay them in, essentially, the same matter as we paid 18th century water loom operators.

I think one of the major Big Ideas of this century is that the economy is being dragged kicking and screaming to where salaries converge closer to actual value faster, rather than being tangentially sorta-kinda arranged in rough proportion to expected value. That's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#42

Post by patio11 »

This is my favorite genre of HN post: news you can use backed by real experience. I don't necessarily agree with all of the advice but a few bits in there are eyeopening for me. (For example, I had never known that the newsletter was a key channel for getting your project seen. That's the sort of non-obvious insight that is worth its weight in gold.)

Thanks Max.

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#43

Post by scorpioxy »

lzm wrote: post #14
scorpioxy wrote: post #8

Interesting article. Some inaccuracies: - "Rentacoder does not have skilled developers from western countries. What it has are freelancers from countries like Romania, India, Pakistan and Russia." Nope. It has developers from all over(I live in Lebanon). Freelance programmers are simply programmers that don't work exclusively for one client. I am guessing you don't mean this in a bad way... - "The availability of par…

I'm from Latin America, and just recently I started using sites like RentACoder/oDesk/Elance. I've found that it is extremely hard for me to get jobs on these sites, especially since I'm not a webdesigner (I'm a C/C++/Python/Java guy). What tips and strategies do you recommend that increase the likelihood of being selected for a job?

You're right that gigs asking for your kind of skills are not as common as ones asking for php development or web design, but those don't pay very well either. Its a supply and demand thing.

The only strategy that I used was to show that i know what I'm talking about in my replies. So don't just say "Yeah, I can do that" or something similar. Ask questions, tell them why what they're asking for is easy or hard or how it will work. Even if they were non-technical folk, just make sure you can get the message across.

Again, just how you would behave in real life.

(If you're just starting out, take one or two jobs at a reasonably low rate to get the ratings before you ask for your desired rate. Its a compromise, but it will get you there.)

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#44

Post by scorpioxy »

patio11 wrote: post #42

This is my favorite genre of HN post: news you can use backed by real experience. I don't necessarily agree with all of the advice but a few bits in there are eyeopening for me. (For example, I had never known that the newsletter was a key channel for getting your project seen. That's the sort of non-obvious insight that is worth its weight in gold.) Thanks Max.

Well, not just newsletters. I still subscribe to the RAC RSS feed even though I haven't done any RAC work for quite a while. It was easier to just skim the headlines in my reader and tag the ones i replied to for later reference.

It has nothing to do with the newsletter. But setting too low a price gives the message that you're not serious about the work or are just trying to find someone to take advantage of(and you will if that's what you're looking for).

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#45

Post by scorpioxy »

lsc wrote: post #37

wow, this is really interesting to hear; See, I thought that nearly all work on these type sites (my experience has been with e-lance, many years ago) had mechanisms for paying people through the site, but from what I saw, only the first transaction was done that way. After that, the contractor and contractee worked directly, so it's interesting to read that some people found enough value in the structure provided by…

Well, some people just use it for payment later on if they don't want the hassle of wire transfers and such.

For RAC, they used to charge 10% of the transaction value so it could build up. My experience was that most people contacted me off site after our first project but sometimes still used RAC for payment because it was easier for them(I can't use paypal). Although they were nice enough to take on the 10% charge.

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#46

Post by scorpioxy »

kungfooey wrote: post #36
maxklein wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For $250 you could get your shopping cart app done. Think of about $200 - $400 for a weeks work (fulltime) by a competent programmer. Then estimate how long it will take him and put that price.

Wow, $200 a week for 40 hours. That works out to $5 an hour. Is that a livable wage even in Eastern Europe? I think I need to find another trade.

I highly doubt it is.

$200 a week can definitely get you a shopping cart. But so can $10. And I am not sure how well it will work.

Usually for that kind of money you'd get someone customizing or re-branding an off-the-shelf open source one or some programmer trying his hand out at writing it from scratch. Use of open source components is fine and probably the way to go but its not ethical if you don't tell your client that you're doing so otherwise use a framework.

I'd say something like $500 should get you a shopping cart with the regular functionality. Probably $200 for customizing an existing off-the-shelf one.

Of course these are just my opinions and experience, so they might be completely off target.

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#47

Post by scorpioxy »

maxklein wrote: post #9
scorpioxy wrote: post #8

Interesting article. Some inaccuracies: - "Rentacoder does not have skilled developers from western countries. What it has are freelancers from countries like Romania, India, Pakistan and Russia." Nope. It has developers from all over(I live in Lebanon). Freelance programmers are simply programmers that don't work exclusively for one client. I am guessing you don't mean this in a bad way... - "The availability of par…

That's what I mean - anyone with any sort of skills in multiple languages very quickly 'graduates' from rentacoder, or picks only very well paying projects, because they can, or focuses on just a few clients that they have prior relationships with. So a buyer coming in with a new request won't have this person available to him, and should he find a person, he will also try to monopolise the persons time, taking him o…

True, but what you said also applies to freelancers not working through RAC or similar websites.

After a year or two of freelancing and if you're good, you'd pretty much get to choose the projects you work on. I usually go with the projects that are interesting to me(research projects from my local university) or that come from good clients or friends.

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#49

Post by robryan »

tom_ilsinszki wrote: post #26

"For C++ and more complex projects, you can pick from the U.S and Europe." – I never thought programming languages where area-dependent.

People feel more comfortable giving out simple work in something like PHP to cheaper countries which in some cases can come back to bite you with more complex stuff as a decent size C++ project can be.

Re: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

#50

Post by robryan »

scorpioxy wrote: post #46
kungfooey wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, $200 a week for 40 hours. That works out to $5 an hour. Is that a livable wage even in Eastern Europe? I think I need to find another trade.

I highly doubt it is. $200 a week can definitely get you a shopping cart. But so can $10. And I am not sure how well it will work. Usually for that kind of money you'd get someone customizing or re-branding an off-the-shelf open source one or some programmer trying his hand out at writing it from scratch. Use of open source components is fine and probably the way to go but its not ethical if you don't tell your clien…

You get what you pay for, just in terms of what the freelancer perceives to be decent money. Paying someone from a cheaper country $5 an hour will probably give the same kind of hacky late rush job that giving someone local $10 an hour.
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