A business-minded friend of mine wanted a Web site with a lot of database-backed features, such as user registration, classified postings, auction bids, a user reputation system, etc. A simplified eBay. She also needed all the graphic design done. She posted her specs on www.rentacoder.com and the numbers to implement this system came back at around $450 for the entire job, including the graphic design. The five bids all came back fairly close to $450 from programmers in Bangalore, Romania, and Canada(!). She put the project on hold for reasons unrelated to implementation so we don’t know how it would have worked out.
Has anyone used rentacoder? I wonder if the undergrad CS majors one sees posting SQL puzzles and Lisp problems on USENET are going to start. (Though if they spent enough time on rentacoder.com perhaps they would change their major eventually.)
Two years ago you might have found competent programmers on there – but things have changed rather drastically – if you don’t have a job now there is something wrong with you. But an eBay like site is a pretty common request – most outsourcing companies would have something generic they could throw together in a day or so.
Basically its a seller’s market for experienced programmers right now – 1999 all over again. Rates are slightly lower but steadily climbing.
Even if rentacoder provides high quality code, relying heavily on it may be the ol’ penny wise pound foolish approach to software development. After all, you still have to pay a business analyst and/or project manager to get the specs together, communicate with the client, and so forth. A programmer *analyst* who is part of the team and communicates well throughout the organization will reduce the number of hours required from the other analysts, stakeholders, managers, etc… if you look at this globally, you may lose money in many cases (and aren’t managers paid to think globally?). Plus, a good developer with the right tools should be able to get commodity features together in a matter of hours, ready for the next iteration in the dev cycle. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic here – it seems like the corporations are starting to understand how to measure total costs of development (that said, I still think it’s wise to major in engineering but go to grad school in something else).
This is from the side of whoever would be working through rentacoder, but it may get you some info (probably much more than you’d like).
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.133921.33
I tried Rent-A-Coder the last time I was looking for work. I got no work, and there were no interesting projects; just a lot of kids wanting their homework done. I am gearing up to go independent; Rent-a-coder will not be part of my approach.
I’ve used it. Over promised and under delivered.
I agree with Owen. Things are picking up across the board. Google is putting pressure on Yahoo!, Microsoft, and basically everybody else to staff up again.
While everybody else was busy screwing around with outsourcing, cutting staff, etc., Google came in with the top engineers and ate everybodys lunch.
Bleh. You get what you pay for. One thing that I’ve been successful, in some instances, is convincing clients and customers that building a site isn’t just construct and presto, you’re done. For a small site traffic, this might be suitable, but any significant visitor pounding is going to require DB maintenance, optimizations, tuning etc.. as site grows. Even a smaller site, the owner is going to want enhancements and changes… …and be stuck with a pile of dung that the next “rent-a-coder” will render even more obsfucated.
I’ve used Rent-A-Coder. I had a developer friend of mine build a very simple GUI app that, in short, fetched a configuration file, took some user input and then output another file on the users machine. I think I paid him like $1500 for the initial app. Well, his laptop was stolen along with the source code so when I need to make a simple text change, I went to RAC and posted a project to recreate the app. I got bids ranging from $10-$400. There were no US-based developers. I ended up working with two developers. One of them hacked the binary executable and changed the string. I paid him $100, but he probably would have done it for $20. The other recreated the application using Delphi. I’ve worked with him several times since and he’s an excellent find. It’s a joy to pay him cause $200 is about a months salary where he lives. I think I paid him like $300 for the initial app and he appreciated it a lot more than the $1500 I paid my friend here in San Francisco.
I also got a lot of over-selling in the bids I received. Follow your gut, I guess. But if it can work out very well for everyone.
Derek shows the best possible job to send out to “Rent A Coder”-type programmers. There is no analysis required for this job. The spec given is the best spec you can possibly give a programmer – a working prototype. The programmer will never have to sit with Derek and there will never be any back-and-forth in getting the software correct. “Just recreate this” is a very simple task. I would certainly recommend sending that sort of task out to a “Rent A Coder” programmer. With more complex tasks, the business interest takes greater risks with receiving a working program within important deadlines, or at all.
I agree, dont make them think. I have experience in hiring people on a number of these types sites (elance.com being one I used most often) and a few years ago my own company produced a similar portal and marketplace that didnt take off as expected due to the large amounts of junk posted and disputes. The key lessons were that is is much better to grant the job to an actual firm operating out of India or a similar country as opposed to an individual developer, who tend to get slack and often dont have the analytical skills. You usually end up in spec-mess and then realise that because of the amount of time you are spending hand-holding you kill the low cost factor. Another problem with these coder auction sites is that most people select based on price, as they dont have a good way of conveying the competancies of the developers. Because of this I found that in most cases the bid price is no reflection of what you will actually end up paying. A dispute will get you nowhere as your specification for such a project must be spot on otherwise they will cut corners and the marketplace providers (in this case rentacoder.com) will often not help out in these cases. These sites are more suited to find a coder for a smaller type of hack, for something more stable you must look above this range to developers who will give you service level agreements, ongoing good support and ideas of their own. I suggest that your friend look to local programming clubs, online groups and the like.
$450!? Whatever happened to “reasuringly expensive”?
I have a friend who has farmed out a few small jobs (Flash, I believe) using http://www.elance.com – and has been completely satisfied.
I have 450 projects done via RentACoder. My projects aren’t big, but all completed.
Of course, I can’t compete with “real guys”, who asking for $100/hour for the same amount of work.
Yes, English isn’t my 1st language. But it’s OK for my buyers.
About elance.com
I refuse to sign up because it expects me to pay for the opportunity to bid at jobs.
Hi Phil,
I have had pretty bad experience with rent-a-coder. One of our clients wanted a custom application form developed for a website we were building for them. Since we did not have any one in house who knew AJAX, we decided to look around.
Rent-a-coder seems like a good place. We posted a project and got a lot of bids from companies in India and Malaysia. So we picked one based on the examples they provided and it has been a downhill ride ever since. First of all their communication is appauling. The programmer does not seem to understand even the most basic of instructions and keep coming back with changes that are either incorrect or completely opposite to what we asked for. Also the project went on for 2 months by which time our client was really upset.
I have hear of similar complaints from a some of our other clients who tried out this service.
Just my 2 cents.
Jeff Marsh