4 ms·

If they can't get jobs for more than $200 they're either terrible programmers, or they need to look for work on places other than rentacoder. Probably both. ED

If they can't get jobs for more than $200 they're either terrible programmers, or they need to look for work on places other than rentacoder. Probably both. EDIT: To be clear, I meant to say that if they can't get jobs making more than $200 for two weeks of work, they're either terrible or need to look elsewhere for work. Further, I'll put my money where my mouth is: if you want to make $5 / hr and you can write good code, email me and I'll give you all the work you can handle. I'm guessing I won't have any takers.

pyre 17y ago
Depends. Who says that these aren't side gigs to their main source of income?
markpercival 17y ago
Yeah I'm completely perplexed by this. I'm not questioning the guys article, but there's got to be more to it then we are reading. $200 for a two week project is $5 an hour if you only work on it 4 hours a day. Even in the current economy any halfway decent programmer should be able to pull in more than minimum wage.
- maxklein 17y ago
  They are doing this on the side in the night to make some extra cash, not their main job, from what I understand.
- ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
  For me, personally, I tend to low ball my costs because I'm just not that sure of my ability. Where do you gauge something like that? There isn't anywhere.
- keefe 17y ago
  I'm questioning the guys article, I think it's either an anomaly or a fabrication.
  - maxklein 17y ago
    Well, I'm the guy. If it's an anomaly, I don't know, but it's not a fabrication.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    I have the same reaction to many of the items maxklein posts. And he has said in the past that he engineers his postings for the effect on the audience... That said I know more than a few people who use rent-a-coder or odesk as a way to motivate themselves when learning a new language or toolkit.
    - hga 17y ago
      That's a brilliant concept: nothing teaches you something like a real project, getting paid, even a pittance, helps all the more, and you can put it on your resume honestly.
- datasink 17y ago
  When asking for fairly straight-forward work, I believe a lot of contractors use generated code or repurposed code from other projects. At least this has been my experience from outsourcing application development. It became especially apparent when I began requesting daily subversion commits for projects that lasted more than a day.
dangrossman 17y ago
Maybe you haven't heard, but at least 1 in 10 people in the US can't find work right now. Unemployment figures always undercount by quite a bit. The official "discouraged workers" count is about 10 million, so let's put real unemployment closer to 16%. We don't all live in Sunny California where tech jobs are seemingly always abundant -- unemployment wouldn't be so high if the jobs were available. If you can't find any work, then $200 is better than missing rent and living on the street. If you think unemployed or underemployed coders are either terrible at what they do or aren't looking, well, you're not living in the same country as me.
- iheartmemcache 17y ago
  Underemployment is arguably worse than unemployment for a given person. It ends up moving the equilibrium S/D price to a drastically lower position in the short run, and ultimately somewhat a lower position than where it should be. Taking gigs like this is foolish for anyone in software who cares about a stable salary any time in the future.
  - dangrossman 17y ago
    What do you suggest, then? If you can't find a job that pays your normal salary, don't work at all? So, homelessness? Or a career change? Take up a job as a janitor for a few years until the job market recovers, then look for programming work again? It doesn't sound like you are grasping the situation millions of people are in right now. They've been without jobs for months if not over a year, the local labor market in much of the country has more available workers than jobs (hence the 16%+ unemployment and underemployment), they've long since run out of credit and savings to tide them over... and you're suggesting they pass up income opportunities because it might hurt their future salary.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      With respect, you're making huge assumptions. What proportion of the increase[1] in unemployment is composed of competent software engineers? How difficult do you think it would be for a decent software engineer to change jobs tomorrow? If I had to bet, I'd say a fair chunk of those people were involved in construction, one way or another, since the boom was largely in housing and construction is very labour intensive.
paulgb 17y ago
I wonder what the age of the developers is. When I was 15-17 I could do simple development jobs and would have rather taken $100/week doing stuff I enjoyed (and learned from) than minimum wage packing fast food.
- wdewind 17y ago
  Yeah, I'm 20 now but learned a ton doing crappy freelance work (not saying the stuff you need done is crappy max :P). I probably made less than minimum wage frequently, but I remember the first time I could charge $500 for a website (when I was like 15 or so - it was a huge amount for me at the time). It took about a week of work, but for a 15 year old $500 (or even $200) for a week of work is quite a lot of money.
rwhitman 17y ago
You know what though? For a college kid in ohio who's used to working the counter at Starbucks $5/hr for coding is a dream come true... I've worked with a lot of college kids who got into coding after the recession started who's minds were BLOWN that they could earn extra money writing code When there's no service / labor jobs on the local college market kids start looking for other angles and will take coding work for peanuts
heresy 17y ago
I don't get it either. I'm doing contracting on the side (here in New Zealand), and two weeks worth of work is around US$3000, if I'm doing 8 hours a day at my contract rates. I guess if they need the experience, but there really should be better ways to get it. You can earn more flipping burgers.

pyre 17y ago

Depends. Who says that these aren't side gigs to their main source of income?

markpercival 17y ago

Yeah I'm completely perplexed by this. I'm not questioning the guys article, but there's got to be more to it then we are reading. $200 for a two week project is $5 an hour if you only work on it 4 hours a day. Even in the current economy any halfway decent programmer should be able to pull in more than minimum wage.

maxklein 17y ago
They are doing this on the side in the night to make some extra cash, not their main job, from what I understand.
ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
For me, personally, I tend to low ball my costs because I'm just not that sure of my ability. Where do you gauge something like that? There isn't anywhere.
keefe 17y ago
I'm questioning the guys article, I think it's either an anomaly or a fabrication.
- maxklein 17y ago
  Well, I'm the guy. If it's an anomaly, I don't know, but it's not a fabrication.
- olefoo 17y ago
  I have the same reaction to many of the items maxklein posts. And he has said in the past that he engineers his postings for the effect on the audience... That said I know more than a few people who use rent-a-coder or odesk as a way to motivate themselves when learning a new language or toolkit.
  - hga 17y ago
    That's a brilliant concept: nothing teaches you something like a real project, getting paid, even a pittance, helps all the more, and you can put it on your resume honestly.
datasink 17y ago
When asking for fairly straight-forward work, I believe a lot of contractors use generated code or repurposed code from other projects. At least this has been my experience from outsourcing application development. It became especially apparent when I began requesting daily subversion commits for projects that lasted more than a day.

dangrossman 17y ago

Maybe you haven't heard, but at least 1 in 10 people in the US can't find work right now. Unemployment figures always undercount by quite a bit. The official "discouraged workers" count is about 10 million, so let's put real unemployment closer to 16%. We don't all live in Sunny California where tech jobs are seemingly always abundant -- unemployment wouldn't be so high if the jobs were available. If you can't find any work, then $200 is better than missing rent and living on the street. If you think unemployed or underemployed coders are either terrible at what they do or aren't looking, well, you're not living in the same country as me.

iheartmemcache 17y ago
Underemployment is arguably worse than unemployment for a given person. It ends up moving the equilibrium S/D price to a drastically lower position in the short run, and ultimately somewhat a lower position than where it should be. Taking gigs like this is foolish for anyone in software who cares about a stable salary any time in the future.
- dangrossman 17y ago
  What do you suggest, then? If you can't find a job that pays your normal salary, don't work at all? So, homelessness? Or a career change? Take up a job as a janitor for a few years until the job market recovers, then look for programming work again? It doesn't sound like you are grasping the situation millions of people are in right now. They've been without jobs for months if not over a year, the local labor market in much of the country has more available workers than jobs (hence the 16%+ unemployment and underemployment), they've long since run out of credit and savings to tide them over... and you're suggesting they pass up income opportunities because it might hurt their future salary.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    With respect, you're making huge assumptions. What proportion of the increase[1] in unemployment is composed of competent software engineers? How difficult do you think it would be for a decent software engineer to change jobs tomorrow? If I had to bet, I'd say a fair chunk of those people were involved in construction, one way or another, since the boom was largely in housing and construction is very labour intensive.

paulgb 17y ago

I wonder what the age of the developers is. When I was 15-17 I could do simple development jobs and would have rather taken $100/week doing stuff I enjoyed (and learned from) than minimum wage packing fast food.

wdewind 17y ago
Yeah, I'm 20 now but learned a ton doing crappy freelance work (not saying the stuff you need done is crappy max :P). I probably made less than minimum wage frequently, but I remember the first time I could charge $500 for a website (when I was like 15 or so - it was a huge amount for me at the time). It took about a week of work, but for a 15 year old $500 (or even $200) for a week of work is quite a lot of money.

rwhitman 17y ago

You know what though? For a college kid in ohio who's used to working the counter at Starbucks $5/hr for coding is a dream come true... I've worked with a lot of college kids who got into coding after the recession started who's minds were BLOWN that they could earn extra money writing code When there's no service / labor jobs on the local college market kids start looking for other angles and will take coding work for peanuts

heresy 17y ago

I don't get it either. I'm doing contracting on the side (here in New Zealand), and two weeks worth of work is around US$3000, if I'm doing 8 hours a day at my contract rates. I guess if they need the experience, but there really should be better ways to get it. You can earn more flipping burgers.