8 ms·

The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder

156 points by epi0Bauqu 17y ago

rubyrescue 17y ago
This is great stuff and worth referring back to when you initiate a project. My experiences as a hiring manager have been from having a dude stiff me for $800 of work, to hiring a full-time developer I found on rentacoder that became a personal friend.
wallop 17y ago
Extremely well-written, concise-but-detailed, no-bullshit guide to a process that I have shied away from because it seemed to involve a lot of mysterious complexities. The author's recommendations provide extremely reasonable advice to follow in any project management endeavor. He emphasizes an assertive but respectful approach, taking the needs of both sides of the project into consideration and outlines a wide range of practical details that you could only know about from having a high degree of first-hand familiarity with this service. I'm saving this and hope to draw on it soon, now that it doesn't seem quite so daunting. Thanks for posting.
andrewljohnson 17y ago
I've had experience using online sites to source jobs, and I think this advice is right on. Here are some summary points, generalized away from rent-a-coder: * don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD) * be clear but not ominous in your job description, and include visual mocks if at all possible * don't try and be secretive - no one wants your dumb idea anyways * make sure someone has a decent reputation on the site you use * keep track of the progress of the product and keep in touch with the coder, but don't be overbearing * be somewhat flexible with the deliverable - aim for perfect but accept done * test the code thoroughly and request fixes in one shot, but don't conflate new features with bug fixes or no one will be happy The only points I would modify are: * Job requests can include bullets, but don't be overly fine-grained. * You can in fact build relationships with outsourcers via rent-a-coder (MTurk, 99Designs, etc), and you should - this will lead to much better long-term work. A good way to get this started is an unexpected bonus. * Don't ever screw someone on work. This is just karmically bad. They live in Eastern Europe and are poor. You live in America and are rich. I think the best way is to give someone a piece of work (5-10 hours worth), ask them for a bill, and proceed from there. If the work sucks or is over-billed, you pay and move on. Otherwise, you can give them more work.
- fnid2 17y ago
  don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD) This is why Americans are saying they are from overseas to get the jobs. If the price is the same, what does it matter where they are from? Speaking a common primary language and being in the same time zone has value. When I offshore work, I send an email and have to wait until the next day to get a response. When the worker is in my timezone and I get quick responses, the project success rate improves. I agree with the other points and have been on both sides of the payer/worker transaction.
  - andreshb 17y ago
    You should try outsourcing to Latin America then, responses in realtime during office hours.
    - fnid2 17y ago
      I've worked with some from Mexico and Argentina. Both are good places to look, so yes, that's a good alternative to distant time zones.
  - mrkurt 17y ago
    If the prices are the same, the American probably isn't as skilled/experienced.
    - lsc 17y ago
      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 skills required to be a good Engineer.
      - patio11 17y ago
scorpioxy 17y ago
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 particular skills is very limited." I started my freelance career on RAC 4 years ago. 6 months into it, i was taking on bigger projects using some of the technologies you mentioned(I'm a python guy but also do C# and Java...). Roughly 8 months into it, i was working with start ups and people were contacting me directly even though my rates are not the cheapest. I no longer look for gigs on RAC, but its certainly a viable lively hood if you're picky with the projects you take on. The trick is to always be honest and decent, the way you should behave in real life. I also found it funny that some Indian companies started outsourcing projects to me.
- maxklein 17y ago
  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 out of the market.
  - scorpioxy 17y ago
    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.
- lzm 17y ago
  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?
jacquesm 17y ago
What a super article. It is actually really good reading too for anybody that manages programmers and/or designers, outside the context of rent-a-coder. Things like scope creep and how to return beta reviews are really spelled out well.
10ren 17y ago
What size project would you typically get done for the $450-$550 mentioned? I'm intrigued that this might be a way to get some small projects done I've been putting off done (like a simple shopping cart app with a few specific functions, that I just can't get interested in.)
- maxklein 17y ago
  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.
  - kungfooey 17y ago
    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.
    - scorpioxy 17y ago
      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.
      - robryan 17y ago
        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.
jackfoxy 17y ago
Suppose I have a real company, and I want to expense or capitalize this. Does anyone have experience with IRS rules on this? What if the guy is in the U.S.? Do I have to send a 1099 to every coder I rent in this fashion to protect myself and my company?
- bestes 17y ago
  I used oDesk and found that because it is a corporation, I don't need to send them a 1099. And, because all the people work for you through the company, you don't have to do anything special.
  - jackfoxy 17y ago
    thanks
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  IIRC, RentACoder sent me a 1099 that covered all the payments they made to me for the year I bid on a few projects. I had already accounted for the income, so it didn;t really change anything.
tom_ilsinszki 17y ago
"For C++ and more complex projects, you can pick from the U.S and Europe." – I never thought programming languages where area-dependent.
- robryan 17y ago
  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.
aneth 17y ago
After some experience outsourcing through RAC, I've concluded that paying more for local developers and designers who buy into and understand your product and business model, speak the same language, and share your culture, is often worth it. Unless your product is extremely straightforward and doesn't need to be flexible in the future, there is a huge hidden cost when your developers aren't on the same page. In my experience, the result is far from "agile."
wellwatch 17y ago
Does anyone know of RentACoder style sites for signal processing?
- scorpioxy 17y ago
  You can always try and post that on RAC and see if anyone bites, but i think you'd find more people who work on that on dedicated forums or groups.
lsc 17y ago
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 the site to continue using it after meeting a person.
- scorpioxy 17y ago
  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.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
patio11 17y ago
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.
- scorpioxy 17y ago
  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).
josh33 17y ago
Can anyone comment on which site is best? I recognize this might lead to more traffic on your site, but it would help to understand why one would use rentacoder over getafreelancer...

156 points by epi0Bauqu 17y ago

This is great stuff and worth referring back to when you initiate a project. My experiences as a hiring manager have been from having a dude stiff me for $800 of work, to hiring a full-time developer I found on rentacoder that became a personal friend.

wallop 17y ago

Extremely well-written, concise-but-detailed, no-bullshit guide to a process that I have shied away from because it seemed to involve a lot of mysterious complexities. The author's recommendations provide extremely reasonable advice to follow in any project management endeavor. He emphasizes an assertive but respectful approach, taking the needs of both sides of the project into consideration and outlines a wide range of practical details that you could only know about from having a high degree of first-hand familiarity with this service. I'm saving this and hope to draw on it soon, now that it doesn't seem quite so daunting. Thanks for posting.

andrewljohnson 17y ago

I've had experience using online sites to source jobs, and I think this advice is right on. Here are some summary points, generalized away from rent-a-coder: * don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD) * be clear but not ominous in your job description, and include visual mocks if at all possible * don't try and be secretive - no one wants your dumb idea anyways * make sure someone has a decent reputation on the site you use * keep track of the progress of the product and keep in touch with the coder, but don't be overbearing * be somewhat flexible with the deliverable - aim for perfect but accept done * test the code thoroughly and request fixes in one shot, but don't conflate new features with bug fixes or no one will be happy The only points I would modify are: * Job requests can include bullets, but don't be overly fine-grained. * You can in fact build relationships with outsourcers via rent-a-coder (MTurk, 99Designs, etc), and you should - this will lead to much better long-term work. A good way to get this started is an unexpected bonus. * Don't ever screw someone on work. This is just karmically bad. They live in Eastern Europe and are poor. You live in America and are rich. I think the best way is to give someone a piece of work (5-10 hours worth), ask them for a bill, and proceed from there. If the work sucks or is over-billed, you pay and move on. Otherwise, you can give them more work.

fnid2 17y ago
don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD) This is why Americans are saying they are from overseas to get the jobs. If the price is the same, what does it matter where they are from? Speaking a common primary language and being in the same time zone has value. When I offshore work, I send an email and have to wait until the next day to get a response. When the worker is in my timezone and I get quick responses, the project success rate improves. I agree with the other points and have been on both sides of the payer/worker transaction.
- andreshb 17y ago
  You should try outsourcing to Latin America then, responses in realtime during office hours.
  - fnid2 17y ago
    I've worked with some from Mexico and Argentina. Both are good places to look, so yes, that's a good alternative to distant time zones.
- mrkurt 17y ago
  If the prices are the same, the American probably isn't as skilled/experienced.
  - lsc 17y ago
    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 skills required to be a good Engineer.
    - patio11 17y ago

scorpioxy 17y ago

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 particular skills is very limited." I started my freelance career on RAC 4 years ago. 6 months into it, i was taking on bigger projects using some of the technologies you mentioned(I'm a python guy but also do C# and Java...). Roughly 8 months into it, i was working with start ups and people were contacting me directly even though my rates are not the cheapest. I no longer look for gigs on RAC, but its certainly a viable lively hood if you're picky with the projects you take on. The trick is to always be honest and decent, the way you should behave in real life. I also found it funny that some Indian companies started outsourcing projects to me.

maxklein 17y ago
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 out of the market.
- scorpioxy 17y ago
  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.
lzm 17y ago
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?

jacquesm 17y ago

What a super article. It is actually really good reading too for anybody that manages programmers and/or designers, outside the context of rent-a-coder. Things like scope creep and how to return beta reviews are really spelled out well.

10ren 17y ago

What size project would you typically get done for the $450-$550 mentioned? I'm intrigued that this might be a way to get some small projects done I've been putting off done (like a simple shopping cart app with a few specific functions, that I just can't get interested in.)

maxklein 17y ago
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.
- kungfooey 17y ago
  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.
  - scorpioxy 17y ago
    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.
    - robryan 17y ago
      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.

jackfoxy 17y ago

Suppose I have a real company, and I want to expense or capitalize this. Does anyone have experience with IRS rules on this? What if the guy is in the U.S.? Do I have to send a 1099 to every coder I rent in this fashion to protect myself and my company?

bestes 17y ago
I used oDesk and found that because it is a corporation, I don't need to send them a 1099. And, because all the people work for you through the company, you don't have to do anything special.
- jackfoxy 17y ago
  thanks
HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
IIRC, RentACoder sent me a 1099 that covered all the payments they made to me for the year I bid on a few projects. I had already accounted for the income, so it didn;t really change anything.

tom_ilsinszki 17y ago

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

robryan 17y ago
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.

aneth 17y ago

After some experience outsourcing through RAC, I've concluded that paying more for local developers and designers who buy into and understand your product and business model, speak the same language, and share your culture, is often worth it. Unless your product is extremely straightforward and doesn't need to be flexible in the future, there is a huge hidden cost when your developers aren't on the same page. In my experience, the result is far from "agile."

wellwatch 17y ago

Does anyone know of RentACoder style sites for signal processing?

scorpioxy 17y ago
You can always try and post that on RAC and see if anyone bites, but i think you'd find more people who work on that on dedicated forums or groups.

lsc 17y ago

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 the site to continue using it after meeting a person.

scorpioxy 17y ago
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.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

patio11 17y ago

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.

scorpioxy 17y ago
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).

josh33 17y ago

Can anyone comment on which site is best? I recognize this might lead to more traffic on your site, but it would help to understand why one would use rentacoder over getafreelancer...