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let me piggyback on this thread. this is my freelancer.com experience as a hirer https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible-experience-991ad0f18597 htt
by gressquel 9y ago
let me piggyback on this thread. this is my freelancer.com experience as a hirer https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible-experience-991ad0f18597 https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible-experien...
- 4lch3m1st 9y agoThis is a horrible experience, but I must admit it's also a good laughing material.
- literallycancer 9y agoYour article doesn't mention how much you paid them. If you are paying someone 5$ per hour, you can't expect much. edit: you mention the prices in the comments, so here they are for anyone curious: Node.js port 155 USD, Android port 789 USD, Website theme 300 USD. It is not slave wages considering the living costs in the respective countries.(sic!) >Node.js port 155 USD This is good for what, 1 hour of work? Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
- gressquel 9y agoWell, the hour rate in europe is much higher than in Asia because the living costs are much lower. So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY
- literallycancer 9y agoWhy should the number be based on living costs? For assembly line workers with no skill requirement, yes. For engineers? Definitely not. >So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY Let's see: Bangalore is (only) 5 times cheaper than SF.[1] So it's hardly 3 days of work. Shanghai is 2.2 times cheaper.[2] 1 - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&country2=India&city2=Bangalore https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... 2 - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=China&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Shanghai https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
- chillydawg 9y agoTo be fair, bay area wages are not high because the people there are particularly special, they're high because there's no space and everyone wants to be there. So, yes, wages do reflect costs of living, to a certain extent.
- GordonS 9y ago> Why should the number be based on living costs? Because that's basically the whole point of globalisation. Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is.
- literallycancer 9y agoAre you living in India and working for that money, by a chance?
- GordonS 9y agoNo, I'm from the UK. I have worked with many Indian and Chinese devs on the past, so I have some knowledge of the outsourcing industry.
- a_imho 9y agoGeographic location is a rather arbitrary criteria for wage discrimination especially doing remote work [1]. I would not call the opportunity to be exploited a benefit exactly, even though I admit the alternatives can be worse. [1]https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-wage-gap-look-like/ https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...
- GordonS 9y agoThere is nothing arbitrary about it - different geographical regions have different living costs and different market rates. I've worked with many Indian devs over the past 10 years or so, and have become good friends with a few. One of those is freelancing for US and EU clients - he is earning far more than he would be paid by a local company, and gets to choose which jobs he takes on, as well as his working hours. He is of course very happy with this, and very far from being 'exploited'.
- vbezhenar 9y agoiPhone or Macbook price is roughly the same everywhere. Cost of living is a tiny part of expenses for a competent worker.
- robjan 9y agoDevelopers in the developing world typically don't use iPhones and Macbook pros. You can easily get a "good enough" machine for 10% of the price of a Macbook.
- arvinsim 9y agoIf you use shitty tools, you get shitty results.
- cjalmeida 9y agoWhat? For about $200 bucks you can buy an refurbished or pre-owned decent i5 desktop system. More than enough for JavaScript webdev. Heck, I guess I could use Raspberry PI and Vim for that
- himlion 9y agoI get exactly the same results on an old thinkpad as on the newest macbook.
- greenyoda 9y agoA developer's primary tool is their intellect. Using an expensive Macbook or a particular programming language won't magically make a lousy developer into a good developer. Note that all the hardware and software that were used to create the original internet or Unix or Emacs (dumb 80x24 CRT terminals hooked up to mainframes or mini-computers running low-level languages) were shitty tools by today's standards, yet amazing things were done with them by smart people.
- arvinsim 9y agoTry doing modern development with those old tools.Let's see if you are as productive as you think. It's insane to think that modern tooling doesn't affect results at all.
- gbraad 9y agoCompetent developers get 200+CNY an hour here in Beijing (so that would be pay for half a day of work) For this price you can only expect to find students to do the work. Note: food might be cheaper, but consider housing is very expensive here... 0.5M+ USD for about 60m^2. If I take this pay and calculate it as a contracted worker, he would receive about 8000 CNY and this is considered a low pay.
- srinathrajaram 9y agoLet us not pretend that the price is driven by living costs. It is driven by desperate people who will work below cost to get a foot in the door.
- xiphias 9y agoFor me as a software engineer who could move anywhere in the world, relative living costs never mattered, only absolute savings, as I can use it in any country, which is salary minus living cost. Zurich gave me the best savings, but I think many people (including great software developers in China) think similarly.
- sudshekhar 9y ago> Pay peanuts, get monkeys. This, this and this. There's isn't a dearth of good talent out there. Please just be willing to pay a fair price (not just for the hours worked but for the fact that he's available to you on demand, cc Adam Smith). As an aside, I do believe freelancer.com should do a better job filtering candidates (and gigs). Can maybe turn into a premium service like toptal.
- literallycancer 9y ago>Can maybe turn into a premium service like toptal. Yeah, no. They literally just ask you a random question from CTCI and call it a day if you can make it run in 20 minutes. All of these "gig economy" websites are funny that way. Go over to the "I want to hire people" tab and they'll tell you all about having the best experts in the field. Then you look at how they find those experts and it turns out that they make them do a fizzbuzz.
- GordonS 9y ago> This is good for what, 1 hour of work? In India? No, will get you several hours of work from a decent dev and still be a great deal for the dev
- raverbashing 9y agoBut maybe if the other guy who's really an expert can give you a better code in a shorter time, even if it's more expensive per hour, it'll be cheaper in the long run
- moltar 9y agoIn which dreamland you get paid USD$155 per hour for Node.js work?
- empath75 9y agoContractors in the us will bill that much for developers.
- hellbanner 9y agoI've worked (employee + freelancer) for multiple "agencies" in the USA. $150 is a more-or-less standard rate.
- swalsh 9y agoI regularly charge clients around $110. so $155 will get you just a bit over an hour of work from someone who knows what they're doing. If you're not a freelancer, but rather a salaried person... take some times to calculate how much your employer is paying for your benefits, and all the costs associated with employing you. It's typically around 2x your "hourly" wage.
- moltar 9y agoNice. Where do you find clients? I live in Canada and work remote. Have a ton of experience (web dev since ‘98), but don’t have these kind of contracts. :/
- robjan 9y agoIn the UK I earned around $750 USD/day for node work as a contractor. A day was around 6 hours when you take the lunch break away so it's not far off.
- csomar 9y ago> It is not slave wages considering the living costs in the respective countries. This pisses me off big time. It is more expensive to live in developing countries than in developed countries. Try to wrap your head around it. These countries are developing, so they don't have infrastructure to support their populace.
- robjan 9y agoI don't think that's true. The cost of food, rent, transportation etc is far greater in the developed world. The cost of living an "expat lifestyle" in developing countries is higher though, but local people typically don't aspire to that.
- a_imho 9y agoMany things have globally fixed prices. A car costs the same. Gas is probably cheaper in a developed country especially in the USA. Food is probably on par or cheaper . A $1000 phone is the same in all countries. The PC someone works with costs the same. Software licenses, (e)books, productivity apps e.g. office365 and G suite cost the same or more. A hosting provider charges the same for servers and bandwidth etc. local people typically don't aspire to that Yes they do, of course it is not accessible to most.
- GordonS 9y agoFor an ex-pat who wants to live in relative luxury, sure. Otherwise it is difficult to see how you can justify this claim? Have you by chance never been to a developing country? Honestly, how cheap some things are would shock you; for example, you can eat like a king in the heart of any Indian city for 1-2 dollars!
- perl4ever 9y agoThe majority of my income goes to housing and transportation though. My impression is that the programmers that work for my company from India make 1/5th what I do, but an apartment is not much cheaper and a car is more expensive. For instance, I did a search for apartments in Noida and found 900 sq. ft apartments for about 45 lakh rupees which is around $70,000. Seven times annual income is very expensive compared to where I live.
- a_imho 9y agoconsidering the living costs in the respective countries Trying to shift the blame to the market is still discrimination in my book.
- GordonS 9y agoMarket rates seem very relevant to me. People with the same skills but living in different geographical regions are of course willing to work for differing amounts.
- rootlocus 9y agoIndian developers are know for poor quality and extremely low prices. You probably shouldn't hire the cheapest developers. > Freelancer.com is a cesspool of low-level coders who says yes yes yes when you ask them of their skills and knowledge of frameworks. Yes it is. And you should avoid them, especially if you know this. Fool me once and all that. I think this experience is as much your fault as it is theirs.
- gressquel 9y agoI didnt only hire Indians: 1 chinese, 1 indian, and 1 bangladeshi.
- alexdrans 9y agoDon't the Chinese have a saying which means 'Pay low price, expect to get screwed over'? Bangladesh is even worse than India.
- sqldba 9y agoI've read an article about Chinese culture of "good enough". That many apartments fall apart right after they're built because if you do 80% of the job then that's pretty much considered "done". Doing it correctly or completely isn't part of the contract.
- wpietri 9y agoThat was a great article: https://aeon.co/essays/what-chinese-corner-cutting-reveals-about-modernity https://aeon.co/essays/what-chinese-corner-cutting-reveals-a... I don't know how true it is about China, but I certainly recognized that attitude.
- doppp 9y agoA more apt idiom is "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." [0] [0] https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/if+you+pay+peanuts%2C+you+get+monkeys https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/if+you+pay+peanuts%2C+y...
- raverbashing 9y agoThere are ways these issues can be mitigated Require that the bid contains a snippet on how they intend to solve the problem. Or if it's something obvious/non-explainable, require that the bidder put their favourite fruit on the bid. Something simple that lets you know they didn't just copy and paste the thing Also pick the middle of the road proposal price-wise.
- gardenpuppet 9y agoLast time I looked, unless this is an hourly rate job, this is not possible. (Hourly rate is free form) You have three or four fields, each 200 char max. Can't really do much more than say "I can do this" and draw attention to your reviews if you have any. For me this is one of the many red flags on this site. If you're very focused then you can make it work, but for common garden jobs, not so much.
- raverbashing 9y agoIt doesn't have to be a wall of text, just something like 'using library Blah should work' or something
- gspetr 9y agoDon't hire asians, hire from Eastern Europe instead. It might be more expensive, but not by a lot and the quality is exponentially better.