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Actually one of my colleagues had the opposite (yet in my opinion equally hilarious) problem with rent-a-coder - the code was much better than he wanted. He wa

Actually one of my colleagues had the opposite (yet in my opinion equally hilarious) problem with rent-a-coder - the code was much better than he wanted. He wanted sample vulnerable Java code to use for secure development training. None of us enjoyed writing Java web apps, so this seemed like a cunning plan to get sample (yet custom) code with minimal effort. Hopefully, full of bugs. He asked for a "task tracker" (IIRC, might have been phone book), and specified Java with "no framework" as the implementation language. He chose the dodgiest bidder he could who looked like they might finish the job. I think he put a few gotchas in the specifications. Actually, as delivered, the app was solid, and based on JSF2 ;) What I learned about rent-a-coder: * There are corporate refugees who do this on the side to make extra money. * CRUD apps appear to be a sweet spot for rent-a-codering. * Code quality is hit-and-miss if you're looking for disasters ;)

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raverbashing 14y ago
That's funny, how come this person was the dodgiest bid of all? Well, maybe he should have specified he wanted an insecure application (or an "extra secure" application - expected result is having several layers of snake oil and "proprietary solutions" applied)
- xyzzy123 14y ago
  Bidding was decided based on communication style, low bid, low GDP country and "has feedback on just 1 or 2 projects" (minimal, but not extensive history of delivering). Didn't ask for "extra buggy" or "extra secure" because the ideal was the combination of honest mistakes and laziness that turn up in real code all time. I like the idea though ;) I mean, you'd think that for $100 or whatever all up, they would have half-assed it a bit ;) Probably the mistake was to stop at n=2 and not choosing a harder problem domain.
  - aptwebapps 14y ago
    I love a good anti-anecdote (antidote?) ;) Here's one potential problem with the selection criteria: "low bid, low GDP country". I might have been better to weight the bid with the GDP (I don't mean really crunch the numbers, just put your thumb on the scale). But more to the point, if your friend didn't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, he probably wasn't that good at picking a bad apple. Or he just got unlucky, maybe.
  - pekk 14y ago
    The mistake was for your friend to think that he was a good judge of ability based on the features at hand. It might be useful to reflect on whether the people your friend normally prefers to hire might just be the people who are best at managing presentation?
  - zeidrich 14y ago
    I would expect a terrible bid from a high GDP country to be a better source of bugs than a terrible bid from a low GDP country. Poor communication? Probably just ESL. Low bid? In a low GDP country that low bid goes a longer way. If you grabbed an american with the same conditions you're more likely to get some illiterate kid instead of some Czech doctor moonlighting.
  - mseebach 14y ago
    I suspect "has feedback on just 1 or 2 projects" might also indicate the opposite: That the guy is picky, waiting around for a project he can actually deliver quality on, and perhaps optimising for second (off-site) follow ups.

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raverbashing 14y ago

That's funny, how come this person was the dodgiest bid of all? Well, maybe he should have specified he wanted an insecure application (or an "extra secure" application - expected result is having several layers of snake oil and "proprietary solutions" applied)

xyzzy123 14y ago
Bidding was decided based on communication style, low bid, low GDP country and "has feedback on just 1 or 2 projects" (minimal, but not extensive history of delivering). Didn't ask for "extra buggy" or "extra secure" because the ideal was the combination of honest mistakes and laziness that turn up in real code all time. I like the idea though ;) I mean, you'd think that for $100 or whatever all up, they would have half-assed it a bit ;) Probably the mistake was to stop at n=2 and not choosing a harder problem domain.
- aptwebapps 14y ago
  I love a good anti-anecdote (antidote?) ;) Here's one potential problem with the selection criteria: "low bid, low GDP country". I might have been better to weight the bid with the GDP (I don't mean really crunch the numbers, just put your thumb on the scale). But more to the point, if your friend didn't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, he probably wasn't that good at picking a bad apple. Or he just got unlucky, maybe.
- pekk 14y ago
  The mistake was for your friend to think that he was a good judge of ability based on the features at hand. It might be useful to reflect on whether the people your friend normally prefers to hire might just be the people who are best at managing presentation?
- zeidrich 14y ago
  I would expect a terrible bid from a high GDP country to be a better source of bugs than a terrible bid from a low GDP country. Poor communication? Probably just ESL. Low bid? In a low GDP country that low bid goes a longer way. If you grabbed an american with the same conditions you're more likely to get some illiterate kid instead of some Czech doctor moonlighting.
- mseebach 14y ago
  I suspect "has feedback on just 1 or 2 projects" might also indicate the opposite: That the guy is picky, waiting around for a project he can actually deliver quality on, and perhaps optimising for second (off-site) follow ups.