Author Topic: Freelancers in Asia  (Read 9633 times)

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Offline ScrtsTopic starter

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Freelancers in Asia
« on: April 21, 2016, 07:10:57 pm »
Hello,
I wonder if someone already tried to hire engineers in India, China or so? Are they on Freelancer.com or some other websites? Just wondering if it's possible to hire people on lower cost to do some software programming for hobby project.
 

Offline IconicPCB

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2016, 06:26:43 am »
Yes..ofcourse it is. Indian IT engineers are promoting themselves as the website exerts, ready to optimise Your site's browsing experience.

A word of warning.. in the beginning we lost the PCB shops.. then assembly houses.. and now...
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2016, 10:46:32 am »
Based on my own experience I'm not going to worry for the next 15 years about (high end) programming jobs going to Asia! The good programmers from Asia work somewhere in the western world. I think the OP is better of hiring a local guy.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline ScrtsTopic starter

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2016, 02:53:13 pm »
I'm open to hire from 5.13 to 6.11.

I am just looking if there's a website or so. Doing initial sniffing :)

I won't have my technical requirements plan by mid of May yet. However, thanks for proposal!
 

Offline System Error Message

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2016, 12:45:58 am »
Im a programmer, i can design software quite well be it an app, C program or even web programming. As long as you dont ask me to use vendor specific stuff like MS silverlight as i have my standards.
 

Offline chrischina

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #5 on: July 28, 2016, 08:21:48 pm »
There are also some foreigners based in Asia/China.
I am one of them :)
 

Offline Daniel Duesentrieb

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2016, 07:59:06 am »
Years ago we had a software project and we outsources some modules to a reputable company in India.

1. They did not understand the application
2. You had to tell them exactly what to do and in most cases as well how to do it

Due to that our programmer said that this will take as long as he would do it by himself...
 
 

Offline System Error Message

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2016, 07:24:51 am »
Years ago we had a software project and we outsources some modules to a reputable company in India.

1. They did not understand the application
2. You had to tell them exactly what to do and in most cases as well how to do it

Due to that our programmer said that this will take as long as he would do it by himself...
 

I have the same experience in university group work. I am always paired with chinese because im international student (such a racist lecturer pairing locals with locals, internationals with internationals). The language barrier made it terrible but at least the lecturer gave a decent mark even though the program was far off from what the requirement was.
 

Offline VEGETA

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #8 on: August 24, 2016, 07:11:45 pm »
If what you want is Microcontroller programming with C, I am in.

Offline kmossman

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2016, 08:19:23 am »
Years ago we had a software project and we outsources some modules to a reputable company in India.

1. They did not understand the application
2. You had to tell them exactly what to do and in most cases as well how to do it

Due to that our programmer said that this will take as long as he would do it by himself...
 

Very common experience. 

I have the same experience in university group work. I am always paired with chinese because im international student (such a racist lecturer pairing locals with locals, internationals with internationals). The language barrier made it terrible but at least the lecturer gave a decent mark even though the program was far off from what the requirement was.
 

Offline SnipTheCat

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #10 on: October 02, 2016, 05:45:27 pm »
Hello,
I wonder if someone already tried to hire engineers in India, China or so? Are they on Freelancer.com or some other websites? Just wondering if it's possible to hire people on lower cost to do some software programming for hobby project.

Well, I'm an expat living in Thailand (I'm Belgian). I am a software developper on computers (web, windows, linux), mobile (android) and mcu (experience with arduino, stm32F0/F1/F4/L0/L1, pic16F and 24F and some other stuff). I work mostly for customers in Europe, or Foreigners based in Asia. I have been looking for freelancers locally (Thailand, China and India) to offload some projects, I didn't have any luck in 7 years... the good guys were as expensive if not more than what you would pay freelancers in Europe, the others ended up being a headache.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #11 on: October 02, 2016, 05:48:44 pm »
Try looking in Indonesia. I know they have pretty good universities over there when it comes to teaching programming.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline ScrtsTopic starter

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #12 on: October 03, 2016, 04:05:40 pm »
Try looking in Indonesia. I know they have pretty good universities over there when it comes to teaching programming.

Any experience with that? So far I've found India to be strong in DSP programming.
 

Offline seatrix

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #13 on: February 07, 2017, 12:32:15 am »
the cost of a  Chinese engineer is about 2000 us dollars / month now
 

Offline Spikee

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #14 on: February 07, 2017, 10:06:34 pm »
I have been doing freelancing work on one of the most popular freelancing websites for a year or two now and can share some experiences.
It is kinda hit and miss with many freelances. The good one's usually cost 25 USD+ for people in asia. To get decent quality in the western world it is usually around 40-50 usd per hour.

Jobs from the US usually have realistic budgets. Many jobs from EU are a lot of work with a realistic wage of 20-30 usd per hour
and a lot of hassle as in conferencing for hours and those kind of things basically for free. The majority of companies that advertise on these platforms
are the one's that want everything but very cheap. The companies that will pay a somewhat decent hourly rate are generally not on these platforms.

Have "competed" against people in the EU or abroad that should be much more experienced than me. But after checking their work found
several basic errors which would make the product fail completely.

I have worked with freelances from Asia before but unless they have to do basic pre-planned work this has not ended in success in my experience.
(of-course there are good and bad one's but I'm just talking from my experience. And those are top rated, worked many hours and are not cheap kind of guys)
And what also happens is that some ask for like 20 usd per hour. But just use a multiplier of 2.5x  ;) to get the rate they really want.

I'm registered on freelancer . com but that website really is a race to the bottom kind of place. With descriptions like "hey I want to build a drone pcb" and that is all the info you have to place a bid on. No possibility to ask for more information or whatever. For the 30 jobs I checked today the majority of them are like this.

The majority of my time I'm based in Shenzhen China , depending on the job I might temporary lower my rate.

The people that really make the big bucks are the platforms themselves they make 10-20% fee + withdrawal fee's / gain due to exchange rate + "premium" packages

A good chunk of my time I spend finding new (good) clients and discussing with potential ones instead of doing actual work.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2017, 10:37:34 pm by Spikee »
Freelance electronics design service, Small batch assembly, Firmware / WEB / APP development. In Shenzhen China
 
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Offline julianhigginson

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #15 on: February 08, 2017, 05:37:47 am »
For this kind of work, I'd recommend you use upwork rather than freelancer, but yeah... upwork is also still a pretty fast race to the bottom. And you need to have a good solid understanding of exactly what you want, or you'll end up haemorrhaging cash in spec-shift hell, then eventually have something delivered you can't evaluate or even use.

I'd recommend you don't send work overseas unless it's work you could easily do yourself, but don't have the time.. at least then
1) you will spec the work intelligently, with sensible expectations.
2) you can catch problems quickly.
3) you can judge the deliverables appropriately, in time.
 

Offline Spikee

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #16 on: February 08, 2017, 02:11:15 pm »
For this kind of work, I'd recommend you use upwork rather than freelancer, but yeah... upwork is also still a pretty fast race to the bottom. And you need to have a good solid understanding of exactly what you want, or you'll end up haemorrhaging cash in spec-shift hell, then eventually have something delivered you can't evaluate or even use.

I'd recommend you don't send work overseas unless it's work you could easily do yourself, but don't have the time.. at least then
1) you will spec the work intelligently, with sensible expectations.
2) you can catch problems quickly.
3) you can judge the deliverables appropriately, in time.

I agree with this for most freelancers. But there are good one's but they are a bit more expensive in the short term.
In the overall picture it does not really matter. I often have clients that try to be super involved but don't have the technical know-how.
To those clients I tell them that I know what they want and I'll make sure they get what they need. And ask the questions when input
from their side is needed. So far this has worked out great. And I have heard before that they had bad experiences with other freelancers.

Like many things the bad one's ruin it for the good one's.
Freelance electronics design service, Small batch assembly, Firmware / WEB / APP development. In Shenzhen China
 

Offline ScrtsTopic starter

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #17 on: February 08, 2017, 02:34:17 pm »
For this kind of work, I'd recommend you use upwork rather than freelancer, but yeah... upwork is also still a pretty fast race to the bottom. And you need to have a good solid understanding of exactly what you want, or you'll end up haemorrhaging cash in spec-shift hell, then eventually have something delivered you can't evaluate or even use.

I'd recommend you don't send work overseas unless it's work you could easily do yourself, but don't have the time.. at least then
1) you will spec the work intelligently, with sensible expectations.
2) you can catch problems quickly.
3) you can judge the deliverables appropriately, in time.

So you guys just crossed out freelancer and upwork. Which ones are still usable then?
 

Offline FrankBuss

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #18 on: February 08, 2017, 03:03:42 pm »
I'm registered on freelancer . com but that website really is a race to the bottom kind of place. With descriptions like "hey I want to build a drone pcb" and that is all the info you have to place a bid on. No possibility to ask for more information or whatever. For the 30 jobs I checked today the majority of them are like this.

I used this site years ago as a freelancer, when it was rent-a-coder, just to test it, mostly small software projects, but one client wanted a firmware for a PSoC microcontroller for a touchscreen, which was a fun project.

Recently I visited the site and many project descriptions are useless and have no information at all. But then there are many bids on these project, with price ranges from like 100 to 10,000 USD for the same project? How does this work? IIRC with rent-a-coder there was a project description review from the staff and you couldn't post any crap. Looks like they don't do this anymore.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2017, 03:06:35 pm by FrankBuss »
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
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Offline Spikee

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #19 on: February 08, 2017, 10:17:34 pm »
For this kind of work, I'd recommend you use upwork rather than freelancer, but yeah... upwork is also still a pretty fast race to the bottom. And you need to have a good solid understanding of exactly what you want, or you'll end up haemorrhaging cash in spec-shift hell, then eventually have something delivered you can't evaluate or even use.

I'd recommend you don't send work overseas unless it's work you could easily do yourself, but don't have the time.. at least then
1) you will spec the work intelligently, with sensible expectations.
2) you can catch problems quickly.
3) you can judge the deliverables appropriately, in time.

I do most of my work on up work. Like with most things you get what you pay for. 30-50 usd per hour gets you good value for money.
But don't be blinded by the worker's rate. Get a quote for fixed price with milestones. And you might notice that the 50 usd per hour guy
is actually cheaper than that 30 usd per hour rate guy since het is faking the hours / is less competent.

If you look at the cost for the employer if you were to do it yourself / if you had to hire a person locally. Than it is actually a very good deal.
So you guys just crossed out freelancer and upwork. Which ones are still usable then?
Freelance electronics design service, Small batch assembly, Firmware / WEB / APP development. In Shenzhen China
 

Offline julianhigginson

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #20 on: February 08, 2017, 11:36:58 pm »

So you guys just crossed out freelancer and upwork. Which ones are still usable then?

I'd say upwork is still usable - you just have to know how to use it.

I've used it before as a test, and got some work successfully completed - but for me it was windows GUI programming work where I'd already defined the behaviour of the core algorithm I wanted in a windows gui program (by writing it) so they had to wrap windows stuff around it to make it work.

But in my opinion, having looked around on there a bit for possible work for myself, and having used it once to get something done, the vibe of the place is most of the customers on the site look like tyre-kicking nobodies with poor ideas trying to get the world for free (and OK there looks to be a couple of good serious customers...) Then there's some good workers - generally people looking for extra/moonlighting work, but charge a reasonable rate, then there's a bunch of cut-rate "quote everything" design houses who must only survive by underquoting like crazy, and then extracting cash by doing supplementary charges by any means necessary through the project (because otherwise they would starve) and probably delivering something in the end that's just not useful because the customer didn't have the skill to define anything useful to start.

so yeah - if you want to use it, start by being a customer who knows what you want, and don't use the cut rate quote anything guys, and you should be fine.

The sites themselves do NOTHING to guarantee your work's quality, so it's 100% down to you.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2017, 01:44:16 am by julianhigginson »
 

Offline Luminax

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #21 on: April 12, 2017, 10:34:19 am »
I used to do some electronic design work (pen and paper analog/basic digital logic) for the site now known as Vworker... I forgot what the former name was. I'm also a member of a few other freelancing sites and the things that are painfully similar about the few top freelancing sites are :

1) They're almost always very saturated and overrun with "experts" from India, overcutting what should be a $100 work by half or even more.
2) Most buyers can't post project properly and trying to find one where the contents matches the 'category' is a pain in the ass
3) They charge you through the roof for their website services...

Regardless... I'm wondering if there's a move, or should there be a move, from the community (like for example here at EEVBlog) to start a no-nonsense 'band of engineers for hire' sort of stuff... hmmmmm
Jack of all trade - Master of some... I hope...
 

Offline ScrtsTopic starter

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Re: Freelancers in Asia
« Reply #22 on: April 18, 2017, 12:59:18 pm »
I used to do some electronic design work (pen and paper analog/basic digital logic) for the site now known as Vworker... I forgot what the former name was. I'm also a member of a few other freelancing sites and the things that are painfully similar about the few top freelancing sites are :

1) They're almost always very saturated and overrun with "experts" from India, overcutting what should be a $100 work by half or even more.
2) Most buyers can't post project properly and trying to find one where the contents matches the 'category' is a pain in the ass
3) They charge you through the roof for their website services...

Regardless... I'm wondering if there's a move, or should there be a move, from the community (like for example here at EEVBlog) to start a no-nonsense 'band of engineers for hire' sort of stuff... hmmmmm

Might be an option. Start a new thread and people would advertise themselves. However, there should be another platform for bidding for a project I guess.
 
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