General > General Technical Chat
Is freelancer.com a cesspool?
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peter-h:
Haha that is funny :) IIRC, almost nobody ever even understood that project. I wrote it myself, with the help of a colleague (in E. Europe) and a French guy on FL who wrote some great Javascript.

I posted about this thread topic here
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/freelancer-com-can-one-post-here-instead-if-looking-for-someone-to-write-code/msg4433713/#msg4433713
but from the POV of the other end (looking for coders).

FL is a bloody nightmare. Only a few % of the people on there do stuff other than website scraping and such, and today's ultra fashionable languages. And 95% of the bidders never read the spec; most of them are auto-bidding based on tags. The ones from the Indian subcontinent are nearly all doing that; they never seem to learn.

And when I find somebody, their English is usually so poor it is impossible to communicate.

I got a great job done by one Ukrainian, but while he is obviously extremely clever (it was a GUI win32 prog in C/C++) he has not been able to understand anything else I described. Eventually I got another job done, by two people abortively and a 3rd to finish it, and I'd say 99% of the problem was poor English. I did a good written spec but most didn't read it properly.

What I now realise is that FL expertise is mostly in common web client areas, a little bit in server-side, a bit in PC apps (VC/C++), probably similar in phone apps, and zero in embedded.


--- Quote ---The quality bids that he received will guarantee that he'll receive the best code for the money  :-DD
Actually I've made a troll programmer account and start bidding unreasonable amounts and copy-paste the most ludicrous bid texts, endless fun
--- End quote ---

Thank you for your positive contribution.


--- Quote ---Go where the grown ups go. LinkedIn, Reddit or even Github, for example.
--- End quote ---

I take it that is a joke.

Linkedin is for corporate ladder climbers. Originally it was for contract programmers who could not look for the next contract while they were doing the current ($1000/day) one.
Reddit is for people who have no life except sit on the internet.
Github is mostly nonworking code which somebody dumped there before moving on. It can be useful because some of the stuff almost works, but still usually has many loose ends which need fixing.

The typical pattern is that the Pakistanis quote $20 and never read the spec, the Ukrainians quote $50 and read 90% of the spec (and tend to vanish when it you want it finished properly) and the Europeans quote $250 and may be good but I am not going to chuck $250 at it to find out. The most I am willing to lose is $100.
tom66:
$100 would get you an hour and a half of a good contractor's time in the UK.  What on earth do you expect to get done in that time?  Engineers are expensive - pay peanuts, get monkeys as the saying goes.
peter-h:

--- Quote ---$100 would get you an hour and a half of a good contractor's time in the UK.  What on earth do you expect to get done in that time?  Engineers are expensive - pay peanuts, get monkeys as the saying goes.
--- End quote ---

True in the 1st World, but that's because the guy has a Porsche Cayenne parked outside, his wife has a horsebox and 2 horses, 2 kids in private schools, sky high stress levels all around, and you have to pay for it somehow.

Most of the earth's surface is not like that - thankfully! And FL should create an opportunity for talented people in other places to earn some money. It is just not well set up and has been packed with useless bidders.

And the Brit contract programmer may be good, or not... in big companies, amazingly incompetent people can carry on for years.
tom66:
Maybe the contractor has the Cayenne because his work is in demand and he can charge what he likes for it :).  But in reality, most contractors I know are just ordinary middle class people. Their rates are higher than salaried positions  because there's more intermittency.  You need a lot of savings to run through a bad patch of no contracts, plus you get no holiday time, no life insurance, no sick pay, you need an accountant (or time to do that yourself), and have to buy all your kit yourself.

And the reality is, if you're a top engineer in India, China, wherever, you either go and get a good job at a company there - and wages for top engineers are comparable to the West in big cities in Asia now - or you emigrate.   You don't sit on Freelancer.com hoping to get £150 from Peter to write some code which takes way more time than they expect and doesn't work first time.

You're essentially asking, why can't I find anyone to work for peanuts?  If you want really cheap work - you need to do it yourself.
peter-h:
Yes but you would say this - because you need 1st World money.

To you, FL is unwelcome competition which undermines your status, income, etc.

There are lots of good people who don't need 1st World money.


--- Quote ---Maybe the contractor has the Cayenne because his work is in demand and he can charge what he likes for it
--- End quote ---

No, he's got the Cayenne because he lives and works in the 1st World where expenses are very high and thus income is very high, and expectations (I mean his wife's expectations ;) ) are very high. And everybody is in the same boat.


--- Quote ---wages for top engineers are comparable to the West in big cities in Asia
--- End quote ---

I doubt that is the case, but in any case there are very few people in Asia on FL.


--- Quote ---You're essentially asking, why can't I find anyone to work for peanuts?
--- End quote ---

No, you are saying I am asking that, but that is not what I am saying at all.

I have successfully used FL but also wasted a fair bit of time on there. It's probably not dissimilar to internet dating - mostly dross ;)

It is ok for well definable little projects, in common-expertise areas like I listed above. I am sure you can spend time on there and find more of my projects, but you probably won't know which ones worked ;)

There are some very good people out there. I've seen stuff delivered in 2hrs which I know damn well would take an hourly paid UK guy a couple of days.
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