General > General Technical Chat

Is freelancer.com a cesspool?

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T3sl4co1l:

--- Quote from: tom66 on October 13, 2022, 02:33:17 pm ---$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 ---

"Good"?  I've exchanged a handful of emails for more than that...
I guess I picked the right major after all, but, sheesh?

...Is programming really that bad paying?  I'm sure my software friends aren't getting that lowballed.  Or... but, surely corporate doesn't just randomly pay 5 times more than they need to, right?

Like, offhand I'd guess spending a solid day (8hr, easily $500-1000) doing what Peter is looking for, granted I don't work in that particular field (networking, win32 devices) and haven't seen the precise spec.  And that's if you can find someone with that exact experience.  Lacking that, maybe figure triple the time, for having to look up all the APIs, rediscover their pitfalls, collect enough devices to put together some manner of testing (I mean, VCPs and such should be pretty generic, but give or take scope, and weirdness, and worst cases and all, y'know--?).  Which, personally, being familiar with the language but hardly anything on the APIs, would be about all I could do for example, and, I guess Peter is in a similar position.  That's going to be true of a lot of other people as well, and to find otherwise will be relatively rare (like, < 1/10th the pool we're in, kind of a thing?).  And, basic economic principles, y'know, would at least seem to suggest...that's worth some kind of premium?

So, if your time's not worth that much, just read up on it all and do it yourself.  Maybe you can find a contractor in a low-CoL country that's slam-dunk ready to go skilled, and maybe you can get it done for a pittance (or, maybe it doesn't work at all, and much back-and-forth is required..), but clearly it's not worth spending several days searching for that.  Then it's a matter of, if you have a pressing need (or equivalently, the opportunity cost of needing to work on other things and not be distracted by all this searching and managing), how much can be budgeted for it, and if it covers a competent subject-matter expert, well, that's good value, and if not, then sucks but that's how it is.  Right..?

Tim

HwAoRrDk:
I think it's just a huge amount of luck if you're able to find a good freelancer for low rates, but they do exist.

At a former employer, I used to work with some contractors in Cuba of all places. I have no idea how my boss found them, but they were great - very competent, excellent English language skills, always keen to dive into a project.

(Funny story about that: one of the guys had a deliverable due by a deadline, but three days had gone past and no-one had heard anything from him. When my boss finally got in touch, he was quite angry with him. The guy said sorry but he had been dealing with the roof of his house blowing off during the recent tropical hurricane! My boss didn't know about the storm, felt like a right idiot, and apologised profusely. :D)

I've also dealt with (not as hirer, but as a co-contractor) other freelancers from various places in eastern Europe that claimed all sorts on their bios, but didn't seem to understand much English, didn't understand the project, and couldn't deliver and were generally rude and abrasive throughout their failed tenure.

It's pretty much like buying a lottery ticket. Lots of money wasted in general, but occasionally you win.

SiliconWizard:
Some people have an elastic sense of ethics.
A good freelancer for low rates? Sure a lot of guys from poor countries have dead-low rates compared to westerners. Taking advantage of that, some may call this exploitation. Others will get a clear conscience by claiming that it's actually a favor to those poor engineers. Which is an argument that has been used extensively for exploiting people. So, pick your side.

Now, ethics aside, for sure many of those low-rate engineers are mediocre, are sometimes difficult to work with due to cultural differences (you can't do much about that), and many tend to give low-quality work, even when they have decent skills, just because they are playing the numbers to manage to get a good income with ultra-low rates (even in their home countries, their low rates are often not enough to make a good living without taking more work than they can deliver with quality.) But they do use those low rates to attract clients.

So anyway, if you want quality work, pay for it.

tom66:

--- Quote from: peter-h on October 13, 2022, 03:34:09 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---

If they exist, they're damn hard to find.  As you've clearly discovered.

About the only people I would class in the category of "cheap" and "good" are very eager and sharp students doing an internship.   Find the right one, and they can spearhead a project with just a little guidance and hand-holding.   And at the same time you're helping someone develop their career.   But these guys don't stick around unless you start paying them commensurate with their experience and knowledge, and there's certainly not an endless pool of them. 


--- Quote from: peter-h on October 13, 2022, 03:34:09 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---

No, labour is quite flexible in engineering, and it moves around.  So it's priced fairly, because it's in demand everywhere.  The average annual salary in Beijing for an EE is 377,000 CNY [1] according to the Internet - which is £46,000.  That's really not far off what someone mid-level would take in the UK - maybe a little lower but hardly devastatingly lower.  By the way, CoL in a big city in Asia is pretty high.  I have a friend who lives in Beijing and her apartment rent is basically the same as London rent for similar space.  Advantage is taxation is lower and food/services are dirt cheap (meal for six at a restaurant - ~£35)

So again - where are all of these cheap engineers?

[1] https://worldsalaries.com/average-electrical-engineer-salary-in-beijing/china/

peter-h:
Like I said, that's the 1st World POV.

A lot of coders hate Freelancer.com.

To be fair I suspect the people on there have to deal with a lot of d1ckhead customers, which would explain the abrupt manners of some on there.

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