RentACoder Losing Street Cred?

Itninja writes, "Having used RAC several times in the past (as a buyer), I was shocked by a recent experience. I did a bit of looking around to see if I was the only one having problems with Rent-A-Coder. Apparently, I'm not." From the article: "This unfairness of RAC fees motivates the majority of coders to negotiate payment outside the scope of RAC which amounts to you and coder getting a better deal. For example, I have several coders that I fully trust willing to work on projects on a monthly basis because it is easier for him to deal with established clients than to have to bid for projects all the time. It saves me time and trouble because I can work with a person that I trust and he knows what is expected." A comment to this posting links a discussion of RAC at Google Groups, and there the service has its defenders. What has your experience of RAC been, either as a buyer or as a coder?

RAC rates are too low for US coders

[eln]

First off, both of those links have basically been overtaken by the same two guys throwing feces at each other.

Also, I did try RAC for work during a time when I was unemployed about 4 years ago. Things might have changed since then, but at the time RAC was basically a site where small shops (a lot of spam sites and such) would post projects and get ridiculously low bids from foreign workers. As someone trying to survive in the US at the time, I could not really see myself working on a 10 hour project for $50 or $100, which is indicative of the sorts of bids that were being offered.

Obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a coder living in the US, I looked at RentACoder with some interest back in, oh, 2002. These days there's no way any American coder is going to make beer money - much less a living - when the competition can afford to underbid the way they do.

When you "conservatively" bid $100 on a gig, knowing even that's a low price for all they want done, and within an hour there are 10 other bidders, all of them under $10, some of them even under $5... You just can't compete.

Which begs the question

[porkThreeWays]

Did it actually ever have any street cred? For as long as I can remember RAC has been filled with insanely low bids being eaten up by foreign coders. I've gone there several times over the years looking to pick up some extra cash and have never seen a bid I thought was worth my time.

ifreelance

[trwww]

So use ifreelance.com [ifreelance.com].

Its free and you and the programmer decide on your own payment method

Up and Down With RAC

[Revenge_of_Solver_Ta]

Got good PHP coders from Scriptlance.

Good designers from GetAFreelancer or Designoutpost.

Good content people from Guru and Elance...

That's it.

Similar sites, and my experiences

[dieth]

http://www.kasamba.com/ [kasamba.com] (they have more than just a "technical" advice area)
http://elance.com/ [elance.com]
http://www.scriptlance.com/ [scriptlance.com]

Personally these sites really don't encourage a Buyer/Bidder relationship, and I have had my accounts on elance, and kasamba, banned for initiating direct contact with my clients. Ofcourse talking through the vale of secrecy and the worst e-mail systems ever concocted by a webcoder are always the best means of communications with clients.
As these sites want there Buyers to keep posting more projects so they can continue to leech money from both sides out of either in monthly membership fees, posting fees, and percentage of earnings fees.

Re:Same same...

[orasio]

I live in Uruguay, and here you find some programmers working for 500 dollars a month (luckily not all of them), and the numbers didn't add up for me for doing extra work, although I did make just about 700$ back then.
A week of extra work, plus the administrative issues of managing a small project surely is worth much more than 200 dollars to me.
The cost of living should be at least 10 times less than in the US to make a profit working at RAC rates.

Re:Which begs the question

[Raynor]

That isn't how i've seen it.

I'm no guru (yet :D) but I just recently joined and put down a $10 bid to get some business and some credibility on a random number generator (I think someone wasn't doing their homework -.- ).

I lost the bid to an Indian programmer who bid $20 and his bid was a generic "I look forward to hearing from you, and rest assured that the results will meet your requirements and expectations."

Whereas I had just spent the last half-hour talking with the guy about exactly what he wanted, and sent him a demo.

All in all I figure RAC is good for odd jobs and an occasional good-deal... but I doubt many people like me (American -.-) make a living off of it.

Re:RAC rates are too low for US coders

[cshark]

I used to work with RAC pretty extensively as both a buyer and a coder. I don't see what the problem is that's being discussed. It's a great service. I don't mind working with the site, or the people on it. Generally, I did find that as a buyer I got a lot of bids that didn't sound credible. Or bids from individuals trying to look like companies, who did that by re-packaging my RFP word per word in a corporate formatted word doc.

As a rule, it's been my experience that RAC is far better for smaller projects unless you have a support agreement with the coder. But you win some, you lose some. Out of the dozen or so projects listed with RAC during my period of working with them as a buyer, the service was outstanding on about nine of them, and I worked with people I grew comfortable with.

As far as the others, not everyone is a people person, and sometimes projects needed to be re-drafted and re-contracted. Can't really blame someone for my lack of foresight. But you can blame people when they're rude or completely obnoxious for no good reason. And that happened once that I can remember in my dealings with the site.

Being an American coder, I found it to be an extremely competitive market place. There were times when it seemed like everyone in the world was bidding on the projects I was most interested in working on for less than I could consider bidding. Didn't make much money at it, but I liked the way the site was organized, and most of the people that I met.

Just after the service started, my boss at the time found out about it and fired six of us in favor of the "per project gurus" on RAC. Two months later he tried to hire us back, so I imagine that it probably didn't go well. When I went back, I managed the process of working through RAC for him. So it's all relative.

It's a lesson in outsourcing.
It can be great when it works. Or not when it doesn't.
It's up to you.

The key is to work with people who communicate well from the beginning rather than the low ball bidders or incoherent spec writers. Oh, and keeping your project specs, and bid proposals short and simple.

If you're a coder, take the time to read and understand the spec. If it's unclear, ask for clarification before making a commitment to work on the project.

If you're a buyer, it's a good idea to read feedback and make sure that the coder understands exactly what it is that you want him to do. It also helps not to get too friendly with your RAC coders. After all, it is a business relationship, and it's easy to offend or get offended when conversations stray too much from the task at hand.

Just some thoughts.