Your experience with elance.com or peopleperhour.com
Your experience with elance.com or peopleperhour.com
I used to do a lot of work from Cambodia, remotely, through elance.com and peopleperhour.com, but over the last two years I noticed that the client base over there got substantially worse. Not only their projects are getting increasingly more stupid, but they also increasingly want the job done for peanuts. Nowadays, I work on projects for two main, stable clients whom I found elsewhere. Therefore, I am certainly no longer dependent on elance or pph for work or for gigs. Of course, no matter how stupid their projects and no matter how low their financial packages have become, elance and pph are obviously still orders of magnitude more interesting and better-paying than local companies. But then again, the degradation over the years is striking. Has anybody else noticed that too?
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- My Only Friend is my Computer
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Freelancing has been going to shit since early 2008, when the world economy really began to contract. Lots of unemployed folks trying to start their own businesses and are trying to get their dumb ideas developed for next-to-nothing. Tire-kickers and unrealistic expectations. Most of these new "web entrepreneurs" are naive and think they can hire you to create a successful Facebook clone for a few hundred dollars. Lots of "sweat equity" offers in return for developing their lame ideas. Also, anything web related is going to be bid downward, as there are too many "web developers" these days. Even the junior high school kids throughout the world are learning Ruby, Python, jQuery etc and many can even develop Android and IOS apps. I gave up on freelancing in early 2008. Why would I want to compete with some Ukrainian hacker kid who lives in his mother's basement?
That's like, your opinion, man.
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- MerkinMaker
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It's because the Smart kids on Elance are becoming increasingly specialized, therefore increasingly efficient.
I see accounts there which are obviously small businesses who ONLY do something as niche as covert PDF books for Kindle and iTunes submission.
I've only ever been on the buying side of Elance, but what I can see is that now the only way to be successful is to be super niche, super efficient and super cheap. The Jack of all trades simply can't compete in terms of price or experience profile of a specialist.
I see accounts there which are obviously small businesses who ONLY do something as niche as covert PDF books for Kindle and iTunes submission.
I've only ever been on the buying side of Elance, but what I can see is that now the only way to be successful is to be super niche, super efficient and super cheap. The Jack of all trades simply can't compete in terms of price or experience profile of a specialist.
@Walter White "Also, anything web related is going to be bid downward, as there are too many "web developers" these days."
If you agree to work on location in a developed country, there is absolutely no problem at all to find interesting and well-paying gigs or jobs in "web development". But working on location, means not being in Cambodia. For me, it is a solution that I would only consider in extreme cases, if everything else fails. I've been in Cambodia for 10+ years, and I have never had to "go back" in order to make money. I've always found equivalent solutions online. But then again, it could still happen, if I am very unlucky.
Concerning "web developer", I call myself: a programmer. I cannot identify myself with something like a data format, such as HTML, and then call myself a "web developer". I obviously use HTML regularly, just like I use a lot of other formats. For example, I regularly use the CSV format (Comma-Separated Values). Would I therefore call myself a CSV programmer?
@Walter White "Why would I want to compete with some Ukrainian hacker kid who lives in his mother's basement?"
In my experience, if the Ukranian guy is really good, he may even charge higher hourly rate than me. Seriously, if he is good, he will also always be busy. So, how could he be competition to me? While being always busy? Frankly, I never experience competition from good programmers from anywhere in the world, because they are generally always overbooked. The bad programmers are also not really a problem, because they cannot do the job. The kind of clients that I work for, can easily see this. So, these bad programmers are also not competition. If I accidentally end up in a situation where there is competition, I will be quickly gone, because it is clear that there is something fishy with entire setup. It is impossible that the client is lining me up against good programmers, because if these programmers were any good, they would think exactly the same like me, and withdraw their interest for the job. So, the client is rather trying to line me up against bad programmers, just to talk down my hourly rate. In that case, my answer is that he should pick someone from that crowd, instead of me.
@starkmonster: "the only way to be successful is to be super niche, super efficient and super cheap.¨
I agree with "super niche". I accidentally solved the problem by mastering particular areas in mathematics that not everybody is willing (or capable?) of dealing with, such as compiler construction, cryptography, and (universal) algebraic structures in general. I say "accidentally", because In fact, I used to do these things as a hobby. Over the last few years, however, it has become a fixture in most of my projects. Quants (also programmers) who implement algorithmic trading for investment banks are probably the most sought after and best paid programmers around. So yes, in general, there are a good number of subdivisions in math that pay off really well for a programmer.
I don't agree with "super cheap". There are two reasons for that. If a client insists on cheap hourly rates, it probably means that he has no money. If the client has no money, there is undoubtedly a reason for that. The second reason is that the budget should not matter. If the budget matters, the project inevitably does not. How much did it cost to develop Google Search? Answer: Who the hell cares? It's worth 65+ billion now. So, who talks about how much Google Search has cost to develop? The question is simply irrelevant. Seriously, if the budget matters, the client is not aiming at something that may have a large payoff. At the same time, there are enough projects around, where they are trying to build something meaningful and that will have an impressive upside, if their plan succeeds. So, why pick the kind of projects for which they have little budget?
In my experience, there are less than 1 out of 5000 projects on elance.com or peopleperhour.com that make sense in any language on the planet. This has always been the case. What surprises me, is that it is even getting worse nowadays.
If you agree to work on location in a developed country, there is absolutely no problem at all to find interesting and well-paying gigs or jobs in "web development". But working on location, means not being in Cambodia. For me, it is a solution that I would only consider in extreme cases, if everything else fails. I've been in Cambodia for 10+ years, and I have never had to "go back" in order to make money. I've always found equivalent solutions online. But then again, it could still happen, if I am very unlucky.
Concerning "web developer", I call myself: a programmer. I cannot identify myself with something like a data format, such as HTML, and then call myself a "web developer". I obviously use HTML regularly, just like I use a lot of other formats. For example, I regularly use the CSV format (Comma-Separated Values). Would I therefore call myself a CSV programmer?
@Walter White "Why would I want to compete with some Ukrainian hacker kid who lives in his mother's basement?"
In my experience, if the Ukranian guy is really good, he may even charge higher hourly rate than me. Seriously, if he is good, he will also always be busy. So, how could he be competition to me? While being always busy? Frankly, I never experience competition from good programmers from anywhere in the world, because they are generally always overbooked. The bad programmers are also not really a problem, because they cannot do the job. The kind of clients that I work for, can easily see this. So, these bad programmers are also not competition. If I accidentally end up in a situation where there is competition, I will be quickly gone, because it is clear that there is something fishy with entire setup. It is impossible that the client is lining me up against good programmers, because if these programmers were any good, they would think exactly the same like me, and withdraw their interest for the job. So, the client is rather trying to line me up against bad programmers, just to talk down my hourly rate. In that case, my answer is that he should pick someone from that crowd, instead of me.
@starkmonster: "the only way to be successful is to be super niche, super efficient and super cheap.¨
I agree with "super niche". I accidentally solved the problem by mastering particular areas in mathematics that not everybody is willing (or capable?) of dealing with, such as compiler construction, cryptography, and (universal) algebraic structures in general. I say "accidentally", because In fact, I used to do these things as a hobby. Over the last few years, however, it has become a fixture in most of my projects. Quants (also programmers) who implement algorithmic trading for investment banks are probably the most sought after and best paid programmers around. So yes, in general, there are a good number of subdivisions in math that pay off really well for a programmer.
I don't agree with "super cheap". There are two reasons for that. If a client insists on cheap hourly rates, it probably means that he has no money. If the client has no money, there is undoubtedly a reason for that. The second reason is that the budget should not matter. If the budget matters, the project inevitably does not. How much did it cost to develop Google Search? Answer: Who the hell cares? It's worth 65+ billion now. So, who talks about how much Google Search has cost to develop? The question is simply irrelevant. Seriously, if the budget matters, the client is not aiming at something that may have a large payoff. At the same time, there are enough projects around, where they are trying to build something meaningful and that will have an impressive upside, if their plan succeeds. So, why pick the kind of projects for which they have little budget?
In my experience, there are less than 1 out of 5000 projects on elance.com or peopleperhour.com that make sense in any language on the planet. This has always been the case. What surprises me, is that it is even getting worse nowadays.
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