How can people on getacoder.com offer such insane low prices?

Question

GetACoder is one of this freelancer job auction web sites.

And everytime im looking there i see ridiculous low prices.

I mean even a good programmer from india gets more then 500US$ per month and i found people bidding to "i need a clone of " at 1000$.

Am i such a bad and slow programmer that i don't think i can't do this carefully in two man months?

Does it makes sense to place higher bids on services like this? Since i'm an expat from Germany living in cheap 3rd world Thailand i'm willing to work for as low as 20 US$/hour (with 20 years of programming and knowledge of a dozend languages from ix86 assembler via Ruby, PHP and C++ to eiffel).

EDIT: i highlighted my question that maybe someone who ever tried to get jobs there might be able to answer. I know that people in china and india work for low money if they are absolute beginners in programming.

Answer 1

Mostly, I think it has to do with a cost of living difference. At least, this is what I always equated it too.

For example, for me to "live", I need something like $1800 a month just to pay my mortgage. I live in the Chicagoland area. If I move away, I might be able to get a equivalent sized place for $1000 a month. In other countries, the cost of living is different than in the US, UK and other such places. Ultimately, $1 to some people is different than to me (and presumably you).

Then of course, there is under bidding; either accidental or on purpose. Some may do it as a side thing and do not care about profit. They find it to be a challenge. Me? I prefer open source development for this type of thing.

Answer 2

You get what you pay for, if the poster is willing to accept a ridiculously low bid they were never looking for quality work to begin with and never would have paid for it anyway. They should have a general idea on what something will cost to create correctly and bids within that range give them more confidence you are on the same page as them.

Answer 3

I suspect most are one of these situations:

• People with very low cost of living situations - a 14 year old living with his/her parents in India could work for pennies an hour.
• People with existing scripts they've written that they just copy and change a few configuration settings on.
• People who massively overestimate their programming abilities.
• People who massively underestimate the task at hand.

Answer 4

Two Points:

First, lots of bids are made and accepted on rentacoder, but that doesn't mean they are fulfilled to the satisfaction of either party. Even if someone pays to fulfill the contract, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are satisfied and it doesn't mean they have a quality product that will stand up to user criticism or high bandwidth.

Second, while you may be willing to work for $20 an hour (a very low rate for a developer in the U.S. or Europe), there are lots of developers in India and China willing to work for $3 or $6. This is, I think, mostly where the cost difference comes from. More over, there are many companies that aggregate contractors from Chindia and are able to offer an entire team of developers/designers for a flat rate of $10-$15 / hour.

In sum, you definitely aren't "just slow" and you aren't over priced by Western standards either. You just have to find a market that is looking for the services you have to offer. Find what differentiates you from your competitors and be sure your prospects know about it.

Answer 5

Try this: ask for bids on a program that can determine if any java program halts or not. You'll get bidders.

Answer 6

I don't know if this is still true, but it used to be that a lot of the people bidding on these contracts are just trying to get their foot in the door. Once they have the clients attention the bid evaporates and a more realistic number magically appears.

Answer 7

When I was 13-15 years old I used to look at sites like that, since I didn't know how else to get a programming job. I don't think I ever bid on anything, because the prices where too low. 'Nuff said.

Answer 8

Of course, if someone asks for something that exists in the open source world, the picture changes entirely. If someone asks for an implementation of a word processor with most of the features of Microsoft Word and doesn't know about the existance of OpenOffice, then you file the serial numbers off OpenOffice, compile it for them, collect your thousand dollars, and five hours later you're looking for the next assignment.

Ethical? No. But you've delivered what was asked for.

You could probably make a good living telling people where they could get what they need from open source sources, for the low price of 200$ a project.

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All that aside, I'll leave it as an exercise how you can make money writing software for people for free. Hint : it's even less ethical.

Answer 9

I have read many complaints about getacoder that imply that the company may not always act in good faith, and they furthermore have shielded their identity by using a private registration with their domain registrar. I decided to do an investigation of their identity as a service to the computing community, in the case that someone wants to pursue a claim against this company. Their primary servers are located in the UK and France (run by OVH), but they are a US corporation.

Name: Getacoder LLC Registered in: Wilmington, DE Owned and operated by: Valis Group, Inc 501 Silverside Rd Suite 105 Wilmington, DE 19809 Phone: 302-792-0175

Answer 10

Getacoder isn't paying the programmers in a timely manner. We released funds for a completed project more than 3 weeks ago. The programmer hasn't been paid. (Most other sites pay the programmers within 3 business days.)

Hint: 1. Use getacoder and you could look bad to programmers and you wouldn't know why. 2. Use getacoder and lose your $$$$ because at that rate they will go under (they wouldn't be the first to fail.) 3. getacoder is far more intent on keeping programmers from clients until money has been paid than making sure the work is done and that the programmers are competent. (We were forced to pay for a piece of programming crap that wasn't usable or installed.)