

Does RentACoder.com Work? - nsoonhui
http://itscommonsensestupid.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-rentacodercom-work.html

======
iigs
I've also never used rentacoder, but my observations, and the observations of
others that I've heard leveled against it rarely stem from "the price is too
good to be true".

Commonly the problem is that a client requests a specific attribute, let's say
a local Win32 client, and the responses are almost all form letters that are
clearly pitching the dev team's PHP/JSP/ASP experience: something clearly not
useful for the client's needs. Can they do the job? Probably, in the same way
the client could pick up a book on C++ development and figure it out himself.

Another thing I've seen that makes me doubt their success is the opposite
extreme: clients give _hopelessly_ vague requirements ("I want a facebook-like
service") and people come back with "We have a lot of experience with PHP, it
will be $1234". How do they know how much time it will take to satisfy the
client? They don't even really know what he wants! What are they going to do
when they run over budget? As a customer, how can I be sure they'll fix things
after they think they've done a fair amount of work for their quoted dollar
amount?

Lastly, some other people have also seen problems and posted trolls to those
sites, asking people to provide solutions to the halting problem or travelling
salesman problems: obvious impossible problems to anyone with basic comp-sci
understanding (I'm not formally comp-sci educated, so I don't want to sound
like I'm coming from on-high here), but people will reply with bids for these
programs! The general problem is a perception of a lack of quality, and the
specific problem is RAC and other similar sites don't offer any easy way to
verify that the coders in question meet any sort of quality bar.

~~~
joshhart
There are things like Topcoder which use competitions to build components and
other projects. Topcoder's business is a lot different but I could see them
doing a rental of sorts. Seeing someone's past history and rating gives a
great insight to their expertise.

------
gengstrand
Exactly, RAC is all about the race to the bottom. It's like buying a car for
$50. Yea, you're only out $50 but you most probably won't get a car that will
take you where you need to go. It's for people who are already convinced that
they are going to get ripped off so they might as well get ripped of for less.

