

U.S freelancers pretend to be from other countries to get jobs - noodle
http://blog.cubeofm.com/us-freelancers-are-pretending-to-be-from-phil

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ryanwaggoner
If they can't get jobs for more than $200 they're either terrible programmers,
or they need to look for work on places other than rentacoder. Probably both.

EDIT: To be clear, I meant to say that if they can't get jobs making more than
$200 _for two weeks of work_ , they're either terrible or need to look
elsewhere for work. Further, I'll put my money where my mouth is: if you want
to make $5 / hr and you can write good code, email me and I'll give you all
the work you can handle. I'm guessing I won't have any takers.

~~~
markpercival
Yeah I'm completely perplexed by this. I'm not questioning the guys article,
but there's got to be more to it then we are reading. $200 for a two week
project is $5 an hour if you only work on it 4 hours a day.

Even in the current economy any halfway decent programmer should be able to
pull in more than minimum wage.

~~~
keefe
I'm questioning the guys article, I think it's either an anomaly or a
fabrication.

~~~
olefoo
I have the same reaction to many of the items maxklein posts. And he has said
in the past that he engineers his postings for the effect on the audience...

That said I know more than a few people who use rent-a-coder or odesk as a way
to motivate themselves when learning a new language or toolkit.

~~~
hga
That's a _brilliant_ concept: nothing teaches you something like a real
project, getting paid, even a pittance, helps all the more, and you can put it
on your resume honestly.

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rwhitman
We are looking at the beginning of the "World Wage".

In virtual labor, the effect of the recession is going to be a major
fluctuation seeking equilibrium between the NYC/CA USA-based $100/hr coders
and the Everywhere Else-based $15/hr coders. As people get better at virtual
work and clients & employers become more conscious of the value deflation of
quality code work people in the US will start fetching less and less and
people outside the US will start fetching more and more, until they meet in
value. Watch.

~~~
patio11
This presupposes that you're selling the same hour in NYC and Bangalore. (i.e.
that when you measure what is produced, it is equivalent.)

I do not live in either a $15/hr or $100/hr region, but I've managed people
from both, and it has not been my experience that the hour sold is the same as
the hour bought.

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mark_l_watson
I see the logic in taking a small job just to keep busy. I did the same thing
right after the dot com bust 8 years ago: I took a task from an Indian company
to do a Sharepoint clone in Java at a fairly low rate with the understanding
that I could set their work aside for a few days at a time when better paying
work came along. I never regretted that decision, partially because the guy
who hired me was a one time McKinsey manager and he was cool to work with. I
live in the mountains in Arizona, BTW, so I do a lot of remote work.

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motters
I suppose that if you're an unemployed programmer in the US doing something
like this might at least keep you engaged and your skills up to date, even if
the money isn't enough to pay the bills.

~~~
icefox
And or learn something new while getting paid to do it.

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dennisgorelik
May be these developers are able to re-package their pre-existing code in
couple of hours? Then these $200 are turned into $100/hour which looks like a
reasonable business model.

~~~
yummyfajitas
That's very likely. It's also possible the jobs are easy enough that they just
do it in fewer hours.

I was once offered a $3000 contract (at $20/hour) for a project that amounted
to stringing together a few generic views and writing a python wrapper around
some C++ code.

The job didn't work out for various reasons (I offered to build on spec, they
wanted a low hourly rate). If I were telecommuting, I could have spent a day
or two building it, wait 2 weeks before delivering it, and pocket $3000 for a
days work.

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imasr
I live in Argentina, and here companies are crazy about hiring IT people, no
matter what your skills are, and most of them do offshore work for the US,
paying barely standard fees here and cashing big there. Don't think have to
say who wins and who loses with this practice. Have been thinking lately about
this and believe one solution would be to equalize developer fees 'round the
world, rise the bar and compete on performance. I know it sounds crazy, but
have some ideas on things we could try to work this out. I'll post them here
if you think it worths anything.

~~~
maxklein
Why don't you start such a company then? Seems like an opportunity. You have
access to a pool of people who need developers right here on this site.

~~~
GFischer
I'm not the above poster, but I'm in Uruguay... and, to answer your question,
I probably will :)

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pyre
I guess the real question is: Are these people really able to take enough
projects at the cheaper price level to survive? How about thrive?

If they are only 'getting by' at the cheaper level, then it's a fair
assumption that they will move on to bigger and better things if they ever
come along. If they are able to thrive, then assumptions about the economics
of taking these cheaper jobs is grossly misunderstood.

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gexla
These people should just move to the countries they are pretending to be from
then. $200 goes a lot farther in the Philippines than it does in the U.S.

~~~
joshwa
That's one of the reasons I'm moving to southwestern China this fall. Making
freelance/telecommute USD will enable me to live quite nicely in Kunming.

(PS if anyone needs an experienced Rails/Java/Python/whatever-you-need-me-to-
learn coder and can deal with a 9-12hr time difference, my contact info is in
my profile)

~~~
andrewljohnson
When you are selling yourself in the future, absolutely do not call out a
negative in your ad.

The number one rule of advertising is be positive, always.

~~~
jergason
I am a bit confused. What does calling out a negative mean and where was he
doing it? Or are you referring to the OP?

~~~
andrewljohnson
He pointed out there was a 12-hour time difference, which would be
inconvenient.

~~~
KWD
Not really. It's kind of expected when off-shoring.

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Daniel_Newby
I am _so_ reminded of this quote from _Snow Crash_ :

"... once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and
smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer
would consider to be prosperity–y'know what? There's only four things we do
better than anyone else

music

movies

microcode (software)

high-speed pizza delivery"

