Rent-A-Coder (RAC) is a site where people looking to have some coding done go to meet coders for hire. yes I did just explain the obvious in case you were not paying attention.
When I first used the site back in 2006 to get some “over my ability” coding work done, as far as I could tell, it was host to strictly code related projects. Slowly but surely as time’s gone on I’ve seen more and more schill jobs posted (go brag about my product/site/whatever on 30 different sites) as well as freelance writing/editing job, mainly from people who know fuck all about the internet, but bought into one of those infomercial “make $10,000 a month from your computer” scheme, selling stupid shit to people who don’t need it and cannot afford it, but will pay $19.95 for it anyway.
RAC works like this.
I need to have a 5 page web site created. I provide the content for each page, and the coder comes up with an elegant, cohesive, functional web site. I determine the bid range ( less than $100, more than $100, more than $500, etc.) and/or the max bid amount. So lets say I post this job, with a max payment amount of $150.
What happens now is bidders(coders) from around the world see I posted the job, determine that they can do it within the requirements I provided, and they bid on the job. Some people will bid $75 up to the full $150. Some people will bid considerably lower… like say $15 or $20.
Either by deadline for bidding, or before, I choose the person I think is most capable of 1) being able to understand what I am after (meaning can easily comprehend English,) 2) completing the task satisfactorily, and 3) do all this for the right price.
So anyway, when I started using RAC as a buyer of services, I paid little mind to where the people bidding on my jobs were from. Not that I didn’t notice, but I didn’t let that influence my payment offer/bid acceptance. If I thought the job could get done for $100USD, that is what I was willing to pay. Maybe the American breaks even, or the Russian just made half his usual monthly wage in just 2 days.
I wasn’t really out to exploit the system.
So anyway, the wife just got her social security number. While in the process of studying for her MCAT, she figured she could get paid for studying/practicing, seeing as she needs to develop her skills for the writing section on the test. She comes to me saying “Baby, I need $100 for this site.” Naturally I’m like “yeah right… what bloody site is this?!” It’s some freelance writing job site that requires job seekers to pay an annual fee. I tell her that since RAC just takes a commission from the jobs, lets give that a try first and see how you like it.
While she’s diligently out there bidding on jobs, I revisit the idea of being a coder too. It beats standing around doing nothing. I bid on some jobs here and there, and while my bids are not at my typical hourly rate, they are at what I’d consider reasonable.
One guy has had his mail server hijacked and is now blacklisted across the board as being a spammer. So he wants someone to a) secure the server to prevent this from happening again, and b) get him de-listed as a spammer. While I don’t expect everyone reading this to understand what that all entails, while not very complicated, it is VERY time consuming. Finding where he’s listed, contacting the list or ISP to get him de-listed. Checking back 48 hours later to see if it’s been resolved. Contacting again if it’s not. Checking again in 48 hours, contacting if it’s not, again and again and again and possibly having to do this for around 100 well known blacklists? Pfft! My bid of $150 lost to someone from Turkey (good luck with that being secure!) for $30. Nice!
Same on some website work. My bid lost out to someone from Eastern Europe willing to do it for 1/10 of mine.
It’s bollocks.
So the wife comes back all distraught too. She’s loosing jobs to people who are willing to research and write 500 word articles for $3. One bid she did end up winning was for three 500 word articles… for $25. If I can call it a flaw, she’s a research freak. Where I would do the bare minimum and plagiarize 50%, she gets 100 books from the library and reads them cover to cover before ever putting pen to paper. Between research and writing, she spent every bit for 40 hours on these college-graduate quality research papers… or did this for $0.60 an hour… considerably less than the average hourly wage in many Eastern European countries.
It’s bollocks!
It really is exploitation. Voluntary exploitation, but exploitation none-the-less.
