Is freelancer.com a cesspool? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Dankoozy
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 10:50:58 am
content: I only signed up a few days ago and all the jobs seem to be like:"Make me an automated AI trading bot so I don't have to work anymore. Budget $1000Do my college assignment for me so I can spend a few nights partying instead. Budget: A couple of Indian Rupeedo any good ones turn up periodically or is it literally all cess?

author: AndyBeez
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 11:42:28 am
content: Yes, it's one of many budget turd digesters. Go where the grown ups go. LinkedIn, Reddit or even Github, for example.There is a similar people for hire site where paid opportunities include sitting other people's SAT exams. I even came across one guy advertising Oxford University entrance exam passes or your $1000usd back. It makes one ponder just how many useless rich kid morons are in well paid engineering jobs because they paid someone else to do their homework projects a decade ago? This said, if you pay $10 for an RF amplifier design, then expect a $10 RF amplifier designer.There are similar posts on this forum too; I know nothing about electronics so someone write me now an Arduino script to fly a drone to the ISS and deliver pizza as this is my summer project that must be completed by next week... ... Why is no one doing this for me?... ... Bump.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 12:08:21 pm
content: I started working on rentacoder.com back in the day, when I was a student, before they rebranded it as vworker.com and then sold it to freelancer.comFreelancer monetized it after a couple of years or so after they bought it ... and all i had left was a badge of sorts to show that it's old rentacoder account, which lots of clients don't understand what it means. Basically, all the "reputation" I built and tons of 10 out of 10 I got for clients got lost, and my account was suddenly just as good as the average joe from any random countryThey started charging for all kinds of things, you basically have to pay now to offer your services to someone so I gave up, have a full time job now and less time to deal with it.When I started as a student, I did small Visual Basic 6 programs, utilities (import excel sheets do some mass processing, filter duplicates, remove invalid phone numbers or blacklisted numbers stored in some other sqlite / text file etc stuff like this) , small games, and more recently (maybe up until 2-3 years ago) did audio transcription, subtitles, video editing (preparing podcasts and small advertising clips) and other things.It's harder these days, and there's loads of people that pretend they're programmers to win jobs but basically win jobs on freelancer then turn around to upwork or other websites or assign job to other freelancers they have recurring projects with and pay them outside the freelancer website. (person located in US or UK asks 25$ an hour for a project then turns around and offers 10$ an hour for a Romanian/Bulgarian/Ukrainian student)If you're lucky, you can score a client that pays well - in my case several times I had clients I worked for several years in a row, and they paid me decent amount of money, every couple weeks, outside the website (directly through paypal or through mailed checks) ... but it's really tough until you have some reputation, until you get established and can afford to be more picky.When I checked out Upwork last, it was full of transcription jobs and market research jobs (here's a list of 10k websites, go to each website contact page and take email address, phone and fill excel spreadsheet, 1$ for 100 links ... stuff like that) and AI/OCR traininig jobs (1$ for manually drawing a border around an object in 100 pictures so that their optical recognition software can improve)

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 12:47:47 pm
content: Quote from: AndyBeez on August 05, 2022, 11:42:28 amAlmost exactly zero, I'd expect. If you can't even pass the entrance exam, you won't last 5 minutes on the actual course.

author: Miyuki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 01:06:16 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on August 05, 2022, 12:47:47 pmPlenty of Noname universities have a way to pay for a degree. It is common all over the world.But those people do not do engineering jobs then. Maybe some small minority.But it is good for a nice warm place in some government offices, and various management positions where you can show how many degrees you have.

author: pardo-bsso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 04:03:36 pm
content: Sadly yes.And the "articles" they keep sending me are even worse.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 07:13:16 pm
content: Freelancing web sites are now full of low-bid jobs. That was to be expected since they are open to the whole word and certainly people from the US or Europe will ask for more money than people from Pakistan. The competition is gigantic. Not that this is completely fair competition of course, but clients are just human that and fall for a few stupid criterions.Yes among those jobs, there are students asking to get their homework done too. Well, to be honest, we have that on a regular basis on this forum too, and they expect to get that done for free. It's cheaper than even a few rupees right?Landing decent projects on those platforms has become pretty tough, especially if you're just starting now.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 10:27:32 pm
content: Upwork seems... passable. I've found a number of worthwhile jobs there. Not enough in the EE space, I think, to make a living, but as a supplement to existing clients, and new from other sources, it seems helpful. You do occasionally see clients looking for long-term employees, too, so even the low yield might pay off once in a while (if that's a kind of role you're interested in, of course).Again, international, so you get the mix ranging from cheap to dumb to surely exploitative (you want WHAT for $50?), with some reasonable proposals mixed in. Probably around 5-10% of US-based or western jobs are worth bidding on, and you can win maybe 10-20% of those if you're good. Takes several months to build a reputation; not really something you can grow while working full time, expect to need significant free time to put towards it (say, when you're between jobs).Tim

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2022, 11:32:52 pm
content: QuoteThey become "managers." Cause they already have "experience!"

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2022, 05:53:54 am
content: How could you say that about that wonderful resource for start-ups, students and forum members, our one and only @peter-h has a couple of projects there:https://www.freelancer.com/projects/c-programming/Implementing-streaming-data-receive-34286369/detailsThe quality bids that he received will guarantee that he'll receive the best code for the moneyActually I've made a troll programmer account and start bidding unreasonable amounts and copy-paste the most ludicrous bid texts, endless fun.Cheers,DC1MC

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 02:29:10 pm
content: Haha that is funnyIIRC, almost nobody ever even understood that project. I wrote it myself, with the help of a colleague (in E. Europe) and a French guy on FL who wrote some great Javascript.I posted about this thread topic herehttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/freelancer-com-can-one-post-here-instead-if-looking-for-someone-to-write-code/msg4433713/#msg4433713but from the POV of the other end (looking for coders).FL is a bloody nightmare. Only a few % of the people on there do stuff other than website scraping and such, and today's ultra fashionable languages. And 95% of the bidders never read the spec; most of them are auto-bidding based on tags. The ones from the Indian subcontinent are nearly all doing that; they never seem to learn.And when I find somebody, their English is usually so poor it is impossible to communicate.I got a great job done by one Ukrainian, but while he is obviously extremely clever (it was a GUI win32 prog in C/C++) he has not been able to understand anything else I described. Eventually I got another job done, by two people abortively and a 3rd to finish it, and I'd say 99% of the problem was poor English. I did a good written spec but most didn't read it properly.What I now realise is that FL expertise is mostly in common web client areas, a little bit in server-side, a bit in PC apps (VC/C++), probably similar in phone apps, and zero in embedded.QuoteThank you for your positive contribution.QuoteI take it that is a joke.Linkedin is for corporate ladder climbers. Originally it was for contract programmers who could not look for the next contract while they were doing the current ($1000/day) one.Reddit is for people who have no life except sit on the internet.Github is mostly nonworking code which somebody dumped there before moving on. It can be useful because some of the stuff almost works, but still usually has many loose ends which need fixing.The typical pattern is that the Pakistanis quote $20 and never read the spec, the Ukrainians quote $50 and read 90% of the spec (and tend to vanish when it you want it finished properly) and the Europeans quote $250 and may be good but I am not going to chuck $250 at it to find out. The most I am willing to lose is $100.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 02:33:17 pm
content: $100 would get you an hour and a half of a good contractor's time in the UK. What on earth do you expect to get done in that time? Engineers are expensive - pay peanuts, get monkeys as the saying goes.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 02:36:51 pm
content: QuoteTrue in the 1st World, but that's because the guy has a Porsche Cayenne parked outside, his wife has a horsebox and 2 horses, 2 kids in private schools, sky high stress levels all around, and you have to pay for it somehow.Most of the earth's surface is not like that - thankfully! And FLshouldcreate an opportunity for talented people in other places to earn some money. It is just not well set up and has been packed with useless bidders.And the Brit contract programmer may be good, or not... in big companies, amazingly incompetent people can carry on for years.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 03:21:29 pm
content: Maybe the contractor has the Cayenne because his work is in demand and he can charge what he likes for it. But in reality, most contractors I know are just ordinary middle class people. Their rates are higher than salaried positions because there's more intermittency. You need a lot of savings to run through a bad patch of no contracts, plus you get no holiday time, no life insurance, no sick pay, you need an accountant (or time to do that yourself), and have to buy all your kit yourself.And the reality is, if you're a top engineer in India, China, wherever, you either go and get a good job at a company there - and wages for top engineers are comparable to the West in big cities in Asia now - or you emigrate. You don't sit on Freelancer.com hoping to get £150 from Peter to write some code which takes way more time than they expect and doesn't work first time.You're essentially asking, why can't I find anyone to work for peanuts? If you want really cheap work - you need to do it yourself.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 03:34:09 pm
content: Yes but you would say this - because youneed1st World money.To you, FL is unwelcome competition which undermines your status, income, etc.There are lots of good people who don't need 1st World money.QuoteNo, he's got the Cayenne because he lives and works in the 1st World where expenses are very high and thus income is very high, and expectations (I mean his wife's expectations) are very high. And everybody is in the same boat.QuoteI doubt that is the case, but in any case there are very few people in Asia on FL.QuoteNo,youare saying I am asking that, but that is not what I am saying at all.I have successfully used FL but also wasted a fair bit of time on there. It's probably not dissimilar to internet dating - mostly drossIt is ok for well definable little projects, in common-expertise areas like I listed above. I am sure you can spend time on there and find more of my projects, but you probably won't know which ones workedThere are some very good people out there. I've seen stuff delivered in 2hrs which I know damn well would take an hourly paid UK guy a couple of days.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 04:08:46 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on October 13, 2022, 02:33:17 pm"Good"? I've exchanged a handful of emails for more than that...I guess I picked the right major after all, but, sheesh?...Is programming really that bad paying? I'm sure my software friends aren't getting that lowballed. Or... but, surely corporate doesn't just randomly pay 5 times more than they need to, right?Like, offhand I'd guess spending a solid day (8hr, easily $500-1000) doing what Peter is looking for, granted I don't work in that particular field (networking, win32 devices) and haven't seen the precise spec. And that's if you can find someone with that exact experience. Lacking that, maybe figure triple the time, for having to look up all the APIs, rediscover their pitfalls, collect enough devices to put together some manner of testing (I mean, VCPs and such should be pretty generic, but give or take scope, and weirdness, and worst cases and all, y'know--?). Which, personally, being familiar with the language but hardly anything on the APIs, would be about all I could do for example, and, I guess Peter is in a similar position. That's going to be true of a lot of other people as well, and to find otherwise will be relatively rare (like, < 1/10th the pool we're in, kind of a thing?). And, basic economic principles, y'know, would at least seem to suggest...that's worth some kind of premium?So, if your time's not worth that much, just read up on it all and do it yourself. Maybe you can find a contractor in a low-CoL country that's slam-dunk ready to go skilled, and maybe you can get it done for a pittance (or, maybe it doesn't work at all, and much back-and-forth is required..), but clearly it's not worth spending several days searching for that. Then it's a matter of, if you have a pressing need (or equivalently, the opportunity cost of needing to work on other things and not be distracted by all this searching and managing), how much can be budgeted for it, and if it covers a competent subject-matter expert, well, that's good value, and if not, then sucks but that's how it is. Right..?Tim

author: HwAoRrDk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 04:59:24 pm
content: I think it's just a huge amount of luck if you're able to find a good freelancer for low rates, but they do exist.At a former employer, I used to work with some contractors in Cuba of all places. I have no idea how my boss found them, but they were great - very competent, excellent English language skills, always keen to dive into a project.(Funny story about that: one of the guys had a deliverable due by a deadline, but three days had gone past and no-one had heard anything from him. When my boss finally got in touch, he was quite angry with him. The guy said sorry but he had been dealing with the roof of his house blowing off during the recent tropical hurricane! My boss didn't know about the storm, felt like a right idiot, and apologised profusely.)I've also dealt with (not as hirer, but as a co-contractor) other freelancers from various places in eastern Europe that claimed all sorts on their bios, but didn't seem to understand much English, didn't understand the project, and couldn't deliver and were generally rude and abrasive throughout their failed tenure.It's pretty much like buying a lottery ticket. Lots of money wasted in general, but occasionally you win.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 06:13:24 pm
content: Some people have an elastic sense of ethics.A good freelancer for low rates? Sure a lot of guys from poor countries have dead-low rates compared to westerners. Taking advantage of that, some may call this exploitation. Others will get a clear conscience by claiming that it's actually a favor to those poor engineers. Which is an argument that has been used extensively for exploiting people. So, pick your side.Now, ethics aside, for sure many of those low-rate engineers are mediocre, are sometimes difficult to work with due to cultural differences (you can't do much about that), and many tend to give low-quality work, even when they have decent skills, just because they are playing the numbers to manage to get a good income with ultra-low rates (even in their home countries, their low rates are often not enough to make a good living without taking more work than they can deliver with quality.) But they do use those low rates to attract clients.So anyway, if you want quality work, pay for it.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 13, 2022, 08:41:57 pm
content: Quote from: peter-h on October 13, 2022, 03:34:09 pmIf they exist, they're damn hard to find. As you've clearly discovered.About the only people I would class in the category of "cheap" and "good" are very eager and sharp students doing an internship. Find the right one, and they can spearhead a project with just a little guidance and hand-holding. And at the same time you're helping someone develop their career. But these guys don't stick around unless you start paying them commensurate with their experience and knowledge, and there's certainly not an endless pool of them.Quote from: peter-h on October 13, 2022, 03:34:09 pmNo, labour is quite flexible in engineering, and it moves around. So it's priced fairly, because it's in demand everywhere. The average annual salary in Beijing for an EE is 377,000 CNY  according to the Internet - which is £46,000. That's really not far off what someone mid-level would take in the UK - maybe a little lower but hardly devastatingly lower. By the way, CoL in a big city in Asia is pretty high. I have a friend who lives in Beijing and her apartment rent is basically the same as London rent for similar space. Advantage is taxation is lower and food/services are dirt cheap (meal for six at a restaurant - ~£35)So again - where are all of these cheap engineers?https://worldsalaries.com/average-electrical-engineer-salary-in-beijing/china/

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 10:22:59 am
content: Like I said, that's the 1st World POV.A lot of coders hate Freelancer.com.To be fair I suspect the people on there have to deal with a lot of d1ckhead customers, which would explain the abrupt manners of some on there.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 10:45:22 am
content: Here's a typical project, with price in Indian rupees (ca. 400EUR after fees), original spelling has been kept:QuoteAnd I know a German company that spend more than 2.000.000EUR for a charging point development, if only they have thought about freelancer.comCheers,DC1MC

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 11:24:26 am
content: It may be a typical project but it isn't one for which FL works.Actually, embedded is about the last thing you can get done on FL.QuoteIf they really spent 2M on the embedded hardware and software, it's no wonder they need so much gasThat's completely ridiculous.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 11:29:46 am
content: Quote from: peter-h on October 14, 2022, 11:24:26 amThat was all the development, including HW, SW and certification, I've heard that in UK they're using RPi's for the control board, in DE that will get laughed out of the door, the HW and SW has to be real secure, like Common Criteria secure. Of course, if one wants to make something that just clicks a relay and a timer when the charging cable is inserted and display the price and time, it may be feasible.I think they'll enjoy if you'll bin on their project.Cheers,DC1MC

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 12:53:03 pm
content: I am sure that's BS. Typical post brexit BS.Common Criteria is complete BS for a charger.If you are doing credit card / contactless transactions, that's completely different.Anyway, nobody on FL will do that. I did for a time wonder if anyone there had any embedded experience (specifically LWIP etc, which practically nobody on EEVBLOG knew about) but while some had worked on products containing it, nobody really knew. Well, same as anywhere else on the internet. Most specialist expertise is developed / paid for in "company time" (even if the project started by lifting code from Github) so nobody talks about what they did.FL is good for little jobs in areas of common expertise. A lot of coders there will work for an hourly rate, say $40/hr which is actually very normal around E Europe, but I stopped paying by the hours years ago because those projects always overrun massively.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 01:04:04 pm
content: You seem to have a very bitter view of software engineering, how much have you done in your time? It's not a closed union-only shop. If you want to learn something, then absolutely nothing stops you asking questions, looking at source code, and examples. In fact I would say SW engineering is a field that is full of people willing to help and contribute, there is a huge resource of help out there. Admittedly it can get harder when there is a problem only you have, but that's true of most things.For what it is worth I ported LWIP to an entire processor it had never run on before (as far as I could tell), it was an interesting process and it did take some time, but it was hardly impossible! No it did not take 10 hours, I think in total it was about 4 months of work from starting to having properly reliable ethernet traffic.Engineering is a field that really depends on both the management/project directors and the actual engineers understanding the underlying technology. If you go out and ask for some LWIP project to be completed in 10 hours at a sub $1k price then you will rightfully get laughed at and get joke bids and no one will think you are serious.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 01:20:22 pm
content: Not at all.Over 40 years, Z80 onwards. I've designed probably 100+ microprocessor based products.What doesn't impress me is typical Western attitudes to East Europeans (of which I am one) who are trying to make a bit of money on FL. As I said, the site doesn't work well, for various reasons, but the "cheap = crap" argument is just typical 1st World stuff where everybody needs to make a packet to fund their relatively lavish lifestyle. And everybody is on linkedin.com to look for the next (higher paid) position.I've never worked for anybody since leaving univ in 1978 but employed enough full-timers to know how it works. If you pay a fixed price, the guy has to fix bugs for free. The bottom line is that fixed price works forgoodpeople (the coder has to be good, do good testing, and occassionally has to fix unexpected things) and it doesn't work for the rest, who are the majority (the customer nearly always gets shafted then because he gets a 90% "done" job which is full of holes). When I have someone working for me now it is nearly all fixed price and I make sure they have the right expertise before they start, because (like with lawyers, etc) almost anybody will take on almost any job...It's great you know all about LWIP but you are an example of those who learnt it in company time and aren't around to help others. For example herehttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/any-experts-on-lwip-and-the-netconn-api-(not-looking-for-free-can-pay)/msg4334593/#msg4334593Not a whole lot... Actually LWIP is a good example of nearly allrealexpertise being offline. Lots of people knew it in its early days, 15 years ago. Now most work is done in company time, the mailing list is dead...The posted project of mine which somebody found on FL was not a fixed price thing. I was looking for people who knew it. I found nobody useful.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 03:55:17 pm
content: Nobody wants to do fixed price work because estimating project durations is an entire job area in itself; the contractor exposes themselves to a huge amount of liability if they estimate it incorrectly.I'd argue that it's not the "best" contractors who offer fixed price quotation as contract work is about building an overall relationship with your clients, not jumping around from customer to customer on short fixed term projects. I don't think this is a good or bad programmer thing, it's just good luck when things run just as predicted.We work closely with a firm in Cambridgeshire for contract work, and they've generally been very reliable and their estimates are on point. They are, however, expensive (over £100 an hour), because they build that liability in on their end. One way or another it has to be paid for.And clearly your experience with fixed price contracts is just like that, nobody really likes the outcome. I mean, it's even uncommon in larger projects, pretty much the only area you see this kind of thing is industries like construction where timescales and material costs can be estimated easily enough. R&D is not the kind of thing where you can say that's a 1,000 line project and I write 100 lines a day.I envy contractors for their ability to deal with clients every day. It's not something I'm yet comfortable enough to do. A salary is good enough.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 06:30:58 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on October 14, 2022, 03:55:17 pmThe truth is somewhere in the middle. If a project is well defined, then it definitely is possible to do this fixed price. Most of the projects I do are fixed price because I know precisely how long it takes me to develop something based on the requirements given. For projects that are less well defined, I quote a 'research' part of a project and go from there.In the end open 'blank cheque R&D' doesn't exist. Companies budget for having a product developed for an X amount of money. If X is unknown, they can't know how to price a product c.q. know it is commercially viable. Most projects that start with a blank cheque simply fail because at some point it turns out they are no longer commercially viable. I fiercely resist taking on projects that are not well defined and do not have a clear budget.My experience with developing with a 'blank cheque' are not good (both projects I have taken on in the past and projects that I have been involved with somehow). In the end nobody was happy and it is not how companies should conduct business (both as a contractor and contractee).It is much better to chop a project with unknowns into pieces that take the unknowns away one by one. Or put differently: make sure there are points in a project where you can pull the plug before expenses get out of hand.Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 13, 2022, 06:13:24 pmIf someone is living in an area with low cost of living, then the rate that person is working for can be lower while still being able to have a comfortable life. Earlier this year I worked (remotely) with a brilliant PCB engineer from eastern Europe that created a design in Altium for one of my customers (found the guy with the help of this forum BTW). His rates are fair for sure but lower than you'd likely find in west Europe or the US.In the end what matters is whether you can live a normal life from the amount money you are making.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2022, 07:48:56 pm
content: Exactly; it is down to understanding the technology involved and drawing up a clear spec.Then itcanbe done fixed-price, and there is no need for a huge uplift to cover extra work. In fact the way for the customer to end up paying an uplift, sometimes a really huge one, say 10x over budget, is to pay by the hourQuoteIndeedThat's why most people are hourly paid. They could not survive otherwise. And even most computer contractors are hourly paid while being nominally self employed.QuoteHe may also be a bright young chap who didn't go to univ so can't easily get his first job, or the country's economy is f***d so there aren't many jobs, and you are giving him an opportunity to make a living. Most people I saw on FL were pretty young, but some are damn fast with MS VC/C++ (which was what I was after for little win32 command line or GUI utilities).Attached is a screenshot of a utility which I got written for something like $100. It displays a 256x256 matrix of sprites, each one showing one byte of a 64k RAM block used for my FreeRTOS stack area. Specific bytes are specific colours and the rest are mostly unique. Mouseover shows the byte value. It instantly shows which task stacks are a bit tight and which are too generous. My board writes out a ccm.dat file into a USB FAT12 filesystem (FatFS) and this program just looks for that file, every few seconds, refreshing it if changed, on a logical drive which I specify in a config menu. It took a Ukrainian guy roughly 3 hours! A perfect example of where FL works. But strangely enough the same guy, later, was unable to understand my spec for a COM port loopback program (I suspect he was google translating all messages) and eventually somebody else did it (it was a struggle, mainly due to language).