Job Bid sites - anyone had a good time from them?

[silas2]

I'm wondering if anyone has any (positive) experience of these new breed of sites where you bid for jobs.
Is it possible to make a UK-type living off them? Can you meet decent clients through them?
By decent I don't necessarily mean blue-chip, though that would be nice, but those that can provide detailed specs and have realistic budgets.
I remember seeing ads in a site called rent-a-coder...'I've got a hardware store in South Dakota, phase 1 complete store inventory system, budget $50, phase 2, create search engine to rival Google, $75.'

[magicbuttons]

I wouldn't go anywhere near them myself. Contractors should be working together to push up the market rates, not undercutting each other and bringing them down.

[silas2]

I think the 'bid' term may be misleading in that it may not be a race to the bottom pricewise. What these sites may be going towards, which people like me crave, is the ability to have more control over your work life, so rather than 'we will pay you £xx per hour, however you must do 37.5 hrs per week, you must be Bracknell from 9am Monday - 5pm Friday, you must be wearing polyester trousers' , to 'deliver the job for this agreed price, sit on the beach or wherever you want, work till midnight/start at midday, we don't care - just deliver.'

[silas2]

I think the 'bid' term may be misleading in that it may not be a race to the bottom pricewise. What these sites may be going towards, which people like me crave, is the ability to have more control over your work life, so rather than 'we will pay you £xx per hour, however you must do 37.5 hrs per week, you must be in Bracknell from 9am Monday - 5pm Friday, you must be wearing polyester trousers' , to 'deliver the job for this agreed price, sit on the beach or wherever you want, work till midnight/start at midday, we don't care just deliver.'

[Freamon]

A "good time"?

In all seriousness, when I've looked at these sites in the past it's usually been from the other end, i.e. getting access to cheap coding labour. Obviously you need an extremely tight spec. I do know a couple of people who have developed software products by writing specs and then offering the work via elance or similar, usually with the work going to a small offshore coding shop with some decent references/portfolio. I guess you could do a similar thing to subcontract some coding work you were doing for your clientco, but you'd have to have a lot of confidence in the subcontractor to do that.

I would imagine the fact there's no requirement for direct interaction or an on-site presence would generally push the rates down quite a bit? So I can't imagine many people here going for work via these sites, unless it came with the chance to get a full-blown contract out of it on a decent rate.

[silas2]

But my issue is, why should a 'full blown contract' have to be '...37.5hrs/onsite/mon-fri/polyester trousers...'
Especially in the South East where the road/rail infrastructure is at saturation point and much software development work can be done remotely.
I personaly feel confident that our proposition as UK based software engineers can easily compete with 3-world offshore whether we are physically in the office or not - provided the client is serious enough, ie the scale of their problem means getting the right person far outweighs savaing a few quid.

[Freamon]

But my issue is, why should a 'full blown contract' have to be '...37.5hrs/onsite/mon-fri/polyester trousers...'
Especially in the South East where the road/rail infrastructure is at saturation point and much software development work can be done remotely.
I personaly feel confident that our proposition as UK based software engineers can easily compete with 3-world offshore whether we are physically in the office or not - provided the client is serious enough, ie the scale of their problem means getting the right person far outweighs savaing a few quid.

So are you basically talking about a traditional T&M contract but with an element of remote-working? Or are you talking about a pre-specced fixed rate piece of software development work?

[silas2]

My ideal is a combination of fixed payment for hitting milestones (which can be done from anywhere), and more hourly rate with 'unknowables' - often onsite stuff.
I suppose I'm indulging in a bit of wishful thinking that more serious contracts would be offered out like this, and I have 'flipped' a few blue-chip contracts in the past to work like that, and it did work for both of us, but you seem to have to spring it on them once you're in there, and there's no guarantee they'll go for it.
But having a look at a newer generation of these 'bid sites' seems to yield more UK-like wages being offered, and a mixture of fixed and p/h

[Freamon]

My ideal is a combination of fixed payment for hitting milestones (which can be done from anywhere), and more hourly rate with 'unknowables' - often onsite stuff.
I suppose I'm indulging in a bit of wishful thinking that more serious contracts would be offered out like this, and I have 'flipped' a few blue-chip contracts in the past to work like that, and it did work for both of us, but you seem to have to spring it on them once you're in there, and there's no guarantee they'll go for it.
But having a look at a newer generation of these 'bid sites' seems to yield more UK-like wages being offered, and a mixture of fixed and p/h

Sounds interesting. Any of them in particular that you could share links to?

[silas2]

Err....that's what I was kinda hoping to get from this post, well maybe not the names of the sites, you can find those thru your favourite search engine, but the experiences. I have seen, as just a random example, PeoplePerHour puting work out with more UK like pricing, and p/h and well as piece work.