Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better alternative to Upwork?

Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by nkkollaw on Friday March 24, 2017 @03:53AM (#13947358)

This problem is not easily solved.

Any platform that will allow anyone to bid for jobs will attract bad developers and developers from third-world countries, who are going to bring bid offers down and push away good developers and developers from first-world countries.

Any platform that will allow anyone to post jobs to developers from third-world countries will bring crappy projects posted by amateurs with vague specs.

The more popular it gets, the crappier it becomes. There's no way to win.

PeoplePerHour is better than Upwork, it's mostly people from the UK. There are also services where they screen candidates and only accept the best developers (I signed up but there was too much friction and I lost interest).

In general, IMHO the market for remote devs is there, but I guess most people if they had to spend a lot of money for a dev they'd much rather have him work in the office or at least meet him in person and have him come in every once in a while. What's left is people who will be ok with crappy developers that will do the job for 1/10 of the price, and they might as well give it a shot.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by OJFord on Friday March 24, 2017 @03:57AM (#13947374)

> will attract bad developers and developers from third-world countries, who are going to bring bid offers down and push away good developers and developers from first-world countries.

What's the inherent problem with 'developers from third-world countries'?

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by anovikov on Friday March 24, 2017 @06:22AM (#13947894)

The problem is that for a normal country, coding isn't such an attractive career in general. It makes about the same money as every other engineering field (and less than many, like architectural engineering) requiring similar qualifications, and in many ways more exhaustive/painful, so only reason why you may want to be a coder in say UK is to love coding, then your hobby becomes your job. Hiring a British developer, you may be more or less certain you aren't working with a cynical milkman.

In poor countries, coding is usually the only way out of extreme poverty, unless you are born into right family. What other good careers are available in India that beat freelance coding at average ($30/h) rates? So, it attracts people who are simply after money and nothing else, they practice squeezing their clients dry and doing all kinds of tricks more than they practice coding. Because they give no shit about coding.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by witty_username on Friday March 24, 2017 @08:16AM (#13948371)

Are you sure about the 30$/hr figure for people escaping extreme poverty?

30$/hr is rich in India, so it's not surprising there aren't better rates.

30$×8×20×65 = 3.2 lakhs per month = 37 lakhs per annum (average Indian makes somewhere of the order of magnitude of 1 lakh per annum).

For reference, in /r/india (on Reddit--not representative of the average Indian) a person posted about how they were struggling to live with 1.6 lakhs per month, and that became a meme.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by anovikov on Friday March 24, 2017 @08:43AM (#13948493)

This is exactly my point. Programmer in a developed country makes about 3x the average salary and about 1-1.5x the average salary of someone having a college degree. Programmer in India makes 37x average salaries. So, in a developed country you don't go into development after money (or if you do, you start your own startups, because you are definitely not going to get rich coding for cash). In India, you go exactly after money and nothing else, because the scale of money you get eclipse everything else. If i was able to get 37x the average salary, moral barriers in my work will seem a lot lower to me.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by dizzy3gg on Friday March 24, 2017 @06:38AM (#13947967)

Huh? I'm coding in the UK (contracting) and find i earn in the top 10% of the country?

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by anovikov on Friday March 24, 2017 @06:44AM (#13947992)

Thing is, contractors in places like Ukraine or India are in top 1%, and scamsters who have covert teams are in 0.1%.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by jazoom on Friday March 24, 2017 @04:04AM (#13947401)

I assume exactly what that quote said. They bring down prices.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by skynode on Friday March 24, 2017 @08:07AM (#13948329)

A developer-review system could handle the possibility of low quality work from savage devs, whether they reside in the Western hemisphere or anywhere else. 2 bad reviews and you're out. Actually, after the first bad review, should be very difficult to get a job again.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by igor_filippov on Friday March 24, 2017 @04:16AM (#13947437)

I suppose there's a correlation between country of residence and education/communication skills.

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Re:Ask HN: Do you think there is an opportunity for a better... by nkkollaw on Friday March 24, 2017 @08:47AM (#13948511)

Perhaps the fact that they can afford to charge $5/h instead of 80..?

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