Re: Have you got a telecommuting job?

My experience is quite similar. Here I post a feed back I've got once from the advertiser (and that job was posted for quite short time - I can't say exactly how long, but certainly shorter than most of the offers):

Here are all the responses. The first column is USD, the second column
is Months. The "x" indicates no information, but the person did offer
helpful advice. 

5500    3
1200    0.5
9200    ?
4500    4
1920    1
3500    1.2
2500    1.2
15000   6
x       x
x       x
9000    1.2
x       x
x       x
1000    0.5
3500    1
2500    0.5
1000    1
12000   1
5000    1
2500    1
1000    1.2
4000    2
7000    1.2
x       x
3000    3
x       x
4000    x
4000    x
7800    1
2700    1
x       x
3500    2
15000   2.5
2100    1
2500    2
x       x
8000    2
4350    1
x       x
5635    1
x       2.2
5000    2
2500    2
15000   x
15000   
5000    2.5
4000    1       
1500    1
1000    1
7500    0.75
8000    1
6800    2
2250    1
20000   3
2500    3
900     0.75

Mine bid was the last one. It is possible that it was rejected because it was to low and did not look serious. Actually being rejected so many times I bided much lower - just to test if there can be any possibillity of geting such a contract.

Comment on Re: Have you got a telecommuting job?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Have you got a telecommuting job? by autarch (Hermit) on Apr 02, 2003 at 08:59 UTC
I can't say for certain why your bid was rejected, but I think you are partially right (I saw the spec that the job poster was asking for bids on). I see you live in Poland, so US $900 might actually be a reasonable rate. You should make a point of saying that in future bids, because if you were living in the US that rate would be a joke, and would make you look unprofessional. More importantly though, your time estimate is ridiculous. There is no way anyone, even a very experienced developer, could do what the poster wanted in 3/4 of a month. It might, theoretically, be possible with a team of very experienced developers, all of whom were used to working with each other. Maybe. The spec itself was not nearly complete enough to give a good time estimate for it, but it's about a 1.5-4 month job for one reasonably experienced person. Anyone who was way outside of that range (<1 month, >4 months) probably does not have enough experience to be doing these sorts of bids. FWIW, I responded to the poster and told them I couldn't offer a bid because the spec was not sufficient, but that I'd like to offer my services in helping them write a better spec so they could ask for better bids.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Have you got a telecommuting job? by zby (Vicar) on Apr 02, 2003 at 09:27 UTC
Actually I was going to work in pair. This makes the money estimate even more ridiculous, even for Poland - I admit (actually a manmonth for an experienced programmer here is a little less than 2000$). Perhaps I did a bad job here - but after so many unreplyied offers I just treated it as an experiment and lowerd it to the least amount that I could work for and don't starve. As to the spec it was the most detailed spec I've ever had in my career, and most of the functionallity you would get from a good library with no work. I believe we could have it working in 3 weeks as we offered (actually we have started some not coding, but designing the app just on the spot when we got the spec - so you could add a week to the estimate thus you have a month and two programmers which is just inside your estimate). But once again I agree with you that my offer was not that serious - it was an experiment, and apparently that was spotted by the advertiser. Sorry if I did a bad job there for you fellow programmers, I promise to not do it in the future.	[reply]