Bidding On a Stranger's Project: The Basics

Overview

Recently I was in a position to hire a freelance programmer to complete a short C++ project (a standalone Windows application) for one of my clients. As is often the case, my client wanted this program ASAP.

 

Normally people hire me for their programming needs. On the rare occasion that I hire a programmer myself it's because either I'm crunched for time and/or I'm dealing with technologies I'm not particularly familiar with. In those cases I usually farm out parts of my projects to friends/associates who tend to be programmers I've worked with in the past.

 

In this case, none of my usual contacts panned out so I turned to the Internet to find a programmer.

 

For a variety of reasons I looked on Craigslist (craigslist.org): it's quick, simple, and gets a lot of traffic. I selected the San Francisco Bay area of Craigslist because I figured that city would have a large number of programmers.

 

Here's the ad I wrote:

 

I'm looking to pay somebody to write a standalone PC (Windows) program to do the following:

 

User specifies a latitude, longitude and radius, and specifies units of measurement for radius (i.e. whether radius is in feet, yards, miles, meters or kilometers). Program then looks in a given folder (also specified by the user) and all its subfolders (recursively) for all JPG files whose EXIF latitude/longitude falls within that area specified, and copies (NOT moves) them to a second folder (also specified by the user). If the destination name already exists it is given a unique name so nothing clashes (e.g. if foo.jpg already exists it attempts to rename it foo.1.jpg; if that already exists it attempts to rename it foo.2.jpg; etc.)

 

So, the interface would look something like this crude example:

 

------------------------------------------------------------

Latitude: [__________]

Longitude: [__________]

Radius: [_____] [Dropdown: feet, yards, miles, meters, kilometers]

 

Look in folder: [__________] [SELECT]

Move to folder: [__________] [SELECT]

 

[Go]

------------------------------------------------------------

 

Program should be able to be compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition (although I'll entertain other compilers/languages if necessary). You will supply a working executable, as well as all the necessary source code library files for me to recompile.

 

Please give me a quote that includes what you would charge and how long you expect it would take.

 

I got approximately 23 responses to my ad, each of which tended to fall in one of the following categories:

 

• Complete wastes of time (4). Most of these just consisted of a thinly-disguised ad (i.e. spam) for their web development business. Not only will I never hire a spammer, but what's worse is that they failed to follow the "it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests" directive at the bottom of my email. With two big strikes against them, I struck these people off my list.

 

• Resume/portfolio (7). These responses typically read: "I'm a C++ programmer. Please see my attached resume and contact me regarding this project." Well, they were on the right track but they didn't give me the most important thing I was looking for: an idea of how long it would take them to do the job and what it would cost. I might consider them, but at the moment they just put themselves at the bottom of my list.

 

• Reasonable responses (12). These responses tended to simply contain the time/cost estimate I was interested in; some contained additional info (resumes, qualifications, questions about certain details of the project), which are always reasonable.

 

Right off the bat, half the responses were reasonable enough for me to pursue so I rejected the rest. Upon investigating the reasonable responses more closely they fell into the following categories:

 

• Too expensive or too late a delivery time. I figured this project would take an experienced programmer somewhere between 8 and 12 hours and they could finish it within two days. Assuming a ballpark rate of anywhere from $25/hr to $100/hr I figured this would cost anywhere from $200 to $1,200. So I rejected any quotes that estimated five or more days or quoted more than $2,000.

 

• Not experienced enough. These responses tended to ask for more info, much of which tended to be irrelevant (e.g. "what is EXIF?" and "is this a school project?"). Sure, I could have answered their questions but since I also had responses from people who didn't need to be hand-held I opted to put these at the bottom of the list.

 

• Reasonable. These responses gave reasonable quotes and asked reasonable questions.

 

The prices I was quoted ranged from $100 to $10,000, which is a huge range. While I pursued the lowest few bids first, I ultimately went with the one whose responses led me to believe they would be able to complete the project competently.

Conclusion

For those of you bidding on projects for people you don't know, here are the most important criteria:

 

• Communicate, communicate, communicate. I can't stress this enough. If your writing style confuses me, I'm going to consider you unreliable. This can happen for several reasons:
• Your knowledge of English is poor
• Your knowledge of English is excellent but your communication skills are poor
• Your knowledge of English is excellent, your communication skills are flawless, but your spelling sucks

 

• Be timely. Generally I expect you to check your email every few hours on average, which means several times throughout the day. If you will be out of touch for more than half a day, it would be a good idea to let me know. If you take too long to get back to me, chances are I'll consider you unreliable and simply move on to the next person. It's far better to reply "I got your email but don't have time to answer it now; I'll get back to you this afternoon" than to leave me hanging until the afternoon, wondering whether you even got my email.

 

• Be direct. Don't beat around the bush. Sure, we both want to feel each other out to get an idea of how this relationship will work, but the bottom line is that I need to complete this project so the less time you waste the better.

 

• Be thorough. If I send you an email with five questions, your response had better contain five answers (or at an least acknowledgment of all my questions).

 

• Above all, be reliable. The more reliable you are the more I will trust you. The more I trust you the more willing I will be to hire you for my next project and the more willing I will be to recommend you to other people looking for a programmer.

 

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