Outsourcing woes...

I got a application today for a job that I posted. The person claimed to have 10 years of Android experience…

I thought I would share :slight_smile:

Maybe it felt like 10 years. :slight_smile:

Was he 10 years old ? Maybe he IS an android !!

Maybe he just works 3 times as fast as normal android developer? So 3,3 years realtime would give him 10 years :wink:

Mind - working on 3rd game?

@mike82 : For the last 6 months… 26k lines of code so far…

Here is a typical reply to a job posting:

Dear Hiring Manager, Thanks for your job posting here. I have read your job posting and I am really interested in your project. I have developed lots of apps before and most of them had been published to app store. Therefore I have rich experiences in realizing your idea into life and deployment of mobile apps. You would not regret if you choose me for this job. Let’s change the world with me. I look forward to hearing from you. All the Best Xiaome

[list of itunes apps deleted]

  1. The guy is from China
  2. His english is not good
  3. He has zero java experience, zero Android experience and most importantly… zero AndEngine experience (job was posted as an AndEngine job).

I really don’t even know how these guys expect to get hired for ANYTHING …

They want to take your money. Not concerned about quality of work. odesk and freelancer is full of scammers. The most scammers I get is from India, China, Philippines, Indonesia, Romania and Russia.
Freelancers from Germany, France, Japan, US, UK and South Africa are 80-90% can be trusted with the work being delivered.

Also many people there take whatever they can and then… outsource it themselves. The result is poor if there is any.

The world is full of scammers. Just apply the same precautions and common sense you normally do.

  1. Ask in your job description to tell something to prove they read it and it is not an automatic application
  2. Always pay after the job is succesfully completed
  3. Never pay per hour

Thats actually true, those websites are full of scamers mostly without any experience in claiming area, I remember when like two years ago I wanted to outsource quite small code (physics based scalable resize able line) and had offers like required 300h (wtf)… Ended up doing it my self.

Have you tried freelancer.com? They are usually pretty good. Freelancers are rated on a number of different criteria by previous employers on the site. Being a developer and having an idea what it would take to do a particular project, I’ve always found it good to state in the description how much you are willing to pay.

guys I haven’t tried freelancer.com to the full extent. But as far as I remember, they charge you for posting the job itself and if you don’t hire anyone then your money is gone whereas odesk is not like that. Am I right?

Or he’s from the far distant future… a whole 4 years.

I don’t think so, but to be honest, I don’t remember. Most of my jobs were taken.

on oDesk, all I do is include something like this in the job description:

please include the phrase ‘i hate css’ in your job application to prove you’re reading this

You would not BELIEVE the percentage of applications that don’t include the word. I’d say 90% don’t. All canned applications from 3rd world countries.

From the applications that do include the phrase, I’ve had good luck. From my experience, Eastern Europe and Russia have great coders. And of course the OECD countries. The majority of applicants from India, Phillipines, etc. have been atrocious.

Easiest way to filter out bullshit developers:

  1. Don’t post public jobs
  2. Pay hourly
  3. Choose developers yourself
  4. Choose developers with good portfolios

In other words, if you want quality work, put in the time to find a qualified developer.

All my projects are by invitation only and I’ve been contracting on oDesk for about 3 years now, never had a problem.

What’s the risk of having your source code re-skined and published on the Play Store by your developer?

I mean: you pay him $500-1000 for him to build a great(unique) game/app. You’re very pleased with his work and stuff like that. But still after a few weeks he decides to post a very similar app/game on the market. What’s the solution in this case? It’s kinda impossible to keep your eyes on and search for similar apps/games all the time.

Well signing a Contract/NDA is one of the ways you can protect your self but it won’t help you if you are dealing with overseas developers. Its more of a scare tactic but it works in most cases.

I’ve been up and down as well trying to find that all rounder. Eventually found one to do all of my apps after 2 years :frowning: but I’m happy now.
When he first started and didn’t think he was skilled enough for the new task, he simply says, let’s find somebody more skilled for this task. I don’t want to waste your money.
I was like, I love this guy. I don’t even look at other devs the same lol.

But I stopped sharing my sdk with all of odesk or elance for one job. It sucks having to do that.
Now we just use stack over flow when we get stuck working on a project.

He doesn’t run unnecessary hours. I honestly see from him that other developers over charge for some very simple jobs.

Maybe he’s a dog. so in Dog years he has 1.3 years of experience.

Seriously though, why do you need an app developer? Isn’t it better to do it on your own using a single code (I’m not just referring to Gingee. There are others).