I was in your shoes 10 years ago. Even worse, I was in Ludhiana (Punjab) where I couldn't even find another web developer.
Getting out of such nightmare in India is a lot easier India than developed countries. You just need to make more money than salary of your job to get out it; which is about $100 at this point for you. In Silicon Valley and NYC, developers need to make $5,000 to pay bills. $500 is considered a decent salary for a first job in India; here are few ways to make $500 / month.
I run a startup (http://www.ranksignals.com), we could hire you for a freelance job if you are interested. My contact info is on my profile.
2) Blogging: Start a blog and promote it, you need about 5,000+ page views per day to make $500 a month.
3) Sell small plugins & themes on ThemeForest and CodeCanyon. You can make a lot more than $500, there are developers grossing over $100,000 per month.
If you want to get a full time job, don't work at a body shop. Work at a product or ecommerce startup, they offer higher pay and better experience. Companies like FlipKart are offering 10 lacs/year salary to new developers.
Another thing to consider is moving South. Go to Bangalore or Chennai. I was making like $1500 per month for a .NET gig in Chennai in 2007 at a body shop. Nothing fancy. Just some ASP.NET stuff. $100 is way too low. In Kochi, Kerala, even day laborers get Rs 600 a day. That'll be at least $200 per month.
You definitely don't need $5000/mo. to pay bills in NYC, except maybe if you're trying to raise a family on your salary alone in a fancy neighborhood. I live very well on $2000/mo., and could easily cut that without excessive sacrifice by moving to a less happening neighborhood with a bit longer commute than my current 35 minutes (say: parts of Jersey City; Sunset Park or Ditmas Park, Brooklyn; Jackson Heights, Queens; Inwood, Manhattan; Riverdale, Bronx; Stapleton, Staten Island) and cooking more of my own food.
Yes, selling plugins and themes is quite profitable and learning experience. I used to sell OpenCart themes while i was in college and used to make over $400 per month with only a couple of days of work.
Wrong. Wrong not as in you are lying, but wrong as in - it does not have to be the case. I would strongly advise the OP not to join...
* Less pay (< $100 month) - totally off, recently I had an offer from a startup in Chandigarh for a very competitive salary - close to $2000 a month (pm me if you want the recruiter's email id).
* PHP projects - There a lot of vacancies for python, ruby, nodejs and angularjs jobs, either you need experience or you should have decent projects in your github repo.
* 48 hours - might be possible, but does not have to be the case
* Joining for a team - Joining a sweatshop for working with a team from whom you can learn is __Stupid__ - Chances of finding someone with proper skills in a sweatshop is close to zero.
* Bond with 2 months pay - Firstly it is illegal, but, yes I do know that sweatshops do have this practice. Avoid it at all costs. Or you can simply not pay them, as there is no way they can enforce the bond (legally). But this is a huge red flag. A proper company does not ask for that - period.
* 0 friends - where do you live? There are PG accommodations available brimming with social life (with individual accommodation - it is not always a shared thing). I currently live in one - and it is awesome.
* Change your life in 9 months - by working in a sweatshop? Not going to happen, you will instead be stuck in a pathetic project which ruins your career prospects further.
* Move to Delhi/NCR region - it is close to CH, and not as far as B'lore/Chennai/Hyderabad, and you have globally respected brands here.
Bro, send me an email. I might be able to help you out, provided you stop flaking.
If you are able to get shit done, I might be able to exploit you in a more pleasant and productive manner than some odesk bodyshop for similar wages - no bond and no hard feelings when you quit for something better in 2 months.
Do you have a github or other code portfolio? (If not, build one.)
And get the heck out of Chandigarh. Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, pick one. There are Hackathons here in Pune and companies who will pay you well over 6000rs/month provided you actually get shit done.
So sad! I was rooting for OP for being a techie in Chandi. I was born in Chandigarh and although I emigrated within a few years of being born, I'll always consider that city a home of mine. I'd really like to do something to support its fledgling tech scene. I've committed myself to the idea of moving to Chandigarh to bootstrap my startup when I decide to go at it alone.
I would love for OP to stay in Chandigarh, but I honestly can't say that's a sensible move at this point in time.
> Things are very bad in my city. There is no any kind of active community of computer enthusiasts; be it some Linux Users Group or something similar.
Start one! Seriously- no jive. Be that change that you want. It may be that your affinity is not to be a developer--- you may actually be an organizer of people! Try it! You can do it for free! Make announcements! Start by meeting once every two weeks in the evening and teach people everything you know! You will make connections! You will be tapped to work with others. You will grow along with those around you. The people you help will see your strengths and send better opportunities your way. Trust me, you will see.
Seriously, start it up. It is within you to do it and it is free and fun! Find a library or a park or someone's living room or a restaurant. Even if it's just one computer, gather a flock.
Charanjit, I'm from Chandigarh too.
I can completely understand what you are feeling since I'm completely aware of the situation. Luckily I was doing quite well myself while I graduated (last year) and didn't need to work for any such company.
I'm working in a startup now where our major focus is on doing quality work using modern tech. We deal with clients directly and not through websites like oDesk.
Great to see that you have worked with backbone etc.
Would you like to catchup some time for tech discussion? I have few friends who do that regurlay at weekends. Mail me at [email protected] :)
You are looking for discipline in the wrong place.
I thought I could find it in the military, I was wrong.
I thought leaving the military and subjecting myself to the cold reality of the free market would force me to develop it. I was wrong.
I thought starting a company would make me focus. I was wrong.
Finally, with no other options left, I entered corporate America. Having a large, nasty ongoing project, clear motivation to keep working on it, and the latitude to implement my own approach was all I needed to start making real progress on my own inner quest for productivity.
In retrospect, it was not the last thing that I did that finally "did the trick." It was the combination of everything I'd done. There weren't any magic tricks, no way to skip the years of paying dues. There's no way to force it, even if you throw yourself into the ultimate sink-or-swim environment, if you aren't ready for that particular experience, you'll either sink, or you'll swim, but find that swimming doesn't mean what you think it means.
Your current course of action will not have the intended result. What will happen is that you'll get burned out. Then you'll have nothing to show for it but the experience. You'll take that experience to your next big push and build on it. And so on and so forth.
At some point, all of that accumulated experience will drive out some small success. Might take three years, probably will be closer to 8-10. Then the game will change, you'll have mastered productivity and now you're playing a management game rather than a survival one.
You're lucky in that you're driven to make this transition, most career techs aren't, they stay at the level of survival their entire lives.
I'm glad you have the voice of experience to put behind my thoughts. When I read the story the motivation made sense, but my fear for the author is that working in such a body shop will destroy his love of programming which is a pretty disastrous thing to happen to one's career path in today's world.
I'm not sure why OP thinks this is going to be a good idea. The kind of projects he'll get to work on will almost always be the usual Odesk "clone XYZ in $X" tripe. Also, the sort of company he's talking about is unlikely to have senior developers experienced enough to mentor him (from what I know about these companies.) Working on an open source project instead would be much more constructive and would get him engaged with experienced developers who could teach him a thing or two. If he's still a student (and it looks like he is) GSoC might be a great way to get started with this.
Also, I would avoid Odesk like the plague. Build up a portfolio (open source works as well) and connect with people on HN.
> The kind of projects he'll get to work on will almost always be the usual Odesk "clone XYZ in $X" tripe.
He knows that much and noted it.
What he wants to learn is discipline and getting shit done no matter how much it smells. Having a boss breathing down his neck might work.
> Working on an open source project instead would be much more constructive and would get him engaged with experienced developers who could teach him a thing or two. If he's still a student (and it looks like he is) GSoC might be a great way to get started with this.
No. In an OSS contribution (or most GSoC) if you lose yourself nobody will care much, it's your loss. You're completely missing the point.
I did some projects from both oDesk and HN. They were quite similar. oDesk projects I've chosen were more interesting but quite short and HN jobs were longer but not so great as you would expect from HN.
How do you go about building a portfolio? Do you do free/cheap work for people, or do you just make things you think people might like or be impressed by?
Thanks for the insight into the world of ODesk 'Agencies', you've confirmed for me what my hunch was all along.
Recently I put a Django Ecommerce site job there for $10k USD and you won't believe how many phone calls/emails/linkedin requests I received from 'Agencies' primarily in India/Pakistan but some from Eastern Europe as well promising me the world for my $10k.
When you have to sift through all of this the cookie cutter scripts everything becomes apparent and you realise it's a thin veil of bullshit, the product managers (middlemen) that call you up in reality have a team of very lowly paid junior devs who are incapable of doing the project. (Evidenced by me asking some moderately difficult technical/architectural questions) And very few have a track record of getting shit done and delivering. I would never hire an 'dev agency' via Odesk after this experience, it's too hard to sort the good from the bad as an employer in a 1st world country.
I ended up interviewing freelancers only and liked what I saw/heard - I thought the freelancers on ODesk were of quite a high standard actually. Ended up hiring a fairly senior engineer for the project. If he pulls through I will offer him ongoing work for $2-$3k a month.
> I can do it myself sitting at home, I’ve done a couple projects, but it was not fun.
No you can't, obviously. You just said it. For one, you don't enjoy it.
What you need to learn is that straight programming isn't a valuable skill by itself. You already know this because you wrote an article about it. You need to be able to tie your programming skills with other skills such as selling yourself as the person to get the job done. Once you get the job, you need to be able to ship it.
There are programming skills that are valuable in isolation. If you are a world expert on a certain domain which lacks talent, then that's valuable. But that's not really isolation, that's tying your programming skills with a certain specialty.
Take a look at the model you are working under. There is a whole spectrum of jobs from good to crap. On Odesk, there are a sprinkling of good and a lot of crap. I imagine the company employing you is saying yes to every job that comes their way. They probably don't get good jobs, so it's all crap. They get crap jobs which pay crap and of course you are going to get a small slice of a crap pie.
Why take a job just because it's there? Okay, you laid out a bunch of reasons but you still hate it. I would probably hate working on crap jobs also. People worked for Steve Jobs because the guy was... well... Steve Jobs. Why are you working for people who are trying to compete on the worst model in web development, the race to the bottom in pricing?
If you know good developers, then maybe you could start your own development shop and get those developers to work for you. If you hate the work but you can get jobs, then maybe do the selling and have the other developers do the work.
Or maybe you could come up with your own projects and monetize them.
You just have to hustle, just like everyone else does. You can't just write code and expect the world to come to you. Get out there and make things happen.
Edit: In other words, quit whining. ;)
Edit: Edit: I could write a book on this subject. The above is just an attempt at an off the cuff capture. There are a ton of threads on HN which are hugely valuable on bringing the bacon as a developer. Just look around, it's more productive than ranting about your situation.
Clearly the person you are working for is trying to take a "this is how everything is done here" approach to running a dev shop and hiring developers. It's the same in the Philippines. Everyone works 10 hour days, 6 days a week and within a certain band of salary. I suppose the U.S. is like that to some degree. We have the 9 to 5 and 40 hour weeks.
Disruption in your case would be pretty easy. If the company has decent employees, then you could scoop them all up.
it doesn't really matter if the job is good or crap. the guy that hires you already thinks you're crap, and why would you care about some job they outsource to you because they don't even want to pay minimum wage?
you don't think that value comes across exactly that way?
that said indians have a major cultural problem. they're way too nice, and they're also way too enduring, and they find other ways to vent that. when i was in the US they were putting their shit on the indians, because they knew that since they really wanted to stay in the US they would endure all the shit, and not talk back. some of these people got dumped on their 6th year, because that's when the employer has to decide on whether they sponsor a green card or just get a new one.
odesk encourages crap, because the people that come there generally don't think hey i'll get an awesome guy on there who i can't find in my environment. they think hey my project is super easy anyway. i'll get a cheap dude to build exactly what i want.
don't get me wrong i know some really good developers, and employers on odesk(well truth be told it's just 1 of either). but they're there no doubt.
what disgusted me the most was that the guy i was working with (who used odesk to get cheap developers) was thinking that he was doing them a favor. he thought of himself of some kind of savior, because he was helping indians so much.
thanks for advice. I'll try to quit whining once I get a hold of myself. And I love programming. The problem is I don't or can't stick with one thing. I have many projects hanging. I thought trying to do a regular job will help and gave interviews in several local companies. Since I have not graduated yet, despite my portfolio most of them offered me to do work for 3 to 6 months for free and then a similar package. One of them even offered me to do paid training with them before they "think" about hiring me. The company I am joining now were the most generous of all I met. Thing I wanted to whine about was the trend of exploitation that's going on in the city, but I think it turned out to look like me whining about the job. I am actually kind of excited as I will have to learn many things which I would not have touched otherwise. And yes I have plans for my own development shop. I will do it once I have enough confidence.
Why do you assume OP has the money to start a development shop? And if you agree that (s)he can't do projects alone, why do you suggest making and monetizing her/his own projects? Won't those have to be developed "sitting at home"?
chances are if be did that, the other company owners would approach him after he is successfully taking their devs to set a minimum wage plan. it is extremely common in developing countries. heck, jobs even brought it back in the US. and like with the late jobs, if you dont get in, things get very tense. thats the main reason i dont do more sub contract companies in my home country.
I am from India. And worked for over a year on oDesk. I think it's painting the whole industry with a very wide brush. Personally know people in Delhi/Mumbai making very comfortable salary.
I'm in the same situation as OP, only the location is different (East Europe). I've been at it for 5 months already but I'm on verge of quitting every week since I started. The only thing that stops me from doing it is fear of not being able to make similar amount of money monthly to able to pay bills and rent. I've been trying to work on something on the side but the job leaves me exhausted and the only thing I can do in the evenings and weekends is sleep.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone - we use terrible tech(php and ftp), I haven't learned anything new in months, only taught my (senior) coworkers some tips to work even faster. I'd write more about it but my break is over.
He sounds like he wants to be a self-sacrificing martyr hero for coding. What's the point of all this? Are we supposed to hail him as a "one true coder" for willing to do this? Is this a competition about who can take the most pain? It's so pointless.
I just want to clarify that this is nowhere close to the average salary a dev earns in India (a decent developer can make anywhere between $400/mo to $3000/mo). I'm not sure what company he's working for but it sounds like a real sweatshop. You can find better gigs even in Chandigarh (it's not known for IT that much..), but for that - you probably need to be better at what you do, or maybe you need to learn how to sell yourself better.
We contracted with Delhi dev shop and were paying about $8000 Australian dollars per month for the equivalent of 3 developers (mix of backend devs full time, and on call front end dev, designer, tester)
I think our junior dev was charged out at $1300 per month so if using standard agency markup of 100% her salary would've been around $650 per month (~26000 rupees per month).
The manager was also always complaining that new recruits kept increasing their demands each year.
So it's strange that there's such a difference in salaries between 2 cities so close by. If it was true then I'd expect programmers to move to Delhi.
If you think you are good at coding, why not get into any of the top IT (by employees) companies. I know they are recruiting the lowest of the bottom barrel. Why not join them and make a decent pay and a career while meeting some experienced people who actually know stuff.
I think it's impossible for anyone even just barely decent in programming to get a job in India. I have seen people get into Motorola while searching for jobs like nomads. They were not from premier or even well known institutes. What you are subjecting yourself to is incomprehensible based on your objectives.
I think overseas development will only be competitive when they start producing products for themselves. The main reason off-shoring fails is because of culture and communication differences.
(I'm not a world traveler, so disregard the next remarks if you have better insight than me.)
I noticed while working with chinese developers they were terrified to tell me they were having a problem with a task I assigned. They also had no problems passing extremely poorly designed code in order to meet a deadline. It didn't even have to work, the understanding was, you just have to turn something in before the deadline. I had a developer that couldn't get writes to the database working consistently. So he wrote them to a file on disk... I guess that was good enough.
Working with Indian developers is a much more mixed experience. Aside from them interrupting you constantly, which I cannot stand, some of their attitudes were downright laughable. "I have 5 years experience, which is about 10 American years experience" one guy told me as he explained that it would be better to write their own messaging layer instead of my selection of ActiveMQ.
Anyway, if Twitter/Google/whatever was based in India or China, I imagine the leaders would know how to use their labor effectively to produce competitive companies. I don't see American companies ever using overseas labor effectively. The cultures are just inherently incompatible for working on a subjective task like software development.
It's hard to tell from just a single blog post, but one thing that strikes me is how focused you are on computers and computer work. It sounds to me like you don't do anything else. Have you considered getting a hobby? Perhaps music, dance, photography, sports, or something else that gets you out of the house and meeting people besides computer stuff? It sounds to me like you're burning yourself out by focusing so acutely on only computer stuff.
Now that is plain exploitation indeed. I live nearby and am about to graduate. I am going to a good company but they have 2 year bond.
I've been working from home for 3-4 years part time and I think my little bits of experience can help you:
1. When It comes to discipline, it is very hard! What I have been doing is measuring everything. I got Rescue Time subscription and now, every minute on the computer is measured! If I don't have a productivity score of 60+ by the end of the day, I know that things need to change. After that, it takes a lot of self control.
2. For networking, online relations can help a lot. Remote teams are great to work with. I have a small group of 3-4 people, all at different places but they help in making sure that I don't get bored and am accountable for what I do!
3. All you need to network is one good friend who is also a networker. I went to a small web development firm for internship and now I'm friends with the COO there. He's helped me with contacts. Some of my relatives are also in IT industry, so there's some help.
9 months is quite a long time and I'm sure some part in this decision is social pressure (I earn good enough while doing studies as well, but everyone around pushes me to get "experience" in big firms!)
I feel exactly the same as you about working from home... except I live in the US. About 7 years ago I quit my .NET programming job. I got that job right after I graduated college. For the 3 years I was there I did great work. I kept getting bonuses and raises for shipping products. And I saved up some money, cashed in my 401k, and quit.
Since then I've never been able to be productive. I tried contract work here and there but I've never had the self-discipline. Actually I've made less money in the last 7 years combined from programming than 1 month at my real job. Think about that... I haven't made $5K from programming over these last 7 years.
Of course I needed money so I started working part-time jobs. I currently work 24 hours a week for near minimum-wage, often having to shovel snow in sub-zero temperatures. I thought the worse I suffer the more I'll get motivated to do work at home. That has not happened. I have nothing to show for these last 7 years except half-completed projects and a free productivity extension that 5,000 people use - but obviously does not work for me.
So maybe getting a job is the right thing for you. If you can't work from home, you can't work from home. You'll have to accept the best terms you can find, and if that's $100/mon then that may be your only option.
As for me... I would rather die than get a programming job. I'm as defiant as ever. I love programming, but I only love programming my own ideas. Even the thought of programming for someone else makes me feel physically ill (like throwing up). So either I make it as an Indie developer or I die as a janitor. Your post made me realize I should feel lucky that I have the option to be a janitor for $10/hr. You don't even have that option.
[+] [-] RealGeek|12 years ago|reply
Getting out of such nightmare in India is a lot easier India than developed countries. You just need to make more money than salary of your job to get out it; which is about $100 at this point for you. In Silicon Valley and NYC, developers need to make $5,000 to pay bills. $500 is considered a decent salary for a first job in India; here are few ways to make $500 / month.
1) Freelancing: You can find better gigs on job boards like http://jobs.wordpress.net and https://groups.drupal.org/jobs
I run a startup (http://www.ranksignals.com), we could hire you for a freelance job if you are interested. My contact info is on my profile.
2) Blogging: Start a blog and promote it, you need about 5,000+ page views per day to make $500 a month.
3) Sell small plugins & themes on ThemeForest and CodeCanyon. You can make a lot more than $500, there are developers grossing over $100,000 per month.
If you want to get a full time job, don't work at a body shop. Work at a product or ecommerce startup, they offer higher pay and better experience. Companies like FlipKart are offering 10 lacs/year salary to new developers.
[+] [-] harichinnan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akgerber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkcgautam|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rudy750|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jezclaremurugan|12 years ago|reply
* Less pay (< $100 month) - totally off, recently I had an offer from a startup in Chandigarh for a very competitive salary - close to $2000 a month (pm me if you want the recruiter's email id).
* PHP projects - There a lot of vacancies for python, ruby, nodejs and angularjs jobs, either you need experience or you should have decent projects in your github repo.
* 48 hours - might be possible, but does not have to be the case
* Joining for a team - Joining a sweatshop for working with a team from whom you can learn is __Stupid__ - Chances of finding someone with proper skills in a sweatshop is close to zero.
* Bond with 2 months pay - Firstly it is illegal, but, yes I do know that sweatshops do have this practice. Avoid it at all costs. Or you can simply not pay them, as there is no way they can enforce the bond (legally). But this is a huge red flag. A proper company does not ask for that - period.
* 0 friends - where do you live? There are PG accommodations available brimming with social life (with individual accommodation - it is not always a shared thing). I currently live in one - and it is awesome.
* Change your life in 9 months - by working in a sweatshop? Not going to happen, you will instead be stuck in a pathetic project which ruins your career prospects further.
* Move to Delhi/NCR region - it is close to CH, and not as far as B'lore/Chennai/Hyderabad, and you have globally respected brands here.
[+] [-] allochthon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|12 years ago|reply
If you are able to get shit done, I might be able to exploit you in a more pleasant and productive manner than some odesk bodyshop for similar wages - no bond and no hard feelings when you quit for something better in 2 months.
Do you have a github or other code portfolio? (If not, build one.)
And get the heck out of Chandigarh. Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, pick one. There are Hackathons here in Pune and companies who will pay you well over 6000rs/month provided you actually get shit done.
[+] [-] izolate|12 years ago|reply
So sad! I was rooting for OP for being a techie in Chandi. I was born in Chandigarh and although I emigrated within a few years of being born, I'll always consider that city a home of mine. I'd really like to do something to support its fledgling tech scene. I've committed myself to the idea of moving to Chandigarh to bootstrap my startup when I decide to go at it alone.
I would love for OP to stay in Chandigarh, but I honestly can't say that's a sensible move at this point in time.
[+] [-] diydsp|12 years ago|reply
Start one! Seriously- no jive. Be that change that you want. It may be that your affinity is not to be a developer--- you may actually be an organizer of people! Try it! You can do it for free! Make announcements! Start by meeting once every two weeks in the evening and teach people everything you know! You will make connections! You will be tapped to work with others. You will grow along with those around you. The people you help will see your strengths and send better opportunities your way. Trust me, you will see.
Seriously, start it up. It is within you to do it and it is free and fun! Find a library or a park or someone's living room or a restaurant. Even if it's just one computer, gather a flock.
[+] [-] gkcgautam|12 years ago|reply
I'm working in a startup now where our major focus is on doing quality work using modern tech. We deal with clients directly and not through websites like oDesk. Great to see that you have worked with backbone etc. Would you like to catchup some time for tech discussion? I have few friends who do that regurlay at weekends. Mail me at [email protected] :)
[+] [-] vinceguidry|12 years ago|reply
I thought I could find it in the military, I was wrong.
I thought leaving the military and subjecting myself to the cold reality of the free market would force me to develop it. I was wrong.
I thought starting a company would make me focus. I was wrong.
Finally, with no other options left, I entered corporate America. Having a large, nasty ongoing project, clear motivation to keep working on it, and the latitude to implement my own approach was all I needed to start making real progress on my own inner quest for productivity.
In retrospect, it was not the last thing that I did that finally "did the trick." It was the combination of everything I'd done. There weren't any magic tricks, no way to skip the years of paying dues. There's no way to force it, even if you throw yourself into the ultimate sink-or-swim environment, if you aren't ready for that particular experience, you'll either sink, or you'll swim, but find that swimming doesn't mean what you think it means.
Your current course of action will not have the intended result. What will happen is that you'll get burned out. Then you'll have nothing to show for it but the experience. You'll take that experience to your next big push and build on it. And so on and so forth.
At some point, all of that accumulated experience will drive out some small success. Might take three years, probably will be closer to 8-10. Then the game will change, you'll have mastered productivity and now you're playing a management game rather than a survival one.
You're lucky in that you're driven to make this transition, most career techs aren't, they stay at the level of survival their entire lives.
[+] [-] dasil003|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aviraldg|12 years ago|reply
Also, I would avoid Odesk like the plague. Build up a portfolio (open source works as well) and connect with people on HN.
[+] [-] gallamine|12 years ago|reply
Frankly it seems like OP is more depressed than anything - alone and isolated in a strange place.
[+] [-] masklinn|12 years ago|reply
He knows that much and noted it.
What he wants to learn is discipline and getting shit done no matter how much it smells. Having a boss breathing down his neck might work.
> Working on an open source project instead would be much more constructive and would get him engaged with experienced developers who could teach him a thing or two. If he's still a student (and it looks like he is) GSoC might be a great way to get started with this.
No. In an OSS contribution (or most GSoC) if you lose yourself nobody will care much, it's your loss. You're completely missing the point.
[+] [-] GvS|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkaziz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddy_chan|12 years ago|reply
Recently I put a Django Ecommerce site job there for $10k USD and you won't believe how many phone calls/emails/linkedin requests I received from 'Agencies' primarily in India/Pakistan but some from Eastern Europe as well promising me the world for my $10k.
When you have to sift through all of this the cookie cutter scripts everything becomes apparent and you realise it's a thin veil of bullshit, the product managers (middlemen) that call you up in reality have a team of very lowly paid junior devs who are incapable of doing the project. (Evidenced by me asking some moderately difficult technical/architectural questions) And very few have a track record of getting shit done and delivering. I would never hire an 'dev agency' via Odesk after this experience, it's too hard to sort the good from the bad as an employer in a 1st world country.
I ended up interviewing freelancers only and liked what I saw/heard - I thought the freelancers on ODesk were of quite a high standard actually. Ended up hiring a fairly senior engineer for the project. If he pulls through I will offer him ongoing work for $2-$3k a month.
[+] [-] onion2k|12 years ago|reply
You learn discipline by sticking with something despite wanting to jump to something else.
[+] [-] gexla|12 years ago|reply
No you can't, obviously. You just said it. For one, you don't enjoy it.
What you need to learn is that straight programming isn't a valuable skill by itself. You already know this because you wrote an article about it. You need to be able to tie your programming skills with other skills such as selling yourself as the person to get the job done. Once you get the job, you need to be able to ship it.
There are programming skills that are valuable in isolation. If you are a world expert on a certain domain which lacks talent, then that's valuable. But that's not really isolation, that's tying your programming skills with a certain specialty.
Take a look at the model you are working under. There is a whole spectrum of jobs from good to crap. On Odesk, there are a sprinkling of good and a lot of crap. I imagine the company employing you is saying yes to every job that comes their way. They probably don't get good jobs, so it's all crap. They get crap jobs which pay crap and of course you are going to get a small slice of a crap pie.
Why take a job just because it's there? Okay, you laid out a bunch of reasons but you still hate it. I would probably hate working on crap jobs also. People worked for Steve Jobs because the guy was... well... Steve Jobs. Why are you working for people who are trying to compete on the worst model in web development, the race to the bottom in pricing?
If you know good developers, then maybe you could start your own development shop and get those developers to work for you. If you hate the work but you can get jobs, then maybe do the selling and have the other developers do the work.
Or maybe you could come up with your own projects and monetize them.
You just have to hustle, just like everyone else does. You can't just write code and expect the world to come to you. Get out there and make things happen.
Edit: In other words, quit whining. ;)
Edit: Edit: I could write a book on this subject. The above is just an attempt at an off the cuff capture. There are a ton of threads on HN which are hugely valuable on bringing the bacon as a developer. Just look around, it's more productive than ranting about your situation.
Clearly the person you are working for is trying to take a "this is how everything is done here" approach to running a dev shop and hiring developers. It's the same in the Philippines. Everyone works 10 hour days, 6 days a week and within a certain band of salary. I suppose the U.S. is like that to some degree. We have the 9 to 5 and 40 hour weeks.
Disruption in your case would be pretty easy. If the company has decent employees, then you could scoop them all up.
[+] [-] rjzzleep|12 years ago|reply
you don't think that value comes across exactly that way?
that said indians have a major cultural problem. they're way too nice, and they're also way too enduring, and they find other ways to vent that. when i was in the US they were putting their shit on the indians, because they knew that since they really wanted to stay in the US they would endure all the shit, and not talk back. some of these people got dumped on their 6th year, because that's when the employer has to decide on whether they sponsor a green card or just get a new one.
odesk encourages crap, because the people that come there generally don't think hey i'll get an awesome guy on there who i can't find in my environment. they think hey my project is super easy anyway. i'll get a cheap dude to build exactly what i want.
don't get me wrong i know some really good developers, and employers on odesk(well truth be told it's just 1 of either). but they're there no doubt.
what disgusted me the most was that the guy i was working with (who used odesk to get cheap developers) was thinking that he was doing them a favor. he thought of himself of some kind of savior, because he was helping indians so much.
[+] [-] channikhabra|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wozniacki|12 years ago|reply
[1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7069416
[+] [-] icebraining|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcb0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] negamax|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shadeless|12 years ago|reply
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone - we use terrible tech(php and ftp), I haven't learned anything new in months, only taught my (senior) coworkers some tips to work even faster. I'd write more about it but my break is over.
[+] [-] eru|12 years ago|reply
What do you have to lose?
[+] [-] rachellaw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heaven00|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|12 years ago|reply
Move.
[+] [-] ashray|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vamsinator|12 years ago|reply
We contracted with Delhi dev shop and were paying about $8000 Australian dollars per month for the equivalent of 3 developers (mix of backend devs full time, and on call front end dev, designer, tester)
I think our junior dev was charged out at $1300 per month so if using standard agency markup of 100% her salary would've been around $650 per month (~26000 rupees per month).
The manager was also always complaining that new recruits kept increasing their demands each year.
So it's strange that there's such a difference in salaries between 2 cities so close by. If it was true then I'd expect programmers to move to Delhi.
[+] [-] eklavya|12 years ago|reply
I think it's impossible for anyone even just barely decent in programming to get a job in India. I have seen people get into Motorola while searching for jobs like nomads. They were not from premier or even well known institutes. What you are subjecting yourself to is incomprehensible based on your objectives.
[+] [-] exabrial|12 years ago|reply
(I'm not a world traveler, so disregard the next remarks if you have better insight than me.)
I noticed while working with chinese developers they were terrified to tell me they were having a problem with a task I assigned. They also had no problems passing extremely poorly designed code in order to meet a deadline. It didn't even have to work, the understanding was, you just have to turn something in before the deadline. I had a developer that couldn't get writes to the database working consistently. So he wrote them to a file on disk... I guess that was good enough.
Working with Indian developers is a much more mixed experience. Aside from them interrupting you constantly, which I cannot stand, some of their attitudes were downright laughable. "I have 5 years experience, which is about 10 American years experience" one guy told me as he explained that it would be better to write their own messaging layer instead of my selection of ActiveMQ.
Anyway, if Twitter/Google/whatever was based in India or China, I imagine the leaders would know how to use their labor effectively to produce competitive companies. I don't see American companies ever using overseas labor effectively. The cultures are just inherently incompatible for working on a subjective task like software development.
[+] [-] vitd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ishansharma|12 years ago|reply
I've been working from home for 3-4 years part time and I think my little bits of experience can help you:
1. When It comes to discipline, it is very hard! What I have been doing is measuring everything. I got Rescue Time subscription and now, every minute on the computer is measured! If I don't have a productivity score of 60+ by the end of the day, I know that things need to change. After that, it takes a lot of self control.
2. For networking, online relations can help a lot. Remote teams are great to work with. I have a small group of 3-4 people, all at different places but they help in making sure that I don't get bored and am accountable for what I do!
3. All you need to network is one good friend who is also a networker. I went to a small web development firm for internship and now I'm friends with the COO there. He's helped me with contacts. Some of my relatives are also in IT industry, so there's some help.
9 months is quite a long time and I'm sure some part in this decision is social pressure (I earn good enough while doing studies as well, but everyone around pushes me to get "experience" in big firms!)
[+] [-] super-serial|12 years ago|reply
Since then I've never been able to be productive. I tried contract work here and there but I've never had the self-discipline. Actually I've made less money in the last 7 years combined from programming than 1 month at my real job. Think about that... I haven't made $5K from programming over these last 7 years.
Of course I needed money so I started working part-time jobs. I currently work 24 hours a week for near minimum-wage, often having to shovel snow in sub-zero temperatures. I thought the worse I suffer the more I'll get motivated to do work at home. That has not happened. I have nothing to show for these last 7 years except half-completed projects and a free productivity extension that 5,000 people use - but obviously does not work for me.
So maybe getting a job is the right thing for you. If you can't work from home, you can't work from home. You'll have to accept the best terms you can find, and if that's $100/mon then that may be your only option.
As for me... I would rather die than get a programming job. I'm as defiant as ever. I love programming, but I only love programming my own ideas. Even the thought of programming for someone else makes me feel physically ill (like throwing up). So either I make it as an Indie developer or I die as a janitor. Your post made me realize I should feel lucky that I have the option to be a janitor for $10/hr. You don't even have that option.
[+] [-] icefox|12 years ago|reply