I’ve seen mentioned on here a few times that there are websites where programmers can bid for jobs. I had the impression that at least some of these jobs were basically one or two day projects, just doing “gruntwork” of various sorts–writing boring, small programs of various sorts.
What are some of those websites?
Not asking for myself–I had mentioned the existence of such websites to someone else, and they wanted to follow up on that on someone else’s behalf…
There’s Elance and ODesk. I wish I had something good to say about either of them, but mostly I don’t. But I do bid on jobs and have picked up work ranging from a couple hours to a couple weeks on them.
What do you have to say about them that’s bad?
oDesk requires you to have a whole bunch of stuff on your computer that essentially spies on you - does stuff like takes screen shots every few minutes to document that you’re really working and not looking at pron, that kind of thing. Not every job requires that the pics are used, but nevertheless, the software is there, and I find that very annoying. Not to mention that for me, there’s no way I could work like that - if it took a pic when a confidential email from another client came in, for example, that could be very bad.
Aside from that, the sites tend to cater to either students or people in low-economy countries, meaning that they don’t pay very well. If I wanted to make minimum wage, I would find something more fun than programming.
oDesk does have snapshot software, but it isn’t required to install, much less use, unless you’re working on an hourly-based project (as opposed to flat-rate). The trade off is that hourly payment is guaranteed by oDesk (even if, somehow, oDesk doesn’t receive payment from the buyer. The snapshots are taken every 10 minutes roughly, and a preview window appears with a thumbnail to show you what the snapshot includes, and you’re able to delete the snapshot if it contains anything confidential (why are you reading emails from other clients on someone else’s time, anyway?).
Having said all that, there is a very large percentage of student and low-income foreign workers on oDesk, which does tend to reduce the pay on many projects. I’ve been using oDesk steadily for several months and haven’t worked for less than double minimum wage yet (unless you count my failed attempt to moonlight as a voice-over artist).
I don’t have any experience with RAC or eLance, sorry.
Seriously? You turn off your email when working on projects because the 10-20 seconds it takes to read an email and decide if you need to respond to it right now or if it can be put off for later will hit the client’s bottom line?
That kind of interruption is just part of the working day. If I had to turn my time clock on/off every time I got an email, I’d spend more time recording the time for the interruption than I would dealing with the email.
Yup, that’s why I said “Not every job requires that the pics are used.”
Do they really not require you to install the software, though? That must be different - when I looked into oDesk a couple years ago, the software had to be installed & running, no way around it.
I don’t like recording my time in their software, which makes assumptions about my workflow that aren’t valid or appropriate and requires duplicate data entry (I record my time in my own damn time database and generate my own invoices).
I am ethical with Elance and ODesk — I don’t go around trying to cut them out of the action and have the client just deal directly with me — but it’s so tempting, not for the extra 10% they’d no longer be scraping off the top but to be free of their intrusive interference.
I’m sorry that I didn’t include a 
with my parenthetical, but it wasn’t intended to be serious. I don’t stop checking my email when I’m on the clock, but if I’m going to read an email that I wouldn’t want included in any potential screenshots, I simply hit the assigned hotkey to pause the recording software - same as I do when I take a shit, take the dogs out for a walk, or make my lunch. And, again, the ability to delete screenshots after the fact is available - I’ve done that when I’ve forgotten to pause the recorder while having lunch and chatting with my wife on AIM.
When I first started freelancing, I bid strictly on flat-rate projects, for a number of reasons. Installation of the “oDesk Team” software was not required to bid, complete, or be paid for these.
Have you had any success explaining your situation to potential Buyers and having them agree to let you log your time as “offline hours”, or even switching to fixed-price? I found many buyers quite happy to go the latter route simply by asking.