J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Slave Wages

This item came up in my RSS reader: Web to Excel. It's a listing at a site called Freelance Projects, where people post their needs, and others reply. This request is:

I have 161 links that I need the contact info taken from and put into Excel. Should not take longer than 2 hours to complete. I will pay via paypal. Budget is $12.00.

Assume that the job really does take two hours (45 seconds per link). By the time the successful applicant places the bid and handles all of the upfront details, it's at least a three-hour job. Do people really work for $4 an hour? Apparently, so. The job has dozens of bids.

The Freelance Projects site has quite a few listing for Excel projects. It's interesting to see what people are using Excel for. Some people could save time and money by consulting the Excel help, or a quick web search. For example:

I desire an Excel spreadsheet which can count the number of characters including spaces written within a cell. In addition, I should be able to derive the number of characters for EACH of the cells framed up within one column on the Excel spreadsheet and get this from any other columns too.

And, not surprisingly, Freelance Projects attracts lots of spammers. For example:

Hiii, We need 100000 real email address, not fake. We'll check them and then make the payment through GAF. Max budget for this is $30.

Bids for this job range from $30 to $300:

Guys i just need an email list of around 1-5 million email accounts.. These email must be accurate not bogus emails. I dont want to get a list of email that are not working

- Reader Comments -

Following are comments in response to this item.
The most recent comment is at the bottom.

1. By Scott. Comment posted 02 September, 2008 5:15pm

   It's funny you mention that website. I placed a low-ball bid just to get some freelance work under my belt and have since spent at least eight, maybe as much as twelve hours on the project. This is in addition to my full time job.
   
   Now, admittedly, I'm a geek for this stuff, so in some respects I find if fun just to see if I can accomplish the task. But I'm getting the feeling that websites like this are really for the freelance beginners (guilty!) or the Excel bottom-feeders.
2. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 02 September, 2008 5:30pm

   Good point, Scott. I guess it's a good way to get some real-life experience, as long as you don't really need the money.
   
   Now I'm curious. What was the job you did?
3. By Jon Peltier. Comment posted 03 September, 2008 6:00am

   When I started my business, I took one job at a rent-a-geek job site. The problem spiraled out of control as I peeled the onion, and multiple changes were demanded to the scope of the project, without concurrent budget changes. It was almost worse than my last regular job. Finally I had to bail on it.
4. By Scott. Comment posted 03 September, 2008 11:43am

   It was to make a rotatiing schedule roster more automated. I'm actually still working on it, a little bit here and there. There are a couple of last minute things to iron out, but mostly little stuff.
   
   But I'm totaling on board with Jon P. Based on the description, it sounded quicker than it turned out to be. The guy I'm communicating with is fine, no problems there, but I think the biggest problem with the rent-a-geek sites is that it's hard to truly understand the scope of the project before you bid. And since the bids are essentially fixed-price bids, once you get into the "true" scope of the project, you can find yourself SOL.
   
   On the other hand, it gives some perspective in terms of what to do and not do in the future. What to say in a bid, what to charge, how to scope it, etc. And without going out and finding these jobs online, I'm not sure where you go to start doing freelance Excel work.
5. By Anthony. Comment posted 10 September, 2008 7:19pm

   Oh, they have these sites for regular old programmers too. Not just Excel developers. C#, VB, SQL Server.... I think they should be banned. You got idiots thinking they can post a real job for "slave pay", as you rightfully call it, and because there are people in this world that consider $4/hr a LOT of money, they get their project done.
   
   We keep pushing good, hard-working, American programmers into the gutter with the dirt. No wonder the United States is falling apart. No one wants to pay programmers (Excel and otherwise) what they are worth so they turn to some kid in India, who will live like a king for $4/hr, $7/hr, whatever.