Ok so after my 3rd programmer being another scam, :eek: within the last 3 months I have given up on any and all freelancers. Other then corporate programmers, Im in a void between the highend programming firms, and freelancers. Is there any programming firms or companies out there that are for economy jobs, and have a actual reputation and are trustworthy, and have talent at the least. American as well.

Thanks.

I am also interested in this.. We have tried numerous times on rentacoder, and none of them were up to the task. I also have a pretty substancial project that I need coded. (PHP)

For PHP I would have a look at this community:
http://www.phpfreaks.com/forum

Theres some really great guys that will help you out with more or less anything, an area to request work to.

What about their going rates?

(will this post considered a one-liner? I mean, the above question is legitimate)

You can search lot of doveloper companies out there. Give a try to company not located on US, basically they are more cheaper but make sure you know their company background, what projects they have been involved etc. They might cheaper because the living cost lower than US or currency exchange.

Well Ive gone through a indian "firm" which i think was just a person, and a philipene (sp?) programmer so far, and an american, and all have screwed me so. Just a matter of morals.

Also (I'd edit but im a bit lazy its 12am), theres a problem of contracts and legal issues to actually bind international firms to a job.

You might try this www.scbr.com . They seem capable to do your job. I myself have tried their free code. You can create a virtual office with them during project development.

There is 1 way to bind a firm to a job, payment milestones. They get paid when they have delivered certain pre-agreed code or pages or whatnot.

Try advertising in WHT's requests forums, perhaps ask for references from previous work.

What type of programming are you looking for?

I'm both a corporate developmer and freelance programmer. What are you trying to do?

Have you taken a look at your local tech colleges too? You can usually find programmers who are majoring in something computer related for pretty cheap.

I have a lot of contacts to web developers which i already work very successfully with. What kind of project are you trying to do?

Just to keep in mind, most web developers charge different hourly rates depending on what is being done. For example, Graphic Work is charged at one rate, HTML Layout at other, PHP Coding at another, Database design at another.

We finally had to goto that type of pricing structure, because we were getting killed on jobs that we alot more involved once we got into them, and the client was quoted an hourly rate below what the work was worth.

Almost all reputable designers and coders will work this way, you cant expect to pay the same rate for HTML code as you do PHP coding, unless you are paying an above average rate for all development work.

I have a computer business in Australia and have team of programmers and designers which I outsource all my work to. After sorting through the "scam" freelancers I am happy with the team I have. I used ifreelance.com and getafreelancer which I found alot better than rentacoder. If you want a quote done on your projects PM me and I will send you my phone number and we will discuss the project in more detail.

Regards,

Darren Andrews
Moura Computer Services

Ive tried payment milestones, and that does help with protecting my money. Local college students cant take on the size and time restraints of this project.

Its a type of all-in-one social networking site, kind of like a more feature packed myspace. Its a big project and needs to be done within 7 weeks.

The problem with people who outsource and have a "team" of designers and programmers is they are just a middleman, that you have to pay, and have no direct communication with the programmers and designers. I need communication with them, because the middleman doesnt cut it.

Almost all reputable designers and coders will work this way, you cant expect to pay the same rate for HTML code as you do PHP coding, unless you are paying an above average rate for all development work.

Very few freelancers I know work like that. I used to do freelance programming and website design and I charged a standard hourly rate, an hour of my time was an hour of my time. Whether it was sitting drinking coffee and planning a class structure for the project or furiously typing code php/xhtml/css it was an hour of my time and I charged the same for it.

There is a catch 22 syndrome with php freelancers in that php is extremely easy to get into and there are thousands of new php programmers who have no background in other programming languages hence they churn out insecure scripts that "work" but are a total disgrace and buyers have become somewhat accustomed to that and therefore dont want to pay what a good programmer feels is a decent rate for their experience.
99 times out of a hundred if you hire a freelancer who has a background in C/C++ or any other strongly typed language you are going to get decent code as they understand the vulnerabilities associated with not casting variables to specific types, using globals, trusting unvalidated input etc.

Here's a few tips for those trying to find a programmer that should help cut down on development costs and projects getting left half finished.
When you contact a programmer try and include as much information as possible about the project. Try and envisage what functionality you need and include any plans you may have for future expansion (adding new code to an application designed for one purpose to suddenly become a multipurpose application can lead to a lot of code refactoring and programmer frustration).

Before giving a project to a programmer ask if they will sign non disclosure/non compete agreements and a contract with payment milestones and project scope. A decent programmer will have their own forms that they can post you to be signed.

There are a lot of good programmers out there but you wont find them answering posts in the employment sections here or any other forum frequented by bargain basement employers.

Freelance sites are usually a poor source as the good guys just cannot commercially compete on those sites. Try sitepoint and read some threads in the php/php application design forums to get an idea of who knows their stuff (a lot of them are freelancers).

If you can get one programmer who has their own framework (all the website basics in place, session control, user management, emailing, templating, db abstraction layers, input validation strategies etc,etc), practices test driven design and knows when to utilize design patterns in their code then I am sure you will be using them again and again and rates that may have seemed expensive at first will be cheap at twice the price.

The problem with people who outsource and have a "team" of designers and programmers is they are just a middleman, that you have to pay, and have no direct communication with the programmers and designers. I need communication with them, because the middleman doesnt cut it.

Yes, I am just a middle man. However, You do have direct contact with my designers/programmers. I am in the middle of installing confrencing software on my server which will be the prefered way of communication, at the moment communication is through email, msn or phone.

I work jobs so that, all the pre-project work (contracts, paper work and payment methods etc) are all discussed through me. Then you will be put in contact with the "team" for the duration of the project and then you will deal with me again at close of project.

There is the problem of having to pay the middleman, but like you said finding good freelancers can be alot harder than it sounds. Having the middleman means that the freelancers that are working on your project have all been tried and tested, I have my team working almost fulltime on projects. I run an Australian based company with a shopfront, ABN etc. I have policies and contracts in place which makes things run alot smoother than finding a backyard freelancer.

PM me if you want my contact details and we can discuss things further.

There are a lot of good programmers out there but you wont find them answering posts in the employment sections here or any other forum frequented by bargain basement employers.

We do post in the employment section on here, however, people generally get scared by our rates to do things, and to be honest it doesnt bother me too much as it is us people will come to when things go wrong on their budget design.

Rgds,
Chris

So far you have 3rd time bad experience with freelancer, I think best way to hire one of them in-house rather than repeating same mistake again and again and expecting different result.

I believe that being able to contact the same person within a company whenever you need them is important as they understand your needs better.

Also don't expect quality for peanuts, you get what you pay for:)

Rgds,
Chris