Market of Ideas
Xplace is a pretty good online market for local Freelancers.
I've been watching this site for over five months. So many people [with money], AKA Investors want to "break into hi-tech" with their "idea". Watching the proposed projects AND the bidding on them, has caused me to realize just how STUPID many of these folks are. 90% of the "ideas" have ALREADY been done endlessly, dozens of times on this site alone, never mind actual running sites. Completely ignore the fact that ready-made solutions for some of these projects can easily be found for... free.
But no, "it is MY Facebook clone that will make me Rich!" If people put nearly as much effort or money into being original, then maybe we would get somewhere. Sigh. We are [supposed to be] the Start-Up Capital of the world. But no, the "dump money, get rich quick!" mentality is ruining it all.
Also, many of the bids on these projects are SO ridiculously low, that I can only hope that the actual developers have done the project once and are just rebranding and reselling it every time a new Idjut comes along.
I realize that such a marketplace is NOT representative of the whole. But really, I have actually WORKED for two such companies.
I've been watching this site for over five months. So many people [with money], AKA Investors want to "break into hi-tech" with their "idea". Watching the proposed projects AND the bidding on them, has caused me to realize just how STUPID many of these folks are. 90% of the "ideas" have ALREADY been done endlessly, dozens of times on this site alone, never mind actual running sites. Completely ignore the fact that ready-made solutions for some of these projects can easily be found for... free.
But no, "it is MY Facebook clone that will make me Rich!" If people put nearly as much effort or money into being original, then maybe we would get somewhere. Sigh. We are [supposed to be] the Start-Up Capital of the world. But no, the "dump money, get rich quick!" mentality is ruining it all.
Also, many of the bids on these projects are SO ridiculously low, that I can only hope that the actual developers have done the project once and are just rebranding and reselling it every time a new Idjut comes along.
I realize that such a marketplace is NOT representative of the whole. But really, I have actually WORKED for two such companies.
- Two guys wanted to create a used-cars site. They had no idea what the term "web-server" meant. Their business model was having call-center girls read the in-print newspapers for-sale sections, call people up and offer them to also spend money on their site. When they decided to "branch out" into home-rentals, they literally told me to copy some specific other site.
- Two guys hired me to fix the mess made by previous contractors, for their application. I was the ONLY technical person in the company. I quit because they wouldn't to treat me decently AND refused to spend 1000$ on SW tools I needed (investment returned within a month) while they Jet-Set around the world with shiny new laptops.