This might just be med letting out frustration, but I’m getting really frustrated. Got a couple of projects I can’t handle myself, they include both designing and programming. I’ve so far tried the SP forums, getacoder etc, and the result is pretty much the same whereever I go - They promise alot, but can’t deliver.
Over and over I’ve gone trough everything, telling them exactly how I want it (usually what I want i 95% of an already existing website, but with some changes, should make it easy for the devs to understand). Still, over and over again they try to deliver something not even remotely close to what I want.
My last project is based on pligg, and the dev promised he could do exactly what I wanted (this is actually more or less a clone of an existing site), and what do I get? well to quote monty python, “now for something completely different”, and that is what I get… wrong design, wrong layout and not coded as I want…
So, am I doing something wrong, or is this alot like going to the hairdresser where you tell what haircut you want and leave with something the hairdresser made up?
FRUSTRATED!! sorry for making you read this, but had to make a statement, expekting to get attacked by developers and that’s ok
It’s actually a valid question, so don’t be shy about asking it, or being afraid of being accusatory. After all we may be dealing with another instance of the classic adage “you get what you pay for.”
It is a valid question, and I knew it would come up. And yes, they are not the most expensive one. Usually around 500$+, but often the projects should be so straight forward that around that would be a decent price. But, this is probably the problems aswell, earlier I could get cheap and good devs, nowadays there are just to many underpricing eachother and overestimating their skills.
Still, getting the job done rather reasonably is what getacoder etc is for IMO.
That’s what happens when a market bubble matures. You start out with the guys who are serious about their craft, and overall pricing structures that haven’t fully matured, and those guys do pretty well because they have little competition. Then a whole bunch of others start dreaming of easy money; they’ve heard the “I quit my Taco Bell job and made $100K/year in web design” legends (which were true for the earliest adopters) and dove right in. They fight each other on price, redefine the bottom, and force the competent folks (who now are more experienced and have higher value in comparison) to raise their prices. Sooner or later, the bubble pops, market population depletes and prices generally start drifting down again. The design bubble hasn’t quite popped yet - we’re still in the latter days of the Taco Bell phase.
Same thing’s happening right now in the U.S. real estate market. The last wave of get-rich-quick flippers ruined the party for everyone, but that bubble has now popped and the market’s depleting. Prices haven’t plummeted yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
That’s why I get a chuckle whenever I hear someone observe/complain about how they used to be able to good work at cheap prices, but they can’t now. Of course they can’t. This market’s out of infancy, and is now struggling through a pain-in-the-butt adolescence (i.e., bubble dynamics). Actually, the more people expect infancy to last forever, the longer the bubble will last, and the worse it will get; the more people expect rentahack.com to provide great deals, the more hacks will flock there, and the harder it’ll be to get even competent deals. And it only encourages the good people to raise rates.
