- Sun May 25, 2014 1:01 pm
#171464
Eh! He'll survive.
As long as the mods don't object, I have no problem with people asking for paid help. Not all of us want to be engineers, and many people need to build something but have neither the time nor inclination to DIY and this is a good source of help. I can repair my own car, but it's usually more convenient to pay somebody else to do the job. That's how I look at these postings.
That said, if you're going to go online and offer money in exchange for development work, you owe your audience at a minimum the basic courtesy of explaining what you're trying to do and what parts (some or all) you need help with. I discount my rates here on SF and other hobby sites when doing paid work, but it's still up to the requester to do some research into what "normal" engineering development costs are in their neck of the woods. No sense expecting someone to work for $10/hour when he expects to be paid $100/hour.
I have done a lot of work for people from online electronics forums over the years. It's generally been a lot of fun, but (surprise, surprise) I make very little money doing it (probably average less than $30/hour when my usual corporate rate is over $100/hour). I've had one experienced EE reply that he had no idea how I could do the amount of work I did for such a low fee. My response is that I tend to only take on work that seems like fun and doesn't need to be done in a hurry: you get good and cheap, but not fast. Fast you pay for!
As long as the mods don't object, I have no problem with people asking for paid help. Not all of us want to be engineers, and many people need to build something but have neither the time nor inclination to DIY and this is a good source of help. I can repair my own car, but it's usually more convenient to pay somebody else to do the job. That's how I look at these postings.
That said, if you're going to go online and offer money in exchange for development work, you owe your audience at a minimum the basic courtesy of explaining what you're trying to do and what parts (some or all) you need help with. I discount my rates here on SF and other hobby sites when doing paid work, but it's still up to the requester to do some research into what "normal" engineering development costs are in their neck of the woods. No sense expecting someone to work for $10/hour when he expects to be paid $100/hour.
I have done a lot of work for people from online electronics forums over the years. It's generally been a lot of fun, but (surprise, surprise) I make very little money doing it (probably average less than $30/hour when my usual corporate rate is over $100/hour). I've had one experienced EE reply that he had no idea how I could do the amount of work I did for such a low fee. My response is that I tend to only take on work that seems like fun and doesn't need to be done in a hurry: you get good and cheap, but not fast. Fast you pay for!
