As a disclaimer to this post, I do not mean any racial discrimination or anything nasty like that, I'm just telling it as it is. Ok, so recently I've been offered a few jobs with reasonably good pay from someone who's quite new to the "hire a freelancer" industry. I really like the guy, and the guy likes me - without making it sound like a homosexual love story, but in a professional sense as I'm happy to explain things to him (but then again, if I wasn't, why should I be a freelancer?!) and tell him what's going on, and what's really best. Some of the work I've been doing is pretty nastily coded. I'm a PHP coder and I'm very conscious about making the code not only run beautifully, but look beautiful too all in the name of future development and organization. Indentation, forward and backward compatibility, commenting, resource management, you name it. As I'm a pretty honest and blunt guy, I asked him "Who the HELL did this?!" He answered he hired a Delhi firm. I visited the website and I thought I might just check out the integrity of the firm. Surprise surprise, it looked just like a back room business supported by a few amateurs who'd bought a template from TemplateMonster.com and then used Babelfish to translate it. I felt pretty sorry for my client, as it was clear that these people had conned him out of quite a bit of money (mid $xxxx) and he's got a family and all. The system itself didn't even run, at which point I said it would probably require a complete recode (and redesign) as it was totally insecure, the whole thing was one big memory hog and wasn't designed well at all. I told him I'd probably charge the same amount for a recode, but properly. I showed him some of my previous work, including the source code to convince him I wasn't going to screw him over like these other guys did. I was determined to get the job done quicker, perhaps by adapting some of the already existing code to save a little bit of time, so I decided I might call the company who did it in the first place. I called the number from my phone and got through to a SkypeIn number that wasn't even answered. These people have landed the guy in financial problems, and I'm honestly not sure if I want to take the jobs on as it's just going to be me versus a blank PHP project and a quick time span. Has this happened to you before, and if so, what did you do? Truth be told this isn't just work outsourced to India. It's also happening with middle aged people buying a "Learn PHP in 21 days" book and then claiming themselves to be web developers. It annoys me so much as people aren't getting what they pay for, and people like me have harder lives at the end of the day.
I have gotten almost through a project with a coder (I was the buyer) and he keeps on I don't want to say avoiding me but thats what it seems like hes doing to me. The work he has showed me has been quality along with the demos but we are so close to finishing I don't want to boot him off the project because I might be entitled to pay him and then pay another coder! so..i'm kind of in a situation like that