StackOverthrow

Since 1998 I have been looking for and sometimes landing freelance development contracts. These are after-hours moonlighting things that unfortunately have never been able to support all my financial needs. But it keeps me entertained and allows me to survey some problem domains and technologies I would not experience in my regular day-job. I also get a great perspective on marketing, customer interaction and plain old lunacy.

I am not poking fun at any of the customers or potential clients I have worked with. No, I am talking about the apparent idiots who think they can pay some schmo who just read “Learn C++ in 21 days” or “Headfirst Java” or some nerdy high schooler to re-write the equivalent of MSWord or Outlook Express or Firefox or something else that contains thousands to millions of lines of code.

I regularly check one or two freelance sites as well as craigslist for projects, but this has tapered off a lot given my existing projects. (not to mention my day job)

The following is an example of the lunacy I referred to. Note the time-frame requirements. I can’t imagine how many man-years are invested in the programs he wants to compete with.

Anyone want to take a shot at it? I am sure it is just a matter of using scrum or TDD or even continuous integration. Or all three! Surely it is a simple matter…

(Again, I am not making this up. This was an actual posting on a freelance web site.)

Title: Commercial grade software for US income

Category: Programming / Software / Database Development

Description:

I need a Commercial grade software made for US income tax preparation and online gui income tax preparation software example are like:

1) Taxact.com

2) Tax Cut

3) Turbo Tax

4) http://www.internet-taxprep.com/plindex.asp?welcome=RR1375356

5) http://www.taxhead.com/

a) must also capture customer info; name, address, email

b) need a free look at software: a free dummy trial or video demo (must show how easy it is to do by customer himself)

c) need to ask questions that would determine what papers they have in hand, to determine forms to be used from IRS.gov

all forms are avaialable at http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/lists/0,,id=97817,00.html as formfill

I would like this project completed in 1 to 3 weeks maximum

The comedy doesn’t stop there. What is even funnier is that people actually bid on this stuff. And they go big. You too can have a clone of Quicken written by some team in India for only $2000. I wonder if they factored in the QA bit. That might eat into the profits…

There is another aspect as well: marketing and market share. Do these guys (forgive the gender specificity please) really think that even if some yahoo could write a competing product that they will be able to displace the other established software? Perhaps “overly optimistic” is an understatement…

I can’t think of a way to summarize or make a funny comment about this entry. I think the bid request speaks for itself. So, goodnight, Gracie.