Somebody on toronto craigslist site is looking for a quote. Their ad copy reads: Looking for a seasoned professional honest and ethical freelance web developer to set up a site similar to e-bay. Please send us url references (min. 3) and references of your past work. We're looking for bids for our project.

I thought an eBay type of site is a very serious effort requiring transaction database queries and fast response and real time update to database. Who would advertise for help for such a project on craigslist of all place?

-Bakulesh

Who would advertise for help for such a project on craigslist of all place?

The same people who think it should cost $500 or less.

dsbrady

For some reason that reminded this old (IT, MIS, DP, whatever) guy of something...

Somewhere in my paper archives is a folder titled Truth Hurts. One item in there is a photocopy of an article - perhaps from Datamation* - dating back to sometime in the 1970's titled "Staffing of the Albatross Project". This bit of satire outlines the staff required to complete a doomed-from-the-start project within the impossibly short time frame promised to the customer with the totally inadequate staff the customer's budget allowed. It lists various team members and their symbolic jobs, but the last position described is a brilliant fresh-out-of-school-and-utterly-ignorant-about-life programmer to build the system single-handed, as anybody else would know better than to try it.


*(I remember working for a couple of years before applying for a Datamation subscription because I was told they were choosy. I got back a letter telling me I qualified, and had been put on a waiting list; I would start receiving the magazine when my name floated to the top of the list. I think I have two particularly interesting issues in my files.)

I remember reading an article in Forbes, I believe, about 5-6 years ago, on eBay. At that time, they were rewriting their entire website every 18 months or so. Not just adding, fixing,amd patching, but REWRITING every line of code.

I don't know if they are still doing that. But that will add to the cost of an "eBay-like" site.

Barbara