It's easy enough for us to say that people don't appreciate the value of what we do but really market value is set by supply and demand.
Not everyone lives in San Francisco or New York where they feel they must bill $100 p/h just to make rent. A smart person in an emerging economy where $500 per month puts them on a higher part of the local income curve could certainly realize that they can compete in a global marketplace on price. This does not necessarily make them incompetent, in fact it's not a bad way to "hack" oneself out of poverty.
Besides, many software applications are alternatives to excel spreadsheets or to handwritten HTML websites and don't necessarily require the hippest programmers who are well studied on the latest technologies. A customized rails scaffold can go a long way to solve a lot of real business problems, and doesn't HN often talk about the value of producing an "MVP"?
There's truth in the idea that a first world salary might go further elsewhere in the world, and that lots of people get by on less ... But I suggest you look at getacoder.com et al. and see what I was really talking about, because it can't be explained only that way with no other explanation. I once saw a project similar to something that took a former employer 10 years to iterate on and finally get right, with a long tail of bug fixes and crazy corner cases because it is a difficult problem. The rentacoder "cost" was 2 weeks and less than $1000. I did not follow up with that particular guy's project but I'm going to guess that they did not have success with those expectations and that budget.
Its interesting that those sites are flooded with "create" but never "update". Version 0.00001 of "a copy of ebay with facebook integration" (true example from getacoder) will only cost $5K... What is the site for "OMG we need version 0.00002"? Oh we already have those, they are the established $500/hr contracting sites.
There's a Hollywood movie trope rolled out every 2.8433 years where a rich guy goes back to university and tries to buy his way past projects and tests. I always kind of imagine some rich kid in "Web Programing 317 section 7" contracting out his final project. Now that tuition is so expensive, $5K for a final project sounds more or less reasonable for a kid who just wants the credential and not the education/training. There should be some kind of ethical filter where if you're obviously trying to contract for a stereotypical final project around the end of the school year...
Once I was looking through rent-a-coder and the pdf spec attached was a homework assignment with the class and professor's name on it. Emailed it to the prof as my good deed for the day.
I guess most of the people posting these one-off coding jobs on bidding sites are probably too flaky to ever need a version 0.00002, they will abandon the business as soon as they realize they aren't getting any hits.
Interesting that you're mentioning the "outsourcing" of academic projects.
While this seemingly has been "popular" in Europe for PhDs / doctoral theses for quite some time (in Germany e.g. some ministers recently lost their posts for that or similar activities), it has become an even larger issue in countries like India across all levels of academic studies - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4610739 for more info on that.
Rentacoder used to have a disclaimer (they may still, I haven't looked in years) that the site could not be used for any thesis or "final senior project"-type project that would determine whether or not someone received a degree.
I always found that oddly specific - they clearly acknowledge that people will use the site to pay someone to do class projects, and get better grades by doing so, and they very much don't care so long as it doesn't determine whether the buyer graduates.
Not everyone lives in San Francisco or New York where they feel they must bill $100 p/h just to make rent. A smart person in an emerging economy where $500 per month puts them on a higher part of the local income curve could certainly realize that they can compete in a global marketplace on price. This does not necessarily make them incompetent, in fact it's not a bad way to "hack" oneself out of poverty.
Besides, many software applications are alternatives to excel spreadsheets or to handwritten HTML websites and don't necessarily require the hippest programmers who are well studied on the latest technologies. A customized rails scaffold can go a long way to solve a lot of real business problems, and doesn't HN often talk about the value of producing an "MVP"?