Petty? Yes.

[lagilman]

But entirely justified.

A while back, someone had placed an ad on a service called elance, looking for an editor to help him work his way through his book. It was a genre novel, and I really did have the perfect chops for it. And my price was within the fair range for what he was asking (and within the same range as several other bidders on the job with almost-as-good credentials).

My bid was rejected, as were all the others, because the price was too high.

Okay, I thought, let me bring my price down a bit (by a third, in fact) to see if I get a nibble.

Nope, that bid was still too high for this guy.

At that point, I determined that bidding lower would be stupid, as my time is worth more than he would be paying, and it was already clear that he was looking for someone to do a rather major job on the cheap, which is a warning sign for the freelance contractor. So I declined to rebid.

Unsurprisingly, the rebids he did get were not from the qualified types previously, but rather "I love reading I'd love to work with you" bids. But they were within what even the bid-placer must have thought were acceptable prices.

Today I received notice that the bid-placer had canceled the auction, citing a lack of qualified bidders.

Well, duh.

Comments

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Elance? Would this be a good place to build work experience?

[lagilman]

It's worth a try, if you have $120 to spare (three month's 'basic' membership, which gets you 80 bids for free, per month and access to all basic job placements -- the upper-level membership costs more but has added perks and jobs basic members can't bid on). If you're willing to underbid, and have a lot of scattershot skills (I was only looking for specific writing and editorial jobs) it might be worth it to try and get clients... but remember that a) they take a small percentage of your fee for acting as broker, and b) many of the jobs I've seen have been severely underbid.

I won't be reupping my membership -- I'm doing better on my own.

[kalligraphy.livejournal.com]

I always get a kick out of people who want the world but refuse to pay for it. I recall looking for work and seeing ads that wanted 15+ yrs of experience and a set of skills that basically said: I invented modern computing. Then the company would offer some salary that was more appropriate for someone with 5 yrs experience and 1/4 of the skill set. Makes you wonder what kind of dream world they are living in.

[lianneb.livejournal.com]

This would be the time to pull out the old cliche of 'you get what you pay for'. It's a cliche for a reason.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

My favorite will always be the group that wanted "5 year's experience with Windows 95" - in 1997.

If you want real devaluation, look at child care. The same people who call children the future and will buy their darlings $100 shoes and clothes they'll grow out of in a week fiercely resent paying a living wage to the people who are actually watching/teaching their precious.