How good are freelance programming sites?
natch: I've had great luck with rentacoder, and have only good things to say about the site itself and the controls and mechanisms it has in place to help ensure the process goes smoothly (ratings, on-site communication so there's a paper trail, escrow, etc.).However, there are caveats:1) Best used with very small, very well-defined jobs.2) You must put in a fair amount of careful work to specify what you want done, in a way that leaves no room for interpretation.3) Best used with low-risk (experimental / proof-of-concept) type projects.4) Don't bet your company on getting good quality. You'll usually get something usable, but it often won't be exemplary code.If "usually get something usable" sounds scary, see point #3.5) Don't expect to save yourself time. Instead you spend the same amount of time as you would have spent had you already known how to do what needed to be done but you instead spend the time on communication, and you get your job done by someone who knows how to do it.A corollary to #5 is for some small jobs, you might be able to learn how to do the task and then do it yourself, all in the same amount of time you spent directing the freelancer.So why do it at all? Because of #6:6) Using such a service can move an item off your to-do list, because having a person at the other end of a job bid (and having your reputation on the site as a buyer on the line) you get forced to finish the item. So effectively it's an anti-procrastination tool.This is my experience, which is biased toward small jobs. But then, I wouldn't use one of these sites for a big job.