Good place to look for paid Access development work or help?

[Fred]

I'm asking this on behalf of about a zillion posters who really need many
hours of help or development work, not just a question answered.

I know that respondents "answering" questions with solicitations (I know
this forum has on or two such predators) would degrade and defeat the purpose
of forums such as this. But lots of people really need this. Maybe
people searching for such could find it in the answers to this particular
post.

Maybe the best criteria would be for questioners to approach the people who
won't toot their own horn and answer with the well-intentioned but pretty
worthless advice of "go find someone, and check their credentials" (as the
typical questioner will not know how to do either, I guess this post asks how
to do those two things)

Or is there a web site or association where they can find such people who
(while there are no promises) have some sort of credentials or would tend to
be partially vetted by some means inherent to the process?

 

[Roger Carlson]

It's interesting you should ask this, because I've had such a spot on my
website: www.rogersaccesslibrary.com for a fairly long time:
http://rogersaccesslibrary.com/Classified.asp. Unfortunately, it was fairly
well buried and got little traffic.

However, I've been rebuilding my website in a new format and I'm transfering
the Classifieds there: http://rogersaccesslibrary.com/forum/default.asp?C=5

Currently, it is limited only to developers I know personally. However,
I've been thinking of expanding it. There are a number of issues to be
considered including 1) time and effort, 2) maintenance (that is making sure
ads are current), 3) liability, and 4) interest. I'd be willing to do it if
there was actually enough interest.

So I'd like to know how many developers would actually be interested in
advertising on a site like mine.

Anyone?

 

[Larry Linson]

If you followed the newsgroup, you would find that quite often, there is a
followup to Steve's offers to assist for a fee from various respected
participants here pointing out that this newsgroup is not a place for him to
seek paid work. Often those followups will point out that, in the opinion of
qualified participants, the answers that Steve provides (and I am not at all
under the impression, as he claims, that answers without a solicitation for
work are the majority of his posts) in his posts are often wrong, or so
trivial that it would be a shame to pay anything for such, and serve as no
recommendation for hiring anyone for paying work.

Because newsgroups do not exists as 'classifieds' for the convenience of
posters seeking paying work, his solicitations are improper at best, and
others have pointed out that anyone who will not follow the simplest rules
of newsgroup behavior may not follow other rules that you'd expect from
someone with whom you do business.

To Steve (who also posts under a number of aliases, apparently often seeking
answers to Access development questions without revealing his own lack of
knowledge) -- For shame, Steve. You know the rules and you know you are
violating them. Stop before you, once again, make a fool of yourself in
public trying to remake the rules of newsgroups to suit your own ends.

There are many posters here who are qualified to do paying Access work...
you can tell from the quality of their answers... not nearly all of those
posters _do_ contract work, but if they have a website reference in their
SIG line, you could visit and see if they offer such services. Do not
expect them to respond to a solicitation here for paid assistance, however,
as they know better.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP

 

[Fred]

Hello Roger,

I think that, for the reasons that I described in my original post, there
is a need for something like that, maybe yours could become the "seed". I
understand about the valuable time to maintain it etc., but it would be ideal
if there was way to keep that low enough so that at least for starters it
could be free: 1. to help it get started 2. To avoid the catch 22 that if
it wasn't, them mentioning it for people to sign up would itself be a
solicitation.

Sincerely,

Fred

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I would. I've seen the projects people hired from Access developers at guru.
com and rentacoder.com. These people were willing to deal with developers
who had severe problems speaking English because they thought they were
getting good deals. They were completely frustrated because the apps didn't
work, the developers couldn't fix the (many) problems, and the developers
couldn't communicate. After evaluating the apps it's evident the developers
never heard of normalization in relational databases, referential integrity,
standard programming practices or even "Option Explicit". Everything was
built with wizards and even then, they managed to mess it up. Some apps
didn't compile and had never been compacted. Most of the multiuser db apps
weren't split.

If these people had an online forum where they could find and hire real
experts who answer Access developer questions correctly in these groups, they
wouldn't have wasted their money and time on guru.com and rentacoder.com. So
if you can provide that forum, Roger, I'd be willing to help. People deserve
quality, not guru.com and rentacoder.com.

A nice feature would be to have feedback. However that exposes Roger
to lots of interesting legal troubles.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

 

[Fred]

Maybe just a list of links to people's sites who say they will do Access
development work. They they can do their convincing / credentials at the
developer's site / landing page.

Whoever is running it can put a a disclaimer to that effect.

Fred