Agreed. I'd call myself a fairly capable programmer, althouth not an expert in their main technologies (.NET and Java) and from the few times I attempted to compete in component development, the amount of work involved just seemed a bit much. (especially the amount of unit tests) I'm not sure where the article's author got the "1-2 components per week, part time" figure from. It seemed to take me almost a week full time to complete one $500 component. (which, inevitably, didn't win)
I'm not complaining I didn't win: the judges clearly thought the other competitors did a better job, and they were probably right. But it's anything but easy money.
TopCoder seems to be overrun with developers from developing (largely Asian, as far as I can tell) countries where salaries (and cost of living) is much, MUCH lower, which is also keeping the prize money low. $500 (before tax) for a week's worth of work is just not attractive to me, I can make (and have made) 3-5x that doing normal consulting. (where the probability of being paid in the first place is a lot higher)
There is, of course, nothing actually wrong with this. This may well be the best way to outsource development to cheap labour: if it's not good enough, don't pay them anything!
There's probably a certain amount of practice to this, over time you figure out what the judges want, and what not to spend time on, but to make a competitive amount of money, you'd still have to have a very high success rate. The article is somewhat misleading in this respect.
That said, if you're in it for the fun, it's great!
I'm not complaining I didn't win: the judges clearly thought the other competitors did a better job, and they were probably right. But it's anything but easy money.
TopCoder seems to be overrun with developers from developing (largely Asian, as far as I can tell) countries where salaries (and cost of living) is much, MUCH lower, which is also keeping the prize money low. $500 (before tax) for a week's worth of work is just not attractive to me, I can make (and have made) 3-5x that doing normal consulting. (where the probability of being paid in the first place is a lot higher)
There is, of course, nothing actually wrong with this. This may well be the best way to outsource development to cheap labour: if it's not good enough, don't pay them anything!
There's probably a certain amount of practice to this, over time you figure out what the judges want, and what not to spend time on, but to make a competitive amount of money, you'd still have to have a very high success rate. The article is somewhat misleading in this respect.
That said, if you're in it for the fun, it's great!