Zuckerberg's Rent-A-Coder profile from 2002 | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg's Rent-A-Coder profile from 2002

rentacoder.com

42 pointsdonohoe24 comments

I guess it turns out that all of those people who want rentacoders to make facebook clones really aren't that far off the mark.

I just submitted a job request through that site to him, to fix some privacy bugs in a "large social networking" application thinking that would be funny. Damn, if he didn't reply back within 30 seconds and tell me to just "Relax, retire, enjoy your family. It's just a web site. Not worth it."

It is kind of interesting how there is some kind of karma in the whole privacy debate here. All of his info is being aired out in public. So far its been fairly benign, but it looks like it might get dirty here pretty soon.

i notice there is no php in that profile

How can we be sure 100% it's reallly Mark Zuckerberg's of Facebook fame? I couldn't see anything definitive in the profile.

Sign up Date: May 23, 2002 9:30:12 PM Username: zberg02 Formal Education: Phillips Exeter Academy '02 Harvard University '06

Unless someone was impersonating him in 2002, I'd say it's a safe bet that it's him.

He's from Dobbs Ferry. He went to Phillips Exeter and Harvard. He graduated high school in 2002, so the "zberg02" username makes sense. No one has logged into the account since 2002 so it definitely wasn't faked recently, and it's unlikely it was faked before he was well known.

Seems likely it's his.

Wow, I was a top coder on RAC around the same time :) Good times!

That said, the site is a joke for US-based programmers IMO. It worked for me because I didn't care about the $ amount being a HS freshman who'd just fallen in love with programming.

[quote]Wow, I was a top coder on RAC around the same time :) Good times![/quote]

zaidf, you miss the days when you would code for free?

vWorker has like 300k workers now. I wonder if it's easier or harder to be a top coder now, compared to then. The #2 and #3 Top Coders right now are from the U.S.

Kind of off topic, but I'm not a fan of their re-branding. Perhaps there's some oDesk envy? (Rent a Coder is now vWorker for those that didn't click through)

It's not surprising: a lot of what's happening there isn't coding related. e.g., I keep getting unsolicited requests to do technical writing.

How do you mean, HeyLaughingBoy? Employers send you private bid requests for technical writing? I think that only happens if you put it in your resume or if you did a technical writing job for someone. I like that they have more than a programming category -- for one thing, makes it easy to hire out the tech writing parts.

Really, tbgvi? I like it. The control panel is easier to use in the site redesign that came with rebranding. Pay by the hour is new for them, but I don't see them as being more like the competition.

And I figure the re-branding makes sense for them. Everyone here is a coder, but vWorker has lots of users, with those projects for SEO and logos and transcriptions. Changing from "coder" to "worker" probably helps the designers and writers, now that vWorker is marketing to their buyers as well.

I like how he graduated from Harvard in '06 in '02.

In case your post wasn't a joke (like mine), the '06 is his class year, not necessarily his graduation date.

Hmm, could it be the projected graduation year ?

That makes sense to me.

Totally lied about graduating from Harvard.

Not saying he graduated, rather simply saying he's attending Harvard, part of the 06 class, which at the time was definitely true.

Not really. It says his last login was 2002. The clear assumption was he was a student at Harvard in the class of 2006.

To those who don't yet associate the mbyrne handle with Bringing The Funny (as we say in my home country), my above comment was meant as an obvious joke. Probably not obvious enough. Probably not funny enough, either.

You have 10 karma. The list of those who don't yet make that association is quite extensive.

I just gave your comment one point.

HN may seem a little dull to you at times, but there's a lot of people here that would prefer that the humor be restricted such that your posts would still be worth reading if you stripped out the humor.

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