Last Updated on November 30, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla
I check some of the well known posting sites on a daily basis to look for leads for web or network jobs. What makes me roll on the floor laughing are ads like the following. Let’s take this apart one sentence at a time.
We are looking for a student who can use PHP and MySQL for our new website.
Ok, you won’t hire a professional. You want someone with little or no experience to write code and develop a database. Do you have any clue as to what an SQL injection attack is, how easy it is to implement or what it could do to your website and domain? thought not.
To market our product on the Internet we are using videos with links to our product order page on our website.
So, you are implementing a catalog/shopping cart. Good luck when your student tries to code the credit card gateways. The only protection you will have will be if the hackers are laughing so hard that they fall off their chair and get a concussion after looking at your site.
We need to have a database and be able to identify each video to give credit to the provider of the video for each sale.
OK – a flat table might be doable for a student.. However, wait until you get to where you have to provide access for your vendors to check their stats. Did the mythical student you hope to find ever deal with a relational database before?? Nope? Have fun with that.
If you are a student, this project can be fun and easy to put together, and good for your portfolio.
Easy to do? Are you kidding or clueless or both??
Good for your portfolio… Translation: We are undercapitalized and cheap. We hope to find some sucker to do thousands of dollars worth of work for nothing except maybe an ‘addition to their portfolio’.
Now for the students, consider:
- How many hours will you have to put into this?? The outline here is just the tip of the iceberg.
- Do the people offering this wonderfully delicious opportunity have a clearly defined business plan?
- What about liability.. If YOU coded the payment gateway and it gets hacked, guess what, you will get one of those nice letters from Dewey Cheetum and Howe with a subject of “You are being sued”..