Sites like Rent a Coder (www.rentacoder.com) serve to remind businesses, such as those confined to a small Island like Bermuda, that the world is their marketplace.

Rent a Coder allows businesses anywhere to offer coding jobs up for bid and allows coders anywhere to bid for jobs.

This means that coders in India, who are deemed to be cheap and good at their job, are now available to individuals and small businesses and not just to the big corporations who have traditionally taken advantage of their availability.

As the site describes it buyers with jobs or related questions to ask can request bids on the project, along with a maximum amount they would be willing to pay.

Coders from around the world will then send in their bids.

Buyers can choose from among the bids after reviewing each coder's resume and reputation online, and then hire them.

If you are a coder, you can bid for work that is put up for bid.

There are no service charges or finders fees for buyers, while coders pay 15 percent of the bid price to Rent a Coder. Buyers are under no obligation to accept any bids sent to them.

Once they accept a bid, they must place payment into escrow with Rent a Coder.

They can pay by credit card.

The money is not released to the coder, until the work is completed to a standard acceptable to the buyer.

In cases of disputes buyers and coders agree to arbitration by Rent a Coder.

For inexperienced buyers Rent a Coder will also provide individual help in choosing programmers for specific jobs.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, writer Lee Gomes describes needing help with a tricky software problem in writing a Visual Basic program to help him learn French.

He put the job up for bid on Rent a Coder and the problem was solved for $25 by a coder named Mani Kumar in Bangalore.

Mr. Gomes, who lives in San Francisco, then muses that this form of bidding might be exploitation, and likens it to the desperate bidding for jobs on Cesar Chavez Street by Mexican immigrants who wait for contractors to pull up in their trucks.

Each immigrant bids for jobs, desperately undercutting each other to feed their family. Mr. Gomes then has a guilt trip.

"I can't, though, discern much difference between Cesar Chavez Street and the evolving Internet," he writes.

"With my programming problem, I had just, in effect, pulled up in a pick-up truck.

"People whose economic circumstances are vastly different from mine then jostled for my attention.

"True, the Internet isn't yet as perfect a market as Cesar Chavez Street. Just give it time. Very large invisible hands are at work.

"One day, everyone in the digital economy may find themselves on a Cesar Chavez Street that spans the globe." As outlined in a previous Tech Tattle column such a process is already happening through another Internet site, www.elance.com, through which people bid pretty cheaply to build an Internet site, write a press release, design a logo, or even provide some legal advice.

I think Mr. Gomes makes an interesting, although misguided analogy with the Mexican workers bidding on the street.

The Mexican workers are bidding for unskilled jobs.

The market for their limited skills (raw human energy, muscle) is limited to the street, and the demand for those skills.

For the talented Indian coder, the Internet bidding process allows him or her to choose among a vast variety of jobs, opening a world of work and opportunity not previously available.

The Internet bidding process has allowed him to move out of his narrow "street", say Bangalore, to the US or Bermuda.

This process is called globalisation through technology, and despite what people like French activist Jose Bove say about the "theft" of their jobs, this could be better than any aid programme for the underdeveloped world.

Bove has brought awareness, however, that we must always be on guard that multinationals are not using globalisation as a cover for immoral exploitation in the Third World.

In the arena of technology, connectivity has allowed business to search for the right person for the job worldwide and has allowed the right person for the job to find that job.

To use the nomenclature of Bermuda resident James Martin (whose companies also use programmers in India), these "cybercorps" can use workers anywhere.

But one must also question at what stage does the price of a programmer in Bangalore become exploitative of that programmer because of their desperation?

Perhaps Mr. Gomes' disturbing analogy of the Mexican street worker might have some relevance after all. Any thoughts on this topic from readers?

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com or (33) 467633307.