I have uneasy feelings about this. I know that you're targeting grunt-jobs and it's easily estimateable. But I also know that things happen and they can't always be met.
If I'm going to send out a grunt-job then more often I care more about it being done well than being on time. If you're targeting quick turnaround over correctness then I imagine that I need to spend more time verifying the work, exactly what I don't want to be doing.
I had the same reaction to the examples. Even for "grunt-jobs", I would be extremely sceptical of anyone who can give me an ETA after thinking about the problem for less than five minutes.
Agreed, these services or even outsourcing can sometimes lean towards getting done just to have it done by the date than by actually being complete with the task.
I have actually worked with people before that turn in projects incomplete just to have it in by the business due date, then later say sorry it has this or that bug. They do the pretend it is working dance.
Services like this tend to be the done rather than complete type of programmers unless it is an easily verifiable task.
Any programmer knows, there are many stages of done and only one complete. Is your developer you get a done type of doer or someone who completes something?
These things are hard. If you can describe a simple programming task in non-ambiguous language, then that's your program right there.
It might be in pseudocode, but transcribing it into a "real" language is trivial compared to describing the problem in the first place. If it's not, there is probably a programming tool closer to your problem domain that makes it easier.
The biggest business opportunity here is probably helping out with office automation, because not all business minded people can code, not helping professional programmers with boring grunt work.
These sorts of mediation services pop up often, so I understand where you;re coming from. I don't know anything about this one, so I'm talking generally:
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think this service is really trying to solve the (impossible) problem that you lay out. This is more about hiring human labour in an efficient way than it is about making software. From the homepage, I think this is the most interesting example:
Ok, so I can
(1) scrape all the pages;
(2) grab the name, address,
and phone number of every listing; and
(3) put all the listings into a CSV
spreadsheet.
This will be <price redacted>
and take three hours. Is that ok?*
Programming is is a useful skill for this task. For the right person, it's 3 hours work. For the "wrong" person, it could be 3 weeks.
This type of exchange is a kind of economic fundamental. Economies are a long, long way from efficiencies and one of the biggest elements limiting them is what economists term "transaction costs." These are sometimes literal, like paying an attorney to write a contract. More often, it's a general communications difficulty.
Solving those communication problems produces. Programming-oriented-tasks is not necessarily a bad place to explore.
I agree that's the most interesting example, but I also think it falls completely under "office automation". It's not much more complicated to state with lxml (or curl + grep) than it is to state in text if you are fluent with your tools, but it's a bigger hurdle for the average Excel user.
But the example is not terribly useful for a programmer to use in a bigger project, because "put it in a CSV" is too loosely specified for further automation. You would at least need it to be in a specific character set, a specific encoding (html entities or not, BOM or not), specify what to do with invalid entries, the fact that some entries are required and some optional, etc. Even with this simplified example, specifying all these details if what takes time for a programmer, not typing out the code to do it.
Edit: Perhaps I should explain, the reason I'm thinking about this is because I am currently spending a lot of time making these sort of bite sized, well specified, and useful work for a junior developer to get up to speed with. It really is a lot of work.
Really? What about ticketing systems? Certainly when I add a bug or a feature to a ticketing system, it isn't just as difficult as fixing that bug or feature.
The difference being the people working on the ticketing system already have domain knowledge as well as knowledge of the system you are reporting a bug on.
I'm not sure that's the only difference. I'm pretty sure I could walk into many companies and read a ticket and be able to execute without ever having worked on their project before.
The examples don't seem very plausible (except perhaps the python one). In the case of website scraping, why not just pay Mechanical Turk? You apparently just need the data so why try to order it as a script?
In the case of express.js, why would a programmer pay someone to follow a tutorial? You can't use the outcome (a completely unstyled blank website) for anything. The third example clarifies that building a themed website is out of scope.
The python module is something I could maybe see somebody ordering, if they were a student trying to get their homework done by someone else, or maybe a programmer who isn't competent to do their job but needs to deliver some code now and again and is probably being given very basic assignments.
Mechanical Turk doesn't always produce great results for something like web scraping. It really depends on the particular website and data that is being scraped. Usually there is also significant setup involved so that MTurk produces good results regardless of the task. If Rabbits really can do web scraping cheap, fast, and well then it might be worth the money.
Mechanical Turk gets expensive fast, and isn't very accurate, usually with any type of service, there's an overhead.
What this seems like is a quick way to get grunt work done. I can see how web scraping can fit nicely. However, some student with a lot of free time won't value their time as much so they will write a scraper but someone like a manager with a busy engineering team can save a lot of time outsourcing tasks like this.
Another solution is to use web scraping tool like https://scrape.it to scrape a website even for complicated AJAX websites. After you know how to use it, it's way faster than writing a scraper from scratch.
Hiya everyone, OP here. If you reached out to us in the last 14 hours, I'm sorry to say we probably haven't gotten back to you. We didn't anticipate this many responses-- we were expecting under 10 offers, and instead we got over 100-- and our management system is still really shoddy. For example, we're still copy and pasting your email into our admin dashboard to get your signup link.
We're working on fixing/scaling things, but in the meantime I didn't want to insult everyone with an automated message, so hopefully this message can catch you before that frustrated comment! Also, we do intend to get back to everyone eventually.
Just since we're on HN, if you have any thoughts to share feel free to reach out to me directly - [redacted]
The idea is good but they need to have both an "about" page, contact info, and remove the privacy on their whois. [1] If they aren't willing to disclose who they are I would have a problem with hiring them. [2] There is no reason for the business that they are in that they can't act like a business.
[1] Use a business address, a po box, a relatives address or anything "legitimate". Cloaking in this case is just a turnoff.
[2] I hire people to do things that I could use this for.
I don't quite get the thinking behind not revealing that information for a commercial service. It's really not ok, regardless of if it's an mvp product, there are still minimum requirements.
Two days of effort would get you to a basic presentation polish (privacy policy, terms, about, and more elaboration on the financial / payment side of things), along with a PO Box.
Many registrars have sold people on using whois privacy to "protect yourself against hackers and spammers". [1]
Many end users either buy this argument or simply parrot what they see others doing (or not doing).
There are legitimate reasons for privacy but as a general rule if you are a business it's a big mistake.
On this page [1] it states that you will also "protect yourself from telemarketer". Well I am here to tell you (I also run a registrar that doesn't even offer privacy btw) that with thousands of domains under management we get perhaps 1 or 2 phone calls
per week. And if we were to use a google voice number that wouldn't even be an issue. (Yes, thousands of domains ...)
Why? What is the threat model here? It's not like some serial killer is known to use random whois data. Your home address might already be "on the internet", in the form of the phone book.
I don't know if it seems alien to you, but it's an honest question. The first thing I did when I got Internet access was to put my contact info in my finger banner. When I got web access I put up a "home page" with my contact info. It's been there since, and I think it's a feature that people can contact me if they want.
I had an eBay transaction go very wrong. Foolishly I used my real email and domain for communication, with a very WHOISable home address.
When the physical threats started I had to get the police involved.
There's also the issue of pseudonymity. If I work on a lot of different projects, I don't necessarily want everyone to know about everything I'm doing with everyone else.
This doesn't mean I ignore NDAs and share sekrit stuff - I most certainly don't. But I've freelanced in the past, and some employers have strange and unrealistic expectations about how much exclusivity they're buying.
This isn't hypothetical. In the past I've been told "You absolutely can't work for anyone else if you freelance casually for us."
Really? How about "no"?
Also it's better for free speech. I can express opinions freely with online privacy. I don't necessarily want those opinions to be associated with - say - a startup I'm creating.
Generally, contact info is a problem. It's actually mandatory for UK companies to include a business registration number and an office address. (I'm not sure how many UK devs know that.)
Problem is, when you can incorporate in Delaware or Kiev, physical contact details start to become meaningless anyway.
My rule now is that contact is easy if there's a networking, customer care, or community-building benefit. But privacy is a fine thing too.
All of these are examples of the need of multiple on-line identities. You wouldn't use your main email for two projects or two employers that you don't want to know each other. Surely someone you freelance for has your address already?
Your primary address probably has traces of your real identity all over the Internet, including orders from eBay and others, so an adversary could dox you in an instant anyway. Especially if you use it for work related things. So why not make it easy to contact you?
I should have said "many registrars have sold businesses on" not "people on".
I agree that it's not desirable to have a home address on whois as a (once again) general rule. Yet many of our customers do that and we've never heard of any particular issues that they have had.
That said, if you are working as a business (and it's unclear if you do any business consulting or programming I did look at your website quickly (very nice btw.)) in my opinion it pays to get a PO Box for $10 per month.
Totally agree that it is worth it to get a PO box, and I did have one when I was in NYC, but now that I'm backpacking for many months it is hard to keep a PO box renewed. I'm half considering getting a PO box in the town I grew up, simply because I know I will always have people able to check it / keep it active.
I bet that if they actually get e-mails for orders, then in a week it'll have that presentation polish and a PO box. If they don't get orders, then they've saved themselves two days.
I once tried "freelancer.com" on a simple job - I had a small Python program which would standardize WHOIS data from a domain registrar, with modules for about two registrars. I needed modules written for each of about a hundred registrars; they all have different formats. Three people crashed and burned on that. Nobody ever delivered.
Do this. I have even hired multiple devs for the same project, picking the best to move forward with for follow-on work. I also always put something in the job description that they have to reply with in the subject so that I can tell they actually read the description: Maybe the answer to a simple math question or the like (What is 60 - 21? Please put the answer in the subject like of your reply).
ICANN has mandated that all whois output be standardized, its part of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, there are still some that haven't signed it, but for the most part many many registrars have and their output/field names are standardized. It makes this a much simpler job now.
Also been there with Nominet. Ended up implementing something with their special Domain Availability Checker only to find that it couldn't handle a single domain spanning two ip packets/tcp segments (wtf?!). After asking them about it a few time the official answer turned out to be: don't do that then.
Once corporate business analysts, business intelligence or banking teams realize that the definition of "simple, grunt-like programming task" could probably include Excel munging (e.g. VBA macros), I'm sure request volume will hockey-stick.
Might need another example on their website, since the current ones are very developer-centric, which may not reflect their true positioning intent for the service.
I'm friends with a business analyst at a bank. They use their Bangalore office to do data or excel munging tasks all the time. But it's an offshore office staffed by company employees. There's no way he'd be able to send his data tasks to an outside party. And even if he could, he wouldn't be able to get the bank to pay for it.
> And even if he could, he wouldn't be able to get the
> bank to pay for it.
You're thinking about this wrong. Bangalore office is busy today with "strategic projects". No-one bats an eyelid when you expense $150 of programming help on your corporate card. Big companies have people use unofficial resource channels to get stuff done all the time.
That still leaves the problem of sending internal data to outside parties. The accountants may be fine with the programming help, IT certainly shouldn't be.
"Corporate business analysts, business intelligence or banking teams" will quickly lose their jobs if they start handing out their precious in-house data to some random people on the Internets.
So I have something you guys may be able to help with. I own SmiteCamp[0] and we're having trouble with our server status checker for months now because I just can't seem to find what IP address the game launcher pings to check if the server is up.
I'm sure a complete novice with Wireshark or similar could find this out instantly, but I'm a complete newbie when it comes to things of that nature.
Is this something you guys could help me with?
Deliverables would just be a simple IP (or collection of IP's) so I can just ping it using Ruby in our Rails app.
Sounds like a well-defined task, so we've got you covered :) Send us an email and mention you're from HN in the subject line, and I'll take care of you myself.
I went to your site but I can't figure out how to download your game (it's a game right?). The "tips for new players" is lorem ipsum so I assume you're still building it?
Regardless, if you can run the game on a Mac or Linux box, just open a shell and run this 'sudo tcpdump'. You'll see a bunch of background traffic and then you should see the connections to your hosts.
I've tried that before and there's just so much traffic popping up that I can't make heads or tails of it. As for the game, we're just a fansite for a game we enjoy playing. Think:
This looks like its good for a quick prototype for inexperienced devs (or non technical people or people who want to experiment). Depending on what work you can do, college students may ask you to do their homework.
My experiences with them have been great on all these metrics. I've worked with them as a dev and referred a few happy friends. Email's in my profile if you'd like to hear more.
I did interview, and found the tests far too difficult and not remotely like anything I've ever hit in 20 years of doing software development. Everything was rather computer-science-algorithmicy, and there was no ability to ask for clarification on aspects of the puzzle-questions that seemed ambiguous. Couple that with somewhat short time lines, and it was frustrating.
In my 20 years, I've never not been able to ask a client or PM or end user for clarification on what they mean, but what I took from toptal is that you'll be expected to work under those conditions.
It certainly weeds people out, and the whole "we'd rather weed good people out than let bad people in" mentality is probably understandable, it just rather felt like a "one size fits all approach".
Interestingly, looking at their site now, I read "we do not tolerate sub-par work or poor communication for any reason." Except, of course, when taking their entrance tests - no communication for clarification there. FWIW, tests were from codility.com
I also found the codility bit off-putting, though I think that company may have improved their product since you used it.
Otherwise, I've always found Toptal personal; even the next algo interview (a Skype-based one) was pleasant and friendly. Just one person's limited experience, though =)
I might have found them personal had they actually been personal with me, but (apparently) utter failure on the codility tests earns a "no thank you" email and that's it.
I'll amend that - I had about a 5 minute conversation with someone pleasant at the very start who set up the web test.
Again, I get the idea of trying to weed people out, and this probably just comes across as sour grapes as I didn't make the cut. The tests just felt rather too abstract and nothing like any work I've done across multiple industries, company sizes and teams. I guess to someone who's (recently?) taken computer science courses, it's a walk in the park, and having never taken CS classes, I'm out of the running.
"Engineers will work during the preferred hours of the clients."
"For example, if the in-house engineers start their workday at 11am PST, our Eastern European Toptal engineers can often start working at 7pm EET and work through the night if that's what the client needs."
Requiring their engineers to sacrifice their health and personal life in this way sounds insane.
Love this: like 99designs for code. Bet you'll get a lot of pushback on this "devaluing coding" just like 99designs has for design, which just means you're on the right track. Of course it doesn't; it just commoditizes basic coding skills, and more importantly makes the accessible to a wider set of people.
I especially liked the example that was scraping data off a bunch of pages and returning a spreadsheet/csv of the results; that's a great example of something a smart business person that thinks algorithmically can identify, but can't/won't implement themselves. I actually wonder if it would work well to target this service specifically at algorithmically minded business folks.
Hope this works well for you - great idea, and looks well executed so far.
This doesn't seem like 99designs does it? As far as I understand, 99designs pins 100s of designers against each others making many logos of which to choose from, which means that most of them works for free.
This website is one team making what the client asks for, there's no competition.
> Unless that's what's happening behind the scenes.
I think something like that is what's happening behind the scenes. Maybe not the competition/spec work aspect, but certainly they're going to be outsourcing to loads of the cheapest workers they can find.
Calling a task-oriented service 'Rabbit' seems worrying. Either you're unaware of the existence of TaskRabbit, in which case you haven't done basic market research and don't understand enough about this market to participate, or you know about TaskRabbit but don't understand the concept of trademark, in which case you may be fuzzy about other aspects of intellectual property - which is a red flag when you will be dealing in code, too.
The last person who hired me as a consultant confused Square with Squarespace. The confusion is real, but not as much to us because we deal with keeping track of namespaces every day as programmers.
You're being overly harsh.
TaskRabbit is about cleaning and handyman stuff, Rabbit is about programming jobs. Different areas, no chance to get the two confused.
And calling a task-oriented service Rabbit, seems common sense, it's a very obvious choice and doesn't imply all the negative stuff you're mentioning.
I gave this a try and first delivery was good. Sent another job and was promised delivery the other night, but haven't heard anything since and they don't reply to emails.
You can't blame the capitalist for trying to make a buck here.
According to them, pricing might be a bit imbalanced in favor of the programmers and then they would love to see a bigger piece of the pie taken from us and transferred to them the brokers and a small chunk back to clients.
Something I don't think a lot of people realize is that "programmer" is a working class profession. The ability to code is a commodity.
By working class, I mean "not the capitalist class." There is still a big difference between programming and say, boilermaking. But in 2015, tech companies are the factories of last century. (We even call them software shops!)
There is a spectrum of quality of course, and a lot of people take a lot of pride in their craft, especially when they do it well, noting the beauty of good code, etc. but at the end of the day, most people who make chairs, for example, are not the highly-paid turtlenecked Danish guy whose work is basically art that you can sit on...most people who make chairs work in factories and churn them out on an assembly line. So it is with programming.
To your point, it certainly is in the interest of those who hire programmers to pay them as little as possible, given the nature of the economic system we find ourselves in. Consider also the trend of startups paying sub-market salaries and compensating with equity. The startup route certainly looks like a way to do programming while freeing yourself from the will of The Man (I'm being tongue-in-cheek here, but you understand the vibe, I hope), but when you get right down to it, it's more of the same. Instead of corporate execs, you have investors. Instead of middle management, you have founders. The programmer is still just the programmer.
Yeah, programmers/coders/hackers/developers are "proletarians" and not bourgeoisie since they trade their labor for monetary compensation.
I don't know from where in my reply did you get this notion that I was implying that we developers are/should be classified as capitalists.
Anyway, what's important is for you to distinguish between the concepts of labor as a commodity and the commoditization of labor.
These marketplaces start out as facilitators in the market to bring more efficiency and vibrancy, increase overall transaction volume and value but over time they tend to get parasitical and feed off every "host" they could infect.
So, basically my comment was a protest and critique of this specific business model of marketplaces and not to debate whether programmers have to join ranks with the bourgeoisie or not.
But if you wanna debate capitalist societies, technological unemployment and the alarmingly increasing income inequality and the overhoarding behavior of resources by and with the aid of the bankers worldwide, that's a whole new thread to engage in.
Ah. Yeah, I agree with you that the more efficiently people can be hired for grunt work and nothing more, the less valuable the work will be. If you need something difficult, you still hire a full time person, but now if you need something easy you can get it much more cheaply, which shifts the overall distribution of the value of X-type-of-work lower.
But one might make the point that all this means is we were paying too much for grunt work before these marketplaces showed up...
Yeah, you could argue that competition is good for the end consumer and I must concede but you have to look at the bigger picture that we keep exchanging labor for more and more shrinking "real" wages and these recent technological developments would accelerate this trend even further and make their implications more pronounced in society.
Wage slavery, the illusion of labor and career derived self worthiness, the quasi monopoly of labor and the pursuit of monetary gain as the principal ideals providing meaning to life in this age, and finally holding our whole lives hostage to increasingly harsh labor conditions just for the capitalists to increase their wealth and consolidate their power over us, all of these notions must be re-opened to discussion in society given that capitalism is entering a new soul-crushing phase that is gonna leave many victims in the world that sadly would have been saved if not for our complicity in one way or another to demand and fight for our rights and our fair share in resources on this planet.
How does it work? Do you use AI techniques in combination with US based human knowledge workers/students? Or do you outsource the task to Mechanical Turk / Asia based outsourcing company?
Do you work together with a recruiting company? One can imagine that work seeking programmer have to deliver "homework exercises" that could be anonymised tasks of your site.
-- From one of the examples.
I have uneasy feelings about this. I know that you're targeting grunt-jobs and it's easily estimateable. But I also know that things happen and they can't always be met.
If I'm going to send out a grunt-job then more often I care more about it being done well than being on time. If you're targeting quick turnaround over correctness then I imagine that I need to spend more time verifying the work, exactly what I don't want to be doing.