

Hiring experiment: hiring experts in 20 minute chunks - leeny
http://apps.glittle.org/pomhire

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aortega
This guy is a genius, he keep coming with ideas about how to pay people less
for their work. He must be very popular on the exec golf meetings.

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anandkulkarni
On the contrary. Greg's work is creating a new market for expertise. If you
want to sell your time in 20 minute intervals, it's quite difficult to do so
today.

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Devilboy
I'm not convinced anyone really WANTS to sell their time in such small
intervals.

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merijnv
A counter example: He mentions graphing data as one option. I'm pretty sure
people with excellent GNU plot skills can make a GNU plot script that does
what I want in 10-20 mins, and I really can't be arsed to figure it out myself
everytime. Seems like the type of expertise that is currently hard to sell and
might benefit from this sort of site.

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dugmartin
Sounds a lot like <http://anyfu.com/>

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stfu
Or <http://www.liveperson.com/experts/> ...

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drewrv
Or <http://comprends.com> ...

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adrianhoward
Or <https://www.minutebox.com/>

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jcc80
Or <http://www.edviso.com>

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lenart
To me hiring a professional for 20 minutes might sound enough for some small
taske, but I'm not sure how well this goes for more complex tasks (e.g. where
the pro has to read and understand your code). I guess you can buy couple of
chunks than but I'm not sure I see the benefit. Is it just so that you don't
have to pay every starting hour?

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fatewise
From the perspective of a person hiring, I'm sure it's better to hire for
exactly as long as you need. The point of 20 minute chunks is to make the idea
more appealing to experts (who are busy doing other things). As an expert, you
know that if you accept a job, you only need to commit up to 20 minutes, and
you'll get paid for a full 20 minutes (even if they're not all used), to
justify the 'switching cost'.

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pubby
What do you consider an 'expert' to be?

It's one of the most ambiguously defined and useless word when used in
practice.

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nthj
I love this. Not only will this be be great when you have those "stuck"
moments, or you want to learn Ruby but wouldn't know to start by reading
_why's Poignant Guide, but I bet you see some incredibly creative solutions
because the expert knows he needs to deliver in a strict 20 minute window.

    
    
      "Man built most nobly when limitations were at their greatest."
      — Frank Lloyd Wright

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54mf
Love this idea. There have been plenty of times when I wish I could throw a
few questions at an expert in a given field. "Is this the best way to program
an XYZ?" "Can you think of a better way to do this?" Is the price is right,
throwing a small amount of cash at a problem is often a better solution than
(a) doing something wrong, or (b) spending significantly more time figuring
out how to do it right.

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rmATinnovafy
Interesting experiment.

Are you sharing the data?

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law
I'd be pleasantly surprised if he (and oDesk, by extension) were to share this
data. They're very profitable, and this type of information might offer them a
competitive edge. Moreover, it appears as if they're also fervid believers in
intellectual property law's "right to exclusion" applied to ridiculous vague
quasi-inventions, viz. <http://www.google.com/patents/US20060284838>. Luckily,
this is only an application, and its longer-than-typical prosecution history
will hopefully prevent them from trolling too much, thanks to prosecution
history estoppel.

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john_horton
Re: oDesk data - what do you want to know?

I regular post data from oDesk on my own blog (I work at oDesk w/ these folks:
<https://www.odesk.com/info/l/research/>): <http://onlinelabor.blogspot.com/>.

And there's the "oConomy": <https://www.odesk.com/oconomy/> There's also lots
of info available via the API.

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joe_the_user
So I'd assume 20 minutes of an expert's time is worth $500, right?

Edit: Seriously, I'd charge $500 if the client picked the time and $100 if I
could pick any period during the day, on short notice.

I'd actually charge more for a client-picked 20 minute period than I would for
a one hour period because a 20 minute period would be very unlikely to repeat
since 20 minutes isn't really enough to demonstrate great expertise.

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fatewise
Just to be clear, experts won't be 'on call'. Jobs will be opportunities for
experts to grab, if they're free, rather than obligations to fulfill.

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kepzorz
Extremely excited to see how this works out. This is an amazing idea.

