

Show HN: GetHacker - Paid, short term projects for developers - jmonegro
http://www.gethacker.com

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cpfohl
Personal Opinion Alert, take with grain of salt: I'm not likely to give out my
personal information (email address, github account, etc) just to see a list
of projects. I'd certainly give you my information to apply for one. Was the
list of projects public, I'd be more likely to sign up for "interesting" ones
be sent to me. Our definitions of interesting might be different, and seeing a
public list would make me more comfortable.

~~~
jmonegro
Could I ask you why? Aside from the e-mail address (which is private), I would
assume you'd want the github/work information to be public anyways.

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cpfohl
Mainly becuase it's basically an email subscription which I avoid unless I
know what value I'm getting ahead of time.

Site looks good, btw, I hope it goes well for you. I was just offering one
insight into a potential reason people might not sign up.

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Brajeshwar
Clients are fed up with broken promises and shoddy work from the hordes of
"freelance" sites and low-cost development shops around the world. Similarly,
the best Indie designers and developers struggle to be matched with great
clients and differentiate themselves online.

Many have tried to fix this and some succeeded to an extend. The deeper issue
with such an initiative is how can you maintain the quality, that you
promised, over a period of time.

You have to be on it all the time and you cannot let anything on its own. A
good developer may be over-worked and may not deliver on another project,
whilst she did an awesome work on the earlier one.

Disclaimer for this plug: I'm one of the co-founder of <http://lxidd.com/> and
we have been trying to solve this problem at a larger scale and magnitude.
We're opening up only to select Clients and only via referral and
introductions.

~~~
jihip
Just curious, do you have a list of other websites that does similar things?
This article has made me quite interested in it (i'm a developer) so I'd like
to know more of that market. Thanks!

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Pezmc
"We're sorry, but something went wrong."

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jmonegro
When trying to sign up?

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Doublon
Yes. Unable to connect with Github

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scorcher
This seems to be pitched somewhere horrible between the fun side projects
ideas site and contract work. Take out the $50 charge and it suddenly looks
great

$50 isn't very much for a days work. Also if I'm doing contract work it would
be nice to pitch the price to the project and my skills rather than having
some arbitrary fixed price. If I have taken someone's money they will feel
entitled and I have to deal with difficult clients vague requirements and
suchlike. They will also (presumably) retain the rites for the code produced.

Remove the $50 and it can be just for fun. I can bail on people I don't want
to work with and I can retain the code if I want to extend it or show it off
on my GitHub.

~~~
garagemc2
I don't think this would be for mission critical projects - that stuff will be
done by the inhouse team. Just small things that I can get done over the
weekend that will make stuff better. E.g. adding responsive design, optimising
widget y etc

Also the $50 fee should be conditional upon a developer being successfully
picked - at least initially so to boost volume.

~~~
jmonegro
I somewhat agree. How about not charging the fee until someone actually
applies for a project? For now, I'll just refund empty projects.

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varunkho
The way you have piched it, doesn't show a difference from other freelancing
networks:

"Then, you can review their profiles and get in touch with the ones you like"
– that's how it works with odesk/freelancer. "When you see a project you like,
just click on Apply. Project owners will be notified of your applications and
will review your profile to determine if you're the right ..." exactly ...

"Short term projects" – these websites already showcase plunty of such.

Now you have added restrictions like $50 and only saturday to see projects.

I think there's an opportunity for a dev marketplace where client post a
project, and it automatically finds a right candidate.

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cimbal
It seems the site is using WEBrick as the webserver. Replacing it with Thin
should help a lot performance wise. Heroku has as section in their docs on how
to change that: <https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/rails3#webserver>

Also, letting the application serve all the static assets has an even bigger
impact on the number of dynos you need. I'm not a heroku user, but it seems
there are some good solutions to this problem, like
<https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/cdn-asset-host-rails31>

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jmonegro
Thanks for the feedback. I've begun addressing the performance issues.

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bubba1356
Looking at this from a non-developers perspective there's one thing that would
put me off- waiting until Saturday before developers see the job.

If it's a small job it's likely the job poster will want to get someone
working ASAP.

~~~
jmonegro
Got it. It's probably not for those immediate issues, but how would you feel
about a "rush" option for a higher fee?

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mattbradley
[http://www.gethacker.com/developers/auth/github/callback?cod...](http://www.gethacker.com/developers/auth/github/callback?code=xxxx)

"We're sorry, but something went wrong."

~~~
chadmckenna
Same problem. It happened to me right after it sent me to GitHub and I clicked
the 'Authorize App' button.

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jmonegro
Alright, I'm working on the signup errors. It appears to be hit and miss. I
personally can't replicated but I'm upping the dynos on heroku and checking my
code.

Thanks!

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InAnEmergency
I often see this with sites that assume a GitHub account has an associated
public email, when that is not always true. The Devise gem for Rails has this
issue, if you are using that.

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jmonegro
I just figured that out and pushed a fix, here's hoping that was it.

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colinsidoti
I will never understand reliance on Github for screening applicants. Here, the
people that need a hacker probably have no idea what to look for in a Github
account.

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jmonegro
We only use github for auth. Then, developers fill out their profiles with
links to their work, bios, and skill list.

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mahmoudhossam
You should add bitbucket too, they have an auth api as well.

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USNetizen
It seemed like a good idea until I hit "contact" and it's just an email
address. Not as credible as I'd prefer were I looking for more information
about the company behind this since it could have legal implications regarding
taking on work outside of the country, taxes, etc. If I can't learn more about
the site/company, it looks like just someone's side project and, hence, I
question the support/security/stability/etc. of it.

~~~
jmonegro
Thank you, I'll definitely work on that.

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USNetizen
I like the idea, don't get me wrong. Call me paranoid, but I just like to know
more about who I'm handing my information over to before I sign up for
something. Thanks for looking into it.

~~~
jmonegro
I completely understand. I'll put that at the top of my to-do list.

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wildmXranat
It's under heavy load and possible during development. I will wait when it
start loading later tonight.

edit: site actually loaded, but sing-up for developers failed . Also, please
be more up-front about how and how much a developer gets paid. Is the $50 a
project submission fee ? Is the $50 the actual income submitted to the
developer minus your commision ?

~~~
jmonegro
Hi,

Can you try signing up again? The $50 is the submission fee, separate from
what the developer gets.

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DoubleMalt
Tried to fill out my profile after initially only saving my email address, but
the textfields don't take my input anymore ...

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jmonegro
Sorry about that, I'll look into it.

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sjs382
Having the same issue. The textarea fields take my input but the input fields
don't.

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jihip
I think this is a great idea. I'm a software developer at a big tech company;
I just signed up to see if there are interesting projects.. good luck!

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bchhun
The contact link doesn't work on Chrome/Fedora 17. Other than that, seems
pretty nice. good luck.

~~~
jmonegro
Working on it.

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dsowers
Out of curiosity, what did you use to make those animations? Cool site, by the
way.

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paulgb
CSS3 transitions, by the look of it
([http://www.gethacker.com/assets/application-69339e2f3b3262c7...](http://www.gethacker.com/assets/application-69339e2f3b3262c7278ab0654b96d3da.css))

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humanfromearth
250USD minimum for a project? How exactly did you come up with this price?

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jmonegro
Randomly. What are your thoughts on it?

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jihip
think it's reasonable. I personally think it's a good bar as this will be 3-5
dev hours which is about a day's work. Given you match projects with the right
domain experts, this can be a good substantial project.

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jmonegro
Wow, apparently you guys crashed Heroku! I'm working on it!

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neuroguy
That's great news. Means people are interested. Can't wait to see the idea
when it is back up.

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jmonegro
It is now! I threw more dynos at it.

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rabbbit
keeps asking me to fill out my profile, but looks cool - I like it so far, gj!

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neuroguy
Application Error

