
Ask HN: How to find people to develop your side projects? and vice versa - esac
I keep finding myself on both the sides of this question<p>&quot;I have money but no time, how do i find some bright college student to work on this small project for me?&quot;<p>&quot;I need 400€, How do i find a small project i can develop for and have no expectation of follow up or commitment&quot;<p>I find hard to trust elance, upwrok and similar as it&#x27;s either super-developer-guy or random-indian-guy, middle ways are buried behind the two extremes.<p>On the other side of the fence, as a programmer on those websites it takes a lot of time to build up reputation and network and it&#x27;s easier to just get a job at McDonalds or similar (e.g. make a website and let someone else maintain it) for those 400€.<p>Something like university&#x2F;hackerspace&#x2F;open source facebook group with a barrier of entry to keep the quality but nothing as formal as a website
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projectramo
Everyone is "random" when you first meet them.

That Indian (or Pakistani, or Croatian, or Thai) person could be just the
partner you need. At least look at their work.

And a lot of time they charge less because their cost of living is much lower.
You can actually pay them more than others would and still save on a "super"
developer.

I think it would be equal time and less energy than going to a University
Hackathon for hours and waiting to see who rubs you the right way.

------
tmaly
Its quite a challenge. I was on vacation over in the Philippines, and I
decided to see if I could find someone to help with the front end for my side
project. I interviewed two people.

The guy I ended up working with did an amazing job using a team of freelancers
on the first task.

On the second task, he asked for more money up front, and then that was the
last I heard from him. He took the money an ran.

I am looking for another person or team to help me now, but I think the
process is going to be to start with a small task and try to build trust.

The most important skill in these cases is the ability to write amazing
specifications.

I have had some good practice over the years, and you would be surprised how
much it helps.

~~~
jpmoral
I'm sorry you had a bad experience with a Filipino developer. I hope it hasn't
soured you on the country as a whole.

~~~
tmaly
I am not sour at all, I love the country. There are always going to be a few
bad apples anywhere you go in the world.

Here is the guy just in case you ever come across him

[http://spinworksstudios.com/](http://spinworksstudios.com/)

------
kranner
> random-indian-guy

Can you pick another stereotype please? It costs you little and is less
degrading to us Indian guys and girls who happen to see it.

I'm sure there are newbies and/or posers of other nationalities as well on
freelance websites.

~~~
moon_of_moon
I think what OP means is this: the tech ecosystem in places like Bangalore is
booming more than anywhere else and the good programmers in India have amazing
opportunities to make good money or are in career paths that heads to a
position earning in a stronger currency, and so its hard to find rock star
Indian candidates on these platforms.

~~~
ianhawes
Not sure if you're serious, but I'm fairly certain that is NOT what OP meant.

~~~
moon_of_moon
Um.. you do realize that the only difference between the Indian engineers at
Google or VMWare in California, and some of the the guys working out of India
is that the latter didnt do an MS or get a visa sponsored? Take the sharpest
Indian dev you know in Palo Alto -- for every one of him, there are like five
guys like that back home working on offshore Engineering teams. They are not
doing php on Upwork.

~~~
vthallam
> I find hard to trust elance, upwrok and similar as it's either super-
> developer-guy or random-indian-guy

Still that's not what the OP meant. As i agree tech is booming in Bangalore
and all, the reference here is the opposite connotation to the super developer
guy. While i don't disagree that there are people who put a WP and make money,
avoiding stereotyping is good for everyone.

------
rando444
You get what you pay for.

Every one of us spends our lives building on our experience and then
presenting that experience to others in exchange for compensation.

Without a system to manage this, it's just something to be exploited.

How do you as the employee know that someone isn't going to have you do a
bunch of work and deny you compensation, or request you do more additional
work than what was agreed upon?

How do you as the employer know that someone isn't going to just take your
money and not provide the requested work or provide something substandard?

If you can't build a reputation on either side, there's no reason for anyone
to trust you.

~~~
esac
That's why I felt that reputation should come from status/community, as a
developer I don't want to be untrustworthy with my
university/oss/friends/peers and as a employer i want to be able to exert
social pressure on the developer in case things don't go as expected.

~~~
tobltobs
That's both time the same side of the coin.

Apart of that: "exert social pressure on the developer in case things don't go
as expected" is an awful way to deal with conflicts.

------
iheartmemcache
I think what you have is a misunderstanding of the market. 400 Euro isn't
going to get you more than maybe half a days work (a day for a long
engagement, for someone who's billing mid-tier[1] simply due to the economics
of freelancing. You're paying both ends of FICA/SS so that's (-) ~17% federal
immediately of whatever he's taking in.

For US freelancers, you're paying for down-time between clients and meetings
that won't convert into any work. SuperDeveloperGuy (regardless of his
nationality) is going to have a full book, and as such will be able to command
a higher rate than random-(any-ethnicity-guy-with-less-than-desirable-
experience). The reason why we bill out at lawyer rates is because our labor
patterns are similar.

HN has a freelancer thread you can check. I've used it before. I generally
discriminate based on the quality of their comments (a subjective metric,
admittedly) as well as how long they've been a HNer. Keep in mind college kids
are getting 35/hr minimum at any summer co-op, so again, 400 EUR won't get you
very far.

RE: Elance, et al -- On Upwork I've had great experience with the Eastern
Europeans/Russians who have tons of feedback (is it still racism if it's a
positive stereotype? hmm).

[1] (Personally a client approaching me with a rate in that range is price-
signaling to me "I'm going to brow-beat you for every dime"; somewhat counter-
intuitively the quality of clients I've had has increased as a function of the
rate at which I bill. Once I crossed the 3-figures-an-hour-threshold people
started taking my time a lot more seriously.)

------
jerf
One of the big problems you have is that at that price range, overhead is
eating away at your money pretty fast. Even if you do an hour of negotiation
with a few people for "free", then pay one of them hourly strictly for the
work, both you and the people you talk to need to be factoring in that time to
the ultimate price and whether it's worth it. I will observe that when people
describe the successful freelance jobs they do at those rates, including some
other comments in this very thread as I type, they seem to tend towards being
some very stereotypical tasks that generally amount to "installing
WordPress/Magento/similar and slight customization". If you're negotiating
something non-stereotypical, you can eat up serious percentages of the time
just describing the situation. You may have to step up to a slightly higher
tier to even get beyond "hello".

------
dos4gw
[http://reddit.com/r/forhire](http://reddit.com/r/forhire) is full of the
latter.

~~~
esac
thanks for the link!

I feel like I wouldn't trust the devs there, unless i can verify/get to know
them physically outside it would feel like throwing money in the wind and
hoping it works

~~~
jrochkind1
Anyone that tells you they can take your random idea and implement something
high-quality and useful (if that's even possible for your random idea) for
400€ is indeed not to be trusted. The kind of skilled, competent and
trustworthy people you're looking for would know that it's a recipe for
disaster.

(400€ is USD$450. At an already low $50/hour, that's 9 hours. Or at a
ridiculously exploitive wage, when it comes to software devs, of $25/hour,
that's 18 hours, or 2-3 solid days of work.)

~~~
esac
In my country (Italy) 400€ is 1/3 of the monthly wage for a junior developer

~~~
jrochkind1
Okay, so 1/3rd of the monthly wage means 1/3rd of a month, meaning 26 hours of
4*40 hour weeks.

Assuming there's no other overhead an independent contractor needs to take
care of in Italy (in the US the big one would be health insurance, but you
live in a civilized country. On the other hand, your civilized country
probably all takes reasonable paid vacation, and an independent contractor
would probably want to charge enough to do the same. And there are other
reasonable reasons contractor hourly rates tend to be higher than pro-rated
full-time salaries, things included with a typical full-time job above the
salary itself that a contractor has to pay for or spend time on themselves).

But okay, let's say 26 hours.

How many junior developers can take an idea, probably somewhat vague and
poorly thought out, and turn it into something useful in 26 hours?

I'd say if they can, they probably ought not to be considered a 'junior'
developer!

~~~
moyok
That would be 4*26=104 hours right? That seems a good amount of time.

~~~
jrochkind1
I meant it as 26 hours total, but I had my math completely wrong. 40 hours a
week * 4 weeks * 1/3rd is 52.8. I had it halfed somehow. But anyway, yeah.

~~~
jrochkind1
and somehow I STILL have my math slightly wrong. Can I not do arithmetic? 40 *
4 / 3 == 53.33.

Anyway, I guess there some projects that can be done well in 53 hours, but
it's still not a huge amount of time. At "USD$450 should be fine as a third of
a monthy salary!", that's approximately $9/hour. Really? Okay. If you can find
someone willing to take $9/hour for 53 hours of work for a project that really
can be done well in 53 hours.... I think my point stands.

------
edoceo
I've hired 'random-$whatever-human' many times. Sometimes Indian (1/7)
sometimes not even guys! WUT!

Your hiring problem is caused by your lack of time commitment to finding the
talent. Your impatience comes through loudly in the post.

That said, Upwork could use some improvements (which I'm working on).

You'll have to get over the idea that you can higher someone perfect ,
instantly and that some magic group (that you dont actively manage) will
ensure that people meet your quality standards

------
iweinfuld
I solved this problem for me by building
[https://Squads.com](https://Squads.com). You're welcome to check it out of
course. Invite only, to solve the random-klingon-eunuch problem.

Here's a full feature walkthrough without marketing bullshit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17uPOmgFFo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17uPOmgFFo4)

------
clentaminator
Your question is making me rethink all "formal" employment as "Someone with a
side project looking for people to work on it".

------
welder
These are community websites, since you don't want a marketplace:

1\. Find someone from [https://nomadprojects.io/](https://nomadprojects.io/)

2\. Go to a hackathon and meet devs.

These are marketplaces:

1\. [https://gigster.com/](https://gigster.com/)

2\. [https://gun.io/](https://gun.io/)

------
mxuribe
Maybe a local dev. group/meetup? I haven't been to one in years...But the one
I used to visit (focused on web design AND web dev. which agreed was too
broad) had often some senior folks, as well as newbies/college students/grads
in attendance. Most everyone was very polite and accepting of both seniors and
newbies. This of course constrains your search to folks who physically attend
these meetups...but at least you can discuss things more easily than
electronically, vet them in person, etc.

Or, maybe, this question that you posted here on HN you can actually bring up
during one of these meetups, and see if others have the same challenge, what
advice _they_ can offer? True, not as scalable as a website (or some similar
alternative/online group), but at least your name would get known around the
locale, and there's the networking opportunities, etc.

------
moyok
I have been looking for a solution to the same problem - short projects with
no long term commitment for some side income. Maybe this is useful -
CodeGophers:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11663869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11663869)

------
keenerd
> "I have money but no time"

You have time. The only person I've ever met who actually had no time was on
his deathbed.

Everyone else is poorly prioritizing their time. Or their money. Cut your
expenses in half and you regain half of your productive hours.

And of course doing it yourself is an investment in yourself - possibly the
most valuable investment you can make. Naturally this assumes that you treat
the project as "deliberate practice" and not something to simply get out of
the way.

If you have the right sort of personality traits (which anyone can develop)
you absolutely have time.

------
duggan
I know the founder, and it might be that Cohort[0] is what you're looking for.
Not publicly available yet, alas.

[0]: [https://cohort.is/](https://cohort.is/)

------
tyingq
You mentioned "bright college student" and "university", which makes it seem
like you have a preference for that route.

Most schools have some kind of online job board. One example:
[https://du.studentemployment.ngwebsolutions.com/JobX_FindAJo...](https://du.studentemployment.ngwebsolutions.com/JobX_FindAJob.aspx?s=1&ls=1&sdgpi=3)

That said, while there's likely some great budding talent there, there's also
a dearth of real world experience. You may find pitfalls there.

------
marcell
Shameless plug: this is the exact use case for my start up,
[http://codegophers.com](http://codegophers.com) which we launched recently.

For people looking for coders, we offer quick turnaround on small projects,
typically priced between $100-$500.

For coders, it's a quick way to make money without having to commit to a multi
week project. Please check us out or email directly at start@codegophers.com

------
DrNuke
With 400 euros you do not need a dev but a modder: he/she buys templates and
cloud space from well known marketplaces for peanuts or for free then inserts
your content, sets up your project online and writes you one page to manage it
properly. He/she will spend a couple hours and you are served with a working
minimum viable product for showcase.

------
kiril-me
Why not ask Hacker News Community? May be we can create monthly post.

I find people among my friends. What work really good, but unfortunately slow.
But usually people are ready to help with out money. My projects are startups
and people found them interesting.

I you need money or ready to pay you can go to freelance website, but I don't
know what quality do you get.

------
tomeglenn
I'm currently working on a platform to facilitate this sort of thing called
[http://hivemindly.com](http://hivemindly.com) but it's not yet ready for a
public launch. You can register your interest though.

------
xchaotic
I'm not sure what more do you expect ove upwork and the like? Tinder for
developers? Unless you put in the time, it's not going work, in love or
coding. Simple.

