

Bootstrap your startup: become a hacker tutor - ryanb
http://blog.tutorspree.com/bootstrap-your-startup-become-a-hacker-tutor

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jfager
I have a little bit of experience with tutoring from TAing a senior-level CS
course in college. Even at that level, there's a big need for it, and as a
tutor, it feels great to see that lightbulb moment when a student suddenly
groks a concept you've been working with them on. If the idea of teaching
appeals to something inside of you, go for it.

That said, it can be a massive time sink, and very frustrating, especially for
students for whom programming just doesn't click at all (and they are out
there). You can probably make significantly more doing freelance work, so if
you know you don't have the patience to, for instance, _repeatedly_ explain
that their Python script isn't working because they're trying to invoke it
from the wrong directory, you might want to pass.

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catshirt
i'd like a system like this where instead of getting money you get labor. some
sort of informal internship, if you will.

would be cool to connect people learning to program with mentors who are
looking for contributors to their projects.

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pilom
So does this mean you dropped the old requirement you had about needing to
have previously been an educator.

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akharris
That's a guideline we use focused on the k-12 subject matter areas (still our
main focus). It's where the "being a teacher" piece is a response to parent
feedback.

Here, for the hacking side of things, we think the dynamics are a bit
different. We still want great people, but the formal teaching piece is not a
requirement.

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SingAlong
Seems like it's only for US guys. Has US-specific fields state and zip-code.

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akharris
We've only built it out for the US for now. If you're international, Fill in
your city and hit the zip with all 0s. When we rejigger it to allow for
international, we'll let you know.

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wodow
You could put those instructions on the sign-up form (or change the controls
there). Are you deliberately holding off from doing that at the moment?

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jswinghammer
This is a pretty interesting idea and I like the idea of the site itself. What
percentage of tutors get work at the rates they have posted and how many hours
do they get on average? I'm curious to know if anyone is doing anything
besides getting beer money (so to speak) with the site right now.

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akharris
100% of tutors are booking lessons at their posted rates, actually - no real
haggling going on. I think it's a different situation relative to, say,
freelancing. You're not negotiating with a business over a deliverable, you're
part of a transparent framework where people are trying to get educated. It's
a different kind of motivation.

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kno
TutorSpree folks, here is a search I made in Washington,
<http://www.tutorspree.com/search/?q=washington> you have this two duplicated
many times over. You may want to fix this.

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ryanb
not sure what you mean - please shoot me a line at ryan@tutorspree

we haven't really expanded into the DC area yet but we're working on it.

edit: oops. you found an IE7 bug. thanks!

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andrewacove
Is there a link to edit my tutor profile? When I log in, I don't see anything
about it.

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ryanb
under your picture on the left hand side of your Dashboard, click the "Edit my
profile" button. perhaps we should make this more obvious.

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andrewacove
All I see under my picture on the Dashboard is "Upcoming sessions - No
upcoming sessions."

My tutor profile definitely exists, because I sent myself a message through
the site.

Is there something messy with having a user account and a tutor account with
the same email address?

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madcaptenor
How is this bootstrapping and not just working on the side?

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noodle
some people consider "bootstrapping" to be equivalent to "spend most of your
cycles on the startup, but also spend some time freelancing to fund it"

