
Show HN: Microtasks - gargarplex
https://utask.org?utm_source=show_hn
======
ryanx435
from their page:

>taking a designer's mockup screenshot and building a fully functional React
app with clean HTML/CSS– $120

build an entire product... for $120. assuming 1 full work day to complete
(which is sort of unreasonable depending on the complexity of the app) this
would be $15/hour. so minimum wage. Why not work at burger king instead?

> taking a designer's mockup screenshot and building a fully functional Vue
> app clean HTML/CSS and a Google Sheets API integration– $185

again, build their entire product PLUS integrate it into google sheets... for
$185. hmmmmm...

> writing scrapers to organize data and then build an interface to make it
> searchable by location– $200

custom scrapers for whatever page your getting the data from, and a custom
interface to get the data... for $200.

so these are really low prices for full projects, which leads me to believe
that only non-american programmers will actually use this site because these
projects are literally offering to pay less than minimum wage here. which,
based on my experience on other similar sites, will lead to a large rate of
fraud, payment problems, and code that straight up doesn't work.

good luck.

~~~
dragonwriter
> $15/hour. so minimum wage.

$15/hour is significantly above the locally-applicable minimum wage in most of
the US. It's even a little above it in San Francisco.

~~~
ryanx435
this is the one thing that you focused on in my post?

15/hour is still ridiculously low compared to other software dev work.

~~~
gargarplex
> taking a designer's mockup screenshot and building a fully functional Vue
> app clean HTML/CSS and a Google Sheets API integration– $185

* Screenshot to CSS: 30 minutes

* Google Sheets API to clean JSON structure: 30 minutes

* Vue app: 30 minutes

\-----------------------------

Total time: 1.5h

Effective hourly rate: 123.33

Let's same I'm a 10x programmer, but you're a 1x programmer and it takes you
15 hours. Then your effective hourly rate would be 12.33. I think the flat fee
rewards programmers who are more efficient than others.

I've been part of organizations where slow developers make just as much as the
so-called rockstars. In what world is that fair? I'm not ranting about "slow
and methodical" engineers who do everything super-correctly; I'm referring to
"Wally", the character from Dilbert.

I have a bit of a moral agenda with this project, as well. There's no reason
that slow programmers should be denied work, but they should not be
compensated at the same clip as fast programmers. Great developers often go
into management if they want to make more money. This dynamic punishes
developers for getting "good" and drains the programming market of its best
talent.

~~~
ryanx435
Why would enough 10x programmers waste their time on these low paying projects
to make it a viable site?

Maybe one or two, sure, when they need a quick couple hundred, but not
consistently. Which means if I'm looking for someone to do my projects, it's
going to be fulfilled by someone who is expecting low pay, which means, on
average, their not going to be a 10x programmer.

I just don't see this being proper valuations for the example projects. They
are too low, which makes me question the finished results' quality.

~~~
gargarplex
I understand that you think it won't work for you. That's why we have the
system of no payment until your work is complete.

The supply/demand economics are such that enough programmers are available to
bang out work in exchange for quick cash.

Honestly, have you ever posted a question on Stack Overflow in a popular
category? People can't wait to post answers.. _for free_. Programmers love to
show off their talent and smarts.

Now, imagine that they were being paid. And with Code For Cash, they are. They
get money as well as ego shoutouts in Slack, etc. It's almost as if it's like
Stack Overflow's reputation system, but backed by cash as well as ego :P

~~~
tmzt
Though actual gamification, as well as Stack Overflow and Github integration
could be useful here.

There might be a role for a go-to programmer for a specific type of task, or
somebody that would be really good at delegating to a specific sub-team, this
could even be extended to Scrum-as-a-service as has been tried by a couple of
companies now.

This could be built up organically based on reputation and completion of a
specific type of task or using experience using a specific technology.

It would also be neat to be able to pick up a more complete task like building
an app to spec and then sub-task out the HTML and/or CSS to somebody with more
UX talent but less application development skills (not everybody is or should
be a full-stack developer.)

I personally know a few people that are killer at UX/UI and barely competent
in JQuery, so I would love to hand one of them the task of building a React
component from a scaffold with all it's CSS goodness, or taking some that I
built and constructing a well-ordered page around them.

------
gargarplex
Over the past few months, I've been leveraging the Code For Cash community as
my own personal freelancer pool. This has provided a huge boost in my
freelance consulting (software dev) business: it's like I have an armada of
individual contributors that I can delegate tasks to, on-demand.

Some example microtasks I did:

$120– translate designer's mockup image into react+html+css app
([https://utask.org/img/microtask1.png](https://utask.org/img/microtask1.png))

$200– take links to websites with VC funds name, and build a webapp to make
them searchable by location so you can find venture capital funds near you
([https://codefor.cash/vc_firms_list](https://codefor.cash/vc_firms_list))

So now, I present to the community, for your consumption: Microtasks!

------
fiatjaf
As a programmer that works alone and by myself, I would sometimes like to
outsource parts of my work, and there are indeed very modularized parts that
could be outsourced like that, but I'm very very afraid of the quality of the
code that will come back from something like that.

Also, even if the code is of good quality, maybe it has lots of boilerplate I
dislike, or is written in a style too different from mine.

~~~
gargarplex
Hey, thanks for the feedback. The style of the code that I get back is almost
always different from mine. However, it tends to be modular and functional;
i.e., I can spend ~5 minutes integrating it as a feature instead of a few
uninterrupted hours. So it's a trade off.

------
greatNespresso
The micro appealed to me but the typical projects showcased on the home do not
look like micro to me, as others have already pointed out. How do you assess
the real level of complexity of a project in order to determine its price ? Is
it all on the customer side ? Nothing mean, I am just curious tbh.

~~~
gargarplex
Hey, so I've been programming (as a hobbyist and a professional) for 20 years.
The key thing to note is that all of these are things that don't require
access to an existing codebase. All these projects could be done within 4
hours by someone talented and reasonably experienced. Combine that with the
fact that we take care of finding the clients and offering same day payment, I
think it's a fair deal.

>How do you assess the real level of complexity of a project in order to
determine its price ?

One thing I should mention is, as I said, I'm a super experienced programmer
[1], so I analyze each project and do the work of dissecting into what needs
to be done. I provide links to helpful APIs and help provide suggestions of
ways to tackle the problem.

So once I know what needs to be done, I do a bottom up estimate of how long it
would take for me to do each microtask. I then multiply each time estimate by
the market hourly converted rate for a San Francisco Silicon Valley startup
software engineer and sum. I put that bid into the Slack channel, and if
someone good takes it, that's that, but if nobody bites, I raise it by ~$15
every so often.

There are 400+ people in Slack currently, and at any given time there's 20+
experienced developers online. Tasks are usually snatched up pretty quickly.
The bottleneck in the system currently isn't experienced devs, but qualified
businesses and entrepreneurs.

[1] But not a truly great one, like Ada Lovelace, Adam D'Angelo or John
Carmack.

~~~
tmzt
Examples of one of these microtasks might appeal to both potential developers
and business clients. As it is, there is little on your website to explain
what it even is, other than a CTA to push me to the next step.

This could also be a useful evaluation/interview tool where the microtasks
represent real-world problems, versus the pages of FizzBuzzing and stripped-
down tasks currently in vogue.

That said, this personally seems useful to me as I'm working on a
scripting/templating language that should vastly simplify fulfilment of these
non-codebase dependent tasks, and this gives me a new way of thinking about
that.

------
grangerize
In my opinion this only serves to proletarianization of programmers.

~~~
dragonwriter
Programmers _are_ , generally, proletarian (wage laborers). This certainly
recognizes that fact, but doesn't serve to advance it.

~~~
gargarplex
There's no reason that slow programmers should be denied work, but they should
not be compensated at the same clip as fast programmers. Great developers
often go into management if they want to make more money. The current market
dynamic punishes developers for getting "good" and drains the programming
market of its best talent.

------
fiatjaf
Good idea, but the network effect is hard to overcome.

Could it be made into a "solve my programming problem" kind of marketplace? I
think there is none of this out there.

~~~
gargarplex
Regarding network effect... I actually have that problem solved. 12 months
ago, I coauthored a book called _Software Engineer 's Guide to Freelance
Consulting_ which has been a bestseller on the Amazon marketplace. I started
cultivating a Slack channel of developers. My next step was to write
scrapers/crawlers of ~50 freelance programming job boards in order to keep the
developers in the channel happy. And I have also tested advertising campaigns,
and they're successful in attracting developers to sign up and complete their
profiles. So if we need to scale the developer side of the market, that's a
solved problem for now.

But I just haven't found the acquisition channel for the people who post the
tasks. Perhaps I should focus on marketing to developers rather than middle
managers..

