

 Are you a freelancer, or looking to hire someone? Take our survey - aditya
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFI1bFNHa2ZDNWVKVF93d3gwMWFOS2c6MQ

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smackay
I am curious as to why the "hiring/freelancing" problem has not been cracked
yet. Given the issues with global sites such as oDesk and elance perhaps the
problem really does not scale without sacrificing either reliability or
quality and an inherently local solution either in terms of geography for a
specific city or more widely for a specific skillset is the most realistic
approach so that referrals and personal recommendations still carry some
weight.

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oneplusone
oDesk and elance leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The only real way I can see
using one of these services is where the potential employers bid on my limited
time, and not the other way around. That way your helping the workers to get
paid more, and you are not helping the employers pay less.

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aditya
So, I'm always getting asked for referrals to good people (engineers,
designers, etc.) Here's what I'm thinking of building: <http://auctionme.me>
(I'll find a better name, promise!) as a side project

But if you find yourself in that boat, please take the survey and let me know!

~~~
akavlie
Survey taken.

I'm concerned that any competitive bid site like this will lead to the
foreigners underbidding Americans, a la elance & oDesk. How will your service
avoid that?

~~~
aditya
Yeah, that is a huge problem with elance, etc.

Two things I've been thinking about

1) Invite only referral system - You only get in if someone vouches for you --
keeps quality up, probably keeps your cost up as well, if you want bottom of
the barrel you go to one of the other places.

2) If it ends up being completely open, then people can sort by third-party
signals (github followers, stackoverflow karma, quora karma, linkedin
connections, etc.)

Thanks for taking the survey!

~~~
jswinghammer
Seems like a price floor would solve that problem assuming that's what the
people paying for the contractors really want solved.

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agentfin
i've been working on this problem for folks in production/post-production
rather than in programming/dev. would love to chat on what i've got so far.

there are some very big differences between what folks who are new to
freelance need vs those who are 'old hat' and very little that is out there to
connect these individuals together. im interested in trying to solve the
issues that many industries are currently having with mentorship and education
while also making sure folks work at rewarding jobs.

...is this really an "auction?"

~~~
aditya
Would love to chat, drop me a note (email in profile).

Yeah, I'm not certain if auctioning your time will really work, but once
people start using the system, I'll know better. It is a fairly interesting
problem, and lots of things you can do.

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kp212
I hope you post the results of the survey.

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baltcode
Is <http://www.coderloop.com/> relevant to this?

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richcollins
WTF is a survey doing on the front page of HN?

~~~
adnam
It's not all that uncommon.

