

Hire Programming Tutors now on WageMachine - breck
http://wagemachine.com/blog/hire_programming_tutors_now_on_wagemachine

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tentonova2
I'd happily solve/tutor a one-off problem for 2 hours at a lower fixed price
($100-200), but as much as I like the idea of one-off tutor sessions, I can't
get behind a minimum wage rate.

At my usual $150 hour rate, it would take 17 hours on WageMachine to match
_one hour of work_. I could just as easily spend those 17 hours finding that
one hour of work (and it wouldn't be just one hour).

[Edit] Thinking about it more, I think your idea is very good, but lacks any
real traction without being able to genuinely pay real experts -- I don't mean
"highly talented, industrious, college educated, English speaking, and lives
in the United States", but rather, someone who has _at least_ a decade of work
experience, is near the forefront of their field, and would like to invest
some time in assisting, teaching, solving other people's once-off issues.

One of the primary reasons I don't participate in StackOverflow is that the
vast majority of questions are simply boring. For $150, nobody is going to ask
a boring question (and if they do, at least they're paying market rate for the
answer).

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sam
Maybe you could handle 17 WageMachine threads simultaneously.

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megamark16
Now there's an idea! It would be like sitting in the Django IRC for an hour or
two, but getting paid for each person who you offer advice to, regardless of
the time overlap.

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prawn
Problem is that you'd lose time dealing with each transaction.

I'd rather have one $1000 transaction than a dozen $100 transactions unless
the process was _completely_ automated (no one questioning time-tracking, no
getting-to-know-you period, no trading contact details - just work done and
money in the account).

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Estragon

      Every worker on WageMachine is highly talented, industrious, college educated, 
      English speaking, and lives in the United States.
      http://wagemachine.com/blog/learn_more_about_wagemachine
    

Then why the hell are they working for minimum wage at a deadend job on your
site?

~~~
wizard_2
Some people don't want more then they need. _If_ Minimum wage is supposed to
be all you need to live off of, then you'll find people who like helping
others working for about that. I've known teachers who's summer or side jobs
made them more money their their primary jobs, yet they still teach.

This site isn't supposed to be a full time job, it's supposed to be a low
barrier way to pick up a few bucks for the ride home. While programming might
not be the best area for this (not sure about the market of tutors) I love the
concept.

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rmason
First I think they need a rating system so people can see at a glance who is
really good.

Then they need to pay based on ranking. Everyone starts at minimum wage but if
you get five stars suddenly you are making $25 an hour.

~~~
Fixnum
Wanted: web programmer with knowledge of game theory to help design a rating
system (must be useful, fair, and hard to subvert) for new programming
tutoring site.

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jey
I regularly tutor people in programming and act as a helpdesk, am considered a
good tutor/helpdesk, and I would never offer my tutoring/helpdesk services at
that puny rate.

I absolutely love the idea, but you NEED to let the tutors set their own rate.
Anyone want to build such a site, possibly working with me? I own "software-
shaman.com" and have been meaning to set it up for something like this, but
haven't felt any urgency yet.

EDIT: Now I also have programmer-helpdesk.com (and both w/o hyphens)

~~~
breck
Thanks for the feedback.

We limit it to a 30min-2hr shifts. My hope is people will do a quick 30min-1hr
help session, and then if it's a good fit continue to work together (offsite).
The idea here is to speed up the initial intro period.

> You may not use WageMachine to find workers and then conduct the transaction
> off site, unless you pay them at least their "Normal Rate".

~~~
jey
I don't see how that would be worth the trouble to a good tutor.

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cellis
I wonder if hours are the best metric? All of the advisors i've had outside of
school have rarely spent a whole hour with me, but still managed to help me a
lot. Unless you are a complete beginner to programming, I suspect that a lot
of the problems you have are of the "how do I do x in language y" sort. So
maybe it could be priced by question, or by problem?

~~~
jmatt
I agree. Experts may be interested in answering questions for wages around 10
dollars per question or problem. As you pointed out most questions and
explanation sessions will not take a full hour.

In general I agree with tentonova2. Going rates are 10 to 20 times minimum
wage. It's scary to imagine what sorts of people you'll get for minimum wage.

All this being said, If it's well organized and non-for-profit I would be
interested in volunteering to work one on one with students. I am a strong
believer that mentoring is a great way to train inexperienced programmers.

I imagine most of us have, at one point or another, ended up helping someone
with their Math assignment at the local coffee shop. It would be nice to
provide the same help to inexperienced programmers with the same casual
relationship.

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mkyc
I like the clean interface. Your gear image looks ugly. Remove the period
after "...wage right now".

Set up a comet-based common chat that everyone sees, and sit in it. This will
let you help users learn to use your system, and will give you valuable
feedback which you can use to improve it. You need to make "sitting around
waiting for work" interesting. One way to do this is to piggyback the rest of
the site on an irc-like technical chat.

You absolutely need a reputation system for this.

Why limit yourself to tutoring and to minimum wage? What if I'd like someone
to give me a code review for $3?

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mlapeter
I think this is a great idea, but agreeing with other commenters minimum wage
is likely far too low. My brother and I are fairly new to ruby on rails, and
we often get stuck and left at the mercy of support forums and friendly
programmers. Many times we'd gladly pay for an "office hours" type service,
especially since one hangup can cost us a day or two... one model might be to
try letting users post questions along with an ideal price range and let
programmers bid to answer it, like a stack overflow for business users.

~~~
prawn
Or elance for small/quick problems.

What I'd do is white-label it and make it available (revenue share) with
communities/networks. e.g., say ForumX always has newbies struggling to
install their code and get things working, and a voluntary support forum isn't
always ideal. So they run paidsupport.forumx.com (or whatever) as a
marketplace for cheap installation help. Scrape x% from the transactions to
split between ForumX and WageMachine.

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breck
If anyone...

\- Wants an invite

\- Has ideas about better use cases than programming tutors

...please let me know! (here or on breck7@gmail.com)

~~~
cabalamat
One thing that something like this may be useful for is in help at solving a
particular problem (e.g. sending POST requests in Python and interpreting the
responses).

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seregine
How are you handling employment/income tax issues?

~~~
breck
up to the users

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jqueryin
I can see it now... computer science class averages increasing in correlation
to the beta release of WageMachine programming tutors...

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kiba
I wonder if I'll be able to tutor people competently on programming with:

1\. 5 years of ruby

2\. 7 months of python + pygame

3\. Approximately 2-3 weeks of C from arudino hacking

4\. A year and a half of Java in high school

5\. A month of experience with javascript, and canvas + html5 technology

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netcan
This is potentially an interesting experiment in incentives.

I wonder if instead of giving tutors the 8.50 ph they could do something else
with it that might be better incentive.

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breck
Invite codes for HackerNews:

To buy: hnbuy

To work: hnwork

~~~
admp
"Sorry but you need a valid invite code to join."

Edit: I suppose you use the same form for both tutors and students to
register. The hnwork code doesn't work there.

~~~
breck
Sorry about that, I stupidly made them single use invites. Should be fixed
now.

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shawndrost
Hey, go bring some students on the site. Post on cl, whatever. Right now,
there are 8 workers waiting, and 1 buyer.

Suggestion: embed the lobby in the homepage.

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ippisl
as someone not living in the u.s. i think it work better by connecting tutors
from countries outside the u.s. and people from the u.s. except for the better
incentives , it's probably harder for someone outside the u.s. to find work in
the u.s , so the introductions might be more helpful.

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guyatplay
Curiousity question: What is the rationale behind the name WageMachine?

~~~
breck
Inspired by this: <http://boingboing.net/2009/11/30/hand-cranked-penny-d.html>

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collision
I can't find an RSS or atom feed for your blog :(

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breck
<http://wagemachine.com/blog/feed>

Let me know if that's a good feed. I don't use RSS at all so don't know what
people expect.

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dflock
Yeah, full text in the feed, or don't bother with the feed at all.

~~~
breck
ah thanks, will add that

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nedwin
Who are the competitors in this space?

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Shamiq
That looks cool. :)

