
Availability.is  - anu_gupta
http://availability.is/
======
Rodeoclash
We tried to do something along these lines in Melbourne, Australia. It was
called Dragonfly. A few points:

\- We emailed people to update their availability. If they were available this
week, we'd email. Otherwise they could set their busyness to between 1 week
and 3 months.

\- We tracked where people were working and used that to bill the companies
that hired them. First we charged a flat subscription rate of $3600 per year
but people didn't want to pay that. We then charged $100 per week per
freelancer. They wanted to go back to paying the subscription again. Then we
went broke.

\- People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you
asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't
like you asking them where they're working this week.

\- People will ask you how you're curating the list. If you're not curating
it, theirs no point in using it as I can get list of people to hire anywhere.
I want a list of people that are good at what they do.

\- Recruiters function because they hide the cost of hiring freelancers.
You're a design agency, your charge out rate is $250/h. Hiring this gun front
end developer through a recruiter costs me $100/h. I make $150/h, simple math.

The most important things to solve from POV is how you're going to curate the
list and keep the bad coders off it. You want to start with A's and only have
A's. As soon as B's creep onto the list then your reputation goes down. Also,
because you want to keep showing growth, C's and D's begin to creep onto it.
Also, your friend who you like but sucks at JavaScript will ring you up and
ask to be placed on it.

Good luck.

~~~
pkinsky
>\- People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you
asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't
like you asking them where they're working this week.

StackOverflow Careers handles this rather nicely. If you mark yourself as
available and are contacted, you get a notification email. If after N days you
don't respond (through SO) to the contact, you are automatically marked as
unavailable.

It's not perfect, but in most cases it should remove stale list entries after
their first contact.

------
bsimpson
QA:

\- The settings link is a 404 if you haven't completed your profile yet.

\- There isn't a link to complete the registration flow from the rest of the
app. If you click Settings prematurely and get that 404, your profile is hosed
unless you know to find
[http://availability.is/users/calendars](http://availability.is/users/calendars)
in your history.

\- There's no obvious way to choose a profile photo.

\- The calendar listing doesn't auto-update. I just went and made a calendar
(thinking it was required) in GC, but I can't link it to your site.

\- It isn't made clear during registration that the availability calendar is a
feature, not a requirement.

~~~
krallin
Also, some twitter links are broken

e.g.
[http://availability.is/for/sebinsua](http://availability.is/for/sebinsua)
links to
[http://twitter.com/http://twitter.com/sebinsua](http://twitter.com/http://twitter.com/sebinsua)

~~~
ianwootten
Not broken, you just don't need to include the full link to your twitter
profile - just your handle.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
If the app automatically adds a prefix and doesn't automatically strip that
prefix if it's present in supplied data, it's broken.

~~~
ZoF
Yep, should be parsing input for twitter prefix I agree.

------
rpedela
It is missing an explanation of what it is, ratings, reviews, resumes. Also
how is this different than other sites where you can hire programmers?

~~~
ianwootten
You're right, some explanation wouldn't go amiss - I'll be sure to add this
soon.

------
rmoriz
Most customers don't look just for available candidates but for ones that also
match the required skill set. Just looking for some available "backend
developer" wont work.

~~~
ianwootten
My experience as a freelancer tells me this is not always the case.

Besides, even if it is, knowing when a particular freelancer is available
still is useful - isn't it?

~~~
rmoriz
I don't think so. If you need external support to fix a problem, it's because
of their skills, not because of their availability. Most businesses can shift
feature development for some weeks/months until an expert is available (if
they can't find one) but an instant, crappy solution wont help them.

It's about skills + price. Not about availability. I don't know many
freelancers with full-time exclusive projects that last more than 12 months.

------
ericcholis
Guessing it's built in Lithium
([http://lithify.me/docs/manual](http://lithify.me/docs/manual)). The favicon
is the default one from the sample application
([https://github.com/UnionOfRAD/framework/blob/master/app/webr...](https://github.com/UnionOfRAD/framework/blob/master/app/webroot/favicon.ico))

~~~
ianwootten
You guessed right.

------
andrewhassan
The page is not....available right now. Haha.

~~~
ianwootten
I also operate the domain [http://available.is](http://available.is) \- we'd
discussed using it for checking whether availability.is was available...

A friend pointed out we'd then need a subsequent site for checking
available.is's availability too

------
dylanhassinger
Backend / Frontend developer is kinda vague. Would be more useful if you could
explain your specialty in more detail

~~~
ianwootten
Yup, sure thing - I'd like to add tagging for descriptions of skills.

------
dewey
Just a minor thing: You could replace the "tick" icon with Font Awesome [1]
icons so they wouldn't look pixelated on retina displays.

[1] [http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-
Awesome/icons/](http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/)

------
danielnr
I'd love to sign up, but I'm unable to do so without adding it to a Google
account.

------
AlbertoGP
The registration form is terrible: each time it doesn't like some input all
the fields are reset and you have to start from scratch. Then the website URL
validation is broken: for instance, I can't use a domain with a hyphen for it,
but I can in the e-mail field. Also, the twitter field could be optional, and
in any case tolerate getting the handle with the @ symbol prefixed. Anyway,
the really bad part is the first point because it promotes the others from
annoyances into pain.

The site looks good, though. It might end up working very well with some
refinements as others noted.

------
jameszhang
Neat idea. I would expect there to be a link to each freelancer's
portfolio/personal website before ever considering clicking on "Hire Me".

~~~
ianwootten
There is. Immediately under the freelancers name, if they've added it. Here's
mine:
[http://availability.is/for/niftydigits](http://availability.is/for/niftydigits)

------
navs
Maybe a signup via email as an alternative to those of us that don't like to
use our various google, twitter, facebook, github accounts for signing up?

~~~
Aaronn
[http://persona.org](http://persona.org) maybe?

------
lucb1e
1\. Oh that looks totally cool!

2\. Sign up...

3\. As a freelancer...

4\. Google account?!

5\. Go back. Is there no other option?

6\. Seems not. Fuck you. I'd much rather create an account than give you my
gmail address, have you use my fake name that I set on my google account, and
have a single point of failure for authentication availability and security.
That is assuming you only request read access.

~~~
karterk
_Seems not. Fuck you._

Not the OP, but don't take it personally. When someone's building a side
project, there are so many things to do, and making using of an existing
authentication system is fairly reasonable in the interests of time and effort
vs value.

Of course, you have a right to your privacy, but you don't need to be so rude.

------
jamestomasino
Are you living abroad in Iceland? I was under the impression that was the only
way to get at .is domains.

~~~
tikhonj
No, they opened them up to everyone a few years ago, I believe. I had no
problem getting one living in the US, although it does cost significantly more
than a normal domain would.

------
mbesto
Any good freelancer/contractor knows your availability is largely unimportant
to the success of your own business. In other words, you don't normally lose
money because you're unavailable, you lose it because you don't have work
lined up.

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
It's up to the freelancer to develop a solid pipeline for work.

Downtime isn't uncommon either, it happens, but it's also one of the reasons
your rate should be high enough to support your downtime.

------
brianmcdonough
As someone who hires developers, it would be great to see a link to a resume.
It often takes a lot of digging to find out what kind of experience a
developer has from their website.

------
jaysonelliot
I see that "UX" is not an option.

User Experience is a skillset that many clients need, and that many also
mistake for visual design or front-end coding. They're very different things.

~~~
ivanplenty
I'm genuinely curious, what are examples of the typical work product you
produce for "UX"?

I must be biased into thinking it is either visual mockups (ranging from paper
to balsamiq to powerpoint to adobe) or working prototypes (ranging from a UI
builder on the web, a UI builder in an IDE, or HTML/JS/CSS coded by hand).

The former case I would label "design" and the latter case I would label
"front-end developer" (with low technical skills and high artistry).

What am I missing? What else is "UX" for freelancers?

 _Edit and P.S. I just read
through[http://www.jaysonelliot.com/about/](http://www.jaysonelliot.com/about/),
and I like the candor and approach. One bit of a small friendly feedback:
Please add measurements for the outcomes of the projects you want to
highlight.

For example, it looks like Preferio (the first example) is no longer around.
That's cool, we've all worked on failed projects. What are some of the
decisions you made while working there and designing the app? You had to have
had some influence... was there a visual style or conversion flow you updated
that increased X% of some valuable activity? Of course there was, so add it :)
That is the kind of behavior and thinking I want to see from UX people. The
entire presentation talks about things you did and omits outcomes. The things
you did are great, but please add more outcomes. They will complete an
otherwise good message._

~~~
jaysonelliot
That's really valuable feeback, thank you for taking the time to look at my
stuff!

UX, for me, is a very upfront strategy role, which culminates in static or
prototype wireframes, but doesn't involve visual design or coding. User
research and testing are also big parts of it.

Of course, roles are fluid and I might answer differently in a year.

I think UX is a role that's often misunderstood in startups, as it's often
most prevalent in larger corporate teams. I've been trying to find ways to
make it more accessible for everyone, though.

Thanks again for the feedback, it's been a while since I updated my own
portfolio, and I will take your advice.

------
jcutrell
Just as a fun polish, you should build really awesome "unavailable" pages for
your 404s and 500s that points out the obvious semantic irony.

------
sytelus
Did I read this right: "Collin Price is available permanently". Or should it
be "Collin Price has been available forever"?

------
codeoclock
If I could sign in with GitHub, absolutely.

~~~
MattBearman
I agree - The weird thing is I have a google account that I use for work, but
I'm not comfortable using it to sign up to other services. Where as I have no
issues signing up for things with GitHub.

------
anarchitect
Brilliantly simple. I'd love to see some permanent/freelance and location
filters for employers though.

~~~
ianwootten
Yup - I want to do this too..but I need a certain number of people in the same
location to make it worthwhile. You can hack the urls to include the
"location" parameter in the meantime though.

------
AbraKdabra
Not so available.

------
ianwootten
Just beefing up the server. Two ticks ;)

------
morenoh149
my website/blog morenoh149.github.io isn't being accepted as a valid website
address :(

------
hk__2
Please use infinite scrolling, nobodies want to click “next” every 10
profiles.

~~~
bonjourmr
I don't think everyone appreciates infinite scrolling, perhaps showing more
profiles per paginate would be better (or give the user a choice between the
two, or how many per page).

------
mindbreaker
availability.is HTTP 500 (Internal Server Error)

------
haydenjameslee
ratings would be awesome :)

------
glurgann
It works!

