

Offer HN: I'll work on interesting projects for free - goshakkk
http://goshakkk.name/dev-freebie.html

======
mgkimsal
Not trying to be rude here, but what happens when the work is no longer
interesting? You abandon it? Much of the work I find needs to be done - even
on "cool" projects - is decidedly uninteresting (refactor XYZ, etc).

While the offer is genuine, and I'm sure you'll get some offers, I just can't
help thinking that a few weeks down the line the honeymoon will wear off.
Nothing _wrong_ with that, but everyone needs to prepare for that.

~~~
mattm
What may be uninteresting to you could be interesting to others. I like
refactoring.

~~~
mgkimsal
Fine, but I was speaking to the offer from the OP. What if the OP doesn't find
writing tests interesting? Someone else trying to pick it up later _won't_ be
so gung-ho to take up refactoring a pile of mess.

I'm not suggesting that the OP _does_ write messy code, but that it _could_ be
if he doesn't think clean code is interesting.

I get the motivation behind the offer, I'm just not sure I'd take him up on
it, even if I had a project. I _do_ know people who have interesting projects
and need help, and I'm not passing this on. _I_ will be the one having to deal
with the project when the OP doesn't find the work interesting any more, and
I've no idea what shape it'll be in. I'd prefer to refer them to someone who
will take on a project and see it past the interesting parts, commit to
something longer term, and be prepared to deal with the uninteresting bits.

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epikur
You advertise yourself as "a geek and fucking awesome developer who cares
about perfect code, who can't live without learning new technologies and
practices. Yep, it's me."

While you may be a great developer, and it's neat that you are interested in
volunteering your time, I see minimal published work on your personal site and
github - it seems like you might be better off working on small, public
projects on your own and then building up to an offer like this, rather than
starting from scratch, so to speak.

My five minutes of poking around yielded 1) you have a very large and active
twitter presence 2) you have one blog post 3) you have an active github
presence, but few public repos of your own.

I am just stating my impression. I hope you find an interesting project that
fits you.

------
feralchimp
Do I get works-for-hire ownership of the IP you create? Can I put you under
NDA? What recourse do I have if you walk off with my source tree?

Demand curves slope downward, but people (yes, in many cases wrongly) distrust
'free' as a bid amount.

Update: For the record, I really like the tone of your offer, and the way in
which you presented it. I hope you soon get to work on something really fun!

------
chops
Just contribute to an open source project you find interesting.

~~~
goshakkk
It's not so easy to find that project...

~~~
javadyan
It's really easy, if you use open source software on a daily basis. There will
always be something you'd like to improve about it and personal interest is
the best motivation.

~~~
anjc
What's the process generally like though? Hang around the community bug
testing for a few years first?

~~~
javadyan
Just come up with a useful patch.

~~~
anjc
Any time i've looked into this, especially whenever i've found bugs (in things
like ODE), i always find stories of people submitting patches that get ignored
and similar tales...i presume one has to get involved in the community first
somewhat?

~~~
javadyan
Depends on the project you're contributing to. True, there are projects that
are more reluctant to accept "outsider" contributions, but I doubt that if you
come up with a viable solution to a real problem, you will be ignored.

------
phzbOx
Why all the hate coming from the comments on this page? The guy is offering is
time to have fun hacking on a cool project.

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goshakkk
Already got many emails. Everybody offers a kind of good project... But,
that's crazy to get 40+ emails in total in 1+ hr.

Actually didn't expect such a load of my inbox :/

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krosaen
Thanks to employment laws it would be illegal for any US startup to let you
work for them for free; there's no legal form of volunteering for for-profit
companies (save a very clearly defined educational internship where the
benefit is to you, not to the company in any material form).

Good luck anyways.

~~~
grannyg00se
This seems ridiculous and unenforceable. Has anybody ever been arrested or
charged with working for free?

Apparently Obama is working toward allowing people to work for free in
Georgia, at least. I imagine there is some kind of slippery slope toward abuse
that is of concern to some people.

~~~
krosaen
What it really means is that with each person you allow to "volunteer" for you
are opening yourself up to liability that they could sue for back payment of
minimum wage if they ever became disgruntled. Same goes for people who work
for sweat equity. This doesn't mean a startup should never make such
arrangements, it just means a startup should be careful and consider the risk
(e.g hiring one key employee vs having an army of volunteers).

------
meric
You like working with new and interesting technologies. Here is a open source
text editor that hasn't had much contributions/work done in the past year, but
involves many interesting aspects like a syntax-aware highlighter (made with a
parser that runs continuously), a parser that is configured in a DSL
(<https://github.com/rsms/kod/blob/master/resources/json.gzl>), syntax
highlighting configured with CSS, tabs in Chrome style, node.js for handling
events...

Will you help work on this wonderful text editor?

<https://github.com/rsms/kod> <http://kodapp.com/>

------
dmk23
The offer sounds suspiciously similar to this one:
[http://teddziuba.com/2011/07/the-craigslist-reverse-
programm...](http://teddziuba.com/2011/07/the-craigslist-reverse-programmer-
troll.html)

If you are real, could you tell us more about your background and where you
are located? Links to your Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/blog/etc would help.

Do you do anything besides Ruby/Rails?

~~~
goshakkk
I'm located at Minsk, Belarus. It's almost Russia. <http://goshakkk.name/>
<http://twitter.com/goshakkk>

I can also do very-very basic node.js dev, but Rails is my primary tool.

~~~
clyfe
He's real alright. I seen his somewhat bombastic and voiced style several
times on HN but only recently realized he's only 15 years old :) . He's a
talented fellow actually, only a bit dramatic.

~~~
javadyan
That explains a lot

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suhastech
Cut him some slack. He is trying to get out of the catch 22 phase which most
frankly most of us, autodidacts experience. No previous projects = No future
projects.

Though my advise is, work on some cool open source projects instead. You don't
have to be committed to all though the project. You can try getting into GSOC
<http://code.google.com/soc/>

------
jc4p
I had to stop reading your page simply because my brain could not parse that
font. Does it have a display issue on Chrome 15 or is it supposed to look
like:

<http://i.imgur.com/01Mjq.png>

~~~
goshakkk
Would that be better? <http://d.pr/IU3Q>

~~~
hansy
Yes that font is much better over the cursive one, both in terms of
readability and cleanliness.

If you do use any cursive fonts, please do not bold the letters as everything
looks mashed together.

Other than that, everything looks great and the offer sounds generous! Good
luck!

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psychotik
Why would you rather work for free than bid on projects you personally find
interesting on freelancing sites like odesk.com? Just curious...

~~~
goshakkk
Because I see many-many stupid or boring projects on freelancing sites. It's
really hard to find a worthy one. And even when I found it, it's not
guaranteed my bid (even free) will win.

And I don't mind helping people for free, and building something great. So why
not?

~~~
felipemnoa
Why not come up with your own interesting project and work on it?

~~~
goshakkk
The lack of ideas for now.

~~~
astartupaday1
Feel free to use any of the ideas from my "A Startup A Day" blog:
<http://astartupaday.wordpress.com>

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derekreed
I really like the "will work on interesting projects" idea, I feel the same
way generally myself.

Kind of surprised there's so much "do something besides this" feedback in the
comments here, I can't see why this isn't an awesome way to find projects?

There's some amazing ideas out there that people have, why not tap into that
gigantic resource pool a little deeper, eh?

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jaredsohn
>I also wanna try AWS

FYI, this can be done for free: <http://aws.amazon.com/free/>

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fionabunny
So did you find something interesting?

------
dsine
Join us in our Fight as we Democratize Shared Living! <http://angel.co/roomeo>
Derek@TrailsVentures.com

------
salmanapk
"I also wanna try AWS"

AWS has a 1 year free tier by the way.

~~~
goshakkk
It doesn't accept my Payoneer MasterCard, and w/o a card verified i can _not_
use that free tier.

