If you know any that are worth recommending: post them!
Regarding "there are other places to do that": there are websites for job posts, freelancers, etc, but we still get those monthly on HN. The form and audience make a big difference.
- code reviews or ticking off annoying bugs on your open source
- update your Wordpress/Drupal/Django/Flask site to a new design or change a few things
- have your backup system checked
- help figuring out an obscure library or piece of software you'll need to use
- updating your not-too-complex website to be bug free on the latest versions of browsers if it's been maintained like this a year ago
- editing and updating content on a site
- de-gruff your architecture, make sure your VPS or dedicated server isn't running anything you don't need, etc
- help you start using a specific technology, e.g. help you figure out a simple Ansible setup or write a Hello World or a simple tool in Rust or Scala so that you can start using it for small things at work
- if you have something and think it could be contained in a fairly long StackOverflow answer, it's perfect
Code: if the code the applicant would be working on is freely available, post a link here, e.g. http://www.github.com/examplecom/my-site/blob/master/routes.... or if it's on a freely available tracker, post a link to that. Do not expect the person to read the tracker issue before they can decide if the job applies to them or not! This is what the short and long description are for
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Longer description here that includes your estimate of how long this might take, e.g.: Hi, John at Example.com here. We've got a site built up in CodeIgniter but we've been using mod_rewrite for routing and it's grown unwieldy. There are currently around 100 rules and we need to update them quite often. We want someone to move this to a CodeIgniter router. We expect this shouldn't take much longer than 10 hours.
Here's a few things that might motivate someone to look for a quick job:
- you have steady income from your startup but would like to get some extra cash, don't want a long-term job but would like to e.g. buy some new hardware
- you've calculated your money for the next few months and have steady income but something unusual happened and you need to come up with some extra money (you fell in love and want to marry, your basement got flooded, you want to invest in something but there's a deadline)
- you want a change of pace from what you're doing normally
- you would like to hone a skill you don't get to use often enough
- you want to work with some new people for a while
Regarding "there are other places to do that": there are websites for job posts, freelancers, etc, but we still get those monthly on HN. The form and audience make a big difference.