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Show HN: Tipping culture for developers on the Web

38 points by 60devs 11y ago

Brainix 11y ago
Great idea! Why hasn't anyone tried this before?
- xentronium 11y ago
  They did (gittip).
  - JackuB 11y ago
    … and Flattr … and TipTheWeb … and Gratipay
    - jacques_chester 11y ago
      ... and Tipjoy
      - rayalez 11y ago
        Here's another great one, with bitcoins: https://www.changetip.com/ https://www.changetip.com/ It's too bad that these ideas keep failing, if one system would work out it would make the web so much better. I wish the very best to the developers. Maybe you guys can make it work. It works on reddit with gold, so it's not like it's impossible to pull off....
        eponeponepon 11y ago
        I think they're solutions looking for a problem. Tips in the service industry are functionally a means of bolstering income for people who are, by and large, distinctly low-paid workers; developers, even on the low end of the scale, tend not be. I think it's also fair to say that most (most - I realise it's not all) active contributors to open-source projects have day-jobs that provide adequate-or-better income. So what would motivate a common-or-garden developer to court for tips in the first place? And how would a "tip-sized" tip even be noticeable to someone on a developer's salary? [edit to add: perhaps the issue is the metaphor? A "tip" is roughly what I described above - but it's not actually any different from a "gift", a "donation", or myriad other terms (except, yes, in legal terms of course).]
        mrec 11y ago
        Reddit Gold isn't really the same; the recipient doesn't really get anything other than warm fuzzies out of it. It's more a way to support Reddit itself financially while dispensing a few of the said fuzzies on the side. I've had minor contact with a BTC-based tipping system on Reddit, and to be honest it both annoyed me and creeped me out. I forget the name of it, but there was a period where it kept spamming me with "FooUser has tipped you $UTTERLY_DERISORY_AMOUNT, go to $SUSPICIOUS_THIRD_PARTY_SITE and connect up your identities on umpty-zillion different sites to claim it" notifications. I'm not sure who was supposed to benefit in this scenario, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't me.
        jacques_chester 11y ago
        I don't think it can work. Tipping systems require someone to think about whether they want to tip. The alternative is what I call "microsubscription": a middleman takes a single fixed subscription, then distributes on behalf of users. Examples include Amazon Underground, Apple Music, Spotify, Netflix, Google Contributor and so on. Where these fall down is that they're walled or semi-walled gardens. They don't really work on the open web, users have to be funnelled through some central pipeline for reliable tracking of usage. Which is understandable: open web schemes up until now have had the problem of fraud. Manageable but potentially fatally expensive and offputting. I'm interested in this problem space for two reasons. First, advertising sucks. It distorts the vision that the early internet held out. We got linkbait and exploitatively addictive web design instead. Second, I solved the problem of reliably tracking visits to websites on the open web (patent granted in Australia, pending in the USA). As a side effect, the same protocol can be used in apps, games, API calls -- anything that has a network request-response system with some kind of command channel (especially headers). Plus it can seamlessly integrate with paywalls. Of the microsubscription providers already in service, the one I worry about most is Blendle, because it presents no upfront mental barrier to consumption. On the other hand, it's another walled garden. We'll see.
        kzahel 11y ago
        There's also flattr, which also follows the "micro-subscription" model
        jacques_chester 11y ago
        Yes, I include Flattr. They have in common with Kachingle (and, if you squint, Patreon) that you need to deliberately activate the payment. I think that this still doesn't work because it still requires thinking. The whole magic of microsubscription is that no additional decision making is needed on the part of the subscriber. They pay once and thereafter consume without consideration or guilt. Any act of making people think, no matter how small, is a barrier to entry. I think this is the fatal flaw in any classic micropayment or tipping scheme.
  - emddudley 11y ago
    GitTip is now Gratipay, correct?
    - xentronium 11y ago
      Yup, they renamed.
danieltillett 11y ago
This is a good idea for a site like stack overflow, but it suffers from the same problem that many ideas suffer from which is you need a network to be valuable, but you don't offer value to the first users. To get out of this trap you either need a lot of money or luck. I want to be positive - the best I can offer is go very niche. Dominate a very tiny language/framework and build out.
x5n1 11y ago
Does not seem as if this concept has proven to work yet. Why? Developers are mostly thrifty and looking to solve a problem. Most of the time they can do this without help using Google. Developers also don't value their time enough or properly and like solving problems, so they would be more likely to try to solve the problem themselves than pay someone for it. That's why you need managers... developers are often not good decision makers in terms of utilizing their time most profitably.
- binarymax 11y ago
  Those are some interesting stereotypes you've got there. Developers don't value their time?
  - stefan_work 11y ago
    I've noticed this as well. Most developers will spend 40 hours building a wheel instead of offering to wire up a pre built solution that costs money.
    - binarymax 11y ago
      I think there are different reasons why that may happen - perhaps a misconception of the problem space and what an off the shelf tool provides, or misestimation of implementation time vs learning time. I don't think it is appropriate to say that developers don't value their time and therefore need managers, as a blanket statement.
    - oneJob 11y ago
      I can tell you exactly why I might fall into this stereotyped category. 1) The wheel is closed-source, and I do not trust the vendor with that component. Linkages to that upstream code/license might not be acceptable/cannot not be justified given the cost/headache of dealing with the transaction. 2) The wheel is open-source and the code is crap or the license incompatible. 3) The wheel is open source and I worry that the direction of the project is not compatible with my needs. It might be awesome for the moment, but given that the project can potentially deviate in a direction that won't work for the needed solution, linking my code to that upstream project doesn't make sense. If the project does end up going in a different direction, I must break my stride, drop what I'm working on, and go back to retrofit that particular solution.
oneJob 11y ago
I love how the cartoon at the top of the page shows two "indie-developer" looking characters in all their idiosyncratic glory, but then lower on the page the user profile photo is of some corporate tool looking guy. It's kinda like the the joke that is "tipping culture". One supposes it is to show sincere gratitude and be merit based, but almost inevitably it ends up being like any other economic exchange, just providing cover for employers who are unwilling to provide a fair wage to their employees. GitHub is already populated with code generated on the unacknowledged narrative of "free ($) OSS". This seems to provide some whitewash.
- 60devs 11y ago
  Thank you for your comment. It's a good point, we'll change that profile photo asap :)
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    So you're going to whitewash it better? I think you missed the point. Not that I care, I think it's still an interesting project.
rch 11y ago
Tipping is the wrong model... would you tip an oncologist who gave you a second opinion for free? Nope. You would just be very grateful.
- walshemj 11y ago
  And its insulting to a professional if any one working in the industry thinks that tipping is acceptable then they need to be "managed" out to Starbucks
- 60devs 11y ago
  Thanks for you comment, would you tip an oncologist who gave you a second opinion for free? Nope. You would just be very grateful. - basically, this is a reason why it's called "Tipping culture", when you go to a restaurant you have a choice to pay or not pay a waitress there, and nobody can force you to leave tips, right? - But, usually people don't say, that the service was super nice and that's all :( normally they leave tips. Here, it's the same. Previously, you didn't have an ability to pay developers who helped you and now you have it, so it's up to you to pay or not to pay. It's all voluntary.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    Please don't lump us in the same category as waitresses. I have all the respect for their job, but I really don't want to work for 8 usd/hr.
delinka 11y ago
"...PayPal." No thanks. "BitCoin..." OK, where's the Stripe & Square integration?
- 60devs 11y ago
  We've chosen PayPal, because of few very cool features: 1. It supports B2B payments. We us this model, because we don't want to keep your money. Whenever you want to tip somebody you do it directly to that person. 2. You can still receive money even without being a member of PayPal. If you are not a member and somebody makes a payment to you, PayPal sends an email asking you to register and receive your money. 3 It's very simple for you (you just need to put an email address).
  - delinka 11y ago
    The problems with PayPal are varied, sundry, many, etc. I've had my own problems with them that convince me I'll never go back. "Simple" is not enough of a reason to trust PayPal with my business ever again.
bobwaycott 11y ago
Sadly, "tipping culture" is all too often a product of employer refusal to pay employees a living wage. They shift that burden onto their patrons, forcing service workers to be dependent upon the generosity of their employer's customers. Why on earth we'd ever want to see "tipping culture" brought into the world of software development is beyond me. Worst-case scenario I'm imagining right now: This whole "tipping culture" thing catches on. A rough amount of tips developers earn becomes public information somehow. Unscrupulous employers use this to offer lower salaries and/or raise increases. This persists for years, allowing salary negotiations industry-wide to employ an expectation of tipping to replace good wages, driving salaries down to incredibly low levels. This becomes institutionalized to the point that developers become just another kind of service worker, dependent on their tips to actually survive. Best-case scenario I'm imagining right now: Worst-case scenario happens. SV Developers get a harsh dose of reality and humility by learning what a horrible thing "tipping culture" is. SV Developers become incredibly more conscious of how people live on non-SV salaries.

38 points by 60devs 11y ago

Brainix 11y ago

Great idea! Why hasn't anyone tried this before?

xentronium 11y ago
They did (gittip).
- JackuB 11y ago
  … and Flattr … and TipTheWeb … and Gratipay
  - jacques_chester 11y ago
    ... and Tipjoy
    - rayalez 11y ago
      Here's another great one, with bitcoins: https://www.changetip.com/ https://www.changetip.com/ It's too bad that these ideas keep failing, if one system would work out it would make the web so much better. I wish the very best to the developers. Maybe you guys can make it work. It works on reddit with gold, so it's not like it's impossible to pull off....
      - eponeponepon 11y ago
        I think they're solutions looking for a problem. Tips in the service industry are functionally a means of bolstering income for people who are, by and large, distinctly low-paid workers; developers, even on the low end of the scale, tend not be. I think it's also fair to say that most (most - I realise it's not all) active contributors to open-source projects have day-jobs that provide adequate-or-better income. So what would motivate a common-or-garden developer to court for tips in the first place? And how would a "tip-sized" tip even be noticeable to someone on a developer's salary? [edit to add: perhaps the issue is the metaphor? A "tip" is roughly what I described above - but it's not actually any different from a "gift", a "donation", or myriad other terms (except, yes, in legal terms of course).]
      - mrec 11y ago
        Reddit Gold isn't really the same; the recipient doesn't really get anything other than warm fuzzies out of it. It's more a way to support Reddit itself financially while dispensing a few of the said fuzzies on the side. I've had minor contact with a BTC-based tipping system on Reddit, and to be honest it both annoyed me and creeped me out. I forget the name of it, but there was a period where it kept spamming me with "FooUser has tipped you $UTTERLY_DERISORY_AMOUNT, go to $SUSPICIOUS_THIRD_PARTY_SITE and connect up your identities on umpty-zillion different sites to claim it" notifications. I'm not sure who was supposed to benefit in this scenario, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't me.
      - jacques_chester 11y ago
        I don't think it can work. Tipping systems require someone to think about whether they want to tip. The alternative is what I call "microsubscription": a middleman takes a single fixed subscription, then distributes on behalf of users. Examples include Amazon Underground, Apple Music, Spotify, Netflix, Google Contributor and so on. Where these fall down is that they're walled or semi-walled gardens. They don't really work on the open web, users have to be funnelled through some central pipeline for reliable tracking of usage. Which is understandable: open web schemes up until now have had the problem of fraud. Manageable but potentially fatally expensive and offputting. I'm interested in this problem space for two reasons. First, advertising sucks. It distorts the vision that the early internet held out. We got linkbait and exploitatively addictive web design instead. Second, I solved the problem of reliably tracking visits to websites on the open web (patent granted in Australia, pending in the USA). As a side effect, the same protocol can be used in apps, games, API calls -- anything that has a network request-response system with some kind of command channel (especially headers). Plus it can seamlessly integrate with paywalls. Of the microsubscription providers already in service, the one I worry about most is Blendle, because it presents no upfront mental barrier to consumption. On the other hand, it's another walled garden. We'll see.
        kzahel 11y ago
        There's also flattr, which also follows the "micro-subscription" model
        jacques_chester 11y ago
        Yes, I include Flattr. They have in common with Kachingle (and, if you squint, Patreon) that you need to deliberately activate the payment. I think that this still doesn't work because it still requires thinking. The whole magic of microsubscription is that no additional decision making is needed on the part of the subscriber. They pay once and thereafter consume without consideration or guilt. Any act of making people think, no matter how small, is a barrier to entry. I think this is the fatal flaw in any classic micropayment or tipping scheme.
- emddudley 11y ago
  GitTip is now Gratipay, correct?
  - xentronium 11y ago
    Yup, they renamed.

danieltillett 11y ago

This is a good idea for a site like stack overflow, but it suffers from the same problem that many ideas suffer from which is you need a network to be valuable, but you don't offer value to the first users. To get out of this trap you either need a lot of money or luck. I want to be positive - the best I can offer is go very niche. Dominate a very tiny language/framework and build out.

x5n1 11y ago

Does not seem as if this concept has proven to work yet. Why? Developers are mostly thrifty and looking to solve a problem. Most of the time they can do this without help using Google. Developers also don't value their time enough or properly and like solving problems, so they would be more likely to try to solve the problem themselves than pay someone for it. That's why you need managers... developers are often not good decision makers in terms of utilizing their time most profitably.

binarymax 11y ago
Those are some interesting stereotypes you've got there. Developers don't value their time?
- stefan_work 11y ago
  I've noticed this as well. Most developers will spend 40 hours building a wheel instead of offering to wire up a pre built solution that costs money.
  - binarymax 11y ago
    I think there are different reasons why that may happen - perhaps a misconception of the problem space and what an off the shelf tool provides, or misestimation of implementation time vs learning time. I don't think it is appropriate to say that developers don't value their time and therefore need managers, as a blanket statement.
  - oneJob 11y ago
    I can tell you exactly why I might fall into this stereotyped category. 1) The wheel is closed-source, and I do not trust the vendor with that component. Linkages to that upstream code/license might not be acceptable/cannot not be justified given the cost/headache of dealing with the transaction. 2) The wheel is open-source and the code is crap or the license incompatible. 3) The wheel is open source and I worry that the direction of the project is not compatible with my needs. It might be awesome for the moment, but given that the project can potentially deviate in a direction that won't work for the needed solution, linking my code to that upstream project doesn't make sense. If the project does end up going in a different direction, I must break my stride, drop what I'm working on, and go back to retrofit that particular solution.

oneJob 11y ago

I love how the cartoon at the top of the page shows two "indie-developer" looking characters in all their idiosyncratic glory, but then lower on the page the user profile photo is of some corporate tool looking guy. It's kinda like the the joke that is "tipping culture". One supposes it is to show sincere gratitude and be merit based, but almost inevitably it ends up being like any other economic exchange, just providing cover for employers who are unwilling to provide a fair wage to their employees. GitHub is already populated with code generated on the unacknowledged narrative of "free ($) OSS". This seems to provide some whitewash.

60devs 11y ago
Thank you for your comment. It's a good point, we'll change that profile photo asap :)
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  So you're going to whitewash it better? I think you missed the point. Not that I care, I think it's still an interesting project.

rch 11y ago

Tipping is the wrong model... would you tip an oncologist who gave you a second opinion for free? Nope. You would just be very grateful.

walshemj 11y ago
And its insulting to a professional if any one working in the industry thinks that tipping is acceptable then they need to be "managed" out to Starbucks
60devs 11y ago
Thanks for you comment, would you tip an oncologist who gave you a second opinion for free? Nope. You would just be very grateful. - basically, this is a reason why it's called "Tipping culture", when you go to a restaurant you have a choice to pay or not pay a waitress there, and nobody can force you to leave tips, right? - But, usually people don't say, that the service was super nice and that's all :( normally they leave tips. Here, it's the same. Previously, you didn't have an ability to pay developers who helped you and now you have it, so it's up to you to pay or not to pay. It's all voluntary.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Please don't lump us in the same category as waitresses. I have all the respect for their job, but I really don't want to work for 8 usd/hr.

delinka 11y ago

"...PayPal." No thanks. "BitCoin..." OK, where's the Stripe & Square integration?

60devs 11y ago
We've chosen PayPal, because of few very cool features: 1. It supports B2B payments. We us this model, because we don't want to keep your money. Whenever you want to tip somebody you do it directly to that person. 2. You can still receive money even without being a member of PayPal. If you are not a member and somebody makes a payment to you, PayPal sends an email asking you to register and receive your money. 3 It's very simple for you (you just need to put an email address).
- delinka 11y ago
  The problems with PayPal are varied, sundry, many, etc. I've had my own problems with them that convince me I'll never go back. "Simple" is not enough of a reason to trust PayPal with my business ever again.

bobwaycott 11y ago

Sadly, "tipping culture" is all too often a product of employer refusal to pay employees a living wage. They shift that burden onto their patrons, forcing service workers to be dependent upon the generosity of their employer's customers. Why on earth we'd ever want to see "tipping culture" brought into the world of software development is beyond me. Worst-case scenario I'm imagining right now: This whole "tipping culture" thing catches on. A rough amount of tips developers earn becomes public information somehow. Unscrupulous employers use this to offer lower salaries and/or raise increases. This persists for years, allowing salary negotiations industry-wide to employ an expectation of tipping to replace good wages, driving salaries down to incredibly low levels. This becomes institutionalized to the point that developers become just another kind of service worker, dependent on their tips to actually survive. Best-case scenario I'm imagining right now: Worst-case scenario happens. SV Developers get a harsh dose of reality and humility by learning what a horrible thing "tipping culture" is. SV Developers become incredibly more conscious of how people live on non-SV salaries.