9 ms·

A marketplace for specialized micro-consulting(30 minutes to an hour). I've seen plenty of projects that are rife with anti-patterns because a team was unfamil

A marketplace for specialized micro-consulting(30 minutes to an hour). I've seen plenty of projects that are rife with anti-patterns because a team was unfamiliar with a problem or technology and made a bunch of bad decisions while they were still coming up to speed. The use-case I envision would fix this. Because it's really a travesty that when we're the least familiar with technologies is when we make some of the most important architectural decisions. And these mistakes could be avoided with questions like "What issues will we run into?" "What patterns should we follow?" "What are good resources to get started?" For instance I recently joined a project that was built by devs coming up to speed on React. And boy did they abuse Flux, they didn't build a store for every drop-down but it's pretty damn close. However I really think a React Guru could have steered them around this mistake with just 30 minutes of his time. Obviously the biggest problem is ensuring quality without having to hike rates too much.

personlurking 10y ago
This would be great for non-tech too. That is, a marketplace for micro-consultations where I can look up industry-specific consultants. It would have saved me lots of time (months) on several projects I've played with launching over the last few years.
colinmegill 10y ago
https://hourlynerd.com/ https://hourlynerd.com/ is an interesting model, if a different industry
dharma1 10y ago
For tech it could be a nice add-on to Stack Overflow, since they have a reasonable amount of data of people's knowledge/quality and a reputation system
mxstbr 10y ago
I've started offering a service like this[0] for React apps. The response so far has been really good, people love it! It's exactly how you say it is, by spending some time identifying the biggest issues and then spending an hour with the team I can get them to rally around some easy fixes that'll be valuable for the business long-term. Developers love it as their bosses finally understand the value of refactoring, and managers love it because they get actionable tips that'll help the business. Making this a general platform would require a lot of good curation, but nothing impossible. Now you got me thinking… [0]: https://mxstbr.com/audits/ https://mxstbr.com/audits/
- smudgymcscmudge 10y ago
  That looks like a valuable service, but it is slightly different from the micro-consulting the parent mentioned. From your perspective, do you think there would be value in a service that offers this consulting thirty minutes at a time?
  - mxstbr 10y ago
    30 minutes is quite a short amount of time, especially given that most companies who will pay for consulting are quite far ahead in their projects already and will have a large codebase. I could see 30 minutes to an hour working out for e.g. a bespoke greenfield codebase setup, but I don't think restricting it to 30 minutes makes a lot of sense.
nodesocket 10y ago
I recently launched my third startup Elastic Byte (https://elasticbyte.net https://elasticbyte.net) a DevOps and cloud management company that offers simple monthly plans to design, build, and manage your cloud infrastructure. Pricing is transparent and upfront (which is rare for consulting/service companies) with no long-term contracts and no vendor lock-in. We specialize in AWS and Google Cloud, and can help with simple LAMP/MEAN stacks all the way to complex multi-region microservice architectures using Terraform, containerization, Kubernetes and beyond.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
http://www.fiverr.com http://www.fiverr.com seems like the current standard for these kinds of tasks. Problem being it's mostly overseas labor and the quality isn't great.
lorenzsell 10y ago
Isn't this kind of http://clarity.fm http://clarity.fm offers?
ClassyJacket 10y ago
That would be cool. I've run into a problem myself of not knowing what technology to use when building a web-shop, but complicated by the fact that users uploaded images to be printed onto their item. Sometimes I just need someone with e-commerce coding experience to talk to me for half an hour or so to let me know what my best options are.
xorcist 10y ago
Wouldn't reading a book about React before they started working with it be preferrable? That's something I've seen getting much worse over the past decade with the proliferation of frameworks. What you call "getting up to speed" is tempting to call "playing with". People work with tools that they have no knowledge of. Learning on the job is good, but I think one should have at least an idea of how the tools are supposed to be used and how they are implemented before doing anything else than throwaways. I don't know how to fix it really, it more of a cultural thing than a technical. Knowledge must somehow be cool and respected again. Or maybe I'm just getting old and this is really a faster way of building things. I just can't think of any other area where professionals jump to the next tool without even learning the one they use.
- sah2ed 10y ago
  > Wouldn't reading a book about React before they started working with it be preferrable? Great in theory but difficult in practice. Developers rarely ever have the luxury to pick up a book as a means of getting up to speed when there exists online resources like Google and StackOverflow where you can easily find posts that answer your query string(s) verbatim.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    But you don't necessarily know what you don't know. If you don't know enough to ask high quality questions, SO and Google won't help you. If you're lucky, G will lead you to tuts and repos with useful code. If you're not, you'll make a ton of stupid beginner mistake and be overdrawn on the technical debt account before you even start.
    - sah2ed 10y ago
      JavaScript frameworks are rarely ever worth buying a book to get up to speed for. Books like this [0] are a much better time investment as the deep knowledge gained would be useful beyond the currently trending JS framework. [0] https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
watwut 10y ago
"For instance I recently joined a project that was built by devs coming up to speed on React. And boy did they abuse Flux, they didn't build a store for every drop-down but it's pretty damn close. However I really think a React Guru could have steered them around this mistake with just 30 minutes of his time." Problems like this tend to be consequence of team that does not tolerate dissent. E.g. either clique that stamps out dissenters as obviously stupid or dominant individual eager to bully anybody who does not conform to his favorite cool aid. Someone would say that "maybe we are going too far" otherwise. Consultant wont be able to solve that one in 30 minutes.
chx 10y ago
Long ago I offered a paid answer service for Drupal StackExchange questions via the drupal.org services list and never got anyone asking for the service. Just a data point.
some1else 10y ago
Please don't call people Gurus. I've had at least three lousy experiences working with people who referred to themselves as Gurus. Some of them didn't even know the dictionary definition of the word. I feel I have dodged a number of bullets since then, by developing a healthy prejudice against self-titled Gurus.
- skrish 10y ago
  +1 And "visionaries". May be it's just me, but my defenses go up whenever I read a profile with visionary in it.
  - projectramo 10y ago
    Thought leaders, ugh.
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      What about rock stars?
      - pdimitar 10y ago
        Ninjas! I run away screaming when I see this in somebody's profile.
        projectramo 10y ago
        To be fair, that's because of the throwing stars, though. Everyone should be afraid of Ninjas.
        pdimitar 10y ago
        But that's just the thing -- most people referring to themselves as ninjas are designers aspiring to be devs, and they are usually cute chubby smiling guys who tend to stumble on their own feet. Hardly something to be afraid of! <giggles>
thowar2 10y ago
This sounds a bit like both https://clarity.fm/ https://clarity.fm/ and https://www.codementor.io/ https://www.codementor.io/
festaans 10y ago
https://officehours.io/ https://officehours.io/
danieka 10y ago
I'm the co-founder of Fliffr. We're building a marketplace for services where you can charge by the minute. We have everything from experts in SEO, chefs, personal trainers, Esport professionals. We also have a couple of developers, for example you can contact me for advice on #go #javascript or #ionic. Our goal is to build a service to quickly get in contact with an expert and only paying for the advice you need. Users can contact our experts through chat and video/voice calls. Do sign up for Fliffr and try it out, we're on both iOS and Android stores, or visit https://www.fliffr.com https://www.fliffr.com . And if you have any feedback I'd love to hear it.
- amelius 10y ago
  Does it support a web-interface? It's not clear from the website.
  - danieka 10y ago
    Not yet, but it is something that we are thinking of adding. Would a web interface be useful to you?
    - amelius 10y ago
      Yes, interacting with a UI on a desktop computer is so much better than using a phone screen.
      - danieka 10y ago
        Cool, thanks for the feedback. If you want me to reach out to you when we have a web interface drop me an email at danielk at fliffr.com
    - monatron 10y ago
      I would second this. In terms of software dev, I'd want this application to live the same place that I'm doing the majority of my work -- my desktop.
    - 10y ago
mattnewton 10y ago
I have never used them, but isn't this the model airpair is going after?
billconan 10y ago
wasn't google helpouts something like that? http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/02/16/google-helpouts-is-shutting-down-on-april-20th/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/02/16/google-h... they shut it down.
apsharma 10y ago
"For instance I recently joined a project that was built by devs coming up to speed on React. And boy did they abuse Flux, they didn't build a store for every drop-down but it's pretty damn close. However I really think a React Guru could have steered them around this mistake with just 30 minutes of his time. " The trouble here is that the guru or consultant who comes in needs to understand the context of the problem, which can't be done in 30 mins. we have a lot of architecture consultant companies which provide these services already.
- VLM 10y ago
  If you microfocused it enough it would work. Am I doing anything wrong isn't happening in 30 mins. Am I doing anything wrong with React is more than 30 mins. Am I abusing Flux? That sounds doable. videoconference with a live dev plus codebase access. In a previous career I walked hundreds of consultants thru connecting to the telco WAN and ISP network that employed me, and I can't help you with everything but in 30 minutes I can easily tell you what is wrong with your BGP configuration or your frame relay configuration or your MPLS/ATM connection. At least WRT connecting to that employer, at least WRT connecting 15 years ago. The consultants knew their client networks inside and out, I mostly told them "no do not redistribute via RIP RFC1918 address space to us" or "no you really don't want to send us a 0/0 route" or "you think we'll accept a route for a.b.c.d/27 and you're actually sending it correctly but you not having sent us a LOA means I'm filtering it right out" or "you might want to think about enabling md5 authentication because we have, as our welcome letter you obviously didn't read, clearly explained" and yeah people actually tried stuff like that. Also people with obvious peculiar ideas about how BGP works WRT priority of routes and load balancing and stuff. Could I tell these "network administrator consultants" how to set up MCSE server stuff, well, no, but I sure told a lot of them how to configure Cisco WAN interfaces and how BGP works (or doesn't work)... You can do a lot in 30 minutes over a narrow enough specialty.
jventura 10y ago
I'm curious if anything related with teaching CS or how to program would be appelative to people? Something like 1:1 teaching/mentoring.. I teach CS (programming, web development, distributed systems) on a local university, but have been thinking if there would be people interested in having 1:1 access to someone with development and teaching experience, for 30 minutes or 1h..
cylinder 10y ago
I think you mean software consulting but Expert360 is a good example for other types of consulting.
cylinder 10y ago
I think you mean software consulting but Expert360 is a good example for other types of consulting.
developer2 10y ago
This just stinks of another way to abuse the talent. If you want to pay someone below-market rates to fix your business's problems, there are already a multitude of race-to-the-bottom "contracting" sites to suit your needs. Real consulting at market (or even above-market) prices exist for a reason. The kind of people who will spend hours setting up a consult, to only officially charge for 30 minutes, are exactly the kind of people you don't want working for you, for any period of time. You get what you pay for. I can't for the life of me imagine what an apparently legitimate "micro-consulting" gig would look like, where the talent being hired isn't being asked to overperform for the amount of billing time being requested.
herbst 10y ago
I got this pitched multiple times in the last months. Nobody got the focus right in my opinion because it needs to be open and paid. I would use this from both sides i really see the potential here as well.
LauraRoeder 10y ago
This is exactly what Clarity provides - https://clarity.fm/ https://clarity.fm/

personlurking 10y ago

This would be great for non-tech too. That is, a marketplace for micro-consultations where I can look up industry-specific consultants. It would have saved me lots of time (months) on several projects I've played with launching over the last few years.

colinmegill 10y ago

https://hourlynerd.com/ https://hourlynerd.com/ is an interesting model, if a different industry

dharma1 10y ago

For tech it could be a nice add-on to Stack Overflow, since they have a reasonable amount of data of people's knowledge/quality and a reputation system

mxstbr 10y ago

I've started offering a service like this[0] for React apps. The response so far has been really good, people love it! It's exactly how you say it is, by spending some time identifying the biggest issues and then spending an hour with the team I can get them to rally around some easy fixes that'll be valuable for the business long-term. Developers love it as their bosses finally understand the value of refactoring, and managers love it because they get actionable tips that'll help the business. Making this a general platform would require a lot of good curation, but nothing impossible. Now you got me thinking… [0]: https://mxstbr.com/audits/ https://mxstbr.com/audits/

smudgymcscmudge 10y ago
That looks like a valuable service, but it is slightly different from the micro-consulting the parent mentioned. From your perspective, do you think there would be value in a service that offers this consulting thirty minutes at a time?
- mxstbr 10y ago
  30 minutes is quite a short amount of time, especially given that most companies who will pay for consulting are quite far ahead in their projects already and will have a large codebase. I could see 30 minutes to an hour working out for e.g. a bespoke greenfield codebase setup, but I don't think restricting it to 30 minutes makes a lot of sense.

nodesocket 10y ago

I recently launched my third startup Elastic Byte (https://elasticbyte.net https://elasticbyte.net) a DevOps and cloud management company that offers simple monthly plans to design, build, and manage your cloud infrastructure. Pricing is transparent and upfront (which is rare for consulting/service companies) with no long-term contracts and no vendor lock-in. We specialize in AWS and Google Cloud, and can help with simple LAMP/MEAN stacks all the way to complex multi-region microservice architectures using Terraform, containerization, Kubernetes and beyond.

godzillabrennus 10y ago

http://www.fiverr.com http://www.fiverr.com seems like the current standard for these kinds of tasks. Problem being it's mostly overseas labor and the quality isn't great.

lorenzsell 10y ago

Isn't this kind of http://clarity.fm http://clarity.fm offers?

ClassyJacket 10y ago

That would be cool. I've run into a problem myself of not knowing what technology to use when building a web-shop, but complicated by the fact that users uploaded images to be printed onto their item. Sometimes I just need someone with e-commerce coding experience to talk to me for half an hour or so to let me know what my best options are.

xorcist 10y ago

Wouldn't reading a book about React before they started working with it be preferrable? That's something I've seen getting much worse over the past decade with the proliferation of frameworks. What you call "getting up to speed" is tempting to call "playing with". People work with tools that they have no knowledge of. Learning on the job is good, but I think one should have at least an idea of how the tools are supposed to be used and how they are implemented before doing anything else than throwaways. I don't know how to fix it really, it more of a cultural thing than a technical. Knowledge must somehow be cool and respected again. Or maybe I'm just getting old and this is really a faster way of building things. I just can't think of any other area where professionals jump to the next tool without even learning the one they use.

sah2ed 10y ago
> Wouldn't reading a book about React before they started working with it be preferrable? Great in theory but difficult in practice. Developers rarely ever have the luxury to pick up a book as a means of getting up to speed when there exists online resources like Google and StackOverflow where you can easily find posts that answer your query string(s) verbatim.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  But you don't necessarily know what you don't know. If you don't know enough to ask high quality questions, SO and Google won't help you. If you're lucky, G will lead you to tuts and repos with useful code. If you're not, you'll make a ton of stupid beginner mistake and be overdrawn on the technical debt account before you even start.
  - sah2ed 10y ago
    JavaScript frameworks are rarely ever worth buying a book to get up to speed for. Books like this [0] are a much better time investment as the deep knowledge gained would be useful beyond the currently trending JS framework. [0] https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

watwut 10y ago

"For instance I recently joined a project that was built by devs coming up to speed on React. And boy did they abuse Flux, they didn't build a store for every drop-down but it's pretty damn close. However I really think a React Guru could have steered them around this mistake with just 30 minutes of his time." Problems like this tend to be consequence of team that does not tolerate dissent. E.g. either clique that stamps out dissenters as obviously stupid or dominant individual eager to bully anybody who does not conform to his favorite cool aid. Someone would say that "maybe we are going too far" otherwise. Consultant wont be able to solve that one in 30 minutes.

chx 10y ago

Long ago I offered a paid answer service for Drupal StackExchange questions via the drupal.org services list and never got anyone asking for the service. Just a data point.

some1else 10y ago

Please don't call people Gurus. I've had at least three lousy experiences working with people who referred to themselves as Gurus. Some of them didn't even know the dictionary definition of the word. I feel I have dodged a number of bullets since then, by developing a healthy prejudice against self-titled Gurus.

skrish 10y ago
+1 And "visionaries". May be it's just me, but my defenses go up whenever I read a profile with visionary in it.
- projectramo 10y ago
  Thought leaders, ugh.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    What about rock stars?
    - pdimitar 10y ago
      Ninjas! I run away screaming when I see this in somebody's profile.
      - projectramo 10y ago
        To be fair, that's because of the throwing stars, though. Everyone should be afraid of Ninjas.
        pdimitar 10y ago
        But that's just the thing -- most people referring to themselves as ninjas are designers aspiring to be devs, and they are usually cute chubby smiling guys who tend to stumble on their own feet. Hardly something to be afraid of! <giggles>

thowar2 10y ago

This sounds a bit like both https://clarity.fm/ https://clarity.fm/ and https://www.codementor.io/ https://www.codementor.io/

festaans 10y ago

https://officehours.io/ https://officehours.io/

danieka 10y ago

I'm the co-founder of Fliffr. We're building a marketplace for services where you can charge by the minute. We have everything from experts in SEO, chefs, personal trainers, Esport professionals. We also have a couple of developers, for example you can contact me for advice on #go #javascript or #ionic. Our goal is to build a service to quickly get in contact with an expert and only paying for the advice you need. Users can contact our experts through chat and video/voice calls. Do sign up for Fliffr and try it out, we're on both iOS and Android stores, or visit https://www.fliffr.com https://www.fliffr.com . And if you have any feedback I'd love to hear it.

amelius 10y ago
Does it support a web-interface? It's not clear from the website.
- danieka 10y ago
  Not yet, but it is something that we are thinking of adding. Would a web interface be useful to you?
  - amelius 10y ago
    Yes, interacting with a UI on a desktop computer is so much better than using a phone screen.
    - danieka 10y ago
      Cool, thanks for the feedback. If you want me to reach out to you when we have a web interface drop me an email at danielk at fliffr.com
  - monatron 10y ago
    I would second this. In terms of software dev, I'd want this application to live the same place that I'm doing the majority of my work -- my desktop.
  - 10y ago

mattnewton 10y ago

I have never used them, but isn't this the model airpair is going after?

billconan 10y ago

wasn't google helpouts something like that? http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/02/16/google-helpouts-is-shutting-down-on-april-20th/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/02/16/google-h... they shut it down.

apsharma 10y ago

"For instance I recently joined a project that was built by devs coming up to speed on React. And boy did they abuse Flux, they didn't build a store for every drop-down but it's pretty damn close. However I really think a React Guru could have steered them around this mistake with just 30 minutes of his time. " The trouble here is that the guru or consultant who comes in needs to understand the context of the problem, which can't be done in 30 mins. we have a lot of architecture consultant companies which provide these services already.

VLM 10y ago
If you microfocused it enough it would work. Am I doing anything wrong isn't happening in 30 mins. Am I doing anything wrong with React is more than 30 mins. Am I abusing Flux? That sounds doable. videoconference with a live dev plus codebase access. In a previous career I walked hundreds of consultants thru connecting to the telco WAN and ISP network that employed me, and I can't help you with everything but in 30 minutes I can easily tell you what is wrong with your BGP configuration or your frame relay configuration or your MPLS/ATM connection. At least WRT connecting to that employer, at least WRT connecting 15 years ago. The consultants knew their client networks inside and out, I mostly told them "no do not redistribute via RIP RFC1918 address space to us" or "no you really don't want to send us a 0/0 route" or "you think we'll accept a route for a.b.c.d/27 and you're actually sending it correctly but you not having sent us a LOA means I'm filtering it right out" or "you might want to think about enabling md5 authentication because we have, as our welcome letter you obviously didn't read, clearly explained" and yeah people actually tried stuff like that. Also people with obvious peculiar ideas about how BGP works WRT priority of routes and load balancing and stuff. Could I tell these "network administrator consultants" how to set up MCSE server stuff, well, no, but I sure told a lot of them how to configure Cisco WAN interfaces and how BGP works (or doesn't work)... You can do a lot in 30 minutes over a narrow enough specialty.

jventura 10y ago

I'm curious if anything related with teaching CS or how to program would be appelative to people? Something like 1:1 teaching/mentoring.. I teach CS (programming, web development, distributed systems) on a local university, but have been thinking if there would be people interested in having 1:1 access to someone with development and teaching experience, for 30 minutes or 1h..

cylinder 10y ago

I think you mean software consulting but Expert360 is a good example for other types of consulting.

cylinder 10y ago

I think you mean software consulting but Expert360 is a good example for other types of consulting.

developer2 10y ago

This just stinks of another way to abuse the talent. If you want to pay someone below-market rates to fix your business's problems, there are already a multitude of race-to-the-bottom "contracting" sites to suit your needs. Real consulting at market (or even above-market) prices exist for a reason. The kind of people who will spend hours setting up a consult, to only officially charge for 30 minutes, are exactly the kind of people you don't want working for you, for any period of time. You get what you pay for. I can't for the life of me imagine what an apparently legitimate "micro-consulting" gig would look like, where the talent being hired isn't being asked to overperform for the amount of billing time being requested.

herbst 10y ago

I got this pitched multiple times in the last months. Nobody got the focus right in my opinion because it needs to be open and paid. I would use this from both sides i really see the potential here as well.

LauraRoeder 10y ago

This is exactly what Clarity provides - https://clarity.fm/ https://clarity.fm/