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Potential alternative to Upwork that sounds better: http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/04/moonlight-work-for-software-engineers.html http://gigworks.blogspot.com

by Mz 9y ago

Potential alternative to Upwork that sounds better: http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/04/moonlight-work-for-software-engineers.html http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/04/moonlight-work-for-soft...

philip1209 9y ago
Co-founder of Moonlight here - thanks for the mention. It costs nothing to contractors, and you set your own rate when you want to work on projects. Definitely recommend that OP signs up. Fun story: The contractor who wrote the code for the Moonlight blog was in a similar position as OP. Hit a deer with his car, and insurance didn't cover it. Needed extra money quickly. He signed up for Moonlight and did a project in a weekend to pay for the damage.
- BartSaM 9y ago
  Sounds great! Signing up right now. I could use some side income while working on my own projects.
- penpapersw 9y ago
  Thanks to you for making this and GP for linking to it. Just applied, looking forward to seeing if this works out.
- throwawaybbq1 9y ago
  Interesting idea. Do you have a mechanism where a moonlighter(?) doesn't get matched in a specific geography, industry or set of companies? Presumably your workers are being employed somewhere and not all employers are friendly towards moonlighting. Also, I'm curious if you have researched the legal framework around moonlighting coupled with non-competes. My limited understanding was it is very state-based. NY, CT are not permissive while CA is very permissive. If you figured this out, there might be a lot of value to unlock.
  - philip1209 9y ago
    We provide a platform for matching and payments. The contractor and the company sign a standard contractor agreement with each other. In it, the contractor agrees that they have no pre-existing obligations or commitments that interfere with the agreement. So, it's up to the contractor to ensure that any existing contracts do not interfere with the consulting agreement prior to signing it. Moonlighters choose which projects they want to work on, so companies don't see them unless the moonlighters explicitly want to work with that company.
throwaway847261 9y ago
The problem with Moonlight is lack of companies on it. The large amount of developers on there compared to the number of projects and the lack of a real site (the app is just Google forms and emails) make this site feel like a waste of time. I really wanted to like Moonlight, but I think it has some issue right now.
- Mz 9y ago
  It is brand new. Give it time.
  - atleta 9y ago
    I don't think time alone solves it. It's a market issue. Basically, there are more freelancers (even good ones) than demand for them. This is the case with every similar platform that I've seen or registered to in the past. For example, I've tried gun.io about 4 years ago. Maybe even found them here. Big words ("we're professional, only work with the best, tell us your minimum rate and will get you the best rate possible", etc.), simple website, simple process (write proposals and they'll do the agreement part), big waste of time. I've spent out like 30 custom proposals (that's around 15-20 hours of time wasted) and never heard back from any client, except for maybe one, but haven't even got to talk to that one either. And of course (signing up twice) I've got two confirmation emails from them in response to their usual entry test proposal saying "welcome, this is the quality we're looking for", etc. Now as they've transitioned into a slack community a few months ago, I know that they are nice and well-meaning guys, but they just weren't able to stand up for their (you can say partly implicit) promises. And you can do quite a bit of harm and be a prick by simply not being attentive enough. For example in their case, they have like 10k(!) developers signed up. And to sign up, every one of them (us) had to fill a profile (there go 30-60 minutes, times 10k!) and do a sample proposal (which wasn't clear was just an entry test - maybe it wasn't). Now in the new slack community you can see all the gigs being posted and it's like 1/month or so. For the thousands signed up. Even if they keep working with the same freelancers as much as possible. This is not the only example, I've seen the same with a few other companies/services, but went into the details with this one, because with them I could see behind the curtains. (With the usual website they just never get back to you, or your proposals just never get answered.) Another similar one is codementor.io, which started out as a programmer-to-programmer mentoring platform (which I do use as such) and who figured out a while ago, that they have quite a few knowledgeable developers, so they could just feed us with projects. Same thing happens: very low deal flow, quite often no feedback after submitting a proposal. (Which is just shitty customer service, of course.) Even though in their case, I do quite a bit of emailing with them (e.g. reporting bugs, suggesting usability fixes, and also sometimes they explicitly reached out for me to help with specific projects/clients in the beginning). So this shows to me that while there is a huge unserved demand for developers, there isn't such a big demand for freelancers. Which, if I'm honest to myself, kind of makes sense. Most companies will want to keep accumulated knowledge in-house. But despite the market situation, I'm still a bit angry with all these mediator portals. They should rob the time of everyone and sign them up in bulk. It would be a lot more responsible to say that we have enough developers for now, come back later or leave your email address and maybe a few tags and we'll ping you when there is a substantial chance that we can give actually you some work.
andriussev 9y ago
I applied to Moonlight but never heard anything back, sadly (except for marketing emails). I suppose that either they have much more developers than contractors, they only work with US people or my skills aren't needed :( (mostly PHP/Laravel backend work with various frontend skills and some experience in other languages)
- philip1209 9y ago
  Hi, You're correct - we have more contractors than developers right now. Sorry if you haven't been matched yet - if you send me an email (philip at moonlightwork.com) we can feature you on next week's Orbit [1] email to clients. The process has largely been manual with spreadsheets until now, but soon you will be able to log in and browse all open projects. Over half of our projects have been completed by a contractor outside the USA. [1] https://www.moonlightwork.com/orbit https://www.moonlightwork.com/orbit

by Mz 9y ago

Potential alternative to Upwork that sounds better: http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/04/moonlight-work-for-software-engineers.html http://gigworks.blogspot.com/2017/04/moonlight-work-for-soft...

philip1209 9y ago

Co-founder of Moonlight here - thanks for the mention. It costs nothing to contractors, and you set your own rate when you want to work on projects. Definitely recommend that OP signs up. Fun story: The contractor who wrote the code for the Moonlight blog was in a similar position as OP. Hit a deer with his car, and insurance didn't cover it. Needed extra money quickly. He signed up for Moonlight and did a project in a weekend to pay for the damage.

BartSaM 9y ago
Sounds great! Signing up right now. I could use some side income while working on my own projects.
penpapersw 9y ago
Thanks to you for making this and GP for linking to it. Just applied, looking forward to seeing if this works out.
throwawaybbq1 9y ago
Interesting idea. Do you have a mechanism where a moonlighter(?) doesn't get matched in a specific geography, industry or set of companies? Presumably your workers are being employed somewhere and not all employers are friendly towards moonlighting. Also, I'm curious if you have researched the legal framework around moonlighting coupled with non-competes. My limited understanding was it is very state-based. NY, CT are not permissive while CA is very permissive. If you figured this out, there might be a lot of value to unlock.
- philip1209 9y ago
  We provide a platform for matching and payments. The contractor and the company sign a standard contractor agreement with each other. In it, the contractor agrees that they have no pre-existing obligations or commitments that interfere with the agreement. So, it's up to the contractor to ensure that any existing contracts do not interfere with the consulting agreement prior to signing it. Moonlighters choose which projects they want to work on, so companies don't see them unless the moonlighters explicitly want to work with that company.

throwaway847261 9y ago

The problem with Moonlight is lack of companies on it. The large amount of developers on there compared to the number of projects and the lack of a real site (the app is just Google forms and emails) make this site feel like a waste of time. I really wanted to like Moonlight, but I think it has some issue right now.

Mz 9y ago
It is brand new. Give it time.
- atleta 9y ago
  I don't think time alone solves it. It's a market issue. Basically, there are more freelancers (even good ones) than demand for them. This is the case with every similar platform that I've seen or registered to in the past. For example, I've tried gun.io about 4 years ago. Maybe even found them here. Big words ("we're professional, only work with the best, tell us your minimum rate and will get you the best rate possible", etc.), simple website, simple process (write proposals and they'll do the agreement part), big waste of time. I've spent out like 30 custom proposals (that's around 15-20 hours of time wasted) and never heard back from any client, except for maybe one, but haven't even got to talk to that one either. And of course (signing up twice) I've got two confirmation emails from them in response to their usual entry test proposal saying "welcome, this is the quality we're looking for", etc. Now as they've transitioned into a slack community a few months ago, I know that they are nice and well-meaning guys, but they just weren't able to stand up for their (you can say partly implicit) promises. And you can do quite a bit of harm and be a prick by simply not being attentive enough. For example in their case, they have like 10k(!) developers signed up. And to sign up, every one of them (us) had to fill a profile (there go 30-60 minutes, times 10k!) and do a sample proposal (which wasn't clear was just an entry test - maybe it wasn't). Now in the new slack community you can see all the gigs being posted and it's like 1/month or so. For the thousands signed up. Even if they keep working with the same freelancers as much as possible. This is not the only example, I've seen the same with a few other companies/services, but went into the details with this one, because with them I could see behind the curtains. (With the usual website they just never get back to you, or your proposals just never get answered.) Another similar one is codementor.io, which started out as a programmer-to-programmer mentoring platform (which I do use as such) and who figured out a while ago, that they have quite a few knowledgeable developers, so they could just feed us with projects. Same thing happens: very low deal flow, quite often no feedback after submitting a proposal. (Which is just shitty customer service, of course.) Even though in their case, I do quite a bit of emailing with them (e.g. reporting bugs, suggesting usability fixes, and also sometimes they explicitly reached out for me to help with specific projects/clients in the beginning). So this shows to me that while there is a huge unserved demand for developers, there isn't such a big demand for freelancers. Which, if I'm honest to myself, kind of makes sense. Most companies will want to keep accumulated knowledge in-house. But despite the market situation, I'm still a bit angry with all these mediator portals. They should rob the time of everyone and sign them up in bulk. It would be a lot more responsible to say that we have enough developers for now, come back later or leave your email address and maybe a few tags and we'll ping you when there is a substantial chance that we can give actually you some work.

andriussev 9y ago

I applied to Moonlight but never heard anything back, sadly (except for marketing emails). I suppose that either they have much more developers than contractors, they only work with US people or my skills aren't needed :( (mostly PHP/Laravel backend work with various frontend skills and some experience in other languages)

philip1209 9y ago
Hi, You're correct - we have more contractors than developers right now. Sorry if you haven't been matched yet - if you send me an email (philip at moonlightwork.com) we can feature you on next week's Orbit [1] email to clients. The process has largely been manual with spreadsheets until now, but soon you will be able to log in and browse all open projects. Over half of our projects have been completed by a contractor outside the USA. [1] https://www.moonlightwork.com/orbit https://www.moonlightwork.com/orbit