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Show HN: Side Quest – An aggregator for not full-time tech jobs

401 points by ryry 5y ago

ryry 5y ago
Hey all! I recently had some personal stuff which made it necessary for me to cut back on the hourly commitment I could make to work, but found it difficult to find contract, part-time, freelance (anything not full-time) jobs through traditional means, so I built sidequestjobs. It's an aggregator, so it gets jobs from various sources and curates them into part time, freelance, or contract based positions. I'm hoping to add more sources over the next coming weeks, but I wanted to post it to get some feedback now. Thanks for checking it out!
mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
Thanks for making this! Would you mind sharing what sources this looks at, or are you keeping that proprietary?
- ryry 5y ago
  A few I'd like to keep to myself, but if you poke around it's obviously no secret that stack overflow contributes a fair bit. The code is some frankenstein monster of a few failed projects I've created over the years, but so far it's doing its job!
  - dang 5y ago
    If you're using HN Who Is Hiring threads as a source at all, we ask people to link back to the original posts when they do that. I feel like that's a good and fair practice in general when copying content on the web, but obviously what you do with other sources is between you and them.
  - somishere 5y ago
    Are you using HN? Just posted a part time / contract job there/here for our non-profit ... could do with some network effect :)
prawn 5y ago
Always thought that someone should do something like this but for part-time marketing/comms/content jobs. I'm sure there are men in the following position too, but in my circles there are loads of 30-40yo women returning to work after maternity leave and looking for 2-3 days/week, often in marketing and related jobs. On the other side of the coin, there'd be a lot of small businesses sick of paying an agency but unable to justify a full-time role. Great match, IMO.
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  This rarely works in fields where they hire full time salary employees. The reason being that the part time employee is still very expensive in a lot of fixed ‘per employee’ cost areas like hardware and licenses combined with the fact that the full time salary person is supposed to be available to get the job done even it that involves some overtime or just off hours work, things part time people are notorious for being unable to do (the reason they wanted part time in the first place, they are unavailable). This really narrows the scope of what employers are willing to hire part time for. Contractors are usually called instead.
  - prawn 5y ago
    I'm talking small business. Hardware would be employee's own laptop. Software in those fields would be a pittance. If I was a bastard who wanted value for money, I'd hire those part-time mums. From what I've seen, they end up feeling obliged to work out of hours, so you'd effectively get 0.8 FTE while paying for 0.4-0.6. Roles like social media or content writing with scheduling involved instantly creeps into days off. Horrible approach from an employer, but like I said, if I was a bastard.
    - stevesearer 5y ago
      On the flip side, if you want the best part-time moms, pay well, supply the hardware, and be very flexible with when work hours happen.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
endlessvoid94 5y ago
This is such a great idea.
- ryry 5y ago
  Thanks! If you have any feedback on what to change/add/remove I'm happy to hear it!
  - mtm112 5y ago
    I'd probably add geographic filters to the front page if you can - I'm guessing a bulk of the positions are remote, but not everyone may have the ability to hire or manage intercontinentally even in that case.
dreyfan 5y ago
Full-time remote jobs don't require a full-time commitment
- codingdave 5y ago
  Sure they do - even if the workload does not demand that I sit in my chair in front of my screen all day, I do need to be committed to be available. If a project hits a crunch, or some crisis arises, and I say that I'm too busy with other commitments to do my job, that is a major problem.
- Sanguinaire 5y ago
  They shouldn't, but it's clear we're not at that stage of societal development quite yet.
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  A lot of us have integrity. We would like part time work but are not willing to lie and steal from our employer to get it.
  - dreyfan 5y ago
    Employers are generally paying for your output not the hours spent.
    - readonthegoapp 5y ago
      I doubt that this is true. And I'm not sure workers would want it to be true. We know about the warehouse bots hounding humans into subservience/defeat. I'm guessing the other bots are right behind -- just not quite as popular yet.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - icedchai 5y ago
        Definitely. It's a minor annoyance, but there's already slack bots pestering people for daily status / scrum updates, retros, and such.
soco 5y ago
Congratulations, I love it! To me it would be very valuable to have a filter on location requirements - if you have such information available of course. Like, who needs office presence (and where), who is okay part-time, who is offering full remote... but once again, great thing!
- ryry 5y ago
  Great idea. I'll get on this. Thanks!
the_lonely_road 5y ago
I wish you the best of luck and will be keeping a bookmark to check back frequently. I would love some part time work but having done the consultant grind for a long time I’m just exhausted by the process of finding it. I would love a marketplace I could keep tabs on and pick things up when they make since.
- ryry 5y ago
  Thanks! And I feel you. Occasionally I've wanted to pick up some stuff part-time for some extra cash and finding it is few and far between. I created a mail-chimp subscription which I'll get up and running as soon as I figure out how, but anyone can sign up now. I'm hoping to get a ton more filters though so people can only get notified about positions that actually interest them.
BoysenberryPi 5y ago
This is very timely for me so thanks for making it. Looking to cut back on my work hours and would like to find something part-time.
- ryry 5y ago
  I think there's a fair few of us looking to do the same. The pandemic caused a huge shift in how I approach everything in life.
diyseguy 5y ago
part-time tech work sounds like a good idea, but it seems to me most serious tech jobs can't be done part time
- ryry 5y ago
  It's definitely not the norm, but I'm willing to bet it'll become more common especially after the pandemic. That said - it's not just part-time jobs I'm curating, but full-time contract positions too!
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Great idea! I feel like there is a gap in the market for experiences engineers who want to work for good rates on well defined projects and occasionally (less than 1 month) and don't bother with client management. I've seen some people charge good hourly rates on Upwork but from talking to them there is a lot of friction / time spent in managing clients, chasing payments, filtering out all the low paid jobs. It would be nice to have a platform that does product / client management for you and just use you for your coding skills.
- ryry 5y ago
  Yeah I actually built this after having a bit of frustration trying out freelancing platforms. What surprised me is as a freelancer, on some of them, I have to pay to apply to gigs. I mean I get it, but it still doesn't seem right.
takenpilot 5y ago
Useful. Bookmarking to watch.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
I'll definitely keep an eye on this! Much appreciated.
conjectures 5y ago
+1 Just for the name. Side quest is exactly what such a thing should be called.
- ryry 5y ago
  Thanks! I play a little too much wow during the pandemic.
- ourcat 5y ago
  Hmm.. It'a already the name of quite a popular side-loading app/store for VR games. https://sidequestvr.com/ https://sidequestvr.com/
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    It's a pretty generic term, though.
  - andyroid 5y ago
    Yeah. It's also used in some RPG games to denote quests which are done independently of the main quest.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      Pretty sure that's the origin.
  - ryry 5y ago
    I saw this, but not until after I had purchased the domain. I always get too excited and commit before researching.
runawaybottle 5y ago
Interesting, I didn’t know big companies like eBay would actually consider a part time employee. Do they really mean that, or are they signaling they seek an intern/student? The availability of part time work always felt like a package that included a tiny shop, cheap clients, and insane amount of cheap international labor competition, and only available through platforms that promote all three things (upwork, etc).
- ryry 5y ago
  I've got a feeling some of the posts that do mention "part-time" are just signalling, which is why I have a ton of them marked "part-time possible" instead of just part-time. If you have any better classification ideas I'm open to hearing them too!
ashdev 5y ago
I really like the name. It immediately reminded of the side quests in RPG games to get more experience. And this is exactly that. Good job.
rexyg 5y ago
Fantastic name
jjice 5y ago
Love the concept. I'm fresh out of college, so I'm more than happy with full time work at the moment, but I'm definitely hoping to FIRE (or more like FIPT) within 10 or so years if things go well. Working 20 hours a week sounds fantastic. Enough to give me something to do on a regular basis, but also enough to let me do whatever I want to do, whether that be freelance development, or a new hobby.
- ryry 5y ago
  Best of luck! I spent most of my twenties using all the cash I had on travelling. I don't regret it at all, but some of my friends showed me their retirement accounts recently and I'm definitely a little concerned. I'd love if North America would get behind the 4 day work week. I might even make a category for employers offering that.
MikusR 5y ago
Not to be confused with 1st google result for "side quest": https://sidequestvr.com/ https://sidequestvr.com/
sanmak 5y ago
Great idea mate! Kudos for building this!
tomcam 5y ago
Love this idea. I just went through a painful search for someone and finally found a good match (I think), but it would’ve been fantastic to have this a few weeks ago. I look forward to trying it out sometime
tppiotrowski 5y ago
I worked for a company once that was very remote friendly. You could disappear for a month and then pop into Slack and ask, what’s next in the issues queue? Then work on issues for however long you wanted, billed hourly at a generous rate. Several times I disappeared for weeks to travel and climb and was always welcomed back. That company was minting money and wasn’t worried about deadlines. I wish more work was structured this way.
- rrggnnlldd 5y ago
  Wow that sounds great. Were you be able to charge overtime? And since you said "worked", what made you decide to stop popping back to the issues queue at this particular org?
  - tppiotrowski 5y ago
    I never hit 40 hours a week. Thirty seemed like a good balance between work/life. Eventually, working on a CRUD app didn't peak my interest anymore and I moved onto some other projects. Company was sold a few years later.
    - mrkurt 5y ago
      How did you track your time? I kind of love this idea but time tracking is a pain in the ass. Seems like maybe you could use "day" or "half day" granularity?
      - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
        You need to get used to it. Use a kitchen timer, then every time you finish something input the time precisely.
        jpindar 5y ago
        There's an app and site called Toggl that makes this easier.
xondono 5y ago
This type of site is what always has me considering moving “up” in the stack. Remote work on either hardware or systems level programming (embedded) is almost non existent. Remote and not full-time is even rarer.
- protomok 5y ago
  SaaS could be a good transition, there are quite a few SaaS shops using C++ for example. Or possibly backend if you're willing to do some cloud based side projects. Embedded is a lot of fun but IMHO there is more opportunity and compensation up the stack.
  - _448 5y ago
    > there are quite a few SaaS shops using C++... Which one?
- jlokier 5y ago
  > Remote work on either hardware or systems level programming (embedded) is almost non existent. Remote and not full-time is even rarer. The trick is to do such things as your own business, i.e. freelancing or consulting (t's all in how you present it), doing projects for clients. This can definitely work for hardware and systems level programming. Then you set your own schedule and your own rules, and clients don't even expect you to come to their office. They expect you to have your own, and the "home office" engineering consultant is quite common.
  - xondono 5y ago
    Yes, I've started doing this, but living in Barcelona it's quite a challenge. There's not that many local opportunities and getting leads out of the country so far has yielded very little for me.
- _448 5y ago
  Big hardware companies provide "work from home" option. I use to work for a company many of whose employees worked remotely. Companies like Google, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft etc provide work from home option. And they do work on systems level programming.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Lol I thought that this was a spinoff of the sidequest app for the oculus quest (which is kind of an app store - really the main none for unofficial content). Even though the name is very well chosen, expect this confusion to come up more...
- ryry 5y ago
  Yep definitely. I'm thinking I'll brand it specifically as "Side Quest Jobs", and hopefully that'll create enough differentiation.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Looks pretty cool. Also looks like a lot of companies are using it to find FT employees. If so, you are saving them a lot of money on recruiter fees. Good job!
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Makes sense. Interviewing is a dumpsterfire. The only reliable way I've ever seen hiring work is to actually work with somebody on a project while paying them a fair market rate. Anything that faciliates that type of relationship, like for example having a bunch of developers working non-full time is the closest thing to an answer for hiring there is.
sepbot 5y ago
I wish recruitment platforms would start classifying the level of remoteness instead of a blanket remote allowed statement. These days remote often means work from home due to COVID in the time zone of the physical office. Presumably won't be remote forever. Remote used to mean people would be working asynchronously, and it didn't matter where you were physically situated and what hours of the day you were online. Obviously this only tends to work for places that are results driven as opposed to ones that care about the number of hours you put in.
- gota 5y ago
  Good point. I imagine there must be ongoing research to define the most relevant (frequent, desirable) "classes" of remote work. If there's isn't, then large moderated communities like HN and Stackoverflow are in an unique position to survey folks and help define these classes. If the "Who's Hiring" threads here adopted a "remote work classification" catalogue, I think it'd catch on easily
gumbo 5y ago
The toggles filters are driving me nuts, as it stands, it unclear what the checked state is. One would assume that when the "handle" is on the right side, however, the color coding suggest otherwise. Congrats on your launch.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- somishere 5y ago
  Looks like it's all-on by default and you're toggling items off .. which means the colour coding is ok but the ux may be counter-intuitive for some? Not to mention the white highlighting looks like text inputs (the subtitle could easily be mistaken for a search bar). Personally, I'd have gone with an "all on" toggle that gets deactivated if you activate any of the individual categories. Not a deal breaker.
Andys 5y ago
This is also good for people with disabilities, such as chronic fatigue, chronic pain, or any others that limit how many hours per week you can work. These sort of people deserve a good chance at happiness in getting to work a fulfilling well paying remote job.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  So much work could be structured this way. My company had a regular motley of random tech work that could support a queue of grab em in the next month tasks. For example, there is a need to add code coverage calculation to a bunch of repos. That is my work. I know nothing about it. Any developer is as equally qualified to do it as I am. Yet I will be pulled off an actual project when we already have a dev shortage to do this. We could benefit from outsourcing it instead.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
LeonB 5y ago
I’ve slowly come to realise that: 1. There’s a large latent pool of talent that can only do part time/flexible jobs but aren’t even looking because so few are available. 2. The total economic loss from such jobs being rarely offered is massive. Consider women who stop working for a year or two due to having a child or children. Many are only able to return part time at first. There’s so few part time jobs in software that many choose not to return to the industry. By the time they can return full time they feel so out of touch, from just a few years away, that they never return at all. Same happens with people who are injured, temporarily disabled etc. The demand of full time only (and often more hours on top again) means that the industry misses out on retaining a lot of skilled talent. And yes chronic conditions and disabilities are also very disadvantaged by the requirement of full-time only work. But as cool as the name sidequest is - I don’t think it’s quite right. Because for most people of the scenarios listed above this would not be a sidequest but a main quest. Awesome work though. And good luck!
smeej 5y ago
This is off to a great start! Being able to filter by things like industry or type of role would make a huge difference too, or even search by keyword. I know that's additional layers of complexity, but it makes a huge difference when trying to find the right fit!
Farfromthehood 5y ago
I wish the posts quantified their compensation. I have spare time for side gigs, but I'm not cheap, and I don't want to put my information out there (by applying) only to get a lousy offer.
mdaniel 5y ago
Foremost, congratulations on the launch; I am a fan of more diverse ways of working, and more diverse ways of upending the recruiting mess in use today I wanted to mention two things for your consideration: 1. it would be stellar to have Atom/RSS instead of mailing list subscription. I don't need more email in my life to ignore :-) 1. related to that, it appears there are job tags but one cannot click on them in order to find more jobs tagged in that way. I said "related to that" because it would also be stellar to be able to subscribe to just the tags of interest, versus the firehose of all jobs (extra bonus points for `/feed/java+spring+whatever.atom` style multi-tag feed subscription)
personjerry 5y ago
Is that front page all the jobs that are available? Is that why there's no search?
mxuribe 5y ago
This is a wonderful idea! (I like the name too BTW.) Unfortunately for me, I've never been able to do freelance or part-time work because I've always needed healthcare coverage...and living in the U.S, it is much cheaper (but definitely *NOT* cheap) to get it through full-time employment. But, hot damn, if i lived in a country that provided healthcare, man, would i jump at the chances to do this kind of work! Regardless, for those that can take advantage of this type of work, this is a great move! Kudos and best of luck!!
jacobobryant 5y ago
One of my predictions/hopes is that part-time work becomes far more prevalent. In addition to the benefits already mentioned here, it would be great for people who want to be e.g. entrepreneurs or independent researchers. Wrote a bit about this here: https://jacobobryant.com/p/what-im-trying-to-do/#1-help-build-a-career-path-for-software-inventors https://jacobobryant.com/p/what-im-trying-to-do/#1-help-buil... Also relevant: https://sahillavingia.com/work https://sahillavingia.com/work. I'd like to make a collection of part-time success stories like this.
voiper1 5y ago
I had assumed this would be remote-friendly, but some postings don't have any info about remote-friendliness.
imvetri 5y ago
Site is down

401 points by ryry 5y ago

ryry 5y ago

Hey all! I recently had some personal stuff which made it necessary for me to cut back on the hourly commitment I could make to work, but found it difficult to find contract, part-time, freelance (anything not full-time) jobs through traditional means, so I built sidequestjobs. It's an aggregator, so it gets jobs from various sources and curates them into part time, freelance, or contract based positions. I'm hoping to add more sources over the next coming weeks, but I wanted to post it to get some feedback now. Thanks for checking it out!

mandelbrotwurst 5y ago

Thanks for making this! Would you mind sharing what sources this looks at, or are you keeping that proprietary?

ryry 5y ago
A few I'd like to keep to myself, but if you poke around it's obviously no secret that stack overflow contributes a fair bit. The code is some frankenstein monster of a few failed projects I've created over the years, but so far it's doing its job!
- dang 5y ago
  If you're using HN Who Is Hiring threads as a source at all, we ask people to link back to the original posts when they do that. I feel like that's a good and fair practice in general when copying content on the web, but obviously what you do with other sources is between you and them.
- somishere 5y ago
  Are you using HN? Just posted a part time / contract job there/here for our non-profit ... could do with some network effect :)

prawn 5y ago

Always thought that someone should do something like this but for part-time marketing/comms/content jobs. I'm sure there are men in the following position too, but in my circles there are loads of 30-40yo women returning to work after maternity leave and looking for 2-3 days/week, often in marketing and related jobs. On the other side of the coin, there'd be a lot of small businesses sick of paying an agency but unable to justify a full-time role. Great match, IMO.

the_lonely_road 5y ago
This rarely works in fields where they hire full time salary employees. The reason being that the part time employee is still very expensive in a lot of fixed ‘per employee’ cost areas like hardware and licenses combined with the fact that the full time salary person is supposed to be available to get the job done even it that involves some overtime or just off hours work, things part time people are notorious for being unable to do (the reason they wanted part time in the first place, they are unavailable). This really narrows the scope of what employers are willing to hire part time for. Contractors are usually called instead.
- prawn 5y ago
  I'm talking small business. Hardware would be employee's own laptop. Software in those fields would be a pittance. If I was a bastard who wanted value for money, I'd hire those part-time mums. From what I've seen, they end up feeling obliged to work out of hours, so you'd effectively get 0.8 FTE while paying for 0.4-0.6. Roles like social media or content writing with scheduling involved instantly creeps into days off. Horrible approach from an employer, but like I said, if I was a bastard.
  - stevesearer 5y ago
    On the flip side, if you want the best part-time moms, pay well, supply the hardware, and be very flexible with when work hours happen.
- IshKebab 5y ago

endlessvoid94 5y ago

This is such a great idea.

ryry 5y ago
Thanks! If you have any feedback on what to change/add/remove I'm happy to hear it!
- mtm112 5y ago
  I'd probably add geographic filters to the front page if you can - I'm guessing a bulk of the positions are remote, but not everyone may have the ability to hire or manage intercontinentally even in that case.

dreyfan 5y ago

Full-time remote jobs don't require a full-time commitment

codingdave 5y ago
Sure they do - even if the workload does not demand that I sit in my chair in front of my screen all day, I do need to be committed to be available. If a project hits a crunch, or some crisis arises, and I say that I'm too busy with other commitments to do my job, that is a major problem.
Sanguinaire 5y ago
They shouldn't, but it's clear we're not at that stage of societal development quite yet.
the_lonely_road 5y ago
A lot of us have integrity. We would like part time work but are not willing to lie and steal from our employer to get it.
- dreyfan 5y ago
  Employers are generally paying for your output not the hours spent.
  - readonthegoapp 5y ago
    I doubt that this is true. And I'm not sure workers would want it to be true. We know about the warehouse bots hounding humans into subservience/defeat. I'm guessing the other bots are right behind -- just not quite as popular yet.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - icedchai 5y ago
      Definitely. It's a minor annoyance, but there's already slack bots pestering people for daily status / scrum updates, retros, and such.

soco 5y ago

Congratulations, I love it! To me it would be very valuable to have a filter on location requirements - if you have such information available of course. Like, who needs office presence (and where), who is okay part-time, who is offering full remote... but once again, great thing!

ryry 5y ago
Great idea. I'll get on this. Thanks!

the_lonely_road 5y ago

I wish you the best of luck and will be keeping a bookmark to check back frequently. I would love some part time work but having done the consultant grind for a long time I’m just exhausted by the process of finding it. I would love a marketplace I could keep tabs on and pick things up when they make since.

ryry 5y ago
Thanks! And I feel you. Occasionally I've wanted to pick up some stuff part-time for some extra cash and finding it is few and far between. I created a mail-chimp subscription which I'll get up and running as soon as I figure out how, but anyone can sign up now. I'm hoping to get a ton more filters though so people can only get notified about positions that actually interest them.

BoysenberryPi 5y ago

This is very timely for me so thanks for making it. Looking to cut back on my work hours and would like to find something part-time.

ryry 5y ago
I think there's a fair few of us looking to do the same. The pandemic caused a huge shift in how I approach everything in life.

diyseguy 5y ago

part-time tech work sounds like a good idea, but it seems to me most serious tech jobs can't be done part time

ryry 5y ago
It's definitely not the norm, but I'm willing to bet it'll become more common especially after the pandemic. That said - it's not just part-time jobs I'm curating, but full-time contract positions too!

jokethrowaway 5y ago

Great idea! I feel like there is a gap in the market for experiences engineers who want to work for good rates on well defined projects and occasionally (less than 1 month) and don't bother with client management. I've seen some people charge good hourly rates on Upwork but from talking to them there is a lot of friction / time spent in managing clients, chasing payments, filtering out all the low paid jobs. It would be nice to have a platform that does product / client management for you and just use you for your coding skills.

ryry 5y ago
Yeah I actually built this after having a bit of frustration trying out freelancing platforms. What surprised me is as a freelancer, on some of them, I have to pay to apply to gigs. I mean I get it, but it still doesn't seem right.

takenpilot 5y ago

Useful. Bookmarking to watch.

BoxOfRain 5y ago

I'll definitely keep an eye on this! Much appreciated.

conjectures 5y ago

+1 Just for the name. Side quest is exactly what such a thing should be called.

ryry 5y ago
Thanks! I play a little too much wow during the pandemic.
ourcat 5y ago
Hmm.. It'a already the name of quite a popular side-loading app/store for VR games. https://sidequestvr.com/ https://sidequestvr.com/
- nitrogen 5y ago
  It's a pretty generic term, though.
- andyroid 5y ago
  Yeah. It's also used in some RPG games to denote quests which are done independently of the main quest.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    Pretty sure that's the origin.
- ryry 5y ago
  I saw this, but not until after I had purchased the domain. I always get too excited and commit before researching.

runawaybottle 5y ago

Interesting, I didn’t know big companies like eBay would actually consider a part time employee. Do they really mean that, or are they signaling they seek an intern/student? The availability of part time work always felt like a package that included a tiny shop, cheap clients, and insane amount of cheap international labor competition, and only available through platforms that promote all three things (upwork, etc).

ryry 5y ago
I've got a feeling some of the posts that do mention "part-time" are just signalling, which is why I have a ton of them marked "part-time possible" instead of just part-time. If you have any better classification ideas I'm open to hearing them too!

ashdev 5y ago

I really like the name. It immediately reminded of the side quests in RPG games to get more experience. And this is exactly that. Good job.

rexyg 5y ago

Fantastic name

jjice 5y ago

Love the concept. I'm fresh out of college, so I'm more than happy with full time work at the moment, but I'm definitely hoping to FIRE (or more like FIPT) within 10 or so years if things go well. Working 20 hours a week sounds fantastic. Enough to give me something to do on a regular basis, but also enough to let me do whatever I want to do, whether that be freelance development, or a new hobby.

ryry 5y ago
Best of luck! I spent most of my twenties using all the cash I had on travelling. I don't regret it at all, but some of my friends showed me their retirement accounts recently and I'm definitely a little concerned. I'd love if North America would get behind the 4 day work week. I might even make a category for employers offering that.

MikusR 5y ago

Not to be confused with 1st google result for "side quest": https://sidequestvr.com/ https://sidequestvr.com/

sanmak 5y ago

Great idea mate! Kudos for building this!

tomcam 5y ago

Love this idea. I just went through a painful search for someone and finally found a good match (I think), but it would’ve been fantastic to have this a few weeks ago. I look forward to trying it out sometime

tppiotrowski 5y ago

I worked for a company once that was very remote friendly. You could disappear for a month and then pop into Slack and ask, what’s next in the issues queue? Then work on issues for however long you wanted, billed hourly at a generous rate. Several times I disappeared for weeks to travel and climb and was always welcomed back. That company was minting money and wasn’t worried about deadlines. I wish more work was structured this way.

rrggnnlldd 5y ago
Wow that sounds great. Were you be able to charge overtime? And since you said "worked", what made you decide to stop popping back to the issues queue at this particular org?
- tppiotrowski 5y ago
  I never hit 40 hours a week. Thirty seemed like a good balance between work/life. Eventually, working on a CRUD app didn't peak my interest anymore and I moved onto some other projects. Company was sold a few years later.
  - mrkurt 5y ago
    How did you track your time? I kind of love this idea but time tracking is a pain in the ass. Seems like maybe you could use "day" or "half day" granularity?
    - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
      You need to get used to it. Use a kitchen timer, then every time you finish something input the time precisely.
      - jpindar 5y ago
        There's an app and site called Toggl that makes this easier.

xondono 5y ago

This type of site is what always has me considering moving “up” in the stack. Remote work on either hardware or systems level programming (embedded) is almost non existent. Remote and not full-time is even rarer.

protomok 5y ago
SaaS could be a good transition, there are quite a few SaaS shops using C++ for example. Or possibly backend if you're willing to do some cloud based side projects. Embedded is a lot of fun but IMHO there is more opportunity and compensation up the stack.
- _448 5y ago
  > there are quite a few SaaS shops using C++... Which one?
jlokier 5y ago
> Remote work on either hardware or systems level programming (embedded) is almost non existent. Remote and not full-time is even rarer. The trick is to do such things as your own business, i.e. freelancing or consulting (t's all in how you present it), doing projects for clients. This can definitely work for hardware and systems level programming. Then you set your own schedule and your own rules, and clients don't even expect you to come to their office. They expect you to have your own, and the "home office" engineering consultant is quite common.
- xondono 5y ago
  Yes, I've started doing this, but living in Barcelona it's quite a challenge. There's not that many local opportunities and getting leads out of the country so far has yielded very little for me.
_448 5y ago
Big hardware companies provide "work from home" option. I use to work for a company many of whose employees worked remotely. Companies like Google, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft etc provide work from home option. And they do work on systems level programming.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Lol I thought that this was a spinoff of the sidequest app for the oculus quest (which is kind of an app store - really the main none for unofficial content). Even though the name is very well chosen, expect this confusion to come up more...

ryry 5y ago
Yep definitely. I'm thinking I'll brand it specifically as "Side Quest Jobs", and hopefully that'll create enough differentiation.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Looks pretty cool. Also looks like a lot of companies are using it to find FT employees. If so, you are saving them a lot of money on recruiter fees. Good job!

blacktriangle 5y ago
Makes sense. Interviewing is a dumpsterfire. The only reliable way I've ever seen hiring work is to actually work with somebody on a project while paying them a fair market rate. Anything that faciliates that type of relationship, like for example having a bunch of developers working non-full time is the closest thing to an answer for hiring there is.

sepbot 5y ago

I wish recruitment platforms would start classifying the level of remoteness instead of a blanket remote allowed statement. These days remote often means work from home due to COVID in the time zone of the physical office. Presumably won't be remote forever. Remote used to mean people would be working asynchronously, and it didn't matter where you were physically situated and what hours of the day you were online. Obviously this only tends to work for places that are results driven as opposed to ones that care about the number of hours you put in.

gota 5y ago
Good point. I imagine there must be ongoing research to define the most relevant (frequent, desirable) "classes" of remote work. If there's isn't, then large moderated communities like HN and Stackoverflow are in an unique position to survey folks and help define these classes. If the "Who's Hiring" threads here adopted a "remote work classification" catalogue, I think it'd catch on easily

gumbo 5y ago

The toggles filters are driving me nuts, as it stands, it unclear what the checked state is. One would assume that when the "handle" is on the right side, however, the color coding suggest otherwise. Congrats on your launch.

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somishere 5y ago
Looks like it's all-on by default and you're toggling items off .. which means the colour coding is ok but the ux may be counter-intuitive for some? Not to mention the white highlighting looks like text inputs (the subtitle could easily be mistaken for a search bar). Personally, I'd have gone with an "all on" toggle that gets deactivated if you activate any of the individual categories. Not a deal breaker.

Andys 5y ago

This is also good for people with disabilities, such as chronic fatigue, chronic pain, or any others that limit how many hours per week you can work. These sort of people deserve a good chance at happiness in getting to work a fulfilling well paying remote job.

MattGaiser 5y ago
So much work could be structured this way. My company had a regular motley of random tech work that could support a queue of grab em in the next month tasks. For example, there is a need to add code coverage calculation to a bunch of repos. That is my work. I know nothing about it. Any developer is as equally qualified to do it as I am. Yet I will be pulled off an actual project when we already have a dev shortage to do this. We could benefit from outsourcing it instead.
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LeonB 5y ago

I’ve slowly come to realise that: 1. There’s a large latent pool of talent that can only do part time/flexible jobs but aren’t even looking because so few are available. 2. The total economic loss from such jobs being rarely offered is massive. Consider women who stop working for a year or two due to having a child or children. Many are only able to return part time at first. There’s so few part time jobs in software that many choose not to return to the industry. By the time they can return full time they feel so out of touch, from just a few years away, that they never return at all. Same happens with people who are injured, temporarily disabled etc. The demand of full time only (and often more hours on top again) means that the industry misses out on retaining a lot of skilled talent. And yes chronic conditions and disabilities are also very disadvantaged by the requirement of full-time only work. But as cool as the name sidequest is - I don’t think it’s quite right. Because for most people of the scenarios listed above this would not be a sidequest but a main quest. Awesome work though. And good luck!

smeej 5y ago

This is off to a great start! Being able to filter by things like industry or type of role would make a huge difference too, or even search by keyword. I know that's additional layers of complexity, but it makes a huge difference when trying to find the right fit!

Farfromthehood 5y ago

I wish the posts quantified their compensation. I have spare time for side gigs, but I'm not cheap, and I don't want to put my information out there (by applying) only to get a lousy offer.

mdaniel 5y ago

Foremost, congratulations on the launch; I am a fan of more diverse ways of working, and more diverse ways of upending the recruiting mess in use today I wanted to mention two things for your consideration: 1. it would be stellar to have Atom/RSS instead of mailing list subscription. I don't need more email in my life to ignore :-) 1. related to that, it appears there are job tags but one cannot click on them in order to find more jobs tagged in that way. I said "related to that" because it would also be stellar to be able to subscribe to just the tags of interest, versus the firehose of all jobs (extra bonus points for `/feed/java+spring+whatever.atom` style multi-tag feed subscription)

personjerry 5y ago

Is that front page all the jobs that are available? Is that why there's no search?

mxuribe 5y ago

This is a wonderful idea! (I like the name too BTW.) Unfortunately for me, I've never been able to do freelance or part-time work because I've always needed healthcare coverage...and living in the U.S, it is much cheaper (but definitely *NOT* cheap) to get it through full-time employment. But, hot damn, if i lived in a country that provided healthcare, man, would i jump at the chances to do this kind of work! Regardless, for those that can take advantage of this type of work, this is a great move! Kudos and best of luck!!

jacobobryant 5y ago

One of my predictions/hopes is that part-time work becomes far more prevalent. In addition to the benefits already mentioned here, it would be great for people who want to be e.g. entrepreneurs or independent researchers. Wrote a bit about this here: https://jacobobryant.com/p/what-im-trying-to-do/#1-help-build-a-career-path-for-software-inventors https://jacobobryant.com/p/what-im-trying-to-do/#1-help-buil... Also relevant: https://sahillavingia.com/work https://sahillavingia.com/work. I'd like to make a collection of part-time success stories like this.

voiper1 5y ago

I had assumed this would be remote-friendly, but some postings don't have any info about remote-friendliness.

imvetri 5y ago

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