Unfortunately the title has been editorialised because my first red flag was 'an alternative to hiring and paying employees'. That language isn't used inside th

Unfortunately the title has been editorialised because my first red flag was 'an alternative to hiring and paying employees'. That language isn't used inside the post. It's not far off the mark though - the 'model' asks you to contribute work up-front and then sets up a few conditions you have to meet if you expect to see any compensation for the work. One of these conditions is actually launching it into prod and measuring it for a month, after spending a few weeks beta testing it. Any contributor is looking at a multiple-month project where the cost of the project is not contractually set in stone, and where they earn nothing while the business cooks up some metrics to avoid paying out. And let's be honest, no business using this model is going to pay a contributor $10k a week using this calculation, potentially for 5 years, when a full time hire would cost them less. The model is a scam. The only thing missing is that it doesn't ask you to rope in other people to help contribute for you, to passively earn up to half-a-million bucks a year.