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Show HN: Uber for Coding — Build product with bounties

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Could I use this to find and pay contributors for open source projects I maintain or consume? Seems so, just thought I’d ask!
  • zcesur 4y ago
    Absolutely :) Thanks for asking!
    • TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      Yeah there needs to be an explanation of this on the homepage. Comparing it to Uber just makes me think this is a job hunting site for 1099 contract positions.
• worg 4y ago
  I wish people stopped defining their products as _Uber, but in $DOMAIN_ tbh it rubs many people the wrong way, a couple of examples: Am I as a developer going to get the same mistreatment uber riders get? Is this platform running on red numbers and betting to become a monopoly in the long run so they can be profitable once users are locked in and they set a higher price? Having said that, the idea behind it is cool, and applying that to open source contributions would be great
  • CSMastermind 4y ago
    All they really mean to say is "two-way marketplace". Aka "we're a platform used by both buyers and sellers of a service. We arrange the exchange of labor for a fee then the two of you work it out."
    • IncRnd 4y ago
      > All they really mean to say is "two-way marketplace". Aka "we're a platform used by both buyers and sellers of a service. We arrange the exchange of labor for a fee then the two of you work it out." That's your belief, but it is more likely to mean they have uber on their minds along the lines of "we are starting a marketplace with plans to be as big as uber, even if we have to ignore laws and treat everyone but ourselves like dirt."
  • matsemann 4y ago
    I don't even understand what "Uber for coding" is supposed to mean. If anything, the uber parallel is hurting. Am I supposed to be underpaid, have no employee rights etc?
    • worik 4y ago
      Yes. Ouch. But where I live if you work on movies or games as a computer programmer you already have no rights. New Zealand. We call it the "Warner Brothers" law, because they are the ones who paid the prime minister to enact it
  • stevage 4y ago
    Yeah, for me "Uber" is shorthand for an unethical, poorly run company. Takes me a while to work out what the OP meant to convey in each case.
• xcambar 4y ago
  Congrats on the hard work and I wish you all the best. Just one comment though: Looking at all what Uber is going through at the moment, I'm not sure you're doing yourself a favor with the comparison. All the best!
• TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Much of this information is missing from the homepage. I did not really understand your product until I read the above description. “Uber for Coding” just doesn’t explain it to me; That sounds like a 1099 contract job? But clearly it is not that. So what is it? Also: is the any way to use this if my code is not open sourced on GitHub?
  • irf1 4y ago
    Re: the latter question, absolutely! You can create bounties both in your private Algora repos as well as private Github repos using our integration. You can share them privately (via email) or make them public on Algora - only the issue becomes visible and not your codebase. No-one can access your repo directory (codebase) unless you add them as a collaborator in the repo. People who discover your bounties can request to solve them, and you accept them by sharing the repos. You can also ask solvers to sign documents before accessing your repos. As for the work classification, it is actually 1099 contract work! Every year, Algora Public Benefit Corporation makes an information disclosure to the IRS about users’ earnings from the previous year, summing up the money they have received. Users who made money on Algora also receive these 1099 forms, which sum their bounty payouts and come in handy when filing for taxes. - Ioannis
• z3t4 4y ago
  Feedback: You want users to both post bounties and solve bounties, so don't separate them. (when signing up I had to choose if I want to create xor hunt bounties)
  • stevenjgarner 4y ago
    EMPHASIS
    • irf1 4y ago
      Thank you both for your feedback!! You are right. This is in our backlog, we appreciate you emphasizing it!
• arcturus17 4y ago
  This might actually turn out to be a really good idea... Can people from outside the US request / hunt for bounties?
  • irf1 4y ago
    Absolutely, in fact they already have! We support bounty payouts from (and to) anywhere that Stripe does. - Ioannis
• monkeydust 4y ago
  Sound concept, used https://bountify.co/ https://bountify.co/ over the years for small coding tasks, really good pool of engineers.
  • raybb 4y ago
    It seems like that site is now overrun with spam. What kind of tasks did you get done?
    • stevenjgarner 4y ago
      How do you feel it could reduce the spam component?
      • raybb 4y ago
        I was on mobile when I first was looking now I can see it's just a few issues with a bunch of spam replies. I would just delete the spam comments https://bountify.co/autohotpy-keyboard-and-mouse-simulator https://bountify.co/autohotpy-keyboard-and-mouse-simulator https://bountify.co/best-way-to-store-tests-and-results https://bountify.co/best-way-to-store-tests-and-results https://bountify.co/betheme-header-display-issue https://bountify.co/betheme-header-display-issue
        • stevenjgarner 4y ago
          Moderating the content seems potentially like a lot of work as the site grows. I guess I was wondering if there is a good user-driven model where spam replies that get voted down by a threshold level end up not getting displayed (or at least dimmed as in HN)? And give out the voting down ability sparely (also as in the case of HN) so that maybe only paid customers or users with a certain rank have that ability.
• capitalsigma 4y ago
  Posting names of employees with their company affiliation on your landing page seems like a questionable move. FAANG contracts typically include a clause that the company owns any work done in your free time unless you have explicitly gone through a process to transfer ownership. Whatever work these SWEs have done on your platform, if it's successful, it's entirety possible that a FAANG will come after you/the buyer to claim their IP. Or the employees might get in hot water for leaking trade secrets if their contract work is even vaguely related to their main job. It looks to me like you are putting everyone involved at risk for the sake of your marketing.
  • c54 4y ago
    Not sure about other FAANG but at microsoft the contract is explicitly that anything you do during work or with company resources is owned by the company, not just everything you do at any time. Just do it evenings and weekends and don’t use your work laptop.
    • metadat 4y ago
      (And don't use the people's employers company names in marketing material.)
    • he0001 4y ago
      I believe that the stuff you do also has nothing to do with work. Like if you would build a competitor to Excel it would probably be something that MS could say they own. With that said, it’s a gray area though, as software engineering isn’t that clear cut.
    • tynpeddler 4y ago
      Amazon's contract says something similar. A court case might be difficult to win if your project is very close to your work projects, but other than that, a company generally has to prove that you used company resources in some way for your project in order to claim ownership.
    • brundolf 4y ago
      Huh. I assumed only smaller companies would ever make those sorts of carve-outs Though, I also live in Texas. I wonder if it's required in states that have better labor laws?
• danielvaughn 4y ago
  This is really cool. I haven't spent too much time on the site yet, but this kind of product will probably generate a ton of questions. It would be great to have an FAQ page, but I couldn't find one. Some questions I thought off the bat: 1. Often, programming requires environment setup and access to sensitive connection details. Is this left up for each participant to decide or do you provide a solution to this problem? 2. I'd love to work on a bounty but I would prefer not to if several people are already attempting to solve it. Is there a way to find out how many people are actively solving a given bounty?
  • cinntaile 4y ago
    2. So it's one of those platforms that let participants compete for a tiny prize pool? Why do people voluntarily do this, the pay is almost always shit even if you win. And if you don't you just wasted a lot of time and money (since you worked while you could have gotten a paid gig instead).
    • danielvaughn 4y ago
      I have no idea, that's why I asked the question. From what I can see on their site, the price is offered up front. I suspect that because this is worldwide, there will be downward pressure on price since lots of talented devs live outside the US, and don't have the same level of expectations salary-wise. So I'd imagine this would be most useful for non-US residents and more junior devs, but I'm definitely signing up just to check it out.
  • zcesur 4y ago
    Thanks for your feedback and questions! We actually have a FAQ section on the homepage, but yeah it's quite tiny and easy to miss, and we definitely need a standalone page where we address many more questions. 1. That's an interesting question that we haven't yet considered. We personally only store the config for the dev environment in our main repo and manage the sensitive production config using k8s Secrets (while version controlling them in a separate repo), so we haven't really run into any issues regarding that. Is there a particular solution that you'd like to see on Algora? 2. Yep! The issue page of each bounty also displays who started a solution (and when), e.g. https://app.algora.io/algora/challenge/bounties/1 https://app.algora.io/algora/challenge/bounties/1. We're actually not a fan of having multiple developers compete for the same reward ourselves (though there are some good use cases for that as well).
• csmpltn 4y ago
  What's the difference between this, and something like freelancer.com?
• elesbao 4y ago
  Fiverrr did that, no ?
  • stevenjgarner 4y ago
    Actually tied into github, recommending contributors based on git focus?
• Joel_Mckay 4y ago
  Uber’s model primarily converts mechanical asset depreciation into discount taxi fares. Much like early courier companies, it also relies on the desperation of indebted owner-operators, and an inability to calculate operational losses. “Coding — Build product with bounties” Translation: contractors with zero long-term obligations, economic incentives to take the shortest/riskiest path, and 3rd parties privy to trade secrets. Not the dumbest idea I have ever heard from MBAs, but maybe a close second. ;)
  • rsrsrs86 4y ago
    Plus there is a strong argument from Coase. Firms, he says, exist because negotiating jobs at this granularity would be to costly.
  • steve76 4y ago
  • synicalx 4y ago
    This model seems to work well enough to have spawned many clones - Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer etc.
    • Joel_Mckay 4y ago
      Good point, market fragmentation is also an issue. I always underestimate the number of people that miscalculate opportunity cost, and overestimate the utility of outsourced 3rd world labor. As a side note, one should be aware of jurisdictional tax laws which can trigger based on the number of transactions in a given state. Accordingly, even international remote contractors that fail to file in each state with the IRS may incur a $10k fine. A common mistake for small Amazon/ebay businesses dealing with US customers since 2019. Good policy is to talk with AMCHAM __before__ you make a silly mistake. ;) For this simple reason, not one of those staffing-agent companies will be in my portfolio anytime soon. Dumb people test the law, and always end up losing. You're welcome friend... =) P.S. I hear these remote job options are not terrible, and full disclosure... I am still bullish on some of their stocks too: GoTranscript https://gotranscript.com/ https://gotranscript.com/ Automattic https://automattic.com/work-with-us/ https://automattic.com/work-with-us/ liveops https://join.liveops.com/ https://join.liveops.com/ Apple https://www.apple.com/careers/us/ https://www.apple.com/careers/us/ Sitel https://www.sitel.com/careers/ https://www.sitel.com/careers/ Asurion https://careers.asurion.com/ https://careers.asurion.com/ Concentrix ( Convergys ) https://careers.concentrix.com/ https://careers.concentrix.com/ UHAUL https://jobs.uhaul.com/ https://jobs.uhaul.com/
• la64710 4y ago
  The AI generated images for the bounties are really ugly in my humble opinion. Also how is this different from freelancer or upwork?
• GeneralMayhem 4y ago
  This looks like a great way for delusional "entrepreneurs" to get terrible results. Looking at one of the bounties currently available: > We would like there to be a search bar in the middle of the navigation bar. The user should then be able to enter a query and filter questions in the database. The searching should be “fuzzy”, meaning that a search query such as “Issue with HTMA and firbase” should return the item with “firebase” or “HTML” in its body, title, or tags. There should also be the ability to filter by factors including date posted, author username, and whether the question has an accepted answer. The amount offered for this is $100. That's the equivalent of two hours of someone making $100k/yr - which would be a relatively pedestrian salary for SWEs in the US. For that amount, you're asking someone to: * Get into your codebase * Add a UI element * Wire it to a backend * Set up a fuzzy-search implementation I'd take more than two hours just reading documentation before I got started on a task like that. Even assuming the person filling the bounty is familiar enough with something like Firebase to be able to set up a pre-existing search implementation in a short timeframe, there's no way you're going to get anything functional in less than a day of work end-to-end, including tooling setup, implementation, basic spot-checking, and deployment. At that point, the person working on it is making roughly minimum wage in most states. Is this just supposed to be a stealth outsourcing/wage arbitrage play? I can't imagine anyone in the West doing this, other than maybe undergrad students looking to build a resume.
  • irf1 4y ago
    This $100 bounty was shared by an undergraduate student founder at Harvard College who is looking for contributors / new teammates. There are likely classmates/peers/developers who may find it fun and worthwhile to solve this bounty and collaborate with Caine. Certainly, university students have thus far found Algora to be neat. You are not wrong, the amount is very low, but it's ok amongst students looking to hack things up. Personally, with my co-founder Zaf we cannot presently afford a full-time engineer, but with bounties we are getting a lot of work done while sticking to our tight budget. It's a modular tool, you can do what you wish with it and award as much as you wish. So far, we have personally awarded $7,876.68 in bounties to our own contributors, and our bounty payouts will be higher as our budget permits. Your analysis is not incorrect. Of course, people who contribute to open source (mostly without pay) may beg to differ, sometimes it's just fun to build stuff and help out. We certainly also hope to see more, higher-paying bounties :) - Ioannis
• rsrsrs86 4y ago
  For the microeconomics-inclined folks, the paper from Ronald Coase about why firms exist (to avoid extensive negotion/transaction costs) provides the argument for why this might or might not work. That is, this would make a great natural experiment to test the paper.
  • kevin_morrill 4y ago
    But if you can crack the code in solving the transaction cost/friction, it would open up a tremendous amount of creative value. I hope this team succeeds.
    • irf1 4y ago
      +1 Thank you Kevin! We really appreciate it :)
  • irf1 4y ago
    Naval Ravikant discusses this with Joe Rogan (episode #1309) at min 25:20-28:20 youtu.be/3qHkcs3kG44?t=1520 What do you think?
• crftr 4y ago
  I tried to launch something similar 9 years ago, rebaked.com. We sold the company 18 months later to a team that has since pivoted into a web3 offering. If I were to do it again, I would pick a very narrow niche and have a few talented folks secretly working on the bounty side, full-time. I do like that you have chosen to leverage GitHub for the collaboration operation. Best of luck to the team!
• mmmuhd 4y ago
  Lot's of negative comments here, and no one complement the work done on the site. I love the look and feel of your site, nice job, solidly behind you. I signed up and I will be checking from time to time for quick bounties.
  • zcesur 4y ago
    Thank you -- this is heartwarming :)
• krageon 4y ago
  Why would you voluntarily advertise yourself as like a corporation known world-wide as exploitative, cruel and forceful?