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Hire a Developer, Watch Them Work In Real-Time
New submitter alphamore writes: Live Coding, which is like Twitch for developers, has added a service that allows viewers to actually hire someone they've been watching. The aptly named 'Hire a streamer' service works exactly as it sounds. Via the profile of a developer you've seen coding on the site, a 'hire me' button lets you request their time. The service is completely opt-in for developers, so not everyone will be for-hire. When you click on the 'hire me' button, you'll be met with a list of disciplines that developer is familiar with, and their hourly rate. Once you've booked a session, the money is held in escrow (transactions happen via the site) until the developer has completed the work.
When I'm coding I might spend 30 minutes thinking about something or scribbling on paper and then spend maybe 2 minutes actually typing the code. Those are just fictitious numbers of course, but really both of those numbers could be much higher or much lower depending on the problem.
How does this service account for thinking time?
I'm a freelance iOS developer and from what I've seen, the rates for remote work are always significantly lower than when I report for duty at the client's office. Right now I'm billing a minimum of 70 euros per hour. I won't get that remotely.
This will be no different. The kind of client that hires remote workers, doesn't want to pay a good rate.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Looks like another excuse for low-balling rates. Hey, you stopped typing for 30 seconds, I want 10% off!
P.S. Don't you think you should have included a link to Live Coding itself?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'd have to use much less profanity in my comments and variable names.
with that.
"wtb: video of screen of professional programmer working. prefer 4+ hour productive sessions no breaks"
Uber-ification of software development. This trend should catch on...IMHO.
Hourly contract is/was the 'Uber-ification' of software development. This is nothing more than a gimmick.
Anyone who has enough knowledge to observe someone code and understand what's the developer is doing has better things they could be spending their time on. Anyone who doesn't have that knowledge won't be able to tell the difference between the developer toiling on the work they were contracted for or on a personal pet project.
Gah, I meant task-based contract is the 'uber-ification' -- not hourly.
This is the second article about Live Coding here; in fact, I wrote a comment to the previous article. Back then, I said that the idea seemed interesting and was about to test it for self-promotional purposes. Finally, the experience turned to be HORRIBLE.
I was expecting it to be a business run by/addressed to programmers, genuinely interested in promoting programming; an assumption which was quickly proven wrong. Although I never felt any kind of interest in watching someone writing code, I believed ideas on the lines of "newbies find it very helpful".
This experiment didn’t last for too long and that's why I am not completely sure about the target audience. In any case, I met quite a few completely-clueless people not knowing anything about the given programming language, even about programming in general; asking random things and pointing out irrelevant problems. There were also cheerleaders, trying to trigger participation in the less-appealing-to-me way possible (e.g., talking about random things without caring about the code being written at all). There were also some people interested in knowing what was going on, but they were a minority.
As far as my intention was just taking this as an excuse to have videos where I was coding (like a picture of mine: a complement to my online references), I didn't mind too much the aforementioned issues. The worst part was the site itself (and their staff). They are certainly not programmers, but want to manage the whole thing their way. The result? I found the overall service/site very unappealing at different level (support, features, control on your videos, etc.). Imagine that Slashdot is being completely managed by Dice people (including moderation)!
My recommendation to any programmer planning to go down that road (mainly with Live Coding): this is not a site/concept managed by programmers. Accept this point and you might even enjoy the experience (so many people, so many minds).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Okay, sure, you can watch a coder in real time, but most of the time people don't need a coder, they need a developer. A developer has project management and other "soft" skills. Coding is the hammer and the nails... you have to know what you're creating before you start to build it. Most of the time you would see the developer typing up emails, creating diagrams and flow charts, writing executive summaries, managing their agile tracker, consulting on a conference call, researching documentation, etc.
I'm so tired of people thinking that software engineering is about coding. It isn't about coding, it's about developing real-world technical solutions of which coding is a relatively small part.
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
Most stupid idea I ever seen. I can't believe decent programmers are going this path. Just another way after the 'coding for pizza' idea to devaluate developers' skills and hold them in contempt.
Achille Talon
Hop!
So the guy you hired is working on your code while someone else can look at it?
Can't think of any client that would ever want nor allow that!
Software Development is a professional trade, and Software Developers should be treated like professionals.
I am sick of these methods to try to monitor our work like a fast food employee.
I have a reputation for being having quick turnaround in my code, and I get called in when others say it cannot be done. this sometimes bites me back when someone is harder than normal so it will take me a week to do something, but Software Development is a skill, and sometimes you need to take extra time and though into a solution, The solution is often just 2 or 3 lines of code, perhaps just a change in parameter, or fixing of a math formula, or fixing a parenthesis. But still it take a long time to look at it, see why it failed, figure out how it passed in the first place. Evaluate what downstream effect the fix will have... A lot of work for something I can type in 3 seconds.
I have never worked in a place where there was rampant goofing off, or just people not doing work. They were always professionals about the work, with the same amount of goofing off and idle time, that other units have such as finance and accounting. You know those other professional level positions.
The issue is the demand for coders in job sectors that have limited use of professional employees, so Mr. Boss man thinks he can treat them like any other minimum wage employee, and have easy/real-time measurements on results. While for professional software developments the metrics are harder to calculate and take time to show their results.
The product may be 2 month late, but it works perfectly vs on time and has a lot of issues that takes 10 months to fix.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So, the coder only gets paid at the end once the project is complete, but the client has to pay hourly rates with no guarantee how long it will take at first? Without a decent contract written up front, I can see a lot of projects getting scrapped part way through, shafting the coder, and others costing way too much for the client.
Yeah, I can't believe how many places these days will give you these stupid online code questions where they ask you to write something and watch you live and then use that as the sole piece of information as to whether they want you to come for an in person interview. And then they complain about how everyone they hire is just "not quite the architect they were hoping for" and let them go after a few months. I see it all the time. So stupid.
i'm just going to go out on a limb and say this is an advertisement because the first thing "alphamore" aka Alphamore Media Solutions did after creating an account was submit this story. despite their address being created on 2015-06-23, they claim to have completed 1,412 projects and written 712,094 lines of code.
seems legit, right? -_-
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The kind of client that hires iOS developers is an Apple zealot too stupid to hire remote employees and pay them well (or understand anything about software engineering for that matter).
The kind of horrible freelance you are can't get normal clients.
iOS developers are a dime-a-dozen so people don't get stuck w/o devs and even consider hiring remotely.
I don't know, you're stating these "facts", so so can I!
Have you seen sites like WeWorkRemotely? Remotive?
FULL of remote jobs at awesome companies offering really, really competitive salaries and benefits.
Yes, even for iOS developers, knock yourself out. Glad to prove you wrong.
I am a freelance, work remotely, charge more than twice what you do, been doing it for 9 years or so.
Not even once, not a single potential client, has asked me for a discount or expected me to earn less because I work remotely.
It's usually "oh, we don't work that way", and even that's really uncommon these days.
Now, you're on slashdot so I don't expect you to understand human beings but...
We don't work just for the money. And we want that money so we can use it for stuff that's not related to work.
Personally, I travel all over the world all year round, and if that meant getting paid a few percents less per hour compared to being stuck in the same city and having to go to an office (read: prison with a coffee machine) and spend time in traffic or public transport, then...
I really, really, really, realllllly couldn't care less.
This is nothing except micromanagement to the extreme.
If you want something built, you hire someone and ask them to deliver it. That's a contractor. Want it done a certain way, write that into the contract.
If you're too lazy to actually write down what you want, you make a vague statement and then correct, correct, correct as the arrow flies further away from the target.
If you're too fearful to believe in your abilities to hire a person, or your abilities to manage them, you watch them. It's not like you could recognize the difference between a person that's busy and a person that's looking busy, but you'll convince yourself that you have done your diligence.
Our managers are sloppy. There are few milestones between start and delivery, and those milestones are rarely structured or ordered in ways that remotely make sense. For example, the first milestone will ask for 80% of the work to be done in a three tier application, and the second milestone will be styling the client with CSS.
You mention books like the Mythical Man Month to them, and they haven't heard of it. (I don't expect them to read it, but they should at least have a synopsis of what was learned from it)
With such an environment, every project becomes a death march, where management alternates between micromanagement and being too busy micromanaging other projects to provide direction when needed.
This website is brilliant, but it sucks. It gives the managers everything they've been asking for, which keeps getting further from the actual delivered product.
> they really don't know what they need, they think they do, until they see the project in action, then they will need other stuff.
This part jumped out at me. Absolutely users rarely know what they need. Very often they'll tell you they need A. When pressed further, they'll explain that they need A in order to get to B. Which they need in order to get to C. Of course, it's much easier and more correct to just give them C, skipping A and B altogether.
However, in my experience, if you walk over to their desk and watch them work, you can normally see what they need. That's been incredibly valuable, watching users work and seeing what they do, so I can actually see the whole process and also take note of the problems they run into.
I'm shocked my boss hasn't replaced our whole team with such people
My luck I'd get a great programmer with no typing skills.
With someone tapping the glass every few minutes to see if you react.
Thinking.
Can't you do that on your own time?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Maybe with a catchy title?
This is a horrible idea, I don't know how many employees think that when you are typing is the only time work as a developer is getting done. I type very fast and tend to have to sit around to figure out what I need to program to get it done. This is just going to marginalize the creative process, the intellectual portion and force developers to become robots rather than writing tapestries in digital context.
So is this an attempt to build the Jiffy Lube of coding?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
The six sygma synergy of agile programming is undeniable.
It's the pendulum issue. Once upon a time, people thought all they needed was coders. They would hire anyone that could code, or even outsource the job.
They didn't work so hot, because you actually need someone with critical thinking, business knowledge, experience, and the ability to actually engineer a system, not just code it, to keep it ticking.
So then they go the other way. Coders are useless, I just want the tip top 1% of the 10x devs. Now, even forgetting how hard it is to find these folks, there's another problem: When you're trying to do something stupid, the engineer you just hired will actually tell you. And that hurts your ego, as a product manager, CEO, whatever. Its your job to tell how the product should be built! The fact that the guy or girl you just hired has already done the same damn thing you thought was your brilliant idea before, and will tell you better ways of doing it...that just causes friction.
So then you realize what you really want is someone to acts on your marching orders...a coder!
And the cycle repeats.
Hello, during the posting process, had the field called for "Link to Original Source of Original Source(s)" rather than simply "Link to Original Source" of the story, i'd've obliged. I myself am not fond of the idea, but to each his own. Just a story I read moments before. Delete it, edit it, either way is fine by me. No biggie.
inhale my funky zuckersnatch, fuck yessssss
So who's going to watch 'Beowulf' or 'Grendel' based on a page of the original old-English text? Or marry a woman based on a picture of her cooking? They think they're being clever; they're not. Obviously, this is aimed towards contractors but I don't want prospective employers to see me in my mum's basement wearing torn underwear, staring at a screen for 15 minutes straight. So this idea will require a lot of PR management where I only appear when dressed for work, ready to type and surrounded by privacy screens.
...assuming that your task is completely mundane and similar to the worker's previous projects. Generic CRUD application? Great. Wordpress skin-and-deploy? Awesome. Something that needs actual research, thought, etc.? Prepare to be bored.
It's the same thing with stuff like watching Notch code. He did coding competitions regularly, but they were all variations on the same theme: make a game in X hours. It's probably the same at other programming competitions, like the web-oriented ones where the winners almost certainly had planned and prototyped their idea for weeks beforehand.
Add performing code monkey to my list of skills...
I never have points to mod up when I need them.
You definitely used that hammer to hit the nail square on bro.
1 I am not a coder or programmer or computer logic problem solver but I recognize the problem immediately.
2 I write 'words' for a living. These define consequences of compliance with {get paid!] or non compliance with [get lawsuit!] providing a 'machine to do a job'.
3 I work in two ways, as Case A) a 'per diem fee on site' OR at same rates hours offsite where I and only I say how many hours apply. Thus offsite work often thinking time 48 hours and 30 minutes writing a single paragraph gets billed as 48.5 hours devide by 7.5 hrs/day multiplied by per diem fee; and Case B) a fixed fee for job.My guess if this will pay or not estimated at estimated hours by a per diem of 180% of billed normal per diem (attendance) fee (allows for the unknowns that come up). If fixed fee not suitable to client I refuse job.
4 All professional jobs have as before described , thinking times, research time, learning time, solution development in the mind and then 'tool handling time' (the writing in my case). Folk get what they pay for. I get more work than I can handle so I guess my reputation for job and fees is OK. (A point I can never prove!)
Regards Eion MacDonald
Are you incapable of adding the markup for links manually? It uses those pointy lefty-righty things, they're usually down near the bottom.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."