Slashdot Mirror
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.
I should say that I am no longer working as a software developer because I needed a change and got another degree and now work in a science field, but the same thing still applies and programming is still part of my job.
I could spend 8 hours writing crappy code, iterating over it, changing it, tweaking it, etc, etc, throughout a typical work day. But, and I'm pretty confident in this, I can (and do) instead spend maybe 25-75% of my day (or more) thinking about things -- designing things -- before implementing them and end up with a better result. I've had jobs where lines of code, or in some cases, words per minute typed, were a metric and left them as soon as I found a job based on reality instead of fiction.
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.
Awwwwwwwww, it's always cute when kids discover sarcasm for the first time.
You know out of curiosity I clicked on one of these sites a half decade ago expecting to laugh at H1B1 company applicants with 5 years experience in Rust and Node.js etc.
Instead found a white guy in Mexico. In Mexico?? Turns out he lives on a tropical beach and living the life :-)
No boss, sucky city, corporate stuff. Just living and soing what he wants.
My exwife got a job in Alaska during this time. OMG LOOVED it!! Ok maybe not by March after 7 months of winter :_)
But money is not everything. If I could be whatever I wanted I would happily live in Alaska for the summer and be in hiking, fishing, boating heaven and Hawaii for 45 Euro and do my own thing with less pressure then sign me up. Everyone I know who chases money becomes misserable after 3 months
http://saveie6.com/