I run a discord channel that has several hundred coders and I get 5+ requests weekly to work on a project with someone and those projects are almost always abandonware in a few weeks even after recruiting help from my channel :/
I'm a pretty good 3d artist, so it's very easy to find people who want to work with me on game projects. Sadly, I've yet to meet one who actually kept the enthusiasm the whole way through - even when I've literally made all the art!
It's literally maddening to see so many games made with programmer art - and I just can't find anybody reliable to work with on any project. And, before you ask, I've tried contacting the makers of programmer art games - and it's almost always the case that they've moved on or got a job.
I just want to work on a project where I can see stuff through to the end without relocating to get a job at a studio. But if I post an ad, I just get a ton of replies from people who will drop the project after I've invested hours of work into it - no matter what I do.
Maybe that's because of you. You need to motivate the others in order to mentain their interest.
At times I think putting money up should be a requirement. It is easy for people to write off "time invested" if they have the stability of a full time job. Even if you simply pay back the initial investment/money they put in after 6-12 months. A modified vesting schedule in some way.
I think many are just feeling a bit hollow due to the day job vamping their inspiration (sense of fulfillment) and then as soon as the shiny new project starts to seem like real work their motivation fades.
I think a searchable "dead project" codebase or repository would be more beneficial than another one of these "find help here" type of platforms. Along with a wiki style (open source/collaborative) handbook of all the potential issues you may encounter along the way. Everything from marketing/sales to engineering issues.
It seems like there's a gap between small one-off jobs that are posted on Upwork, and projects that require multiple full-time engineers. RemoteHacker seems to sit perfectly in between those two options.
Competing on price with bottom-of-the-barrel programmers, crazy hoops (skill tests) to jump through to prove your worth... I get why these things arose out of their model, but I will never participate in their marketplace because of them.
Just let people sign real contracts, for realistic prices, and let people's skills speak for themselves based on their own portfolio.
Seems like you did a great job of narrowing down the scope for an MVP. You could have added all kinds of filtering, searching, etc. but for starting out you nailed the core feature set.
I'll keep this in mind next time I'm looking for some help. Hopefully, as you scale up you can defend against spam and the type of low quality stuff that pollutes craigslist and the like.
Also Fiverr, and many, many others...?
Include the project info in the initial answer from the poster. I have contacted three project owners and now have trouble figuring out which one replied.
My name is Eric, I’m a programmer from Sweden. I built this thing pretty much out of frustration of not finding the right people to work with, in a time when we can collaborate across borders and time zones. I don’t mean finding a job, or fixing someones email template. I mean as in being part of an actual project.
Hope you like it :)
