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0 pointsjzwinck11y ago0 comments

That's right. Joel Spolsky (co-founder of StackOverflow) and others said long ago that offering people cash incentives can work against you. Some people will do quality work for free if they receive a non-monetary incentive like recognition. But when you reduce it to dollars, they can easily do the math and decide it's not worth helping you.

The above-linked question about databases is a great example: it basically asks the reader to solve a fairly tricky database design/administration problem for the princely sum of US $3. And this is a question posted by the site's creator?

Almost no one will be your part-time DBA for $3. And anyone who will should be treated with suspicion.

If you want to pay me money to solve your IT problems, great, let's talk about that, but it's going to be more expensive than an ice cream cone.

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bbarrows11y ago

I put this up too soon.. so I am trying to deal with scaling and some other issues right now but to briefly try to answer those questions/points..

The point is not to get anyone to be your "part time DBA" that was just some example question I came up with, hopefully to spark some kind of debate or just usage of the site. I am basically just giving someone $3 for their 2 cents on a scaling question. I think asking for someones opinion on scaling is a little different then asking them to be your part-time DBA.

About the financial incentives, the creator of the question can set the "Bounty" for whatever price they want. And if it is not worth someone's time to answer the question for that price then they can just ignore it right?

Really I am just trying to create an environment where people can offer "something" for help if they are not getting it elsewhere. It is not meant to be a source of employment but just a nice reward for someone willing to lend their time and knowledge.

I have a hand full of friends still in college who would pay a few dollars someone to walk them through a math proofs problem for example..

sdrothrock11y ago

I think that what people are trying to say is that if you do something for free, you don't really think about the time going into the answer or what kind of "service" you're providing the original commenter.

But once you incentivize it with money, you start thinking:

1. Hmm, how much am I making per hour here? How does that compare to my normal job?

2. Man, X dollars is kind of low. Do I really want to go find links and write a lot of stuff for just X?

3. I wrote a lot for Y dollars before, but this guy has a more difficult question for only X... guess I'll skip it.

4. This guy's question is something I can answer as a person who does Job Y, but if I'm doing Job Y for him, I want way more than X dollars!

toomuchtodo11y ago

> The point is not to get anyone to be your "part time DBA" that was just some example question I came up with, hopefully to spark some kind of debate or just usage of the site. I am basically just giving someone $3 for their 2 cents on a scaling question. I think asking for someones opinion on scaling is a little different then asking them to be your part-time DBA.

I have ~13 years of experience. I would rather answer someone's question for free on Stackoverflow or on a Reddit subreddit than get paid.

Networking/Repuation > Beer Money.

Please don't let this take the wind out of your sales, it may work, but I'd rather give my knowledge away for free in the right forum vs a couple of bucks.

sb2311y ago

Maybe the site should have a "cash out for rep" feature?

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