[1]: https://twitter.com/askadev_/status/487288537579266048
Text: "Developers: Secure more freelance work and standout to the big tech companies by mentoring. We promote you!"
Its a great experience though,
Also, it's less "I'm motivated to learn something on my own and quite intelligent, but don't know how to code" and a lot more "tell me how to do this project so I can drink this weekend."
I know guys who do this for $$ or for close friends knowing that they'll get something in return (help on a startup idea?) but teaching for free is odd -- tutors in other fields get paid, why should comp sci keep racing to the bottom?
I would be much more comfortable with "Code my startup project: I retain property rights, you get to learn". It's a much more even agreement. Not super exploitative given that the tutor probably could code everything they are teaching, but they let the student do it at a slower pace in exchange for some oversight (hopefully a lower time investment for the senior than coding the project themselves).
The closest analogous scenario: there are pretty strict ethical rules against e.g. professors offering extra help to students in exchange for labor. Doing so would probably be grounds for inquiry and possible dismissal, even from a tenure position. I realize it's not exactly the same scenario, but it's probably as close as you can get where there are codified rules.
I have over a decade of experience and I think the likelihood of solving someone's likely domain specific problem in 30 minutes seems unreasonable.
I'd see this as being the same as saying "Oh, you commit to open source projects, so you'd be happy to work on this private project for free!".
Charge $5 for 20 mins and give $4 to the dev, take $1 for the biz.
I guarantee you there are plenty, millions of people in this world interested in a solution like that.
$5 seasoned international developer (cheap third world expert like me)
$20 seasoned american developer
$50 expert developer
$500 Patio11's godly level
Allow ratings so people can attest the expertise of the developer according to their rate.
If you're expert - you're expert, country does not matter.
Without pricing to reduce the first number to manageable levels, how would you plan to succeed?
want to know how to code (9/10 individuals)
willing to learn how to code (1/10 individuals)
I like the idea of some simple 'can you follow instructions' coding examples to get the basics out of the way (parenthesis, braces, int x = 1; etc). Make this test be the gate to taking up a humans time, and alter the difficulty of the test as you need to throttle.
"Oops, sorry an error occurred! Either you left the languages field empty or <email address> might be already registered. Please contact us if you require further assistance."
http://www.meetup.com/hackerhours/
hard to connect mentor to mentee efficiently for people of different levels from beginner to expert or domain specific problems.
Anyway I think the angle is this is a way to get leads for new clients. The part I am not sure about is, how does 'askadev' get paid? I am guessing they charge the coaches a small amount ahead of time for access to the noob programmers (leads).
Or maybe its simpler. After 30 minutes you have to pay.
