Ask HN: contribute to an idea: teams of unemployed programmers into startups
Is there a way to form these folks into startups/teams?
Almost like some sort of "startup in a box" in which developers can join a team, and everyone agrees to a predefined set of rules on equity.
The core idea being that everyone on the team is contributing their time at no charge.
Maybe it would at some level be a bit like online games where people come along and add themselves into a team.
A key part of this is that there is no employer, no recruiter, no ycombinator, no techstars making decisions about who can join a team. It is up to the team members themselves somehow.
Developers would browse the teams, see who is in them, the technologies being used, and perhaps even some overview of the software idea being built out by the team. They would choose which teams to join.
Maybe there could be some way that developers could perhaps do some practical coding tasks that actually contribute to the project and therefore prove to the team members that they should be a team member.
There's lots of open questions about this sort of thing, how it could be made to work, if at all.
What's in it for the programmers - that would have to be clear - maybe it's gaining commercial experience working with technologies that they are interested in - maybe it's some sort of equity after certain conditions have been met.
I'm wondering if anyone else thinks this (currently not fully thought out) idea has any merit?
Startups forming spontaneously from unemployed programmers who choose to donate their time, no permission required from anyone - could it work?
I don't want anything from this at all - I've just spent alot of time wondering about all those unemployed programmers and how they could be doing something with that time.
Can anyone else suggest any ideas on how it might be made to work? I'm looking for comments/ideas that might turn such an idea into something that actually works to get unemployed programmers programming instead of sitting around waiting for an employer to give them a job.
22 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 60.5 ms ] threadthat is the basics of an open source project, to turn this into a profit generating machine I would suggest a third party which owns the created code/project
with open source the code is given to those who it can help, this option lets a third party sell it
management company gets x% and the rest is split among the devs.
as for deciding % per dev, it should be decided by the impartial 3rd party which is the company doing nothing more then selling the product.
now someone start the 3rd party company, define the % you want for management and then define the market for your services and meet competition of others who do it for less or do it better
I can say for sure that there are very large numbers of unemployed programmers because my day job is as a recruiter - I spend all day receiving resumes from programmers and talking to them about whether or not they are currently employed. Even in my own city there are large numbers of programmers looking for work. Expand that around the world and there's many many more.
Actually the reason I have been thinking about this idea is because I'm acutely aware and reminded daily of how much programming talent is not active due to unemployment.
Many people struggle to get work even though they might be willing and highly talented, for a wide variety of reasons. Consider for example if you are Delphi programmer who wants to make the shift into programming with some more recent technology. It is very hard for such people to get a job because employers are reluctant to take the chance. The Delphi programmer may in fact be incredibly talented and may easily be able to switch technologies, but getting an employer to give them that chance might take 12 months. There are lots of other valid reasons why there are many potentially talented programmers who can't find a job.
this solves the issue of people arguing about fairness of ownership. with a bounty for equity you agreed to your share for your work beforehand.
This model only works for simple greenfield projects; as soon as you get complexity, it introduces dependancy of domain knowledge, which doesnt work with short term employees.
Even in opensource projects, there are usually only a few core developers - i.e. the ones with domain knowledge. Everyone else submits small bug fixes/patches.
All of that being said everything goes through cycles and there probably will come a time in the not too distant future where something like this could do very well. If you can overcome the adoption challenges of today, you'd have something very powerful when the next tech recession comes.
I can say for sure that there are very large numbers of unemployed programmers because my day job is as a recruiter - I spend all day receiving resumes from programmers and talking to them about whether or not they are currently employed. Even in my own city there are large numbers of programmers looking for work. Expand that around the world and there's many many more.
Actually the reason I have been thinking about this idea is because I'm acutely aware and reminded daily of how much programming talent is not active due to unemployment.
Many people struggle to get work even though they might be willing and highly talented, for a wide variety of reasons. Consider for example if you are Delphi programmer who wants to make the shift into programming with some more recent technology. It is very hard for such people to get a job because employers are reluctant to take the chance. The Delphi programmer may in fact be incredibly talented and may easily be able to switch technologies, but getting an employer to give them that chance might take 12 months. There are lots of other valid reasons why there are many potentially talented programmers who can't find a job.
And if the Delphi programmer is in fact incredibly talented and able to switch technologies - why hasn't he done so? Why is he still marketing himself as a Delphi programmer if he can teach himself JavaScript, do a couple webpages, and market himself as a JavaScript programmer?
Because a project like this would allow a developer to join a team and starting coding. They would not have to go through a recruiter/employer to get the gig. If you are willing to code, then you get to write code. Recruiters/employers and salary are the biggest barriers to working on a commercial software project.
The hard part is getting people to pay you money for it, which is what defines "commercial software project". And in my experience, it's harder to get customers to pay you money than employers. Why would a team of previously unemployed be able to sell their services or their code to customers when they can't sell it to employers? And if they do manage to sell it to customers - what distinguishes them from a startup?
I think what you should do is make a site where employers can post a guaranteed test for hire situation. For instance, an employer would post a job, you would apply to it by signing up for the job. You'd have to do a test project for free, but the catch would be that as long as you could meet certain requirements you'd be guaranteed a job.
I'm not sure if this would work, but it would certainly put the theory that there are a ton of capable programmers sitting around to a test. It's pretty risk free for the employer as long as they are careful with designing the test (and they could even design the test to get something useful out of it to offset their risk).
Just my .02
Unemployed people have talents like everybode else and someone should come up with an idea or program to collect, develop and channel those. I can't speak for other countries, but here in germany I see a lot of stuff that could be done if one could mobilize them.