Show HN: Uber for Coding — Build product with bounties (algora.io)
The problem: early-stage founders always have more work than people, tight budgets and no time. Hiring full-time engineers is often not an option, yet most founders would welcome contributions from new collaborators. Meanwhile, most developers welcome flexible work. However, today, all of this is hard.
Our solution: we built a Git GUI where you can pay developers and start collaborating with new ones, in just a few clicks.
On Algora you can share, reward and earn bounties right inside your code repositories. Algora also recommends developers/bounties that match your tech stack and makes it simple to start working together.
We are excited to welcome you on Algora, answer your questions and further improve our product and documentation with your feedback!
Thank you
- Ioannis & Zaf
86 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadHaving said that, the idea behind it is cool, and applying that to open source contributions would be great
That's your belief, but it is more likely to mean they have uber on their minds along the lines of "we are starting a marketplace with plans to be as big as uber, even if we have to ignore laws and treat everyone but ourselves like dirt."
If anything, the uber parallel is hurting. Am I supposed to be underpaid, have no employee rights etc?
But where I live if you work on movies or games as a computer programmer you already have no rights.
New Zealand. We call it the "Warner Brothers" law, because they are the ones who paid the prime minister to enact it
Just one comment though: Looking at all what Uber is going through at the moment, I'm not sure you're doing yourself a favor with the comparison.
All the best!
Also: is the any way to use this if my code is not open sourced on GitHub?
As for the work classification, it is actually 1099 contract work! Every year, Algora Public Benefit Corporation makes an information disclosure to the IRS about users’ earnings from the previous year, summing up the money they have received. Users who made money on Algora also receive these 1099 forms, which sum their bounty payouts and come in handy when filing for taxes.
- Ioannis
Can people from outside the US request / hunt for bounties?
What kind of tasks did you get done?
https://bountify.co/autohotpy-keyboard-and-mouse-simulator https://bountify.co/best-way-to-store-tests-and-results https://bountify.co/betheme-header-display-issue
It looks to me like you are putting everyone involved at risk for the sake of your marketing.
Just do it evenings and weekends and don’t use your work laptop.
Though, I also live in Texas. I wonder if it's required in states that have better labor laws?
Why? Because it's confusing to the point that it could seem like Google or Snap or whatever corporate entity is endorsing Algora.
Companies sometimes do require you to disclose the work that you do off the clock, but that's just so they can review it for conflicts. I have worked at multiple FAANGs and known lots of people who had side businesses or consulting gigs, all completely above board.
I have heard that these clauses are unenforceable, yeah, but that doesn't mean that these employees (who seem to mostly be fairly junior) aren't going to be in hot water if this page gets back to whatever part of the company is responsible for attempting to enforce them.
It's a myth... until the lawyers come round and start serving papers on your ass.
Do you want to hazard law enforcement busting your door down and raiding your home or office, even if you think you might prevail in court?
...and that was also in Russia.
Yes, you can submit for permission, and you have to. Because those clauses are in there. And if you think you will survive a legal battle with a FAANG that is your employer... well good luck to you.
> (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either:
> (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or
> (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer.
A huge company like Google can claim nearly anything relates to their business, so they could trigger (1) even if you don't do that kind of work for them.
In practice, I agree they usually don't care about side projects and wouldn't take action even if you didn't get an exception, but there is substantial risk if you are contributing to a significant project that ever attracts their gaze.
1) Is done on work time, or 2) on work property (the office), or 3) using work equipment (an employer-provided laptop, for example, or their IP)
This provision is a bedrock for why startups became such a huge thing in CA: people could work on side projects that turned into startups and not worry about ownership by their employer.
Which, would make this section of the landing page even worse (I think?).
Is this for real?? What a dystopian hell hole. It's called "free time". Do you need to purchase from the company store and live in their approved housing as well?
And you constantly bemoan unions here, looks like you could need someone helping you out with worker's rights..
Let's see it do something for European SWE salaries first. Oslo: just as expensive as SF @ 1/3 the salary.
I guess there's a reason you want the right to moonlight in the evenings...
Would I like to make more money? Yes! Do I think I would be happier somewhere else? Probably not! I like living in a "flat" society where most people are treated well. If anything, if it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't have been able to have the career I now have.
Whether it's a deal-breaker for you or not, make sure you read what you sign
In California, there is an appendix that is required to be included in employment contracts (and applies even if they exclude it) that states an exception. Any work done by the employee cannot be claimed unless it:
1) Is done on work time, or
2) on work property (the office), or
3) using work equipment (an employer-provided laptop, for example, or their IP)
This provision is a bedrock for why startups became such a huge thing in CA: people could work on side projects that turned into startups and not worry about ownership by their employer.
Tech companies will often include this provision throughout their work force, even if you don't work in CA or another state that has a similar provision.
TLDR: If you're in CA, your work on your own time/equipment/home is yours, no matter what your employer says.
Edit: some friends of mine have worked at companies where you need to get "approved" to do side projects. They can fire you for doing side work without permission, but point still stands that they can't claim it unless you touched the work during work hours, or with a work laptop, or used their IP.
Some questions I thought off the bat:
1. Often, programming requires environment setup and access to sensitive connection details. Is this left up for each participant to decide or do you provide a solution to this problem?
2. I'd love to work on a bounty but I would prefer not to if several people are already attempting to solve it. Is there a way to find out how many people are actively solving a given bounty?
1. That's an interesting question that we haven't yet considered. We personally only store the config for the dev environment in our main repo and manage the sensitive production config using k8s Secrets (while version controlling them in a separate repo), so we haven't really run into any issues regarding that. Is there a particular solution that you'd like to see on Algora?
2. Yep! The issue page of each bounty also displays who started a solution (and when), e.g. https://app.algora.io/algora/challenge/bounties/1. We're actually not a fan of having multiple developers compete for the same reward ourselves (though there are some good use cases for that as well).
Also how is this different from freelancer or upwork?
“Coding — Build product with bounties” Translation: contractors with zero long-term obligations, economic incentives to take the shortest/riskiest path, and 3rd parties privy to trade secrets.
Not the dumbest idea I have ever heard from MBAs, but maybe a close second. ;)
I always underestimate the number of people that miscalculate opportunity cost, and overestimate the utility of outsourced 3rd world labor.
As a side note, one should be aware of jurisdictional tax laws which can trigger based on the number of transactions in a given state. Accordingly, even international remote contractors that fail to file in each state with the IRS may incur a $10k fine. A common mistake for small Amazon/ebay businesses dealing with US customers since 2019.
Good policy is to talk with AMCHAM __before__ you make a silly mistake. ;)
For this simple reason, not one of those staffing-agent companies will be in my portfolio anytime soon. Dumb people test the law, and always end up losing.
You're welcome friend... =)
P.S. I hear these remote job options are not terrible, and full disclosure... I am still bullish on some of their stocks too:
GoTranscript https://gotranscript.com/
Automattic https://automattic.com/work-with-us/
liveops https://join.liveops.com/
Apple https://www.apple.com/careers/us/
Sitel https://www.sitel.com/careers/
Asurion https://careers.asurion.com/
Concentrix ( Convergys ) https://careers.concentrix.com/
UHAUL https://jobs.uhaul.com/
Looking at one of the bounties currently available:
> We would like there to be a search bar in the middle of the navigation bar. The user should then be able to enter a query and filter questions in the database. The searching should be “fuzzy”, meaning that a search query such as “Issue with HTMA and firbase” should return the item with “firebase” or “HTML” in its body, title, or tags. There should also be the ability to filter by factors including date posted, author username, and whether the question has an accepted answer.
The amount offered for this is $100. That's the equivalent of two hours of someone making $100k/yr - which would be a relatively pedestrian salary for SWEs in the US. For that amount, you're asking someone to:
* Get into your codebase
* Add a UI element
* Wire it to a backend
* Set up a fuzzy-search implementation
I'd take more than two hours just reading documentation before I got started on a task like that. Even assuming the person filling the bounty is familiar enough with something like Firebase to be able to set up a pre-existing search implementation in a short timeframe, there's no way you're going to get anything functional in less than a day of work end-to-end, including tooling setup, implementation, basic spot-checking, and deployment. At that point, the person working on it is making roughly minimum wage in most states.
Is this just supposed to be a stealth outsourcing/wage arbitrage play? I can't imagine anyone in the West doing this, other than maybe undergrad students looking to build a resume.
Personally, with my co-founder Zaf we cannot presently afford a full-time engineer, but with bounties we are getting a lot of work done while sticking to our tight budget. It's a modular tool, you can do what you wish with it and award as much as you wish. So far, we have personally awarded $7,876.68 in bounties to our own contributors, and our bounty payouts will be higher as our budget permits.
Your analysis is not incorrect. Of course, people who contribute to open source (mostly without pay) may beg to differ, sometimes it's just fun to build stuff and help out.
We certainly also hope to see more, higher-paying bounties :)
- Ioannis
$100 feels a little low for this just because of the added fuzzy-search implementation, but it's important to remember that a huge amount of developers between the coasts make significantly less than $100k/yr.
What do you think?
If I were to do it again, I would pick a very narrow niche and have a few talented folks secretly working on the bounty side, full-time.
I do like that you have chosen to leverage GitHub for the collaboration operation. Best of luck to the team!