Ask HN: Idea for a Developer Exchange – would you use it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Idea for a Developer Exchange – would you use it?

10 pointscdnsteve7 comments

Developers and companies sometimes are interested in exploring new technologies and stacks but are very happy where they are at their current employer. Dedicated time allocated to training alone seems like it's hard to come by, you get pulled back into work, there is also an associated cost to this.

What if there was a developer exchange?

The problem: Company A wants to learn about Tech X

Company B wants to learn about Tech Y

Make sure that Company A and B are not competing in the same market space.

How it works:

Connect these two companies and agree to have them send developers over to each other and work with their existing team(s) and gain knowledge of that technology. Their employer, would pay them for that time at the other company. They would learn about the new tech stack from the other companies devs actually using it. The developer would ideally come back with real experienced gained and be able to contribute to the host company while present.

Think of it as open-sourcing your developers knowledge and development.

What do you think?

Would you be interested in this as a developer? Would you be interested in this as an employer to have your developers knowledge and experience expanded?

It sounds like a decent idea, but the tech giants are so broadly vested that they are competing with each other in something.

I think you have to get this right in Silicon Valley for it to work everywhere else.

Unlike some simple SaaS that you can build while living in Thailand, this has to appeal to THE place where such ideas can work, before it can spread everywhere else.

This is how I make money sometimes... resource hire or consult gigs and help out with new tech, automation, delivery/process or do/fix things the development team can't do. So I would like to continue being paid, and the company has the confidence knowing I'm delivering what they're paying for. Any other way is just not something I'd do.

What I will do and currently do is keep in contact with guys from old companies and they are welcome to flick me a mail and I'll reply with some guidance as far as is practical

Etsy has done this with Twitter, PagerDuty and a few others.

https://codeascraft.com/2012/09/10/the-engineer-exchange-pro... https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/etsy-engineer-exchange/

I like the idea. I've heard of programs like this within very-large companies (team X will send some devs to team Y to evangelize a new technology and visa versa), but I've never thought of it happening between companies.

I think it's worth a shot. I think a lot of devs and companies might be uncomfortable with the idea at first, but that's what early-adopters/trailblazers are for (to show everyone the way, and prove that the concept works).

My concern is what are the odds of this working out.

Your company wants to use spark. And you literally have no-one in the company who has ever used spark or wants to read a book on spark.

And there is a company that knows spark, and happens to need a skill you know. And no one in this second company knows it, nor does anyone in the second company want to read a book or learn about it.

i actually have been doing this a bit. I asked on hacker news and someone else I found online. Told them I would help them/lend them my core skillset for theirs.

I think it would make sense as a community, it does e.g. HN, or maybe an accelerator type thing where you get a few gurus together IRL and help/hack on eachothers projects so that in reality like 5 companies all helpn eachother, but directly. not advice, or not just, but code, legal design, hardware marketing etc. everyone buys in with skill instead of money.

i think helping and learning from people is strong and getting help outside core.

I know for a fact my company would not use this method. All of our programmers are too busy.

something online might work better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com