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Comment by vlokshin | Hacker News Reader

Hey, Philip!

We're in a similar space and more companies like yours need to exist.

I'm one of the cofounders at https://turtle.ai/

Our average paid out hourly rates have been lower than yours, but we make it REALLY easy for both sides to work together. We've built our own task manager and chat app that makes customer and freelancer lives easier.

We have a lot of PhD students and full time developers doing 5-15 hours per week on Turtle.

Good luck and we'll be looking out for you! More "alternative work" options need to exist. The 40-hour, butt-in-seat life needs to go (or other options have to at least exist).

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This space desperately needs to be disrupted. And don't sell when Upwork comes knocking! :)

Cool - we've been taking a very manual approach to optimize our process so far, and are finally just starting on a web app! We have a lot more work to do in automating the process and creating a great user experience. We're users of our own product too - I'm working 10 hours a week through Moonlight to afford rent.

Our mission is to help engineers earn what they want, and for some people - that means working more time for more money, but for others that means working just a few hours per week.

I see that Turtle focuses more on web development. I think this is a good way to go about it - but for Moonlight specifically, I knew there was a problem when a friend of mine making $400K/year as a security researcher couldn't find a way to apply his skills in contract work. He wanted to travel and contract for a bit, and was having to look at webdev contracts at $50/hour. So, instead of focusing on building products for non-technical clients, we're focusing on more specialized tasks like dev-ops and algorithms for technical clients.

ah very cool.

Our customers are technical and non-technical. There is a lot of web and mobile app development work, but we've had some interesting projects on there already (ML, AI, even an app to stop your cat from locking up your keyboard when you watch movies.... haha).

I really like your focus. It's ridiculous that the infrastructure doesn't exist for a professional making 400K / year to make 100K / year for 25% the time (assuming skill is stagnant. if it improves, rates should adjust).

Drop me a line if you ever want to chat -- vlad (at) turtle.ai

Good luck!

Hi philip1209, I just applied to your Moonlight site as a software developer. With that said, my experience has all been in web development, and have some personal experience writing native desktop apps. Would I have a problem finding work in your platform as a web developer? I also like the idea of working for more technical clients. I believe that finding high-rated clients is one of the bigger problems that freelancers have in using most common freelancing websites.

No, it should be fine. But the projects will be more pointed and for a more technical client. So, rather than "build me a thing", the projects should be more specific - like "build me a thing in Redux with this low-fidelity mockup."

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