Ask HN: contribute to an idea: teams of unemployed programmers into startups

This describes an open-source project. Since these developers are looking to make money from the project, their goal is to seek widespread adoption (just as a startup would), and then market themselves as (extremely) highly-paid consultants charging top dollar for their expertise in the system they designed.

The intended outcome is not open source projects but commercial products/services, companies owned by the developers.

I would say then use the same scenario with a bounty system. instead of paying with dollars, offer % of equity for reaching a goal on work done.

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.

Which is exactly why taking short term unemployed developers is difficult to execute correctly. They will not be unemployed for long, which means that they get up and leave the project - taking with them domain knowledge. That knowledge is extremely expensive to pass on - it involves the startup having to "train" their next employee. Better to reduce churn and get permanent developers.

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.

If there was a massive pool of unemployed programmers sitting around, this could be a pretty good idea. Unfortunately I think you have a rather oddly skewed picture of the current state of the job market. Right now there is a huge talent crush for programmers. If somebody has the skill and ambition to be a useful team member in this kind of setup, they are unemployed because they choose to be at this point. You're going to have a very difficult time attracting anything other than leeches and "business guys" looking for free/cheap labor. Think about this: from the perspective of a recently unemployed programmer, why do I want to join your project instead of signing on with one of the dozens of startups currently hiring or just starting something on my own?

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.

>>>"Unfortunately I think you have a rather oddly skewed picture of the current state of the job market. "

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.

Why are these programmers not hired? The answer to that question matters a lot for the viability of this idea.

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?

A good way to develop experience in any new technology would be to actually do some coding work with it.

Right, I completely agree. The point I'm getting at is that you already have the option to actually do some coding work with your new technology anyway, either through a startup or an open-source project. And the people who do that very often get hired, and leave the pool of the unemployed. So what value-add is there for an organized program of the sort that you're proposing?

>>>"Think about this: from the perspective of a recently unemployed programmer, why do I want to join your project instead of signing on with one of the dozens of startups currently hiring or just starting something on my own?"

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.

It's trivially easy to quit your job and start coding for yourself. I've done it myself. This whole website is pretty much dedicated to that.

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?

Unemployed programmers? Where do you see them?

Repeating this reply to anther comment:

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.

Well, unemployed is a flexible term. How about freelancers? I'm freelancing and (apart from my startup efforts) technically unemployed for about 1/3 of the year.

I think you'd be pretty much incorrect that there are programmers sitting around unemployed who are capable of scraping together and making a successful software project, especially considering that when people who are unquestionably at the top of the industry do it they too fail more often than not.

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

Problem is people can always cheat when you put a test online. So maybe instead of a guaranteed job the applicant can earn a guaranteed phone / face to face interview.

1. define a problem 2. propose a fix 3. create a list of tasks which realize the fix 4. random people interested in the solution accomplish the tasks 5. problem is fixed, code is released as open source and now anyone can benefit

that 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

One of Seth Godin / Scott Adams had a posted that's related to this. The way I look at it is there are people all over the world with diverse skill sets tapping into the internet. There needs to be some sort of collaboration engine where units of work can be posted and exchanged, something similar to http://www.builditwith.me/, but on a much grander scale. I can't really think of a way to make this work, but yes, this is a great raw idea and absolutely begs for some more brain cycles to be put into it.

I dunno, really. Someone mentioned open source projects. For example, there is a huge shortage of talented Drupal developers. So you are a Delphi programmer? PHP is easy to learn and the Drupal community is superb helpful to those who want to contribute. So come, contribute, everyone is welcome, you do that as a dayjob (8+ hrs a day) you will be known in less than a year that's for sure and get a job.

I thought about something like this, but not tied to programmers.

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.

Looking for work would be my full time job if I was unemployed.