Ask HN: Are there any CS students that would do a project for $500? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there any CS students that would do a project for $500?

2 pointsjjets7186 comments

Hi everyone, I'm working on a startup, and we're looking for a student or recent graduate in computer science that would be interested in bolstering their portfolio by completing the MVP or functional prototype for our idea. Our asking price is $500 dollars for the completed project, with any changes that we felt were needed with the final product. All of the intellectual property would be ours after the project was finished. Any students with mobile/web app experience that are comfortable with the facebook places API and PayPal API or Venmo API, feel free to contact us at selfey.sw@gmail.com Thanks!

The "any changes that we felt were needed" part is what gives me pause. $500 for a couple week's simple coding work isn't bad for a student, but expecting development support atop that is highway robbery.

I agree, the "any changes that we felt were needed" part made me laugh.

I was thinking about finding out more details about the project initially since I have a ton of free time, but that "any changes that we felt were needed" clause sounds fishy. They seem to want someone to build the prototype, then re-build it. Why don't they just design it right in the first place?

And paying only $500, and keeping all the rights and IP to boot? Nah, I need cash but not that bad.

You're working on a startup? Then you should have more than $500 to invest in your product. Offer a humane hourly rate ($15/hr for a student programmer? Probably), and you might get what you want.

Minimum $25 for anyone confident enough to do it; which anyone familiar with any of the APIs he wants, will be.

So for $500, thats 20 hours of work. A perfectly decent amount of time (and rate) for integrating APIs. But WITHOUT decent views, which at a prototyping stage aren't that important (by the sounds of this idea anyway)

That's way too little an amount.

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