TinyProj Shuts Down, Users Sent To TechStars GroupTalent | Hacker News Reader

TinyProj Shuts Down, Users Sent To TechStars GroupTalent

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39 pointsFluidDjango19 comments

Only 20% of all applicants get in, as determined by a filtering process done through manual review in combination with algorithms that rank the applicants based on open source contributions.

Applicants are ranked based on their open source contributions? Jeez, I'd never get in. All of my clients require me to work on closed source code, and I've worked on the smallest of the small projects, to large $700 million dollar projects.

I realize that choosing the right candidate for a project can lead someone to a certain set of paranoia, but isn't there more we can use to rank people other than their open source contributions?

Open source contributions is one of many things we look at to decide acceptance. You don't need to have any open source contributions but it does help us gauge you as a developer. It mostly comes down to what you've built in the past (open source or not).

Thank you for following up.

What other criteria do you judge candidates by? Do you only look at publicly accessible work? A lot of work that I do is in back-end services...stuff that the public never sees. That has always made it difficult to show in a portfolio.

Yeah, currently we look at publicly accessible work a developer has done. Agreed that front-end and design heavy work shows much better in a portfolio (and is usually an easier sell for the project owner) but we're working on ways to bubble back-end work to the top so it shows nicely. We get a number of back-end only type projects come through, so definitely still request an invite.

Does "transition" mean you have to apply if you were on TinyProj or are you automatically in?

Yeah you still have to apply if you were an existing TinyProj user.

Interesting! I started a service with a similar idea in mind, but still have a smaller userbase (~>2000 members and growing every day!). Nice to see there is a real demand for it though. Congratulations to Kyle!

(If anybody is interested, check it out at http://gun.io /shameless.)

Thanks a bunch. Love what you're doing with Gun.io. For me, just came down to not having the time to really devote to Tinyproj. Glad it's found a good home though.

A friend pointed this thread to me & I found this to be interesting.

I am running stalkninja.com since Dec 2010 & noticed that grouptalent.com started 15 days later. Glad to see similar initiative around the world.

I agree with Kyle that such an initiative is pretty time consuming. Even I need to spend considerable time hand-holding the first time project creators as I am very particular about the quality of the work that comes. The only hope being - this is one time & if they come back again, they should be able to do it all by themselves.

Lot of people pointed out that it is a non-scalable way but I still think of taking my chances :).

P.S. cum shameless plug :-

stalk ninja is more of college hacker from India centric initiative. The idea is to expose raw but amazing talent to guys who can not afford to offer them a job (salary skew is pretty high in India).

We never got covered on any of the major tech journals as I chose to spend time listening to my clients, helping them refine projects & spreading the word to college audience. Not sure, if this is right - but again - I decided to take my chances & do things my way :).

Ah what sad news! I really enjoyed using this service and although I never found a project through it this was almost certainly due to the fact I wasn't able to take on new projects during the time I was subscribed to it. However there were many projects that looked interesting and worthwhile. I'm sorry to see it go.

Appreciate that! I couldn't think of a better service to take the wheel than these guys. It just came down to not having enough time/momentum to really make sure that great projects were coming in consistently. I'm happy to report that that won't be an issue any longer.

TinyProj was cool. Unfortunately the only jobs I applied to had a ton of other people also apply, and as time went on, the quality of the jobs severely degraded. Some of them smelled like a scam to me.

Either way, it was a valiant effort and I really appreciate the amount of work that went into it.

I won't miss reading the "$500 for 14 days of work" emails in my inbox, that's for sure.

Just scanned the ToS - seems like GroupTalent own the relationship between dev/client for 3 years subject to the client buying them out.

Careful what you agree to if you move over!

https://grouptalent.com/legal/tos

I think it's worth mentioning that Kyle's consideration of his user base's interests was a top priority, and ultimately the reason we decided to collaborate. He's a class act all the way, and I hope some of you fellas will take him out to drinks. Dibbs on the first round!

I also started a similar service, although geared towards designers:

http://folyo.me

It's an interesting space to be sure, but running that kind of site does require a lot of work (if only to find good projects).

ooo, I'm on folyo and have to say there are nice projects coming through there. good job!

Sorry to see it go. Though I never applied to a job with tinyproj, I liked the way it worked. It was simplicity itself. We'll see how GroupTalent goes, but I'm not thrilled at the way their filter works.

Anyway, good effort Kyle!

# Edit: By the way, how exactly do we get "transitioned" to GroupTalent? Should I expect some instructions, an email or something? Or is it better to just go ahead and apply for an invitation like everyone else?

Much appreciated. Email is queued up, so expect it shortly. FWIW noone is automatically moved over; it's your choice to opt-in, but we are providing a "skip the line" feature for all Tinyproj users who do want to transition.

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