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Comment by jordanlev | Hacker News Reader

I'm an experienced developer who would be interested in helping others. But I have no idea who it is I'm helping here, and also I'm not sure what the company's role is or how they benefit, etc. I'm happy to volunteer my time in some situations, but not if I feel others are profiting off it in some non-explicit way. Would love to see more info about who exactly you are, what your plans with this thing are, what your financial motivations are, how my contact info is to be used, etc. before I commit to offering help.

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One of their tweets[1] seems to suggest they will be promoting(read: selling?) leads to companies who need freelancers?

[1]: https://twitter.com/askadev_/status/487288537579266048

Text: "Developers: Secure more freelance work and standout to the big tech companies by mentoring. We promote you!"

We won't be selling leads. We'd like to feature mentors on the site as a way to thank them for offering their time for free - it's optional upon sign up.

Check local colleges to see if they offer tutoring to students in CS courses. Many universities offer the service free to students, but they still pay tutors.

It's worth noting that at most colleges, the pay is quite low and most of the tutors are older students.

Also, it's less "I'm motivated to learn something on my own and quite intelligent, but don't know how to code" and a lot more "tell me how to do this project so I can drink this weekend."

Yes, the pay is low if you're still a student. It goes up if you've already got a degree, and even more for a graduate degree.

If students ask you to do their projects for them, you can always refuse.

In some colleges, you can even lecture. That's what I did for a few semesters. However, be warned that preparing a lecture is a LOT of work, and pay is usually not that great.

Its a great experience though,

Yeah I may help out a non-profit team but nothing like this. When you work for a company teacher/student relationships are somewhat natural, its part of what the company is paying for (senior devs should mentor juniors). Even then there is the worry "this guy could take my job..." but you expect the company to reward your teaching ability and promote you. In a case like this it just seems like a way for the hobby market to steal more work from solid engineers.

I know guys who do this for $$ or for close friends knowing that they'll get something in return (help on a startup idea?) but teaching for free is odd -- tutors in other fields get paid, why should comp sci keep racing to the bottom?

I would be much more comfortable with "Code my startup project: I retain property rights, you get to learn". It's a much more even agreement. Not super exploitative given that the tutor probably could code everything they are teaching, but they let the student do it at a slower pace in exchange for some oversight (hopefully a lower time investment for the senior than coding the project themselves).

Is the last part of your post meant to be ironic? People should feel privileged for the purpose of coding for someone else's for profit company, for free?

It's essentially the concept of an apprenticeship as it works in the UK. The apprentice is paid a far below minimum wage salary, and is ostensibly trained by the company they apprentice with as part of their remuneration. The apprentice then works on commercial projects, again ostensibly with mentors.

Heck, throw in a ~$5/h wage and it's basically the UK apprenticeship model except with the guarantee of an actually qualified mentor. I agree that working for free is a bit of a steep ask, but I know I'd prefer to work for free with a properly qualified mentor than work at $5/h for someone totally unqualified (as my own apprenticeship turned out some years back).

EDIT: Yes, my last line is a false dichotomy. Ideally you'd be working for some sort of wage with a qualified mentor.

Facebook pays their interns over 5k/month. With how tight the market for CS graduates is, the idea of someone working for free for a company that makes a for-profit product is pretty crazy.

Unpaid (or, practically unpaid) internships are a sad reality of job markets where the supply far, far outpaces the demand - this is common in high prestige professions that do not require extensive qualifications - things like PR, fashion design, art galleries, magazine publishing, event organizing, etc.

Yes, but this is interns rather than apprentices. Interns are typically, as you've said, graduates. They're inexperienced, but they've had 3 years of theoretical training. Apprentices have had no training, much like the end user of askadev.

I agree it'd be fairly preposterous to hire a CS graduate for a very low or no wage salary. It just wouldn't be effective, what with the demand for CS at the moment.

EDIT: typo

I think the standard view is that this is exploitative, and I doubt you would find many students opting in.

The closest analogous scenario: there are pretty strict ethical rules against e.g. professors offering extra help to students in exchange for labor. Doing so would probably be grounds for inquiry and possible dismissal, even from a tenure position. I realize it's not exactly the same scenario, but it's probably as close as you can get where there are codified rules.

This seems to be exactly the case in psychology. Undergraduate students often assist with experiments in return for research experience on their resumes. Depending on the degree to which they were involved in a project, they may be thanked in a paper, but not listed as a coauthor.

Research is significantly different from private, for-profit business.

And those studies are always IRB-approved. The IRB takes into account the conflict of interest, and will sometimes protest if you don't pay the student subjects (e.g. if the study involves a significant time commitment).

I'm not talking about students who participate in experiments as subjects. The students who are research assistants are sometimes unpaid, and might not receive course credit for RA work, but contribute code to projects for research experience. It's relevant to working for a private, for-profit business in the sense that the alternative is often doing an internship for a private company.

The IRB only monitors study participants, not research assistant work.

Ah, I misinterpreted your comment. Sorry.

> It's relevant to working for a private, for-profit business in the sense that the alternative is often doing an internship for a private company.

I still think there's a pretty significant ethical difference between not-for-profit research and a for-profit business. Even without the student-teacher relationship, unpaid internships in CS are pretty ethically dubious and uncommon.

We want to help novice coders get advice from experienced people instead of what happens to most people - getting worn down and confused by an overwhelming amount of information. We want it to be free because money shouldn't stop you from learning. Maybe it's too idealistic but we're going to try.

Not to sound like a naysayer, but while the idea that education shouldn't cost money is laudable, it seems fairly untrue given the fact that education as a professional sector exists.

I think the site is a good idea, and it'd be great if it takes off. But I presume it'll briefly take off due to the novelty/pride value of being a mentor, and then see an exodus of mentors as they figure out on their second lesson that education is difficult, and that's why people usually get paid for it.

It's acting as a guide and less as a teacher, which is what students need. They need to figure most of it out for themselves and have a helping hand to get them over the humps.

Plans are to pair students up with mentors/teachers for one 30mins slots per week for free. We're hoping to extend it to 1 x 60mins or 2 x 30mins slots. We like to make enough to pay the bills and help students learn to write quality code.

I think what you're implying is that students could pay for extra lessons per week? You might want to work on making this explicit, it's really hard to tell what you're getting at here (I'm still not entirely sure). And to my original question: would the tutors get paid a portion of the additional time? Just really confused about what exactly the situation is you're presenting. I think you'll have a hard time rounding up mentors if you're unable to clearly explain it.

Excellent questions. I'd also like to see this answered.

If you know C++ and Qt, shoot me an email. :) I need some help.

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