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Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

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Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

#1

Post by buzzzlight »

Startups seem to be hiring more developers this year. And developers are leaving their day jobs in droves. This presents a strange paradox. What does everyone think about programmers working "with" each other instead of "for" each other?

In my own career, I can say that without a doubt, the employees were more competent in their endeavors than their employers. They just suffered from a lack of funds or the freedom to do their calling (whether from family obligations or past debts).

I just keep thinking, if there was a project like Mozilla that I could contribute to from home, and then if it was sold/supported similar to Red Hat, the programmers could split the earnings. Whoever contributes the most, could take the largest split of the profits. I don't see elance or other sweatshops as the future of programming, because they are limited to working at the level that employers expect. We should be able to work at our level and create income streams appropriate for our expertise.

Re: Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

#4

Post by notphilatall »

Who determines product direction? Aside from the challenge of estimating developer contributions ("I wrote the core services" vs. "I wrote the money making feature of the day" vs. "I wrote the analysis / AB test tools that let us optimize"...), how would you split revenue among non-coding contributors (including artists, for example)

Re: Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

#5

Post by buzzzlight »

bigohms wrote: post #3
jules wrote: post #2

How are you going to determine who gets how much?

Programmatically. License an open source formula based on the value of short/long contributions against a revenue / equity model.

Ya that's my thought too. The logistics of running a business are different (and in my mind easier to solve) than the logistics of programming, and should be solvable in a more general way. Also there is a social aspect to it. It's pretty obvious in any project who is pulling their weight (at least for people on the inside).

Re: Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

#6

Post by bobds »

notphilatall wrote: post #4

Who determines product direction? Aside from the challenge of estimating developer contributions ("I wrote the core services" vs. "I wrote the money making feature of the day" vs. "I wrote the analysis / AB test tools that let us optimize"...), how would you split revenue among non-coding contributors (including artists, for example)

>Who determines product direction?

Everyone submits ideas, some voting and discussion takes place, then people work on what they want to work on.

Splitting equity and revenue is a much more complicated issue. In my experience it's easy to figure this out for small teams, provided the members are reasonable and can appreciate each other's work.

There was a software startup that was trying to do exactly this but I can't remember what it's called. Quirky is also doing this, albeit for tangible products, and they have an interesting approach.

Re: Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

#8

Post by arghnoname »

notphilatall wrote: post #4

Who determines product direction? Aside from the challenge of estimating developer contributions ("I wrote the core services" vs. "I wrote the money making feature of the day" vs. "I wrote the analysis / AB test tools that let us optimize"...), how would you split revenue among non-coding contributors (including artists, for example)

On issues of product direction and a whole host of other decisions which aren't practically decidable by "let's vote everyday," it seems reasonable that the collective would elect from within a chairman who would hold office for some previously agreed upon period of time before the next election, say two years. Etc.

The logistics problems aren't the big difficulty to me. To me the activation energy, so to speak, is where it gets tough. Who starts the thing? How does it get rolling and profitable such that you could get people to do such a thing.

Re: Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

#9

Post by thoughtTinkerer »

I've been thinking about something like this for a while. What I picture is something like elance or rentacoder with a mix of sourceforge (or the like).

Projects could advertise for members, and use the site for hosting the source, bug tracking, wiki, etc. Plus, the site could, if it were a commercial product, act as a payment processor and distribute collected funds according to some set of percentages or rules.

Re: Ask HN: Co-Ops for Developers?

#10

Post by handrake »

jules wrote: post #7
bigohms wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmatically. License an open source formula based on the value of short/long contributions against a revenue / equity model.

Do you mean based on number of lines of code?!

Hopefully not LOC since it can be very easily abused.
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