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Availability.is

availability.is

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Re: Availability.is

#51

Post by wudf »

ivanplenty wrote: post #49
jaysonelliot wrote: post #46

I see that "UX" is not an option. User Experience is a skillset that many clients need, and that many also mistake for visual design or front-end coding. They're very different things.

I'm genuinely curious, what are examples of the typical work product you produce for "UX"? I must be biased into thinking it is either visual mockups (ranging from paper to balsamiq to powerpoint to adobe) or working prototypes (ranging from a UI builder on the web, a UI builder in an IDE, or HTML/JS/CSS coded by hand). The former case I would label "design" and the latter case I would label "front-end developer" (wi…

I feel design is inclusive of UX, but "design" by itself is more commonly interpreted as visual & graphic art. Not sure how that stands with general public though.

Re: Availability.is

#53

Post by ZoF »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #31
ianwootten wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not broken, you just don't need to include the full link to your twitter profile - just your handle.

If the app automatically adds a prefix and doesn't automatically strip that prefix if it's present in supplied data, it's broken.

Yep, should be parsing input for twitter prefix I agree.

Re: Availability.is

#55

Post by MattBearman »

codeoclock wrote: post #29

If I could sign in with GitHub, absolutely.

I agree - The weird thing is I have a google account that I use for work, but I'm not comfortable using it to sign up to other services. Where as I have no issues signing up for things with GitHub.

Re: Availability.is

#56

Post by ianwootten »

lucb1e wrote: post #45

1. Oh that looks totally cool! 2. Sign up... 3. As a freelancer... 4. Google account?! 5. Go back. Is there no other option? 6. Seems not. Fuck you. I'd much rather create an account than give you my gmail address, have you use my fake name that I set on my google account, and have a single point of failure for authentication availability and security. That is assuming you only request read access.

I'm going to take it as a testament to the idea that you'd really like to sign up that you've left such strongly worded comment.

There had been the option to sign up with twitter too, but I dropped everything but Google because that gave everything I needed very simply (dates, avatar, email), in a single step.

Part of the problem I felt was consolidating different auth mechanisms into a single account - which I decided not to deal with by leaving out.

Re: Availability.is

#58

Post by ianwootten »

Rodeoclash wrote: post #42

We tried to do something along these lines in Melbourne, Australia. It was called Dragonfly. A few points: - We emailed people to update their availability. If they were available this week, we'd email. Otherwise they could set their busyness to between 1 week and 3 months. - We tracked where people were working and used that to bill the companies that hired them. First we charged a flat subscription rate of $3600 pe…

I'm not an agency. This is an app to indicate availability for freelancers.

Re: Availability.is

#59

Post by OnSite »

Rodeoclash wrote: post #42

We tried to do something along these lines in Melbourne, Australia. It was called Dragonfly. A few points: - We emailed people to update their availability. If they were available this week, we'd email. Otherwise they could set their busyness to between 1 week and 3 months. - We tracked where people were working and used that to bill the companies that hired them. First we charged a flat subscription rate of $3600 pe…

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. We are doing something very similar with http://onsite.io, and have encountered some of the same problems.

People won't update their availability for 2 reasons, they can't be bothered or they want to keep their options open. Good freelancers will often have a few offers on the table at the same time and can pick and choose between jobs.

One of the ways we have attempted to deal with the problem is by building in the option for available and qualified freelancers to state an interest in a position. Hiring companies are still returned a list of matched candidates, but can further refine it by showing only those interested in the job.

We are looking at also building in a simple 1 click update via email (I'm booked next week, I'm booked for 2 weeks, I'm booked this month) that will allow freelancers to update their availability without having to sign in. Unfortunately people don't like emails much either. So this will require careful testing.

Agree that curation is important. Nobody is going to pay for access to a list of people of dubious quality. They would rather have 4 good results than 200 bad ones. You will get accusations of elitism, but if you are serious about building a valuable product, quality control is paramount.

Cheers.

Re: Availability.is

#60

Post by rmoriz »

ianwootten wrote: post #23
rmoriz wrote: post #21

Most customers don't look just for available candidates but for ones that also match the required skill set. Just looking for some available "backend developer" wont work.

My experience as a freelancer tells me this is not always the case. Besides, even if it is, knowing when a particular freelancer is available still is useful - isn't it?

I don't think so. If you need external support to fix a problem, it's because of their skills, not because of their availability. Most businesses can shift feature development for some weeks/months until an expert is available (if they can't find one) but an instant, crappy solution wont help them.

It's about skills + price. Not about availability. I don't know many freelancers with full-time exclusive projects that last more than 12 months.

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