Has anyone used hunie.co?

I think there is a need for this kind of community, but I don't know that the people who need it most recognize that need.

Everyone needs professional support and constructive criticism. He's not as good a programmer as he thinks he is. She doesn't handle herself in meetings as well as she could. That whole team doesn't estimate their tasks or manage their time as well as they could. You can't golf and his clothes are unkempt and her commit comments are under-descriptive and their algorithms run in O(n) time instead of O(log n) time. Or whatever.

More generally for developers and designers, junior people should be mentored by senior people, senior people should be mentored by leads and architects, and leads and architects should be mentored by business people and also by junior people who are more likely to be closer to what's new and upcoming.

In fact, in surveys that I've run, more than half of us actively wish we had mentors. We're not, as an industry, getting the validation, training, and oversight we think we need.

The problem is the other almost-half of us also need mentors, and don't realize (or think) they do.

As a platform for enabling review and constructive critique, Hunie does a pretty good job. Damian made some different choices than I might have, but he had reasons for them, and he pays attention to usage and feedback.

The worry I had for my own work, which I project onto Hunie, is that it will only ever be used by the people who already realize they need it. And those people don't have to use it; they're self-aware enough and motivated enough to seek out in-person mentoring and feedback instead. A company large enough to have multiple designers will either (1) not have any sort of review process because those designers don't seek each other out, and therefore will never use Hunie; (2) have an informal in-person review process because those designers are capable of seeking each other out; or (3) have a formal review process tied into all their other review processes, maybe even using the same tools (SmartBear supports images and we used it for design reviews at a place I worked).

Freelancers and one-person shops might be more likely to use it, but also might be more likely to work at a coworking space with other designers precisely to get that sort of regular feedback.

I think the same applies to programmers. Programmers could be getting more code reviewed than they currently do. Is there a need for distributed code reviews? Probably. Do programmers think they actually need code reviews? Often not. See my comments on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352121

In short, I don't know that there's a sustainable market for it, even with the potential for other business models, like placement, or referrals, or job boards. Too many people don't have good professional practices, and the ones that do, don't need it.