Ask HN: Would you pay for one-on-one programming help when you are stuck?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510459

by eibrahim • 13 years ago

8 12 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We all get stuck when we are coding, would you pay $50/month to have access to an expert programmer who you can skype and have him/her help you get unstuck?

ScottWhigham2• 13 years ago

Absolutely - we all would. But the problem someone creating a business around that model and targeting HN is that the level of expertise we might expect is far different from that which a government contractor/employee might expect. So asking us if we'd pay gets a different response than asking someone/somewhere else, I'd think. And that difference might make a whole lot of difference if you are trying to make a business case/model.

Man, $50 a month for 1-on-1 access to someone who knows x better than me? I could do a whole lot of damage with that!

imcqueen• 13 years ago

I don't think you could do a subscription model for this business. It's only profitable if none your customers use your service.

The value proposition makes sense - find a solution faster than searching for it yourself. However, I feel like you would have to pay per use and the level of expertise required would dictate cost.

positivejam• 13 years ago

Recently saw a company on HN that does something similar: http://www.airpair.com/

Don't know much about them, but they seem to be making a go of it. Apparently there's at least some demand in the space!

eibrahim2• 13 years ago

very cool and similar to what I had in mind...

eibrahim2• 13 years ago

This is kind of what I had an mind https://gumroad.com/l/bADx - again I am just trying to validate the idea.

PS: I make more than $50 an hour in my day job but the hope is that it will be like a gym membership - you count on some people never to use your service.

PPS: I know this doesn't scale, at least not at first and if it is just me but I can see it eventually becoming a marketplace

ScottWhigham2• 13 years ago

... the hope is that it will be like a gym membership - you count on some people never to use your service.

I think that any consultant who has been in the game for many years has worked out a recurring monthly "relationship" with some customers for exactly that reason. The difference is that (a) those consultant deals have a minimum of x hours per month (where x >= 10), and (b) there's a dollar amount per hour that you bill for time over that base. As a result, you the consultant have a strong bias towards helping that customer ASAP. But it has to be at least a decent amount of money per month - say $1000 at a minimum - for you to put aside other projects 2-5x per month to help this customer. $50 though just doesn't cut it - am I going to stop working on this major project with a deadline three days away so I can earn $50 one time? No. I have 50 unread emails and they represent $5000 this month - am I going to ignore those right at this moment and answer the one that's worth $50? No. With your recurring consulting client though, you would do that - not only are you getting $1000 per month from them, but there's the potential every month to make much, much more if we go over x hours.

"But, Scott - I don't actually have any of those customers doing that with me right now."

Maybe not, but everything has an opportunity cost. All it takes is you not answering a $50 email in what the customer thinks is an appropriate amount of time and bam - bad reputation. Or all it takes is 2-3 customers in a row who ask for things that can't be completed in an hour or who don't like the advice/help you've given them and bam - bad rep. Or all it takes is one customer asking a problem that you don't know the answer to and you also have a major project deadline looming and so you "miss" the question (wrong answer, bad advice, forget to answer, etc) and bam - bad rep. Just not worth $50 to me.

sejje• 13 years ago

More than not scaling, I think in a lot of cases it just doesn't work at all.

I'm a web dev and I have no trouble solving routine hangups.

I feel like most of the problems that would get me to pony up some money would take you a long time to figure out. You have to delve deep, understand the stack, trace through a minimum of several files...a couple hours later you're making minimum wage and my problem hasn't gone anywhere.

kohanz• 13 years ago

No, I don't think I can realistically expect someone external to understand and solve the type of problem I'd pose to them. It's not that they wouldn't be smart capable people, but if I can't solve the problem easily myself, or with the help of StackOverflow or Google, the problem is typically of a nature that is very specific to my niche field, programming environment, etc.

taternuts• 13 years ago

I was recently asked to join http://www.sagebourse.com/ as a teacher, but I had a few reservations about it. I do love to teach, but I don't want to put a price/expectation on it. I just prefer to troll freenode channels like #learnprogramming. I suspect someone like me would be a good kind of person to get as an instructor (not that many years in the field, wouldn't ask for much of an hourly rate, but is still knowledgeable to beginner to intermediate developers), and I think more experienced people would either ask too much or just not want to waste time. It would be really cool if there was something like this available, but I just don't think it will ever scale (and as it does it probably will degrade in quality significantly) or be reliable. It's definitely a 'problem' without a real good solution (if you don't count irc)

redrory• 13 years ago

I came across codementor.io

petervandijck• 13 years ago

Yes.

thenomad• 13 years ago

Yes. Absolutely.

Ignoring the possible problems of your pricing model, I'd go for this like a shot during the months where I'm coding.

Coaching is incredibly valuable, even for experts (which I'm not, but others might be), and is much undervalued.

Ask HN: Would you pay for one-on-one programming help when you are stuck?

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