5 ms·

I will work for free on your Ruby project

9 points by dushan01 3y ago

VoodooJuJu 3y ago
>Because I believe that Ruby is a powerful tool that can help you achieve your goals in record time, and I want to help you make the most of it. No, you're doing 5 hours free so you can get people into the start of your sales funnel, after which you'll attempt to sell them the paid service. Even if it may be a good worthwhile service, the dishonesty is a hard stop for me and many others. Just say it's like a free trial and if people want even more out of it, there's a paid version with more hours/features. Just be honest man.
- tejohnso 3y ago
  Doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me that this person is going to spend 5 hours a month pro bono on a few projects with no attachments or sales hustle. Do you have evidence that they are being disingenuous? You're accusing them of being dishonest.
  - b_be_building 3y ago
    He's not being disingenuous. He said that he would work 5 free hours. Its not his obligation to provide you a detailed outline of all his intentions.
  - pantulis 3y ago
    > Is there a reason you're so certain that they are being disingenuous? Well, for starters because 5 hours/month amounts to almost nothing in any non trivial project. I am not saying this is dishonesty or a scam, I think it is a legitimate way of marketing your services. But I would be the fool if I thought that there would be no followup.
  - VoodooJuJu 3y ago
    I don't have a peer-reviewed study to validate my wild hypothesis, I'm just a simple businessman, but if you go to the Pricing tier of the page, you'll see Free, and then several paid tiers of service. Then, when you go to subscribe to the Free 5 hours tier, you are asked for a credit card, email, among other things. The idea is to remove friction for easily sliding prospects down the funnel until they ultimately agree to pay you money. That's not pro bono, or public good no-strings-attached work, that's modern sales 101.
    - dushan01 3y ago
      Offering a free service without any kind of barrier would be ridiculous. It is not unknown that free services would ask you for a credit card. For example, website hosting, at a lot of places would ask you for a credit card, even on a free plan. This is to distinguish between bots, scammers and spammers and real human users.
- Ocha 3y ago
  I haven’t heard of a trial that renews every month…
  - VoodooJuJu 3y ago
    I've never heard of a free service that needs my credit card.
    - dushan01 3y ago
      This is to prevent abuse from bots, spammers, hackers, and other things malicious on the Internet. Having a valid credit card means you are probably a real human being
- dushan01 3y ago
  It is a free trial if it is time-limited. Like 30 days, or 2 months. It is not a free trial if it continues forever. I never said it is 5 hours for the first three months or anything like that. If 5 hours is enough for you(and you would be surprised there are many sites that need nothing more than that, just to keep running), then it will be free forever
jacknews 3y ago
I admire the passion, but it seems ominous, and some might even say underhanded; obviously it's not simply 'free' work, but a 'free trial' and marketing. But work for 'free' also pulls the rug from under competitors - they will also have to offer free work, if they can. There really are very few ruby/rails jobs/contracts going at the moment. But ominous because in the bigger picture, perhaps the next step after working for free, will be that you have to pay to indulge your passion on real projects. Like many other hobbies I guess.
- dushan01 3y ago
  There are so many websites and apps, that can do just fine forever with a little bit of maintenance and nothing more. For people that fall into this category, it will be free forever
- dajonker 3y ago
  > There really are very few ruby/rails jobs going at the moment. What is your source for the number of ruby/rails jobs at the moment?
  - jacknews 3y ago
    please tell me where I should be looking to find plenty...
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  It seems more like they're replacing 5+ hours of business development activities with ~5 hours of coding.
vcg3rd 3y ago
I try not to assume motivation as I can't read minds, let alone hearts, but as a practical matter "refactoring, optimizing, or adding new features" means someone has to maintain something he may not really understand.
- dushan01 3y ago
  Do you mean understand as in "understand the architecture, structure and the domain" of the project worked on? Are you implying working for 5 hours a month only on a project is not enough for these? Is that what you are saying?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
elango 3y ago
i can use a ror expert to peer review my code in 5 hours. Or refactor a piece of ugly mess.

9 points by dushan01 3y ago

>Because I believe that Ruby is a powerful tool that can help you achieve your goals in record time, and I want to help you make the most of it. No, you're doing 5 hours free so you can get people into the start of your sales funnel, after which you'll attempt to sell them the paid service. Even if it may be a good worthwhile service, the dishonesty is a hard stop for me and many others. Just say it's like a free trial and if people want even more out of it, there's a paid version with more hours/features. Just be honest man.

tejohnso 3y ago
Doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me that this person is going to spend 5 hours a month pro bono on a few projects with no attachments or sales hustle. Do you have evidence that they are being disingenuous? You're accusing them of being dishonest.
- b_be_building 3y ago
  He's not being disingenuous. He said that he would work 5 free hours. Its not his obligation to provide you a detailed outline of all his intentions.
- pantulis 3y ago
  > Is there a reason you're so certain that they are being disingenuous? Well, for starters because 5 hours/month amounts to almost nothing in any non trivial project. I am not saying this is dishonesty or a scam, I think it is a legitimate way of marketing your services. But I would be the fool if I thought that there would be no followup.
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  I don't have a peer-reviewed study to validate my wild hypothesis, I'm just a simple businessman, but if you go to the Pricing tier of the page, you'll see Free, and then several paid tiers of service. Then, when you go to subscribe to the Free 5 hours tier, you are asked for a credit card, email, among other things. The idea is to remove friction for easily sliding prospects down the funnel until they ultimately agree to pay you money. That's not pro bono, or public good no-strings-attached work, that's modern sales 101.
  - dushan01 3y ago
    Offering a free service without any kind of barrier would be ridiculous. It is not unknown that free services would ask you for a credit card. For example, website hosting, at a lot of places would ask you for a credit card, even on a free plan. This is to distinguish between bots, scammers and spammers and real human users.
Ocha 3y ago
I haven’t heard of a trial that renews every month…
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  I've never heard of a free service that needs my credit card.
  - dushan01 3y ago
    This is to prevent abuse from bots, spammers, hackers, and other things malicious on the Internet. Having a valid credit card means you are probably a real human being
dushan01 3y ago
It is a free trial if it is time-limited. Like 30 days, or 2 months. It is not a free trial if it continues forever. I never said it is 5 hours for the first three months or anything like that. If 5 hours is enough for you(and you would be surprised there are many sites that need nothing more than that, just to keep running), then it will be free forever

jacknews 3y ago

I admire the passion, but it seems ominous, and some might even say underhanded; obviously it's not simply 'free' work, but a 'free trial' and marketing. But work for 'free' also pulls the rug from under competitors - they will also have to offer free work, if they can. There really are very few ruby/rails jobs/contracts going at the moment. But ominous because in the bigger picture, perhaps the next step after working for free, will be that you have to pay to indulge your passion on real projects. Like many other hobbies I guess.

dushan01 3y ago
There are so many websites and apps, that can do just fine forever with a little bit of maintenance and nothing more. For people that fall into this category, it will be free forever
dajonker 3y ago
> There really are very few ruby/rails jobs going at the moment. What is your source for the number of ruby/rails jobs at the moment?
- jacknews 3y ago
  please tell me where I should be looking to find plenty...
datadrivenangel 3y ago
It seems more like they're replacing 5+ hours of business development activities with ~5 hours of coding.

vcg3rd 3y ago

I try not to assume motivation as I can't read minds, let alone hearts, but as a practical matter "refactoring, optimizing, or adding new features" means someone has to maintain something he may not really understand.

dushan01 3y ago
Do you mean understand as in "understand the architecture, structure and the domain" of the project worked on? Are you implying working for 5 hours a month only on a project is not enough for these? Is that what you are saying?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

elango 3y ago

i can use a ror expert to peer review my code in 5 hours. Or refactor a piece of ugly mess.