Finding skilled pythonistas for micro-jobs?

[Nick Vatamaniuc]

  If you are agile it means that the developer is in constant
communication with the user/client often changing and updating the
requirements. The typical work that you specify though is not of that
nature because it a list of specifications and then the coder
implements it, and when done gets back to you.

 In other words, you will pay for not having a relationship with the
programmer. Theoretically just having the requirements and a set of
unit tests should do it, but in practice it might not work, stuff
_always_ comes up when you least expect it. Sometimes the clear goals
end up not being that clear to both you and a strange new programmer
you just met over email.

 There are other things to consider what if the person doesn't come
through? They end up doing something else or forget -- you wait for 3
days, your company expects a result and the programmer you just asked
to work for you does not deliver. Or what if they are not satisfied
with the pay because it took longer than expected. Also, what would you
do about taxes, technically  you are employing someone, a day job is
still a job. Theoretically one could run a company and never pay the
proper taxes because they pay their programmers per day through
Paypal...

 However, you do mention CS students.  I would suggest to find a local
university and befriend a professor. Then whenever you need a small job
ask him. He will know the students (who knows what, how well and so
on). Just based on a personal experience from my CS department you will
not have a shortage of candidates ( starving graduate students _will_
code for food ), and you get to meet the students in person if you so
desire, and then keep them on  your contact list.  An even better
advice -- get two students,  you will get a true xp team, they'll have
to split the pay but in case one is busy,  the other one will be there
for you. You can hire them as part time with no benefits and they can
put the work on their resume, which will be of great help for them.

Note: if your company is well known, you might even find students who
will help for free, just so they can put some work experience on their
resume...

Hope that helps,
Nick V.

darran wrote:
> I'm a partner in a design and technology studio that creates
> large-scale interactive exhibits for museums.  We are agile - by
> choice.   For big 6-12 month projects, we try and secure exceptional
> python talent on contract.  The python job board addresses this need.
>
> Every few weeks though I run up against a bite-sized programming
> problem begging to be farmed out by our small company.  The tasks
> themselves span the gamut from data wrangling (format conversions) to
> SWIG wrappers to Twisted to pyOpenGL.  Often the task is 1 or 2 days of
> work.  Not really big enough to warrant a job search, a contract, or
> even someone's full-time attention.  The type of problem that is
> perfectly suited to a CS student or daytime programmer looking to make
> some extra money.  Presently, when one of these jobs pops up, I just
> add 8-16 hours to my work week - much to the dismay of my 3-year old
> daughter who'd rather I pay someone and go to the park.  The nice thing
> though about our bite-sized jobs is that the goals are perfectly clear
> because we are religious in our use of unit testing and test-driven
> development.
>
> Any suggestions then for locating skilled Python/C++ programmers for
> these small (micro) jobs?  
> 
> Cheers,
> Darran.