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posted by martyb on Sunday December 13 2015, @01:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-when-they-increase-the-lease-rates... dept.

Josh Constine writes at TechCrunch that you send Gigster your app idea and it sends you back a fully-functional app. "No coding. No hiring. No wrangling freelancers. Just a fundamental shift in how software gets built." Gigster's artificial intelligence engine converts a client's product proposal into a development plan, and helps Gigster's army of remote developers plug in pre-made code blocks to efficiently build the app. Gigster has already helped build a dating app for muslim millenials, a way for citizens of the developing world to buy electricity, and has over fifty more projects in the pipeline.

Gigster finds top-notch freelance developers, designers, and project managers with pedigrees from MIT, CalTech, Google, and Stripe, and only accepts 5% of applicants. A sales engineer discusses proposals with clients, and using the AI engine, comes back with a price quote and production schedule in about 10 minutes. Then Gigster manages the entire development process through delivery of the fully-functional app. Gigster charges a flat fee, so there is no incentive for developers to work more hours and run up charges. Both developers and customers interact with a project manager, who insulates them from the potential hassles of dealing with each other. Gigsters who satisfy customers can earn karma points and qualify for higher-paying contracts, and the company uses artificial intelligence to learn from and assign every new project.

One caveat: Gigster will still own the code to the app it designs for you and "lease" it to you. The reason is that they want to be able to reuse certain components that they develop for reuse on other projects. "Software development that requires continuous recruiting and months of development time writing code from scratch is slow and costly, and not necessarily a consistent internal need of all startups or large enterprises," says CEO Roger Dickey. "Hiring talented engineers is hard – so don't. Instead, let Gigster be your engineering department."


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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday December 13 2015, @11:01PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Sunday December 13 2015, @11:01PM (#275884) Homepage

    If the code you paid for is shared with your competitors anyway, what not develop free software?

    Because it's not you doing the developing. It's people who are getting paid.

    If you think you can persuade a bunch of people to work for free on the software you need, go for it.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @02:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @02:57AM (#275981)

    Well, what I left out of my comment was a way to have a third-party "recruit" and manage developers.

    As others have pointed out, the Gigster developers are not likely to be paid well.

    Maybe an Organization like the Free Software Foundation could arrange something similar.

    I will have to think about it more before making a formal proposal.