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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."
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday December 14 2015, @02:52PM
What is a far-below-poverty wage in California can be a far-above poverty wage in a third-world country. That's the way exchange rates work. They are set by the market in internationally transportable, tradable goods, rather than nontransportable goods. But a lot of what you need to live on, such as real estate, and many services, are not transportable.
So it can make sense to leave your high-cost location and move to a third-world country where you can live for peanuts and continue writing your extremely transportable software while living cheaply.
There are difficulties -- notably communication. How are you going to find out about potential jobs? How are you going to communicate with your patron once you do have a contract? And how are you going to convince the patrons that you are indeed competent?
Some potential patrons start out giving small contracts to test the waters, and once they find contractors that are actually good they advance to larger ones. It takes effort on both sides, but eventually both sides benefit.
But it is not a low-friction market. There are issues of trust and competence on both sides.
So get your education and experience and first-world contacts; then go third-world, young man, go third-world.