Job offers on 43oh

[bluehash 1,581]

Hello All,

In the past month. a few job offers have popped up. I have hidden the two posts for now as I don't want it to get out of hand.

 

I'd like your input on this. Would it be ok if job offers were allowed? I'm ok with this as long as the site gets something back, since you are using a huge network, which is fair. Maybe a small amount for a user to post a job? It will involve a little planning as users can use the PM system to circumvent this.

Of course, it will be a separate sub-forum.

 

As of now.. any job offers made will be marked hidden.

 

Looking forward to your suggestions.

[Lgbeno 189]

I think that it is great that people are using the forum to solicit job offers but I 200% agree that the hiring party should pay for agree that there should be a fee for the privilege to hire on the site. A recruiter gets 30% of the first year salary. I don't know how much LinkedIn, Indeed or Monster get but I'm sure that it is a few hundred.

[seesoe 0]

A job doesn't mean a full time salary paying job. It could mean a one time small project programming task (probably true for most posts). Requiring a fee is out of a forums scope, you will have to handle double transactions and fee, which nobody wants. Just have a classified section with a pinned post as a disclaimer leaving you with no responsibilty and leave it up to the members to sort things out. Perhaps members would want to do trades or work things out differently than traditional payment for programming services.

 

best regards

sam

[rockets4kids 204]

Personally I don't see anything wrong with job advertisements so long as they are specifically focused on the MSP430.

[spirilis 1,265]

On the other hand, perhaps having a "job postings" section with a sticky indicating that a "donation to the 43oh site fund would be appreciated for use of this subforum" (in particular for small/odd-jobs) may suffice...

[Rickta59 589]

I'd like to make some cash ... show me the ads!

[igor 163]

Whatever the policy is, need to make it clear what you mean by a job offer (would also help for purposes of this discussion).

Offering somebody a piece of hardware in exchange for help getting a driver going for said hardware (or for help in

reverse engineering said hardware) - is that considered a job offer?

(There have been a few such posts on stellarisiti, one of which I have been working on.)

 

What distinguishes job offers from Buy, Trade and Sell posts?

Should there be a fee for those posts also?

 

is it a question of the form of the pay (okay to pay in goods and services, but if paying in currency then have to pay to post).

is it a question of value (i.e. if the remuneration has value more than so many dollars/euros/etc. then have to pay to post).

is it a question of community membership 

 

Without knowing what sort of job postings triggered the discussion, it is a little hard to weigh in with opinions.

 

I think small/odd jobs at least should continue to be available without fee (though requesting a donation is fine).

The cost overhead of paying the fee could easily make such posts impractical.

The site benefits from such posts (at least in the case of the driver I am working on) in that the Energia library will be published back to the community through these forums.

 

Are there other fora that already post jobs relating to MSP430?  (Maybe link to them.)

 

For big jobs (defined e.g. by value of remuneration or by hourly pay) would be okay to have a pay per post forum for them as a way of helping to support 43oh.  (As well as helping to pay for moderation of said forum.)

[Rei Vilo 695]

I have mixed feelings about "job offers".

 

Just as @@igor, I've been given hardware

[Rickta59 589]

For what it is worth, adafruit doesn't charge anything, it is a free service

 

http://www.adafruit.com/jobs/

 

-rick

[zeke 693]

This forum is a hotbed of MSP430 activity. The people who are a part of this tribe are starting to be realized as MSP430 industry experts. Is it really a surprise to anyone that companies have started to notice us?

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a contractor. I have been since I arrived here back in 2011.

 

I continue to invest in this community because this community has invested its knowledge in me so that, in turn, I could put food on my table. My family and I are grateful!

 

So, I am all for the job postings because I need the work!

 

I too recommend segregating the job postings in the same fashion as adafruit.com does.

[roadrunner84 466]

One post above mentioned donations over fees for job posting. I think it's a good idea, because it will conserve the hobbyist/free spirit of this forum, while allowing a small amount of professional hirings. Whenever you start requiring fees to post jobs, the spirit of the forum will most certainly shift to a less open community. A thing that would be a real shame to my opinion.

[pabigot 355]

Given how 43oh collects postings across a couple microcontroller lines including Tiva and STM stuff, I think postings for pay or barter-compensated contract projects involving microcontroller hardware or software development would be appropriate, even if they aren't MSP430-specific (sometimes an MSP430 may not be the right solution). I don't see a clear need to support searches for new employees, since those have a well-developed Internet infrastructure.

 

A fee to advertize for opportunities with value exceeding some limit ($10K?) makes sense, but without the limit would probably drive off somebody who wants to do an in-kind expertise or hardware swap that would otherwise fit 43oh's culture well. Though perhaps not enforceable, I'd also prefer to see requests only from principals (those who want the work done), not from head-hunters, or at least require mediated offers to be clearly labelled since they affect the contract value.

[Lgbeno 189]

I should clarify that my comments relate to recruiting full time employment positions on the forum. For contract or barter type work, I think that should be exempt from a fee. That opens a big gray area and would hate to propose rules that would imply lots of policing.

 

 

My message is that job postings are a sign of a healthy forum. I like the donation sticky idea because it makes things self policing.

[bluehash 1,581]

@@Lgbeno @@seesoe @@rockets4kids @@pabigot @@zeke @@roadrunner84 @@Rei Vilo @@Rickta59 @@igor @@spirilis

 

Thanks to everyone for your inputs. By job offers, I meant tiny projects.. not search for employees. There is Dice, Indeed etc for that which most of you pointed out.

 

Please continue this discussion. Just some points:

 

1. To be frank and honest, I do need some money coming in to pay for licenses, upkeep, server fees. When I was talking about a fee, I was thinking in one digit numbers, not percentages. Embedded engineering is not cake walk. You need to know a decent amount of electronics/software and some mechanical to know what you are doing. You get that by experience( and/or study ). Paying a tiny amount to reach a large audience is a great advantage and you get a niche audience.

 

2. There was the idea that  a developer would give back to the forums once the job is done, but I do not think that would be the case. If I was paying you to write code for my platform, I "may" want it for myself( not shared ).

Maybe if there was a check to see a developer uploaded his code for a job after it's done might work. This is tough.

 

3. Some of you mentioned Adafruit( worth more than a million ). It is a great platform. I love it. I can surely take some ideas from there. They can sustain having a free platform. If 43oh were at that stage, I would do it in an instant.

 

4. Paying a small fee may play a role is keeping posted content good. Other wise it will get flooded with requests.

 

5. As posted before, I don't want to loose the community feeling we have here. Hence this discussion. Yes, I'm more biased towards a fee based system, but hearing counter points will steer the direction that will be taken.

[pabigot 355]

"Give back" is a tricky subject. I give a discounted rate to customers who are willing to open-source any re-usable aspects of the solution I develop for them. I find that approach is not understood by most corporations, though.

 

Based on the details @@bluehash has provided I think a small (~ 5$) fixed-price fee for any solicitation is a reasonable solution: making the solicitor have "skin in the game" should reduce the spam considerably. I'd hope the micropayment infrastructure would not be a huge impediment. A "free if the result is made public" policy is probably too complex to work.