The mutter of invention.
Business Ranks
caffeine vapor
Ceiling Filing System
chinese lanterns in the office
codefarm
Counting the straws
Daylight Wastings Solar Mulch
Desktop Creative Thinking Box
Direct compensation for employees' ideas
business:workplace
Codefarming
It's hard to hire good programmers. It's harder still if you're a non-profit or otherwise under-funded.
Many programmers are fanatical about their work, and want to program and worry about nothing else. This can be used to realize low-cost software development.
Set up an environment where programmers receive little pay, but have all expenses, meals, living arrangements, doctor appointments, assorted toys and a small amount of spending cash provided. Such an environment could be modeled after a school dormitory, and would allow a company to harvest productivity from the above types of programmers.
The only real compensation might be a small amount of spending money disbursed daily, and contributions to a 401(k) or equivalent so the programmers can still feel secure about their futures.
— snowfox, Dec 12 2000
Sounds like a case study on how Asian coders were used to reformat the world's systems for the Y2K changeover.
— reensure, Dec 12 2000
This has already done gangbusters in the textiles industry, but won't most programmers who want this already have moved back in with their mothers?
Maybe it could be a separate service which would run your life for you in exchange for a flat fee which you could pay however you liked, without foregoing the rest of your salary. Sort of a high-priced co-op located in a city centre with all possible services on hand.
The possibility of low-development-cost software is lost, but it may be possible to find people to work on it by open-sourcing it and seeking programmers in the usual places, if it's interesting and in a good cause.
— Monkfish, Dec 12 2000
Sp.: Chihuahua.
— MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 04 2015