Ask HN: Developer-as-a-Service?
I’m currently testing this. One customer is already paying $2,500/month for development services. I’m wondering if I should provide my freelance services this way.
Like with DesignJoy, only one active task at a time. We use GitHub to manage almost everything. CI/CD is configured so deployment is a breeze. Each issue is a task. We use GitHub projects (kanban-style board) to manage the backlog and task stages (todo, in-progress, done). Big projects are broken into milestones and stages; each milestone or stage corresponds to one month of work.
Another benefit I see is that the costs is clear to the customer; he can budget properly and may pause things as needed. I also don’t need to spend time preparing estimates/quotes (which I’m not good at, and I don’t enjoy doing).
I find this works well for people looking to build MVPs or small to medium web applications. There are no long-term contracts or strict project scopes.
What do you think? Any feedback and discussion is welcome.
Isn't it called consultant/consultancy?
Modern web design is better commoditized than software development. For example, you need to paint typical pictures for every new blog post, press release etc.
But you're expected to build a blogging software only once, and any fixes/bugs are unexpected in scope and complexity.
Unless you take advantage of your customer (nobody else can fix that complex system that you left him with) - it doesn't look sustainable to me.
Sounds like a competitor to existing platforms like Upwork/Fiver etc?