I think it's a really great idea, but I was disappointed to see most of the offered project were really of the bottom-feeding sorts (many offered ~$100/day) as some here feared would happen.

I'm in Vienna (which is a much cheaper market than the US/UK/AUS) and even here I don't generally charge less than 300 euros a day (~$420) and received offers for as high as 500 euros/day (~$690) for contract work in the past.

I am sure the real pros who frequent HN charge a lot more than I do.

Programmers, don't sell yourself short! You are bringing down expectations and hurting all of us.

Thanks for the feedback. I think part of the issue is that I'm asking folks to give project rates and durations, and it seems (based on the projects submitted thus far) that the duration ends up being a bit of a misnomer. I think a project rate of a few grand for a simple prototype is probably above board, but if you add an erroneous or poorly anticipated duration, it suddenly dilutes the rate into bottom feeder territory. Nonetheless, I'll be revamping some of this so it's much more clear. FWIW, I rejected more projects than I sent out.

I got the email, and I didn't take the "duration" as how long they wanted me to spend on it. I took it as more of a "When you start this, you should be done in X days because we want it by then."

Should I have read it differently?

I agree that this is confusing. Maybe two different fields: 1) estimate of how long this will take 2) deadline

I can see many projects that are just a day or two of work, but where the company doesn't need it for a week.

I think that's an interesting idea. I agree that it's probably a bit confusing/off-putting as it stands now.

I think that's kind of what I was getting at too. Perhaps duration is the wrong word -- might experiment with deadline/due by or similar.

Sounds good!

Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Glad to see this starting off strong!

I was amazed to read:

"Over 4,500 developers and designers, copywriters, and illustrators have signed up in the past few days, and the growth isn’t showing any signs of slowing down."

That's indeed an impressive response. I'm working on a webcam sideproject, and I also hope to get that amount of signups ;-)

Thanks. It's really exciting to see that this struck a chord with so many people. Interestingly, most signups are devs or designers (or hybrids). Not that many (low 100s) for copywriters and illustrators. I may remove those as an option and just focus on dev/design if becomes clear that's where Tinyproj is heading.

I suggest you keep copywriters - their job is as important as the designers' and you could perhaps help devs understand this.