Why everyone seems to be wanting to use INFERIOR tools in the tech world baffles me. Why in the world would you ever want to do development on the web? You have no control over your development environment. Its almost as bad as the iPad needing a special case so that it can have the same ergonomics as a laptop.
People tend only do things like this for people they actually know and not for acquaintances on the 5th or 6th degree of separation. Seriously, this isn't a startup. Its not a business. Its a potentially nifty tool that nobody is going to pay for.
There is nothing like free contract work. This is no different than the way Microsoft treated developers before the anti-trust hammer was brought down upon them.
The only real businesses affected by this are Instapaper and Dropbox. The rest are just cool applications that our bubble media props up as enterprises.
A company like this may deliver better education than traditional colleges and universities. However, it won't matter. It won't have the reputation, that matters more than anything else, which has been cultivated by elite schools for hundreds of years. Even if the University of Phoenix Online delivered a great service it would still give degrees from the University of Phoenix.
Whenever a business grows by hiring more and more people it won't scale well and be massively profitable.. People are expensive. They are always going to have razor thin margins.
I usually will create a new branch based on the TODO list item I am working on. Then I will checkout that branch and work on the new feature. When it is done I will merge it back into master and write a commit about what I changed. Then I push it to the master branch on origin. There are only two of us working on our project right now so we don't branch on Github. However, a large team should probably push to a new branch on the origin and then merge it there.
Seriously, just pay something even if it is only $10/hr or whatever service student jobs pay in the area. Not every kid can afford to work free for a summer regardless of the experience gained. Some people need to have a job with some income. Thats why some less privileged students get stuck working in restaurants and bars. Are you interns really not doing enough work to warrant minimum wage?
to a bootstrapped entrepreneur who has literally run himself into the ground to get a b2c venture off the ground in a non-startup town, i can't afford to pay. the situation is made abundantly clear before they step through the door (and when i say door, i mean metaphorically because we don't even have an office...we meet on campus) ... yet, we still have students lining up the 'door' to intern with us every semester cuz we're the sexy opp in town (startup + music).
if i had the money/means/funding, i would have no problem compensating the ones that were bringing value to the table.
this should lead to a subsequent thread though:
how should i pay for students workers when the CEO/company has no money coming through? as many credit cards as i can get my hands on?
Okay I apologize then. There are tons of companies who can afford to pay who don't. I think that a good way to motivate them is to give them a broad thing to do and let them try to do it whatever manner they want. Make it clear to them that you want them to be paid with learning and building up their skills.
Daemon Freedom T.M.
Daniel Suarez