Is there a site for consultants / mentors “as a service”?

Question

I'm working on a side project and learning a new programming language at the same time. Sometimes I get stuck with questions that seem like they would take an experienced person a few minutes of time to answer to steer me into the right direction.Usually I hop onto IRC, ask friends, open GitHub issues, ask on StackOverflow etc. but answers there usually take a while to trickle in and also I don't want to burden open source maintainers with "usage" questions if it's not strictly a bug.I guess what I'm asking is kind of a money-based bounty system coupled with a platform like StackOverflow. Is there such a thing?PS: I'm not an impatient person, just sometimes it would be nice to get the opinion of a professional on a question like "what would be the Rails way of solving that issue?".

codegeek · Accepted Answer

I have always wanted to build that service even though never got a chance yet. I even have the domain registered for it (experthours.com). There is the generic clarity.fm and then there is sites like codementor.io. But I am not quite happy with both. The idea is that you will be able to connect with someone who is really good at 1-2 things and then give you tips as a consultant. They won't do the project for you but guide you. Something like that.

rboyd · Answer

I've had generally positive experiences on https://www.codementor.io/

shinryuu · Answer

I was a mentor on codementor.io for a bit. My experience was that there is a significant overhead in understanding the problem for not much gain.

jascii · Answer

I'm not sure the financial incentive of such a site would be significant enough to generate a faster response time than the channels you already mention.Besides, isn't part of the beauty of side projects that you get to go down rabbit-holes figuring how something really works without economical pressure?

machtesh · Answer

Not for technical stuff, but for managerial stuff: http://leadingup.co

mtmail · Answer

https://clarity.fm/ for business advice, less technical questions.