I'm not sure how this would work on closed-source projects. Coders would need to see the existing code that others have written to get anything done, 1 hour of coding could be 45 minutes of grokking how your system is setup and 15 minutes of work. It seems like "micro-outsourcing" would only work for micro-requirements.
You could maybe do something based off of Git where the hirer pays to pull from contractors who have already glanced at the project and can jump in and add a feature, but the hirer would have to expose his business source code to everyone. The alternative is to expose it to less people and have them work on it for longer periods of time to deliver a properly integrated product which puts you back at a regular outsourcing service.
I don't think micro-outsourcing would work because productivity returns from the coder might not start taking off until after 1 hour.
It seems like "micro-outsourcing" would only work for micro-requirements.
Bingo. The role of the "programmer" then becomes to split a project into these micro-requirements, with minimal glue in between. This also yields a system of well-defined, loosely-coupled components... all things dear to my heart.
Even though I said ~1hr, I was thinking of one hour being the upper bound. If I can write testable specs in 3 minutes instead of code which would take 30 minutes to write/debug, I could increase my productivity at least an order of magnitude. But the point isn't even that, it's the kind of architecture one could create by "requesting" tons of custom built components throughout one's day, worrying about their whole structure instead of the bricklaying.
This is something I would love, for both coding and system admin tasks.
The thing is, I would want to 'retain' a few people for these tasks. For example, instead of one system admin, I would have four people who vaguely know my systems (have passwords, etc.) and if I offer an hour's worth of work, the first of the four to accept gets it.
You could maybe do something based off of Git where the hirer pays to pull from contractors who have already glanced at the project and can jump in and add a feature, but the hirer would have to expose his business source code to everyone. The alternative is to expose it to less people and have them work on it for longer periods of time to deliver a properly integrated product which puts you back at a regular outsourcing service.
I don't think micro-outsourcing would work because productivity returns from the coder might not start taking off until after 1 hour.