Heard of TopCoder?

If you're like me, you've probably never heard of TopCoder. I recently discovered the company when the company's founder, Jack Hughes, introduced his company at BIF3.

TopCoder is a "no shore" (their term) based software company. They enlist a highly skilled virtual army of developers from around the world and pit them against one another in virtual competitions to create great code, quickly.

By employing a methodology framework and reusable components, their goal is to quickly deliver, well designed, error free code, faster and cheaper. Developer teams self organize, self-manage and are pitted against one another to create the best product possible.

Hughes believes that by taking motivated (self-enlisted workforce), allowing them to volunteer for specific assignments, and by competing against all other developers, that both the virtual employee and TopCoder's customers win.

Since the community has access to a library of pre-built software components and continually adds to the library as projects are completed, each project continues to add to the overall toolset, making the next project easier and faster to develop.

This cycle, Hughes believes, leads to truly, faster, cheaper and better software. And apparently they've convinced some large Internet players. AOL is a customer.

Given the number of local want ads I've recently seen for Java programmers and .Net experience, TopCoder could make a lot of sense as a solution to a meagre, locally available talent pool.

[Disclosure: I have not personally used TopCoder, but if I had a need, would probably give them a try.}