It's really not "Hire a worker" to do "work". The service is more geared around a private tutor model.
You can hire a streamer to get a private one on one stream with them; for whatever reason the streamer wants to hire out for.
Sure, people can do work for hire that way but I don't think it will see much use in that regard.

If it's on the internet, it must be true.

I live stream 100% of my commercial/indie game development (coding), and yes I'm a professional/commercial developer. Source code is rarely precious once it's out in the world.

Executing on your ideas faster and more efficient then your competition is where the money is.

http://www.twitch.tv/whilke | http://www.livecoding.tv/whilk... (dual stream, pick your favorite service) if you are curious.

As someone who live streams development 6+ hours a day, 7 days a week, you get more benefit then just talking out loud to something that can not respond. Rubberducking is great, but when the duck can talk back it enhances the process. Sure, the responses might not be correct or on point but it will force you to rethink how you are describing your problem. As to watching live streaming. Why do you assume you can do just one at a time, watch or do? I stream to about 100 people nightly, and many of those people are actually working on their own project(s) with me on in the background as a support/comfort/buddy layer. It's tremendous motivation to keep working away, and not just turn on netflix. It probably doesn't hurt that I'm constantly talking on my stream about what is going on, or how I'm helping a viewer with a development issue. Check it out sometime, if you think you have enough time on your hands, http://www.twitch.tv/whilke | http://www.livecoding.tv/whilk... ( I dual stream, pick your favorite service).

Actually, Twitch a few months ago added a new channel called: Game Programming. It's also had a General Programming channel for longer than that. As long as you are streaming your programming to one of those channels you are completely within the rules of twitch. In fact, several streams have gotten partnered from streaming game development.

I stream all of my indie studio game development live to twitch in front of 100-200 people 8 hours a day, and there are many other game development streams.

If you want to see how streaming development is properly and entertainingly done: http://www.twitch.tv/whilke

Interesting enough, I develop indie games for my studio 100% live on the internet. 8 hours a day in front of 100-200 people on average. I also make sure my encoding settings are able to work a screen full of text at 1080p.

Your question as to why watch instead of do? I ask, why not both? I have a lot of people who come hang out on my stream while they are developing their own projects. Hearing me constantly talking on my stream about my development or helping others fix their bugs keeps them motivated and on task. Also, my stream community is very active in chat with all levels of game/general/web developers. We are constantly helping people solve problems, or bounce ideas off of.

If you want to see how it's properly done sometime: http://www.twitch.tv/whilke

You're 100% correct about hackathons etc. However, they are not completely useless. You should consider them a fast prototyping session. If any good ideas come from it, you can take it and run with it properly.

However, I actually do develop indie games live on the internet in front of 100-200 people 8 hours a day and they are very entertained. It takes more then being able to code to do this; you must also be very entertaining.

I don't know about how one guy got the internet to watch people code, considering several of us have been doing this via twitch for some time now. If you want to see how it's correctly done, and possible join a great interactive development community:

http://www.twitch.tv/whilke