Growing a Time Tracking Software to $316,000/Month | Hacker News Reader

Growing a Time Tracking Software to $316,000/Month

failory.com

71 pointsnicoserdeir47 comments

I'm definitely never working for a company that uses this product. Any employer that feels the need to constantly review screenshots of my work is an employer that I don't want to work for.

Instacart seems a customer (from their landing page). I'm wondering it they track their devs this way.

There ought to be a site to show whether a company does time tracking or other excessive surveillance techniques. Would be helpful to filter out employers before hand. It'd also be helpful when making purchases. I'd prefer to buy from alternative suppliers when available (e.g. buying from Costco vs. Walmart)

I would feel better as a customer if I knew that anyone with privileges to access user data ran software like this.

Why? It takes a screenshot every 10 minutes or so. Easy to misuse data between screenshots. And I really doubt management is looking very hard for data misuse, they most likely care more about employees wasting time.

Also the software now has your data as well so you have to trust a 3rd party company in addition to the one you're doing business with.

In addition, the screenshots are getting shared around the company increasing the risk even further.

I would assume they track anyone working with customer data or other sensitive data to ensure they don't misuse the access.

If so, this software would constitute another threat vector for customer PII. Can this sort of firm credibly argue that they take good care of screenshots of PII?

My company tracks our employees - but it's for good reason: We work 7 hour days.

Does that mean you have to do 7 hours of pure work?

That sounds horrible. There's no way to get real productive output for 7 straight hours. I've always been considered a very productive programmer by coworkers, but it's very rare for me to be at the keyboard banging out code for 7 hours a day (even back when I only had individual contributor tasks).

A huge chunk of my time is spent at the white board.

As a freelancer I've been using such products -- they're a part of the package in this market -- and I can testify that it actually motivated and disciplined me. Once I start the tracker, I'm in work mood and I actually do the job without distractions. I even found it harder to attend to my pet projects with the same vigor :)

Also, the version I used took a screenshot every 10 minutes; if it happened that something unintended got there, I had the option to delete that screenshot (losing these 10 minutes, naturally; or having to submit them without a screenshot, which was a separate "manual" category).

I can't imagine hiring a freelancer that I felt I needed to micromanage to that extent. What do you do when you need to spend some time working on a white board? I probably spend more time on a whiteboard than I do coding (I'm more of an architect these days, but that was still true when I was only an individual contributor.)

I worked as a freelancer for years, and I would have refused to work for someone that required me to install tracking software.

If it's possible at all, I would work on trying to bill daily or weekly instead of hourly if I were you.

There was an option to post "manual" time without screenshots; I have used it a few times, but mostly I was sitting before the computer anyway. I doubt most of my customers actually looked at the screenshots; I remember one distinct case when a customer actually did, read my todo list for the project and provided feedback and answered questions without me even asking :) It was when we've just started working though, so naturally he was cautious.

Also, I my case it was a requirement from the site (Upwork); in return they guaranteed the payment, that is, if I provide screenshots, I get paid by Upwork even if the customer doesn't pay. When I started a few years ago it was very reassuring, although I don't think this actually happened with my customers.

One only needs to google the name "Upwork" to find out whether they indeed "guarantee payment".

They don't. Not by a long shot.

The entire thing just seems like automated micromanagement

They're an opt-in pervasive surveillance company, but instead of sharing the data with advertisers, they share it with your employer. I can't personally imagine ever willingly using their product, but apparently many other people can. Congratulations, I think?

Good way to identify which companies you shouldn't work for, I guess.

All of my agreements

But I wouldn’t mind having a bank account, credit card, health insurance / healthcare or prescription drugs from a place that did this.

I wouldn't call it time tracking software.

IMO, what they do is very evil practice, it leaves employees no personal space at their workplace. Imagine receiving a highly personal message via skype or email, and a manager seeing it. It leads to employees hating their job and wanting to leave their workplace as soon as possible.

Call centers and such. You got a bunch of MBAs "leading" a massive amount of entry-level workers. They pretty much look down on and dehumanize their entire workforce.

I'm not sure what's worse; being on the floor or being the sorta-manager that busted their ass hard enough to scrape a few extra dollars an hour but has to now act as a buffer between the MBAs and the floor workers, of which they used to be, all while being too scared to truly stick up for them due to the risk of losing their job..

Your personal device is your personal space.

True, but if your manager is taking screenshots of your screen as you work, then they are micromanaging you. They don't trust you. If my manager doesn't trust me, then I'm not feeling too good about my job.

"Hey I see you're on Stack Overflow a lot, are you having trouble with the work we've given you?"

Why do we think that nontechnical managers would be good judges of what productive behavior looks like? Everyone has their own style.

I know people who refused to accept otherwise decent job offers just because a company had that policy in the workplace.

For software developers, designers and many other creative workers, work and life are intertwined. They can't, and often don't want to separate one from the other.

People often might fix urgent problems at night, or work extra hours on a weekend from home. But in exchange people want to be able to use company computer to check personal email, read the news, etc, and they don't want that email be available to their boss. That's a creative professional bargain. If employer doesn't accept later he won't get the former. And the value of the former is much higher than the later.

Yes, there're people who slack off, and they should be disciplined and fired if it doesn't help. But, if only people who you can hire are such slackers, may be there's something wrong with your hiring.

Why can't you just have a laptop next to your work computer to do personal stuff? For many companies, allowing access to personal email via work network is an absolute no-go as it massively increases the risk of data theft. I've worked at several financial companies in my life and they always blocked any kind of page that is designed to store files. Otherwise you get employees that upload sensitive data to some online storage because it's the "simplest" way to continue working from home.

That doesn't mean those companies don't allow personal use but it has to be from devices on another network. Nowadays with most communication happening on mobile devices that's not much of an issue.

Yes, such companies are completely different from what I thought of. I think, allowing personal devices on premises wouldn't be a good idea for them due to security requirements.

I though about staffing agencies creating digital sweatshops without any business justification for it.

"Your personal device is your personal space" should be your personal policy, regardless of employer policy. Even if you have complete control over your employer-provided device, you have to assume the network is hostile -- if they aren't tracking everything you communicate over the network today, how would you even know if they started tomorrow?

Any business worth anything has data to protect and insider threats are what frighten them the most.

Use your own device. On the Guest / untrusted network. With a VPN. Should you find yourself somewhere that doesn't let you do those things, and it's not a job involving a security clearance... then it's definitely time to shop for a new gig.

I lost all respect after Hubstaff launched their "Hubstaff Talent" board by copying jobs from Upwork and other freelancer boards. Discovered this when a post I had made on another platform was scraped and posted on Hubstaff Talent. The applicants never reached me.

To make matters worse, Hubstaff themselves started posting their own job ads on the web. When people applied to work remote for Hubstaff, they were instead opted into Hubstaff Talent daily spam.

I wonder if they don’t have a partnership deal with Upwork. I’ve hired freelancers through Upwork, and you get a series of screenshots of the freelancer’s screens if you want it. (It helped me catch someone trying to defraud me - they had the exact same Microsoft Word screen up for hours on end, billing but not actually doing anything.) A partner deal with Upwork would explain the seemingly crazy high revenues.

Is it just me or is failory a blatant copy of indiehackers?

I thought it was Indiehackers until I saw this comment and checked the domain

I mean, the name and everything indicate a much, much stronger emphasis on failures.

The design's definitely a ripoff, true

The design's is one of those standard templates that 90% of new sites appear to use (my estimate). Wouldn't call that a rip off, just not very creative. But then again, hiring designers to come up with something completely new isn't cheap.

Hey there! I am Rich, maker of Failory. I was 100% inspired by IH when building Failory. I love Indie Hacker interviews and I am really active in their community :)

No problem with that!

Are these revenue claims somehow verified? I know that indiehackers never verified them, is failory any different?

I’m surprised this doesn’t mention their podcast. I don’t remember how I discovered it, but I really enjoyed the interviews with agency owners and along the way I learned about Hubstaff’s features. Eventually, they shut it down because the employee doing the show either was laid off or got another job.

The company I work for uses this software, only the CTO finds the overarching surveillance super duper creepy, and refused to subject us (the employees) to the screenshots.

Hubstaff should not have included that as a feature, as many others have commented, it's too invasive. I am lucky to have a CTO that considers employees peace of mind and comfort on the job. The time tracking features are great, the surveillance, not so much.

I use and recommend Toggl[1]. It's really a nice fit for contractors.

[1] https://toggl.com/

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