Ididwork (YC Summer 08) Launches | Hacker News Reader

Ididwork (YC Summer 08) Launches

techcrunch.com

75 pointssgupta61 comments

"Micromanagement" and "Time Poor" - 2 concerns that scream out when I look at this product. RescueTime did a fantastic job at removing the "time poor" component for keeping track of where you spend your time, hence living up to its name.

Having worked in the corporate world and in start-ups I can tell you now that most corporate clients already have a time sheet system that is a pain in the a. Employees spend at least 30mins or so a day writing everything they did throughout the day and billing their time where appropriate.

When it comes to getting management feedback for each task you did, again managers are time poor having to deal with more then 1 person in their team + their own tasks from higher management. Hence why performance reviews between you and manager occur every quarter / 6 months / annually and only focus on the high level picture - the stuff that counts - the outcomes / results.

Micromanagement is another issue; no one likes to jot down every action they did. What "matters" is always the end result not the bits in the middle. I.e. taking a client for coffee spending 2 hours out of the office is a step to a potential sale (building rapport). At the end of the day, the sale is what will count on your performance agreement not the coffee break. My manager doesn't want to know that I went to coffee with a client unless I managed to get a sale.

I'm sure some of you would have heard this before but the best workers are those where management give them what they need to do their job and let them do it without micromanaging their time. How and when they do it doesn't matter, all that matters is the end results (outcomes).

I would agree, the "time poor" issue is obvious. However, I've been testing this out a little and figure to try it on myself first (me managing me).

My first impression--besides idiotwork--is that they really make things simple. They seems to be going for the twitter, microblogging style for management. They really reduce a lot of the fat out of managing tasks and reporting.

I like how it just asks, "What did you do?" Instead of, "what's the progress?" "what are your road blocks?" "are you sure you're not critical path?" I'm not sure if this tool will answer those questions, but I'm not sure if they're aiming to do that either.

But then again, I'm not as "time poor" as some may be.

As a developer I solve this by importing an RSS feed of my subversion commits and trac tickets. I then only have to manually add other stuff such as any topic I spent time reading up on or researching.

I have something very similar for a dashboard-like interface I use to figure out what's going on in my ISV.

Here's what it looks like: http://files.dangrover.com/wwactivity.png

That's sales (integrated with the order system), SVN commits, wiki edits, bug tickets.

There's also a pane that shows yearly/monthly/daily goals for sales.

I'm going to have it keep track of my releases too, just so that I can quickly update the site, appcasts, etc and have it tell me when a major release is getting long in the tooth.

Since I use Mint for web stats, I've thought about joining that in just to try to correlate hits/sales, but haven't gotten around to it. Too meta :)

I like the idea and initial basic implementation. I can see a lot of potential.

The name has problems, though. First, it seems a bit defensive: "Look, I did work!" Second, it looks/sounds a little like 'idiotwork'.

There are tons of themes and word fragments to work with for 'team microblogging of work tasks with metrics', so I think with a little effort you could have a very memorable, meaningful name.

Good luck!

Good to know I'm not the only one, I actually read "idiotwork" the first time I skimmed the title.

Agreed. Name bad. Not just the "first time" for me, either. It continues to look like "idiotwork". Notice that a 'd' is basically an o and a t jammed together.

Ambiguity is not necessarily a bad thing e.g. if all interpretations give positive phrases. Would be cool if it could be done with 'ot' and 'd'.

I'm Shawn, one of the ididwork.com founders. We'd like to know what you think about the service. Please leave any feedback here or email us at feedback [at] ididwork (dot) com.

The only concern I have is, I might not want to give details to somebody on the tasks Im working(since the projects whatever I do in my company are confidential). This could be a genunine problem for most company employees but for personal tracking its great.

EDIT: Same concern over rescuetime which sends all the corporate urls to thier server?

I'm the other cofounder. That's something we're working to alleviate concerns for - we've added hackersafe and verisign (and truste's on the roadmap) so the data is secure and the session is encrypted. It's definitely something we want our users to be comfortable with, and something we're working on.

Right. But my actual concern was not that a middleman is snooping, but the concern of giving the data to ididwork.com. Its not that data is not secure, but I think companies might be just simply paranoid(for no reason maybe). A hosted solution within thier control might be one of the solutions. Again, might be people are ok with that and its just my thought.

I think this is something that can be solved with trust and good customer service. Too many times people look to the technological solution because thats what they know. But people give sensitive information out all the time. If they trust you and know who you are and know you've got their back, they'll be more than willing to work with you.

"A hosted solution within thier control"

Having the customer host a complex web application is likely going to be less secure then a hosted solution.

Consider the customer has to manage the code, applications that support the code (mysql, apache), manage the web server, and manage the physical security of the web server.

Your data is safer hosted.

Absolutely, and corporations will never in a million years understand that, and they're willing to pay ten to twenty times as much for a "secure" internally-installed app (when you include the price of hardware, consultants, etc.)

All you really need is a way for companies to pay you and get a contractual obligation for privacy.

You probably want to be careful about how you word "we've added HackerSafe" to corporate customers. I will say the following things:

* "Off-the-shelf" scanner-based certifications are not held in uniformly high esteem by companies with IT security groups.

* HackerSafe just won the Pwnie award at Black Hat for "Lamest Vendor Response".

* Talking about how you have a security SDLC, code reviews, and secure architecture will offer much bigger warm fuzzies to customers.

Also, avoid blanket statements like "so the data is secure". Marketing 101. If you're going to invite objections, make sure they're objections you want to deal with, not ones where you'll eventually have to concede.

People buy into Hackersafe for many reasons, including the fact that a Hackersafe badge and customer link will boost your Google pagerank (this was the case last year, but google is always improving).

Also the little green badge does slightly improve conversion rates for marginal and otherwise unknown ecommerce sites.

So Hackersafe can be some good marketing, even if it's rather a joke from the standpoint of what they check for (if you fail their scan, you really fail; passing tells you little).

My bad, forgot I was talking to the hacker news crowd. The point I was trying to make is that we understand that it's a trust issue, and we're taking the steps we need to get that trust.

Don't worry, there are sister sites to help you out. Once you get fired for breaking your contract and divulging project details on the Internet, you visit ineedalawyer.com and later on, ineedajob.com

This is the standard concern with any SaaS solution, from Salesforce.com to hosted Gmail to Mint.com to QuickBooks' online offering. We get the objection at RescueTime less often than you might think. When it comes down to it, data about what you did as an individual (whether it's Twitter-like or a passive recording of window/tab titles) isn't THAT valuable/scary.

It's probably likelier that you'd have a disgruntled tech/admin do something untoward with the data on a local version of the app.

I could see myself using a tool like this for my freelance work which is usually 'task based'. I would probably use tags like 'paid', and 'unpaid'. It would be helpful if it had time element for tracking hours too.

On the agile projects I have worked on, you had to micro-manage yourself by updating a burndown daily (a spreadsheet of granular tasks and hours). I could see you making developers happier (and selling to Agile shops) if you could somehow automatically update a burndown sheet for them (based on their tasks). Managers love agile because it delegates accountability; developers hate it for the same reasons.

great idea guys this is definitely something people want.

i have a similar system, but much more rudimentary in place, i've got an email sent daily automatically to all teammembers asking them 2 questions.

what did you do today? how long did each task take you?

i hoped to do some reports but haven't done it since i must get the info out of the emails, so i was thinking on getting a webpage up where team members would update their work done, and now you just did it.

so thank you and congratulations!

just one thing, so now that we can measure the amount of work done, what about the quality of the results and the time it took to do? oh, and what about what i need to do, maybe something like nowdothis.com could help...

Yep, we've gotten a lot of suggestions regarding 1) todo lists and 2) # hours a task took. We're trying to figure out the best way to do this since we're trying to preserve the simplicity of this site, while still giving users power options. Thanks for the feedback.

1- No need to login to use. Add Twitter support << @IDW finishing presentation.>>. Add SMS support << 41411 IDW spent 2 hours playing basketball>>.

2- Although being focused is good, it can be open to anyone as anyone can find a "use model" for it. eg students who want to track their progress throughout the semester (while using twitter).

1. We're looking to use other methods of input (im, email, etc) - not sure about using twitter since it's out in the public (whereas companies probably don't want that)

2. Yep. We're first focusing on companies because that's the one we're most familiar with. That being said, there's no reason a student couldn't use it the way it stands now ...

Potentially something to think about -- while I can't ever really see myself using Twitter for such, that's the second entrepreneur that I've known to have that idea recently.

It should just be a matter of synching things to an RSS feed, no? I can imagine that having other applications.

FYI, with Twitter you can direct message ("dm idw completed rought draft") so your tweet won't appear on the public timeline.

are you using it urself everyday now?

Minor details, but

- I don't want to watch video at work, so I can not see the demo video. There is no other information on the website on how it works.

- I can not sign up instantly either, because I can not access my home email address from work. I don't want to sign up with my work email address.

Bottom line: my instant curiosity can not be satisfied. If it wasn't an YC company, I would have forgotten all about it by the time I got home. Since it is YC, there is a faint chance I might remember it and actually check it out in the evening.

Voted up. The exact idea I hyped to everyone (and wrote on my name tag) at YCombinator's Startup School and reception in April, so I know it has potential. And registered at Dynadot 3 days ago, the domain registrar I introduced News.YC to this Spring. ;) So, at least you got one vote :). And I know other founders of existing YC companies loved the idea as well.

Good thing that of the two YCombinator founders who were there at the reception, I only talked to Trevor about the idea, and not PG--otherwise I would be pretty upset! Oh well, I'm actually going back to college this Fall per PG's new advice to finish college--after following the old advice to drop out of college--so that's fine that somebody made this. (Had I applied to the summer round, I would have probably been rejected, given that an app like this takes 5 people to make.) The implementation looks good! Good luck!

Obviously, I'm not particularly excited to hear this news, since I was thinking about this idea every day, but on the other hand, it will make it easier when my app launches since it would have been previously demonstrated as a proven idea by somebody else.

Why not let the guys take a look at what you have and hopefully you can come together and increase the chances at becoming successful.

quite obviously, it didn't take five people to make it.

I like it, but I'm skeptical when TechCrunch says "it will eliminate the need for status meetings". Face-to-face still offers lots of advantages: you can ask questions in real time, you can read body language, and you have have quicker discussions. ididwork is a supplement (a pretty good one too!), but not a replacement.

Thats just a TC sound bite, and you should be skeptical until you try it. I'm sure there are a lot of things out there TechCrunch thinks will eliminate the need for something and it hardly ever does.

The beloved anti todo list. I've been using it every day.

Loving the video - good job Shawn and Reman.

I think it would be helpful if you included the option to input the time that each task took.

Thanks for the suggestion.

It's something we've been debating about, and it helps to know what a user would prefer. Right now you can star an entry, so the more important work gets prominence.

so for all the people who upvoted that "tired of Techcrunch, want direct links instead" story, let's take a new habit :

direct link : http://www.ididwork.com/

It's actually nice to read TC's review in 2 minutes rather than spending 20 minutes on the site to discover all that stuff on my own.

yeah, but not making that logo a link to the site was freaking annoying!

How are you planning on making money, exactly?

Later on we're planning on charging managers/companies that want to use this as a tool to manage multiple teams and employees. We'll never charge the users that are using it as an individual account.

How does your software fit in with the purpose of timesheet software? I know they're not the same, but people have to enter this information for timesheets to bill clients. I know that people put that off all the time, so if they had to do this as well it would be a nightmare. How would you convince a company that already uses timesheet software to also use your software? I see one or the other becoming a repetitive task and the odd thing out that everybody starts to hate.

I did use something like that at the last company I worked for. Something we're looking into (probably more long term) is building out an API that can play well with others.

This may be the workout log I've been looking for. I've been wanting a web app that will let me easily enter, e.g., "went for a run", and then allow me to view a graph of my workout history (i.e., how many workouts I've done).

I read once on 37 Signals that they have a twitter like "what are you doing?" status page so that the team lead doesn't have to ask this all the time.

I really expceted this to be a "what are you doing" kinda app rather than a "what have you done" one. To me (I'm sure people will disagree, np) it's easier to write down a task when you start it, or when you are in the middle of it, than when you end it. And that way it's easier to track interruptions, etc.

I don't know if this exists in the states, but I know in Canada tech companies can submit credits for hours their employees log as R&D (it's a pretty loose definition). At many of the large companies that is the main reason they use timesheets.

If this exists here in the US and were integrated into ididwork somehow it might be a great way to get adoption from managers.

Vaguely like 'Stuff To Do', which I ended up open sourcing because I just didn't see the demand in that space. Of course theirs is prettier (lots prettier), and more professional looking. Still, I wonder about making money in that space - it's quite crowded, and there is probably a lot of competition from "good enough" solutions.

This is the kind of bottom-up stuff that can change an organization from the inside. Congrats to the ididwork.com team.

I'm thinking we might use it on our small, decentralised (across two continents) agile team, since we always have a bit of a headache keeping each other up to date on what we've done.

Don't focus too much on the manager-review aspect, imho. This could be very useful as a simple communication tool, without any management reviews.

I really like the idea. There is a definitely a need for something like this. I'm curious to know if you plan on adding any sort of communication aspects (along the lines of built in chat, messages, possibly video chat, etc.)?

I'm not sure (since there are so many alternatives out there for that kind of thing). Our primary goal is to keep it as lightweight and easy to use as possible. That being said, it's something we'll think about.

Bookmarklet incoming? Or, better yet, a Quicksilver plugin? Looks great but it's the kind of thing that I'd only use if it's easy to get information into, ala Twitter.

Definitely. One of our top priorities at the moment is adding more (and quicker) channels of input into the system.

I would like to see this maybe entered into Ubiquity

Where are the barriers to entry? I could build the same thing in 24 hours.

Do you guys have an API?

Integration with RescueTime would be very interesting!

I keep reading the name as "idlework."

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