Show HN: iDoneThis+AwesomenessReminders, Get Work Done, Get Awesomeness
idonethis.com
idonethis.com
AwesomenessReminders deservers absolutely ZERO positive press and I hope you're VERY careful in working with Zach Burt.
He underpaid my team significantly for good work (kept my most senior JS guru busy for a month, only to underpay by a LOT), and was a hassle and a half to deal with. The kid needs to grow up and learn how to run a business respectfully -- not just go through cycles of picking up contracted devs, getting 1-2 months of work done from them, then disappearing and avoiding paying out what he owes.
Even after he underpaid my team for the work, his check bounced. The guy is pathetic. (full disclosure, he sent the underpaid amount again + 10$ for the bounced check fee I incurred)
When I contacted other devs that worked with him on the same projects, they said that they didn't get paid at all. I guess the underpayment was the best result of dealing with this retard.
Please be VERY careful in working with him, and HN -- please avoid giving a piece of shit any positive press.
I have nothing negative to say about iDoneThis, and I wish you guys the best of luck, but I have absolutely nothing positive to say about Zach Burt and his projects. Please proceed with caution.
"running a business respectfully," does that include calling someone a "retard" and "piece of shit?"
Probably not.
Ever hear the phrase "proper channels for grievances?"
Probably not.
You really took the high road here didn't you? I've only heard positive things, and I think it's a great idea. Nice collaboration.
After working with him, seeing him treat my team like crap, having him NOT PAY my team after them having to go through that and deliver great work (they basically rebuilt his only two products and built them right), and having to take my own money to pay my team instead (because I think running a business respectfully means paying good developers everything they deserve on time so they can worry about what they do best and not about IF they'll get paid) -- I think I deserve to throw a few disrespectful grievances there. We're human, after all.
I also respectfully disagree on the "nice" collaboration, but best of luck to the iDoneThis side of the collab.
That's fair enough. I didn't mind all that much. But then a few month later the calls stopped alltogether, then Zach went in and cancelled the $10 subscription manually on Paypal.
I didn't complain about the frequency of calls, but sent an email asking about the cancellation. That went unanswered. Sorry but this guy doesn't seem responsible.
And one more insight from this interview: http://www.twilio.com/blog/2010/12/awesomeness-reminders-mak...:
'...I made all the phone calls while I was high...'
-What did you have them say? -Did she find your delegation of affection to a paid third party extremely bizarre and off-putting? -What was her reaction to only receiving encouraging calls from strangers twice a week rather than every day?
I opted to have this call go to my girlfriend. Didn't tell her anything. She's a very girly girl, and loves when anyone says "Your shoes look pretty etc". She thought it was quirky, funny, but then liked getting the awesome calls.
After a while, the daily calls became biweekly calls. Then I got this email: http://i.imgur.com/iqGmE.png
It's not merely compliments.
If you need to put a service in place to remind you how "awesome" you are, you simply lack confidence. No service in the whole wide world will give you confidence - it can only, temporarily, simulate what it would be like if you had confidence. Ergo - the minute you stop having a service remind you how "awesome" you are, you will go back to wondering. If you need a service to tell your employees that they are "awesome", you are inconsiderate and emotionally dead.
Real confidence is produced through the direct exchange of appreciation between two actual humans who care about each other.
I'm rarely this scathing, but this is garbage. It's cargo cult. It's pathetic.
It also sure doesn't help that that advertisement for the project reads like those dime-a-dozen "I want to sell you something you don't need" sites. Complete with meaningless stock pictures and cliparts.
> We think people need to feel genuinely included and that's what's missing from many work environments.
Yes, I think the word they have missed in their own text is "genuine". Because this is not genuine, this is automatized, no matter how many humans you throw into the mix at any point. There is no line of genuine appreciation going from one human (the person appreciating the work) to another (the person doing the work).
To paraphrase that greenpeace saying about "can't eat money" - When the whole world is social networked and all human interaction has been successfully automatized, people may finally realize that no technology will ever convince that one part in your brain that just frigging knows whether something is genuinely human or not. Because it knows. And that's why you will always wonder until you can fully appreciate the real thing.
> [...]a real person will call your team to tell them they are valued and appreciated
"Hey, I'm calling you to tell you that the person heading your team paid a service to make sure that a human calls you to inform you that they value and appreciate your work but not in a way where they would invest their own time and emotions into it, but let me not actually put it like that and instead make it tee-hee-silly because we both know that this is somewhat strange - yeah, I know, weird, hm?"
"Only in America", I guess?
I think this whole "give constant reward" is nothing new, and it's something that has been done in large corporations for ages, aka "Treat your employers as 8 year olds".
In my opinion, it just alienates the "self" with the "work". Thus, constant reward just gives the false assumption that your work is meaningful and part of your life.
There will be a time when you don't have no one giving rewards to you, and you will need to just keep ahead, doing something because YOU believe in it, not because someone gives you free candy.
At the same time, that's also why social networks and community sites have "karma", to engage people in interesting discussion, with the promise of karma (or, acceptance of the group).
Getting a daily email with a list of accomplishments can get rather old and annoying. Plus imagine your employees hearing this new policy... and trying to keep a straight face?
We hope employees who hear about this crack a smile and have a good laugh. Keeping a straight face is the least of our worries!
I built something to scratch the same itch a few years back. It's open at https://github.com/kristjan/stars and deploys immediately to Heroku with just a few ENV variables to set.
Happy being happy, everyone.