3 ms·

Show HN: Someone has to do the boring dev work

11 points by swaroooooop 7y ago

swaroooooop 7y ago
Really excited to share a product we have been working on. We launched Boringcodecompany 5 months ago, after successfully running a product development agency for 3 years. A lot of times we would get requests to complete really small tasks (integrate this api, create this report, create this plugin, push the app to the playstores, fix this bug etc) which we would have to turn down, since the entire team was built in a way to handle larger projects. Boringcodecompany focuses on fulfilling these microstasks - any dev work which would take around 1-5 days, with lesser the time, the better. Initially it was an email only service, but we have now built a full fledged product where users can post these development microtasks on the platform, get estimates, track the status and communicate with our team - all through the portal.
2rsf 7y ago
interesting concept, but isn't the overhead in such small projects bigger than the work itself ? It takes time to setup and learn a customer's new environment
- swaroooooop 7y ago
  Hi. Thanks for your response. So far we have noticed that the time we spend in overheads for these small tasks is very minimal compared to the larger projects we take on through our other agency. Over here it is very cut to the chase, and we only need to know to know the files and logic for the microtask. We are not interested in the overall vision and roadmap of the product. We just cut to the chase. Whereas for larger projects - in addition to tons of project manangement, a lot of time is spent on trying to understand the product, figure out the industry, UI/UX, user testing and research and maintenance.
mswen 7y ago
Interesting branding. Clear value proposition. As essentially an alternate interface/version of an off-shore development agency for small tasks this will succeed or fail over the longer run based on whether the developers are competent and speedy, whether project/task management is done well. One thing that strikes me is how well constrained and defined the micro-tasks are. I find that many of the micro-tasks are micro for someone who is already familiar with the business processes, tech stack and existing code base but as soon as you want to hand it off it becomes more complex and the hand off consumes nearly as much time and effort as just doing the task yourself. In a larger project the cost savings in rates often justifies the additional communication and project management overhead but I wonder if that can still work at a micro level.
- swaroooooop 7y ago
  Hi. Thanks a ton for your thoughts! All very pertinent questions, and some food for thought for us too. Completely agree with your positioning of us trying to be an "off-shore development agency for small tasks". We realized that no one does it - and currently the only route is through freelance platforms, where probably 40 hours is spent to find a dev for a 2 hour job. With respect to project/task management - we are trying to eliminate the project management layer and keep it to a bare minimum. So once a user posts a microtask, there is an account manager and developer assigned automatically basis their existing workload and skillset. Ideally over the long run the developer utilization should still be > 70-80% for it to give us good enough margins, and hopefully we do get there. At this stage, we feel the well defined and constrained nature of the microtasks would work to our advantage, since we really are not too worried about the macro picture of the product. We ask for very clear requirements and would only need to know the files and logic for the microtask. And if the developer is familiar with the tech stack and the code is well structured we have noticed there is not much of a learning curve involved. In larger projects - like in the other agency we run - there are months spent trying to understand the product, figure out the industry, UI/UX, user testing and research and maintenance - all of which lead to a lot of additional overhead, which at many times are not billable to the clients too. Having said that, even we are still understanding the market and testing out the above hypothesis! So fingers crossed! Thanks a ton again for your valuable thoughts.

11 points by swaroooooop 7y ago

Really excited to share a product we have been working on. We launched Boringcodecompany 5 months ago, after successfully running a product development agency for 3 years. A lot of times we would get requests to complete really small tasks (integrate this api, create this report, create this plugin, push the app to the playstores, fix this bug etc) which we would have to turn down, since the entire team was built in a way to handle larger projects. Boringcodecompany focuses on fulfilling these microstasks - any dev work which would take around 1-5 days, with lesser the time, the better. Initially it was an email only service, but we have now built a full fledged product where users can post these development microtasks on the platform, get estimates, track the status and communicate with our team - all through the portal.

2rsf 7y ago

interesting concept, but isn't the overhead in such small projects bigger than the work itself ? It takes time to setup and learn a customer's new environment

swaroooooop 7y ago
Hi. Thanks for your response. So far we have noticed that the time we spend in overheads for these small tasks is very minimal compared to the larger projects we take on through our other agency. Over here it is very cut to the chase, and we only need to know to know the files and logic for the microtask. We are not interested in the overall vision and roadmap of the product. We just cut to the chase. Whereas for larger projects - in addition to tons of project manangement, a lot of time is spent on trying to understand the product, figure out the industry, UI/UX, user testing and research and maintenance.

mswen 7y ago

Interesting branding. Clear value proposition. As essentially an alternate interface/version of an off-shore development agency for small tasks this will succeed or fail over the longer run based on whether the developers are competent and speedy, whether project/task management is done well. One thing that strikes me is how well constrained and defined the micro-tasks are. I find that many of the micro-tasks are micro for someone who is already familiar with the business processes, tech stack and existing code base but as soon as you want to hand it off it becomes more complex and the hand off consumes nearly as much time and effort as just doing the task yourself. In a larger project the cost savings in rates often justifies the additional communication and project management overhead but I wonder if that can still work at a micro level.

swaroooooop 7y ago
Hi. Thanks a ton for your thoughts! All very pertinent questions, and some food for thought for us too. Completely agree with your positioning of us trying to be an "off-shore development agency for small tasks". We realized that no one does it - and currently the only route is through freelance platforms, where probably 40 hours is spent to find a dev for a 2 hour job. With respect to project/task management - we are trying to eliminate the project management layer and keep it to a bare minimum. So once a user posts a microtask, there is an account manager and developer assigned automatically basis their existing workload and skillset. Ideally over the long run the developer utilization should still be > 70-80% for it to give us good enough margins, and hopefully we do get there. At this stage, we feel the well defined and constrained nature of the microtasks would work to our advantage, since we really are not too worried about the macro picture of the product. We ask for very clear requirements and would only need to know the files and logic for the microtask. And if the developer is familiar with the tech stack and the code is well structured we have noticed there is not much of a learning curve involved. In larger projects - like in the other agency we run - there are months spent trying to understand the product, figure out the industry, UI/UX, user testing and research and maintenance - all of which lead to a lot of additional overhead, which at many times are not billable to the clients too. Having said that, even we are still understanding the market and testing out the above hypothesis! So fingers crossed! Thanks a ton again for your valuable thoughts.