6 ms·

One of the Most Time Consuming Startup Roadblocks

39 points by pragmatic 17y ago

tdoggette 17y ago
The value of this depends on whether you can afford to make that trade of money for time.
- DenisM 17y ago
  Can you afford not to?
  - aditya 17y ago
    Depends on what your goal is - if you've got the skills to do everything and/or are happy picking them up as you go along, while building your business - and in no hurry, then go for it...
  - jsonscripter 17y ago
    What happens when the outsource work isn't to your quality standards? You've wasted a lot of time already, and now you have to dispute it and waste some more time.
    - RK 17y ago
      That's how my friend's service-based startup died before it even got out of the gate. He tried to outsource way too much overseas, not realizing the extremely low quality of work he would get (e.g. copy writing). He had to have a lot of it redone and burned through all of his cash before he got anywhere. (And he had a pretty weak business plan in the first place.)
JeremyChase 17y ago
If the time required to write that perl script was longer than writing an email you should look into a different field.
- delano 17y ago
  Not if it takes you away from a task that requires your specific attention. Anyway, this kind of delegation doubles as practice for managing larger teams and companies. You need to get used to not doing every little thing.
  - JeremyChase 17y ago
    I would argue that writing the email will require just as much thought because you have to define what you want. Regarding delegation, it is a good point. Knowing when do do something yourself is always a challenge. In my opinion, these tasks are far too trivial for a 'hacker' to give to someone else. Personally, I have a directory named "doodles" that is full of 2 or 3 line programs that do this kind of thing.
    - Elessar 17y ago
      The point of the article is this: There are many small tasks that you could do, but they are time-consuming and they are not your forte. Knowing when to delegate a task and when not to is something that comes from experience, and anyone working in a startup should do well to know that they are not alone in the world. So if you're great at Perl, that's fantastic. Go ahead, hack it in a minute or two. But for that guy who hasn't written Perl in a year, might need a google search or two to remind himself of the syntax, might even need to update his packages... well guess what? Maybe it's time to delegate and focus on other things you are even better at.
- ericb 17y ago
  If you think you are correctly estimating how long the script will take to write, and your estimate is "less time than writing an email," you should look into managing programmers in a large, clumsy corporation.
  - JeremyChase 17y ago
    I am quite serious here. You already have the URI's, and you should be able to write this script in under 2 minutes. This reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 The amount of time spent defining what you want is surely going to be equal to this.
delano 17y ago
"Micro-outsourcing" daily tasks isn't everyone's cup of tea but there are absolutely huge gains to be had if done carefully. Not just for technical and business tasks, but personal ones as well (cleaning, cooking, errands, etc...). I find it really difficult to maintain focus when switching contexts from one task to another so for me it's really valuable to be able to fire off a brief email to hand off stuff that doesn't require my direct attention.
moe 17y ago
To me this looks like the old outsourcing myth in a new(?) disguise. The question remains: How do you find sufficiently qualified and trustworthy partners who are willing to remain on standby for tiny one-off tasks like these? Moreover many of his bullets just make no sense whatsoever. How am I supposed to outsource "Fixing Post-Launch Bugs" (on my code-base)? Creating Unit Tests? Database Development? I have personally witnessed more than one startup fail spectactularly because the CEO drank a bit too much of the outsourcing kool-aid. Over here in the real world it still takes quite a bit of time to bring a contractor up to speed, even on small tasks. In my expirience outsourcing makes more sense for slightly bigger chunks, to justify the overhead, instead of the teeny weeny bits.
- rwalling 17y ago
  >How do you find sufficiently qualified and trustworthy partners who are willing to remain on standby for tiny one-off tasks like these? You spend time up front to find them. With a few hours of up-front work it's not very difficult. >Moreover many of his bullets just make no sense whatsoever. How am I supposed to outsource "Fixing Post-Launch Bugs" (on my code-base)? Creating Unit Tests? Database Development? We've outsourced post-launch bugs to a very talented developer who works for us 2-8 hours per week depending on the bugs we find. Creating unit tests is one of the easiest development tasks to outsource, and you'll find out pretty quickly whether your object model makes sense when you assign this to someone who didn't build the objects themselves. >I have personally witnessed more than one startup fail spectactularly because the CEO drank a bit too much of the outsourcing kool-aid. But that doesn't mean outsourcing is bogus, or that it doesn't work. >it still takes quite a bit of time to bring a contractor up to speed, even on small tasks. If you're working on a credit card processing system you are correct due to the complexity. But most apps are not this complex, and you'd be surprised how quickly a solid developer can start fixing bugs on a system they've never seen before if they are talented and the architecture is sound.
  - moe 17y ago
    You spend time up front to find them. With a few hours of up-front work it's not very difficult. Well, but upfront I don't even know the tasks that may crop up in the future. And once I encounter them I can often not be sure whether they're one-off or recurring. I just don't see how this is any quicker (or different, tbh) to just finding people when you need them - and hiring them or contracting to them. The author apparently wants me to avoid hiring people and contract out everything instead. I have never seen that work on such a fine-grained level. I'd need a PA just to spend the time of finding and managing all those micro-contractors. But that doesn't mean outsourcing is bogus, or that it doesn't work. Well, I didn't say it wouldn't. I'm just saying it was quite overhyped for a while ("just outsource everything to India") and this article seems to beat that dead horse again, from a slightly different angle. We've outsourced post-launch bugs to a very talented developer who works for us 2-8 hours per week depending on the bugs we find. Sorry, but that sounds absurd to me, unless your app is of the truly trivial kind. Bugfixing normally requires a deep understanding of the codebase and is exactly the kind of work that makes not much sense to outsource. And how is a "post-launch bug" different from a "pre-launch bug", btw? If you're working on a credit card processing system you are correct due to the complexity. But most apps are not this complex, and you'd be surprised how quickly a solid developer can start fixing bugs on a system they've never seen before if they are talented and the architecture is sound. If it's honestly cheaper to have an external contractor learn your codebase and fix your bugs, than to have your in-house staff take care of that, then I think you have much bigger problems in first place.
EGF 17y ago
I like the idea of drip outsourcing but one common problem I have run into, and seen others have trouble with, is finding the right providers. The hourly rates are not the problem, but the quality and source of the worker. I am location agnostic, but finding the source to do the work is sometimes a huge part of the time suck that happens when you are looking to to drip outsourcing.
- 3pt14159 17y ago
  Choose 2: Quality, speed, price. I do some freelance work, but not for $3 an hour.
  - EGF 17y ago
    This is great - I just wrote about exactly that topic - choosing 2 (but you can't have all three) on my own blog.
- prpon 17y ago
  I agree with what you are saying. You could download images in an hour or design a logo in 2. Unless you are planning on releasing websites by the dozen or have existing relationship with providers, you probably will spend more time, fret and expend more mental energy on whether they will deliver.
tc 17y ago
He thinks this needed a perl script or defining the task by email for an assistant? Seriously? $ wget -i urls.txt I understand that this may have been a contrived example, but many of these foreign VA stories sound pretty contrived. Having worked with foreign and remote staff, I know that it is what you're able to make of it. But at the same time, there are some natural hurdles to doing this effectively at a small scale. It'd be easy to spend a lot of time managing the process, doing quality review, and providing feedback. When you can scale delegation, or when you're talking about things outside of your skill set, then there is of course no question.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jgamman 17y ago
i agree with him - i can't code at all so i was forced to go this route to build some projects for my last position. i invested a lot of time in the specs to start with and as the contractor and i got more comfortable with what 'success looked like' it got a lot easier and soon he was suggesting improvements or implementing some features on the fly (you gotta earn that kind of trust). the key for me was to make sure each set of tasks was distinct and i could actually test something that works each week - ended up with 4-5 solid iterations before we finished and the weekly turnaround let me get a lot of good feedback from others.

39 points by pragmatic 17y ago

tdoggette 17y ago

The value of this depends on whether you can afford to make that trade of money for time.

DenisM 17y ago
Can you afford not to?
- aditya 17y ago
  Depends on what your goal is - if you've got the skills to do everything and/or are happy picking them up as you go along, while building your business - and in no hurry, then go for it...
- jsonscripter 17y ago
  What happens when the outsource work isn't to your quality standards? You've wasted a lot of time already, and now you have to dispute it and waste some more time.
  - RK 17y ago
    That's how my friend's service-based startup died before it even got out of the gate. He tried to outsource way too much overseas, not realizing the extremely low quality of work he would get (e.g. copy writing). He had to have a lot of it redone and burned through all of his cash before he got anywhere. (And he had a pretty weak business plan in the first place.)

JeremyChase 17y ago

If the time required to write that perl script was longer than writing an email you should look into a different field.

delano 17y ago
Not if it takes you away from a task that requires your specific attention. Anyway, this kind of delegation doubles as practice for managing larger teams and companies. You need to get used to not doing every little thing.
- JeremyChase 17y ago
  I would argue that writing the email will require just as much thought because you have to define what you want. Regarding delegation, it is a good point. Knowing when do do something yourself is always a challenge. In my opinion, these tasks are far too trivial for a 'hacker' to give to someone else. Personally, I have a directory named "doodles" that is full of 2 or 3 line programs that do this kind of thing.
  - Elessar 17y ago
    The point of the article is this: There are many small tasks that you could do, but they are time-consuming and they are not your forte. Knowing when to delegate a task and when not to is something that comes from experience, and anyone working in a startup should do well to know that they are not alone in the world. So if you're great at Perl, that's fantastic. Go ahead, hack it in a minute or two. But for that guy who hasn't written Perl in a year, might need a google search or two to remind himself of the syntax, might even need to update his packages... well guess what? Maybe it's time to delegate and focus on other things you are even better at.
ericb 17y ago
If you think you are correctly estimating how long the script will take to write, and your estimate is "less time than writing an email," you should look into managing programmers in a large, clumsy corporation.
- JeremyChase 17y ago
  I am quite serious here. You already have the URI's, and you should be able to write this script in under 2 minutes. This reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 The amount of time spent defining what you want is surely going to be equal to this.

delano 17y ago

"Micro-outsourcing" daily tasks isn't everyone's cup of tea but there are absolutely huge gains to be had if done carefully. Not just for technical and business tasks, but personal ones as well (cleaning, cooking, errands, etc...). I find it really difficult to maintain focus when switching contexts from one task to another so for me it's really valuable to be able to fire off a brief email to hand off stuff that doesn't require my direct attention.

moe 17y ago

To me this looks like the old outsourcing myth in a new(?) disguise. The question remains: How do you find sufficiently qualified and trustworthy partners who are willing to remain on standby for tiny one-off tasks like these? Moreover many of his bullets just make no sense whatsoever. How am I supposed to outsource "Fixing Post-Launch Bugs" (on my code-base)? Creating Unit Tests? Database Development? I have personally witnessed more than one startup fail spectactularly because the CEO drank a bit too much of the outsourcing kool-aid. Over here in the real world it still takes quite a bit of time to bring a contractor up to speed, even on small tasks. In my expirience outsourcing makes more sense for slightly bigger chunks, to justify the overhead, instead of the teeny weeny bits.

rwalling 17y ago
>How do you find sufficiently qualified and trustworthy partners who are willing to remain on standby for tiny one-off tasks like these? You spend time up front to find them. With a few hours of up-front work it's not very difficult. >Moreover many of his bullets just make no sense whatsoever. How am I supposed to outsource "Fixing Post-Launch Bugs" (on my code-base)? Creating Unit Tests? Database Development? We've outsourced post-launch bugs to a very talented developer who works for us 2-8 hours per week depending on the bugs we find. Creating unit tests is one of the easiest development tasks to outsource, and you'll find out pretty quickly whether your object model makes sense when you assign this to someone who didn't build the objects themselves. >I have personally witnessed more than one startup fail spectactularly because the CEO drank a bit too much of the outsourcing kool-aid. But that doesn't mean outsourcing is bogus, or that it doesn't work. >it still takes quite a bit of time to bring a contractor up to speed, even on small tasks. If you're working on a credit card processing system you are correct due to the complexity. But most apps are not this complex, and you'd be surprised how quickly a solid developer can start fixing bugs on a system they've never seen before if they are talented and the architecture is sound.
- moe 17y ago
  You spend time up front to find them. With a few hours of up-front work it's not very difficult. Well, but upfront I don't even know the tasks that may crop up in the future. And once I encounter them I can often not be sure whether they're one-off or recurring. I just don't see how this is any quicker (or different, tbh) to just finding people when you need them - and hiring them or contracting to them. The author apparently wants me to avoid hiring people and contract out everything instead. I have never seen that work on such a fine-grained level. I'd need a PA just to spend the time of finding and managing all those micro-contractors. But that doesn't mean outsourcing is bogus, or that it doesn't work. Well, I didn't say it wouldn't. I'm just saying it was quite overhyped for a while ("just outsource everything to India") and this article seems to beat that dead horse again, from a slightly different angle. We've outsourced post-launch bugs to a very talented developer who works for us 2-8 hours per week depending on the bugs we find. Sorry, but that sounds absurd to me, unless your app is of the truly trivial kind. Bugfixing normally requires a deep understanding of the codebase and is exactly the kind of work that makes not much sense to outsource. And how is a "post-launch bug" different from a "pre-launch bug", btw? If you're working on a credit card processing system you are correct due to the complexity. But most apps are not this complex, and you'd be surprised how quickly a solid developer can start fixing bugs on a system they've never seen before if they are talented and the architecture is sound. If it's honestly cheaper to have an external contractor learn your codebase and fix your bugs, than to have your in-house staff take care of that, then I think you have much bigger problems in first place.

EGF 17y ago

I like the idea of drip outsourcing but one common problem I have run into, and seen others have trouble with, is finding the right providers. The hourly rates are not the problem, but the quality and source of the worker. I am location agnostic, but finding the source to do the work is sometimes a huge part of the time suck that happens when you are looking to to drip outsourcing.

3pt14159 17y ago
Choose 2: Quality, speed, price. I do some freelance work, but not for $3 an hour.
- EGF 17y ago
  This is great - I just wrote about exactly that topic - choosing 2 (but you can't have all three) on my own blog.
prpon 17y ago
I agree with what you are saying. You could download images in an hour or design a logo in 2. Unless you are planning on releasing websites by the dozen or have existing relationship with providers, you probably will spend more time, fret and expend more mental energy on whether they will deliver.

tc 17y ago

He thinks this needed a perl script or defining the task by email for an assistant? Seriously? $ wget -i urls.txt I understand that this may have been a contrived example, but many of these foreign VA stories sound pretty contrived. Having worked with foreign and remote staff, I know that it is what you're able to make of it. But at the same time, there are some natural hurdles to doing this effectively at a small scale. It'd be easy to spend a lot of time managing the process, doing quality review, and providing feedback. When you can scale delegation, or when you're talking about things outside of your skill set, then there is of course no question.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jgamman 17y ago

i agree with him - i can't code at all so i was forced to go this route to build some projects for my last position. i invested a lot of time in the specs to start with and as the contractor and i got more comfortable with what 'success looked like' it got a lot easier and soon he was suggesting improvements or implementing some features on the fly (you gotta earn that kind of trust). the key for me was to make sure each set of tasks was distinct and i could actually test something that works each week - ended up with 4-5 solid iterations before we finished and the weekly turnaround let me get a lot of good feedback from others.