4 ms·

Ask HN: Most amount of time you spent on a project with nothing to show for it?

13 points by act9 12y ago

Edit: The question was meant for personal unpaid time, not a company funded project that was scrapped.

_random_ 12y ago
Months.
_cheese_ 12y ago
A person I know quite well explained to me how his company hired a team of six or so developers to work on a project full-time. They worked on the project for about about two years before feeling ready to showcase it to clients. Once they showcased it to clients they realized their solution was far too generic for its intended application and it had to be scrapped. Huge amounts of time and money lost due to bad project management and inability to meet market needs. The solution ended up so generic that it could not really fit the specific role it was needed for. Its intended market requires a high amount of attention to specificity and detail.
tomasz207 12y ago
At university, I spent almost a thousand dollars on an espresso machine and a few hundred dollars on cups. I was going to open up a to-the-classroom coffee delivery service. I just never pulled the trigger. I've had really good espresso every morning though, and the cups are reusable.
pistoriusp 12y ago
I spent 11 months writing an app, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6Z81dMzhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6Z81dMzhc, and sold less and sold less than 100 copies. It was probably too much to take on as my second app... I did learn a lot though.
- coryl 12y ago
  Make it free now and see where it goes?
pmurphyirl 12y ago
A whole summer mid-college in my late teens (three months of prime time it turned out!) coding a cloud e-learning platform for the industrial training vertical (what a Cornerstone does today basically) for a partner who then didn't sell any product, disappeared and I had to go and sue - cost me both time and legal fees!
eropple 12y ago
Years. I've made a lot of games not up to the level of quality I want to be associated with. They're in a graveyard on my NAS. I don't buy into the "it doesn't have to be good, it has to be done"; for me it has to be good and done to feel okay having my name on it. But I'm getting much better at this, and am working on a project I feel good about.
binarysolo 12y ago
Worked with a friend and his family's privately owned SMB to monetize an additional revenue stream. Spent 6 months part time and used a bunch of social currency to get a Fortune-100 company on board as a paying customer for MVP. Asked to signed a contract as a consultant so they could "properly compensate me" -- trusted and signed and got kicked out the next day + had a gag order in the agreement so I couldn't talk publically about it. Lost a friend and learned a big life lesson there. The project floundered after that; it was my heart's desire to make it work even if I wasn't there, but they just shuttered it without letting me know. I emailed them to give me some peace and closure by at least letting me know why they did what they did but never got a response. I still see this "friend" due to a common-ish social circle. Bad things happen some times -- I haven't lost the ability to trust and have faith in people; my opinion of lawyers and contracts that protect me have increased though.
richardjdare 12y ago
My first game for an early mobile platform (2003) took me six months and sold 600 copies. My latest iPhone release took a couple of years of part time work, and doesn't look like it will even approach that. It won't even cover the cost of repairs I made to my macbook during development. I am proud of my games, I only ever wanted to be a game designer but right now I'm feeling wary of expending so much effort again for so little reward or even recognition.
- alphagenerator 12y ago
  Mind posting the URL to your iOS game? I would like to try it out.
  - richardjdare 12y ago
    http://antigengame.com http://antigengame.com
    - alphagenerator 12y ago
      Well, I bought the game and I gave it a shot. I like indie-productions like this. The game is fun but I encountered a little snag where, somehow, it'd keep asking me if I wanted to resume the game constantly. I must be doing something non-standard with my thumbs and this takes away from the experience. Granted, I play this on an iPad at 1x-mode, so the form factor difference might be the reason for the constant pausing.
      - richardjdare 12y ago
        Hmm, Not sure what the problem would be. Are you accidentally touching the top right corner of the screen? Thats where the pause button is, there's a little video player pause icon up there. I made that whole corner into a pause button so it's easy to hit when your playing on the iPhone
        alphagenerator 12y ago
krapp 12y ago
I've had some web app projects i've been playing with for a couple of years now - i've completely rewritten some from scratch several times over (and I have yet to actually finish the custom framework I was going to make for my personal website which has been useless since about 2011.) And if you count Game Maker projects that i've started, stopped, and restarted again, and given up on again... maybe five or six years? Although with my tendency to ignore projects entirely for weeks or months at a time, it's not as bad as it seems but still there's a long line of failed projects behind me. Really, what do I have to show for anything? Not much.

13 points by act9 12y ago

Edit: The question was meant for personal unpaid time, not a company funded project that was scrapped.

_random_ 12y ago

Months.

_cheese_ 12y ago

A person I know quite well explained to me how his company hired a team of six or so developers to work on a project full-time. They worked on the project for about about two years before feeling ready to showcase it to clients. Once they showcased it to clients they realized their solution was far too generic for its intended application and it had to be scrapped. Huge amounts of time and money lost due to bad project management and inability to meet market needs. The solution ended up so generic that it could not really fit the specific role it was needed for. Its intended market requires a high amount of attention to specificity and detail.

tomasz207 12y ago

At university, I spent almost a thousand dollars on an espresso machine and a few hundred dollars on cups. I was going to open up a to-the-classroom coffee delivery service. I just never pulled the trigger. I've had really good espresso every morning though, and the cups are reusable.

pistoriusp 12y ago

I spent 11 months writing an app, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6Z81dMzhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6Z81dMzhc, and sold less and sold less than 100 copies. It was probably too much to take on as my second app... I did learn a lot though.

coryl 12y ago
Make it free now and see where it goes?

pmurphyirl 12y ago

A whole summer mid-college in my late teens (three months of prime time it turned out!) coding a cloud e-learning platform for the industrial training vertical (what a Cornerstone does today basically) for a partner who then didn't sell any product, disappeared and I had to go and sue - cost me both time and legal fees!

eropple 12y ago

Years. I've made a lot of games not up to the level of quality I want to be associated with. They're in a graveyard on my NAS. I don't buy into the "it doesn't have to be good, it has to be done"; for me it has to be good and done to feel okay having my name on it. But I'm getting much better at this, and am working on a project I feel good about.

binarysolo 12y ago

Worked with a friend and his family's privately owned SMB to monetize an additional revenue stream. Spent 6 months part time and used a bunch of social currency to get a Fortune-100 company on board as a paying customer for MVP. Asked to signed a contract as a consultant so they could "properly compensate me" -- trusted and signed and got kicked out the next day + had a gag order in the agreement so I couldn't talk publically about it. Lost a friend and learned a big life lesson there. The project floundered after that; it was my heart's desire to make it work even if I wasn't there, but they just shuttered it without letting me know. I emailed them to give me some peace and closure by at least letting me know why they did what they did but never got a response. I still see this "friend" due to a common-ish social circle. Bad things happen some times -- I haven't lost the ability to trust and have faith in people; my opinion of lawyers and contracts that protect me have increased though.

richardjdare 12y ago

My first game for an early mobile platform (2003) took me six months and sold 600 copies. My latest iPhone release took a couple of years of part time work, and doesn't look like it will even approach that. It won't even cover the cost of repairs I made to my macbook during development. I am proud of my games, I only ever wanted to be a game designer but right now I'm feeling wary of expending so much effort again for so little reward or even recognition.

alphagenerator 12y ago
Mind posting the URL to your iOS game? I would like to try it out.
- richardjdare 12y ago
  http://antigengame.com http://antigengame.com
  - alphagenerator 12y ago
    Well, I bought the game and I gave it a shot. I like indie-productions like this. The game is fun but I encountered a little snag where, somehow, it'd keep asking me if I wanted to resume the game constantly. I must be doing something non-standard with my thumbs and this takes away from the experience. Granted, I play this on an iPad at 1x-mode, so the form factor difference might be the reason for the constant pausing.
    - richardjdare 12y ago
      Hmm, Not sure what the problem would be. Are you accidentally touching the top right corner of the screen? Thats where the pause button is, there's a little video player pause icon up there. I made that whole corner into a pause button so it's easy to hit when your playing on the iPhone
      - alphagenerator 12y ago

krapp 12y ago

I've had some web app projects i've been playing with for a couple of years now - i've completely rewritten some from scratch several times over (and I have yet to actually finish the custom framework I was going to make for my personal website which has been useless since about 2011.) And if you count Game Maker projects that i've started, stopped, and restarted again, and given up on again... maybe five or six years? Although with my tendency to ignore projects entirely for weeks or months at a time, it's not as bad as it seems but still there's a long line of failed projects behind me. Really, what do I have to show for anything? Not much.