EXECUTION My startup progress that will buy me a Ferrari

[AppMan]

One of the good developers was back , and asked me just more time , however he never come back , this delay cause me to kind of loose interest in the project , and since my last post I have no big progress.
Plan :
dedicate 30 minute daily to progress in this project .

 

[AppMan]

Something strange happening , every time I give a developer access to my code (repo ) they apologize and say they cant do it , either they find it too hard to start or they think they have the code and they can do something with that , especially I dont sign them NDA , keep hiring and keep running out.
So yesterday I started coding myself, which is not good since as entrepreneur I should not spend my time coding , instead building the business, but since things are moving slow , I have to.
The booming in real estate market also scattered my attention , as the plan was to put some money in real estate, but it is taking too much time from .
I have created a schedule and have to respect this schedule to finish this app .

 

[loop101]

Something strange happening , every time I give a developer access to my code (repo ) they apologize and say they cant do it , either they find it too hard to start or they think they have the code and they can do something with that , especially I dont sign them NDA , keep hiring and keep running out.
So yesterday I started coding myself, which is not good since as entrepreneur I should not spend my time coding , instead building the business, but since things are moving slow , I have to.
The booming in real estate market also scattered my attention , as the plan was to put some money in real estate, but it is taking too much time from .
I have created a schedule and have to respect this schedule to finish this app .

Are you using the cheapest developers? That might be the problem.

 

[AppMan]

Are you using the cheapest developers? That might be the problem.

They are cheap but not the cheapest, however non of them complained about the money, they just find some strange reasons like my father is sick , blah blah blah.

 

[WJK]

I read through your thread and I understand why you feel stuck. You are tired of this very long project. I can't tell you how many times over the years, I've had to jump in and help by doing at least part of the work myself. It's a classic situation for the person building a business. It's all part of being the boss.

(When the cook doesn't show up, the boss must flip the burgers. That's why I never wanted to buy a fast-food shop.)

But, I must say that I'm not too good (or too important) to do anything that I would hire another person to do. I'm in the real estate business. If a toilet needs to be cleaned, where is the brush? I'll do it. If I see trash, I pick it up and properly dispose of it. I also make sure that everyone has the planning and the materials to do their jobs -- and the monies to pay for the workers and those materials. Most of all, I make sure that I'm cheerfully doing all the parts of my job.

No, I don't always get what I think I'm paying for from people who I hire. Yes, there are times I must step in and help with the hands-on tasks -- like you have had to do. I'm saying that you're in good company.

Just don't give up. My Grandmother used to remind me that it's always darkest before the dawn. Keep putting in the time. It all counts.

Also, find some kind of joy in what you are doing. If the happiness in the whole project is contained in a someday-sexy-car, it will be hard to continue to move forward. I have learned that happiness is all about the journey, not the ending. I know it sounds trite, but believing that truism makes the daily activities go better. It's no longer just a grind.

 

[Deleted50669]

Something strange happening , every time I give a developer access to my code (repo ) they apologize and say they cant do it , either they find it too hard to start or they think they have the code and they can do something with that , especially I dont sign them NDA , keep hiring and keep running out.
So yesterday I started coding myself, which is not good since as entrepreneur I should not spend my time coding , instead building the business, but since things are moving slow , I have to.
The booming in real estate market also scattered my attention , as the plan was to put some money in real estate, but it is taking too much time from .
I have created a schedule and have to respect this schedule to finish this app .

Could be a problem of inexperienced hires, or experienced hires that see the way your repo is architected and want no part of it because of lingering bad architectural patterns. Legacy code issues is the number on reason why you never hire bad devs. It will haunt you throughout the duration of your company's existence.

 

[AppMan]

I read through your thread and I understand why you feel stuck. You are tired of this very long project. I can't tell you how many times over the years, I've had to jump in and help by doing at least part of the work myself. It's a classic situation for the person building a business. It's all part of being the boss.

(When the cook doesn't show up, the boss must flip the burgers. That's why I never wanted to buy a fast-food shop.)

But, I must say that I'm not too good (or too important) to do anything that I would hire another person to do. I'm in the real estate business. If a toilet needs to be cleaned, where is the brush? I'll do it. If I see trash, I pick it up and properly dispose of it. I also make sure that everyone has the planning and the materials to do their jobs -- and the monies to pay for the workers and those materials. Most of all, I make sure that I'm cheerfully doing all the parts of my job.

No, I don't always get what I think I'm paying for from people who I hire. Yes, there are times I must step in and help with the hands-on tasks -- like you have had to do. I'm saying that you're in good company.

Just don't give up. My Grandmother used to remind me that it's always darkest before the dawn. Keep putting in the time. It all counts.

Also, find some kind of joy in what you are doing. If the happiness in the whole project is contained in a someday-sexy-car, it will be hard to continue to move forward. I have learned that happiness is all about the journey, not the ending. I know it sounds trite, but believing that truism makes the daily activities go better. It's no longer just a grind.

Thanks for your encouraging answer, I am not ashamed from programming , as my full time job is programing , the reason I dont want to do the programming for this project, is because this is never end task, yes software development is cycle with no ending point, and I dont want to be sinked in this cycle like many developers and they miss building the business .
I am not really doing this for buying expensive car, I love coding and designing app, but if you really slow in getting results you will loose interest over the time , and to be honest after some time you will loose the desire to start even a new project, because deep down you know it will never see the sun light.

Could be a problem of inexperienced hires, or experienced hires that see the way your repo is architected and want no part of it because of lingering bad architectural patterns. Legacy code issues is the number on reason why you never hire bad devs. It will haunt you throughout the duration of your company's existence.

My code follow the best industry practices, whether the backend or the front end , front end I use angular and to make it easy for them I asked them to just work inside one component and use unit test to verify their work , so they dont have to worry about the rest of the project, but even with that they seem not motivated, tasks are easy for any average developer , create form , verify data, send data to backend API , etc.
I dont have legacy code, try to keep the libraries up to date as possible, I have CI and CD in place to verify the PRs. and during interview I ask them all the question that make me sure they can handle the task , like I said I am developer myself so no one can fool me of how much the have experience when it come to tech stack I use.

 

[Deleted50669]

Thanks for your encouraging answer, I am not ashamed from programming , as my full time job is programing , the reason I dont want to do the programming for this project, is because this is never end task, yes software development is cycle with no ending point, and I dont want to be sinked in this cycle like many developers and they miss building the business .
I am not really doing this for buying expensive car, I love coding and designing app, but if you really slow in getting results you will loose interest over the time , and to be honest after some time you will loose the desire to start even a new project, because deep down you know it will never see the sun light.


My code follow the best industry practices, whether the backend or the front end , front end I use angular and to make it easy for them I asked them to just work inside one component and use unit test to verify their work , so they dont have to worry about the rest of the project, but even with that they seem not motivated, tasks are easy for any average developer , create form , verify data, send data to backend API , etc.
I dont have legacy code, try to keep the libraries up to date as possible, I have CI and CD in place to verify the PRs. and during interview I ask them all the question that make me sure they can handle the task , like I said I am developer myself so no one can fool me of how much the have experience when it come to tech stack I use.

Did you give them a hard deadline? Work will always take as long as time is given.

 

[AppMan]

Did you give them a hard deadline? Work will always take as long as time is given.

I give them weekly deadline , by dividing the task to small steps , and each step have to finish within a week . This is a way to make sure there is a progress , if they say this is too much I divide it to smaller part.

 

[Deleted50669]

I give them weekly deadline , by dividing the task to small steps , and each step have to finish within a week . This is a way to make sure there is a progress , if they say this is too much I divide it to smaller part.

Sounds like you're micromanaging, they are probably disengaging because of it. That or they dont know what they're doing. Only two explanations that would make sense really.

 

[AppMan]

Sounds like you're micromanaging, they are probably disengaging because of it. That or they dont know what they're doing. Only two explanations that would make sense really.

No micromanagement, weekly or biweekly deadline tasks is normal in software development companies, if you cant show any progress after week of coding you might have a problem.
it could be they don't know what they are doing, but like I said the tasks I give to them usually are easy to medium in difficulty. I leave architecture and hard parts to myself since I know to such task I need far more experienced and expensive developers.

I also have another theory, I think many freelancers are not looking for serious projects even if it is pay them , they mostly look for simple modifications or small size projects that doesn't require from them to understand all the picture, they simply dont want to invest in these projects as for them it is not worth since it is temp job.

 

[Deleted50669]

No micromanagement, weekly or biweekly deadline tasks is normal in software development companies, if you cant show any progress after week of coding you might have a problem.
it could be they don't know what they are doing, but like I said the tasks I give to them usually are easy to medium in difficulty. I leave architecture and hard parts to myself since I know to such task I need far more experienced and expensive developers.

I also have another theory, I think many freelancers are not looking for serious projects even if it is pay them , they mostly look for simple modifications or small size projects that doesn't require from them to understand all the picture, they simply dont want to invest in these projects as for them it is not worth since it is temp job.

Yea I'd imagine a big portion of the freelancer population is company wash outs honestly. People that couldn't cut it in a serious development role. The really good ones would just start their own firm, the average dev probably sits in some startup or enterprise.

 

[AppMan]

After a week from now, I ll have a junior software developer joining my company, this is the first official hiring I am doing for a local person , the government will be his salary and I have to pay the rest of expenses , in return he will gain experience and get trained with me to built his skills .
He is computer engineer , but not the bright type, he is learning from scratch , but promised he is going to get up to speed and he is already learning now.
The reason I hired :
1- I like the idea that my business have employees (even though it is a fake event in term of real success )
2- his salaries are paid by government for 3 months.
3- I am tired from overseas freelancers who are not serious about the work.
4- I ll gain experience managing and leading other people , which I didnt have it in the official way I ll have it.

Lets see how this experience will be

 

[AppMan]

So this week I hired a new developer, seem really know what he is doing, I am paying him double of what I usually pay for others , but that is to buy some time to finish my project, I want my MVP to be ready soon , so I decided to pay him what he want as long as I am getting more into making my MVP ready.
He delivered his first code , looks clean , however he changed some stuff without consulting with me and that could trigger more work to me , so I asked him to correct them .
Regarding my scripted life, I have moved to a new software company that less micro manage their employees, they are happy to have me since I have a lot of technical and business skills, also I dont feel so exhausted at the end of work day, unlike my previous job when it was sucking all my focus and energy.
So two things now changes :
1- My budget for developers increased in order to speed up building the MVP
2- I have more energy after my day job to work on this project .

Risks :
Paying developers this rate might not be sustainable.

 

[AppMan]

Another big millstone was done today, I have a developer who was able to complete the core part of my software, I paid him a lot, and I have literary to test every thing he did.
While progressing slowly however I am now more near to the end line than the start. I want to complete this project and try to market it , I am sure that will gain me a lot of experience that will open more doors to me. without product on hand you have nothing.
I am also distracted in other kind of investments, but after each evaluation I see doing this software is what really will fullfill all my desires.
The urge to have my own business pushing me to some wrong directions, so I want to control this urge to have the right business .

next steps :
Finish the web version
Package the web version into mobile app for ios and android , I was reading about native script, hopefully it will help me generate android and ios apps quickly.

I also built a good CI /CD on azure, so far the free layer is enough for me , except the SQL database I am paying for. I am not going to make my app cloud first as it seem running apps on cloud is too expensive , especially for startups that are not generating revenue .

 

[AppMan]

Finally 3 developers working on my project
Backend developer
Front end
Fullstack
I can say all of them are mid range developers , usually need my help in advance stuff. and all of them working part time , but collectively I am progressing , I estimate within one month the software should be ready to go to market.
So far not sure who will be my customers since my software can be used by a lot of businesses and personals.
My spending spiked , but I want to reach a point of completion.
I am also learning how to manage team of developers which is a good thing.
Azure DevOps was very helpful for me, I was able to build all the system of development for almost free .

People around me think it is a waste of time and some fake action I am doing to pretend I have a start-up , the thing is they are afraid of its success because they know if it succeed I ll boom financially.

 

[AppMan]

Tomorrow I have meeting with outsourcing company to provide me with a full time developer. although I have currently 3 developers but they are not putting enough hours to move in the speed I was wishing . one of the problem with full time developers is that they waste a lot of time. but I decided to give it 2 weeks trial to see how things will go.

Grants, I keep hearing about grants but so far I couldn't get one, the grant now needed to fund the hires, and I need some hires at this moment.