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Results of: 7 developers, working 24/7 for 90 days, 1 house (in Colombia) (alexander.letmego.com)

66 points by andreshb ↗ HN
Colombian entrepreneur Alex Torrenegra hired a small team of developers and for 90 days, they worked every waking moment, and except for one family weekend break, they did not leave the house. Food and other logistics was taken care of by another company. Here he tells how productive the experience was.

46 comments

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edw519
"...we are pleased to note that there were no fatalities due to programmer-on-programmer violence..."

Good thing you used a framework. Who knows what would have happened if you didn't.

jonknee
I don't want to be that "this would take a weekend!" guy, but 27,000 hours? There must be some hidden complexity somewhere. Excited to try out the product though, sounds like a great idea.
jacquesm
Impressive to put in that kind of hard work for such a long period. I'd be falling asleep at my keyboard after the first month or so.

Also, I wonder how this would stack up against the same thing done on a 'regular' schedule. Of course nobody in their right mind is going to do an 'a/b' test on something like that but it would be interesting to see if this kind of all-out effort really pays off or if there are hidden costs which make it less than what it seems.

billydean
All that work on the backend and, sadly, the lack of time put into the landing page will make it all for naught.

* 7 steps? Why would I want to be involved in something that complex? 3-4 steps max.

* 11 benefits? I'm not going to read or be able to process all that. 3 max, give me something I can quickly understand and tell friends about.

* That screenshot has got to go. Looks amateur at best.

mahmud
Nothing they can't tweak "over the next few weeks". They're not open yet.
calambrac
But they have a landing page explaining what they are, and they're obviously already doing their PR push. How many eyeballs are they getting that, instead of saying "I'll have to come back and check it out when it goes live", are saying "Uh, what?" and won't go back?
ovi256
Never too early to do a good impression.
jrockway
I don't think any of these things are a big deal. Real people don't religiously follow the 37signals blog and shun any company that ignores their principles.

Did my friend recommend this? Does the site save me money? Great, I don't care that there are 7 steps instead of 4.

jlongster
Ugh, that sounds like an awful experience.
andreshb
I don't know if I could do 90 days, but I would like to have that work environment for maybe two weeks. No distractions, and everything else taken care of. Weekends off though.
mseebach
I've though of this as a business. Find a rural place in beautiful surroundings, fit it with a bunch of high quality workstations, a fast internet connection, meeting area, lounge area and small but private sleeping quarters. Fill the fridge with good, healthy food and have someone come in and cook dinner. Breakfast and lunch is self-serve.

I'd market it as a place for get-stuff-done-retreats for entire teams (I thought of the name "CramCamp") rather than the semi-luxury-relaxed setting of traditional conference resorts.

You're in the middle of nowhere, so physical distractions are few, but in nature, so clear-your-mind/10-mins-of-privacy walks are right out the door.

andreshb
Sounds like it might be a good idea, however, you would have to prove cost benefits.
clistctrl
There could be something there, I imagine more than a few companies would pay very generously to trim 7 months from their timeline. Of course the cost of all that white board paint might add up :)

I'm a nerd, I've had my share of overnight music blasting pausing for the occasional ping-pong game pizza eating soda pounding programming sessions. I've even gone several months working > 60 hours a week, but still thats not near the intensity of this. My point is, it sounds like they have all their needs met except for one... for me I have a girl friend to take care of it, what do these guys do?

jlongster
I've always wanted an office in some beautiful, hilly area, like western Virginia. It would mimic a barn, sit on top of a hill, and have huge doors which would stay open facing the beautiful landscape.

I would totally work in your office!

smokey_the_bear
That's pretty much what TrailBehind did. We moved to a house in Lake Tahoe from our small apartment in San Francisco when we started full time development. It's great, rent is half what it would be in San Francisco, and we can hike or ski from our front door when we need a break. The fridge is full of healthy food from Costco, we have to take turns cooking though.
bockris
Agreed. I once worked for 37 days straight. (weekends were 6-8 hours a day, weekdays were at least 12) and it is not something I care to repeat. I was much younger, didn't have a family and was living in a city that I had just moved to and therefore didn't know anyone outside of work. (but I formed some long lasting friendships, a guy I worked with was my best man.)
andreshb
"The Results:

We didn’t reach the beta milestone completely, but we were able to release a limited beta version of the site. We are still developing some of LetMeGo’s traveler-focused features.

We found that the productivity of the team was also three times higher than usual. For those of you familiar with RescueTime, the tool we used, we measure productivity by multiplying average efficiency per week times the tracked time worked per week.

Productivity = Average Efficiency * Work Time

Productivity Working as Usual = 1.22 x 30.9h/week = 37.7/week

Productivity at the LetMeGo Immersion = 1.53 x 73.8h/week = 112.91/week

Ratio: 1:2.99

Given that the productivity and the cost increased side by side, we can then conclude that the biggest benefits is that we saved seven months of development. If it wasn’t for the Immersion, a limited beta of LetMeGo would have not been released yet and the full site would have not been launched until the second quarter of 2010."

swombat
What exactly is the point of quoting part of the article without adding any comment of your own?
felideon
A little off topic but: Colombia as in the country? It seems the company is based off the New York area but all the names/faces look Colombian. Is the dev team located in Colombia?

Just curious since this is the first time I've heard of a "Colombian startup".

andreshb
This is Colombia as in the country. Bogota, Colombia. Alex Torrenegra is Colombian but also lives in NY. This was developed in Colombia by Colombians for the rest of the world.

I promise this will not be the last time you hear about a Colombian startup. (Disclosure: I am Colombian too)

DannoHung
How do they capture travelers? Also, how do they convince travelers to go to a particular place?
smithjchris
I'm not sure this is ethical or sane. In Europe we have working time regulations and that is for a good reason.

Seems to be another attempt to justify start-up whipping tactics to cash in quick rather than build a well-backed product with staff who won't hate you.

numbchuckskills
This is nothing to be proud of. I'm surprised they are willing to broadcast that they: - we're able to convince some amateur developers to work slave camp hours - didn't hit the goal - on top of these two, they spent 3x what they normally do.

I can't see http://about.letmego.com/letmego/content/career_opportunitie... getting many visits.

Just my opinion of course. What would the inverse of this scenario be? A start-up that has remote workers and saves 3x the amount of money of keeping everyone in one spot, has flex hours, and hits the targets.

That would be something worth blogging about.

swombat
Erm... Doing 27'000 hours of development in private, without any customers beta-testing early versions of the site, seems completely insane. Why would you ever do that? I mean, if you really don't have a choice at all, because the project is that big, then fair enough (but in that case, don't do this as your first start-up - do it later when you have access to funds and people).

Imho the CTO/CEO of this start-up should have figured out a way to get something out there and test the concept for at most 1/10th of that cost. Much smarter, and cheaper, than trying to cram developers like chickens in a coop.

jlongster
Yes. In light of your last sentence, the attitude of the article is what most developers are fighting. We are not slaves to be calculated into a cost efficiency equation.
torrenegra
Hi! Alexander Torrenegra here :) - First of all, thank you all for reading the post. I had no idea it was going to become so popular and controversial.

Swombat: You seemed to assumed that LetMeGo is my 1st startup. Actually, LetMeGo is my 4th startup. Not all of them have been successful, though.

27,000 hours may sound like a lot, but that is just a fraction of the time our competitors have invested in their software. Although you can be successful in other industries with very simple software, that is not usually the case in the lodging industry. I may be wrong, of course :S

breck
The interesting thing was it was done in Colombia. If you read the job ad it pays 30,000,000 Colombian pesos, which equals ~$15,000 (or $5k/month per developer).

Which is pretty damn cheap for a 40/hr week developer, nevermind 80.

So it's even smarter than at first appears.

edit: Colombia.

alexitosrv
Colombia, South America is quite different to Columbia

(sorry, just nitpicking a little ... :)

breck
i should really know better. (my gf is Colombian) :)
jlees
Add a few staged infights and you pretty much have Hacker Big Brother meets Shattered (reality TV show where participants didn't sleep for a week), with a dash of Apprentice (you'd have to throw out a coder after each week), Dragons' Den (have nice closeups of bad feature pitches) & even Startup.com.

God, Channel 4'd be all over this. I'd best pitch the idea to them quick!

andreshb
I like it a lot. When I first heard of it that was my first thought. They had a ustream, but it was not as exciting as I thought.
run4yourlives
Hopefully helpful critique regarding the business itself:

1. I'm not sure about Americans, but "lodging" translates very poorly for this Canadian. It's not that I don't understand it, it's just that people don't really use the word here. "Rooms" or "Beds" would be a better bet.

2. I'm questioning why I as a traveller would bother to "bid" on a room that I may know nothing about. Seems like a win for the hotelier, but a lose for me. I can stay at a hostel or hotel chain and have a reasonable expectation of what to expect. I can't do that at a B&B, but I can compare prices to get an idea of what would be up scale and what would be bargain basement. This site disables that, and brags about it. I really don't need to save $5 that badly.

About the process:

I think - humbly - that sometimes us geeks can get so caught up in the process of how we're building something that we lose sight of what it is we're actually building. This doesn't matter when you're making lego structures as a hobby, but it's completely relevant when you're trying to design a business.

How you do it is - in the end - largely irrelevant. Yes you can argue about productivity or the best way to get the most hours out of a day, but extremes aside it is not going to be what matters to your customer. I don't care if you used agile and got your product up in 10 hours or if it was a disastrous waterfall plan that needed to be redrawn 6 times and took 6 years to complete. I care about the product, and what it can do for me.

In this case (and I mean this respectfully) I get the impression that the process was the focus and the product was the afterthought. There's nothing wrong with that specifically, but it certainly shows through.

torrenegra
Thank you for reading the post. I must clarify that travelers are not bidding. Instead, the lodgings bid for the itineraries of the travelers.

Additionally, we, at LetMeGo, use the word "lodging" because we are not only limited to hotels, beds, or rooms. We also cover vacation rentals, tents, and pretty much any place where you can sleep. "Lodging", which is the abstraction of all these, is not a common word because most online services only offer one type of lodging: hotels, or rooms, or vacation rentals, etc. That, hopefully, will change, as more options equals more competition and lower prices.

run4yourlives
>Instead, the lodgings bid for the itineraries of the travellers.

Ah, I see. That wasn't evident to me. The way it was described seemed to be that travellers were bidding on open rooms and highest bid won.

Your way is interesting, but I'm not sure what benefit it offers me as a traveller. In order to drive the service you'd need to create a market of travellers eager to provide the products to bid on. I'm having a hard time understanding why I would do that on the surface.

Also, I understand why you use the word lodging, I just don't think it fits. I need to know as a consumer exactly how I can benefit from your product. If I'm confronted with a word that I need to define, it delays my understanding of the product and increases the chance that I not use it.

Regardless, good luck to you. I wish you the best of successes.

alex_c
From the benefits on the job description page:

http://alexander.letmego.com/2009/01/29/very-special-90-day-...

I see no mention of exercise, and:

* Unlimited food and beverages, including of course Red Bull and coffee.

* If interested, we will offer you healthy and balanced food. (emphasis mine)

I have to wonder how productivity would be affected if they offered an environment just as immersive, but a bit more focused on health. Healthy mind in healthy body, right? I don't think I could last more than a couple of weeks.

mrbgty
So were requirements, design, coding, debugging and testing all crammed into this 90 days?

I'm guessing that system is going to be very difficult to maintain. You need some downtime for designs to settle in your mind and to be sure that it's going to work.

If you're going 24/7 for 90 days, I expect the design to be poor, the code to be hacked/patched, the bug count per loc to be very high and the test coverage to be minimal.

Hexstream
Ugh. Andres' transformation (photos at bottom) reminds me of "faces of meth".
le_dominator
So basically, you screwed up your scheduling, your project management and your resource allocation. As a last ditch effort to save the project you created a sweatshop and bandied it around under the euphemism of "immersion".

Instead of taking personal responsibility for entrepreneurial, management, and financial shortcomings, you've degraded people's health and sanity.

Going so far as to mock these people who built your product by showing before and after pictures of them in a state of decline and then presenting that to us as "humor" is a bit much.

I'm insulted and ashamed at the way this operation was carried out. Hacker News is supposed to be a community of the forward thinking, not those who wish to revert to the abuses of the industrial era.

robryan
There is no partial payment plan for those who quit or get fired before day 90 of coding is reached.

Wonder what the reason is to load the last payment and underpay on the first 2, more pressure to push to complete the project at the end?

dantheman
I really question the productivity measures used in this article. All time in front of a monitor is not equal. Sure they tripled the amount of time they were at their desk -- how did it impact the quality of the code, the abstractions used, the overall design, etc.

I know that after some really long days, I look back at what I wrote and am like WTF did I do.