
Show HN: Staffjoy – Automated Workforce Scheduling - philip1209
https://www.staffjoy.com
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philip1209
Hi HN, Andrew (andhess) and I co-founded Staffjoy as a side project a year ago
after doing college research scheduling. Today we are launching from
YCombinator Fellowship!

We saw a lot of tools on the market that helped managers to schedule their
hourly workers, but we wanted to build a tool that used technology to do more
than just digitize old workflows. Our whole goal is automating the workforce,
and using math to create optimal shift schedules is our first step.

Andrew and I will be hanging around here for the day - if you have any
question about Staffjoy or YC Fellowship we’re happy to answer them!

~~~
jamasenr
I tried out your demo and while the design is very stunning, I am a little
confused about what I'm supposed to do. Is this meant for big company
workforces (500+ employees), restaurants, any company? Would love some more
insight as to who this is for.

~~~
philip1209
Hey Jamasen,

We have primarily been focused on startups. This means that we have had people
sign up with 20 workers, then end up with >200 after a few months.

We're finding that it takes at 30 workers to recognize the automation benefits
and cost savings. Workers also need to be treated equivalently in terms of
skill. So, a small restaurant workforce where people change roles every day
may not be the best fit.

We think that call centers, fulfillment companies, and retail stores are good
early fits. This is because they need different people at different times, and
the number of people they need changes throughout the day.

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alext0
I've used OptaPlanner recently for this kind of scheduling where planning
affects both people and things.

You don't mention whether your approach is rule-based or constraint-based. I'd
certainly recommend the latter as it allows a bunch of factors to be
considered which are really preferences rather than absolute requirements.

It seems that the preferences quoted above (wanting two consecutive days off,
minimum rest time etc) are examples of a potentially broad range of factors
which typically differ across organisations, or even individuals. They may
also change over time or be subject to external events such as a major
emergency or building power outage.

Resource planning is a broad and long-established field going back to the dawn
of IT. My take is that, while another good planning tool is welcome, the main
obstacle is in businesses understanding the problem and what IT can do to help
rather than a lack of solutions.

~~~
philip1209
Hey Alex. We treat most of these as hard constraints in our model. Some, such
as consecutive days off, we will relax to a soft constraint if it breaks
feasibility. Managers have the ability to modify our shifts as they see fit,
e.g. to assign shifts that create overtime.

Our approach to educating users is to treat our software as "autopilot" \-
they don't have to understand the complexities of resource planning, timing,
etc.

For optaplanner specifically - I am not too familiar, but I believe that the
scheduling that they do is block-based, whereas ours dynamically adjust shift
lengths. This lets us change the coverage hour-by-hour.

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richardbrevig
Bravo on your homepage language. A couple years back I looked into creating
'open shift management' scheduling software for caterers. It appears that
you've created something similar. Though most OSMs send out a notice of
available shifts. It appears you have the employee enter their availability.
Either way, your approach is fresh.

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tkiley
Hey philip - nice work!

Have you looked at going into the healthcare industry in particular?

I've been working in the patient scheduling space for almost ten years, and
people are constantly complaining about the sorry state of staff scheduling in
every part of a hospital.

Healthcare tends to be an infuriatingly unique industry, which means lots of
client hand-holding and industry-specific product concessions, but the flip
side is that healthcare is a great sandbox to play in - large enough to build
a decent business, but specialized enough that you can be a market leader with
a relatively small number of customers.

Hit me up if this sets off your spider sense, I'd love to talk offline.

~~~
philip1209
Hey Tyler,

Medical scheduling is a fascinating place with unique constraints. AnalyticsMD
from last winter's Y Combinator class did an amazing job of building a
forecasting system for emergency rooms.

We are interested in beginning Staffjoy deployments at outpatient medical
facilities immediately. Operating in an actual hospital likely has unique
constraints that we do not support right now.

Down the line though, the medical industry seems like an excellent fit for our
product vision!

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bsbechtel
I noticed there is API documentation, but I only glanced briefly at it. We've
developed our own software for our business, and had >200 people working with
us this past summer. I've been wanting to develop an automated scheduling
solution like this for our managers for a while now, but it hasn't been the
top thing to do on the priority list.

My question is, does the API allow me to automate scheduling within my own
application? We schedule jobs each day, instead of scheduling shifts or hourly
based work. Also, I'm curious about pricing. Thanks.

~~~
philip1209
Hello,

We have not published much documentation about our API, but all of our
applications run on it. We'll be expanding the documentation soon.

Shoot us an email and we can discuss an integration and pricing!
team@staffjoy.com

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Splendor
I'd like to see pricing information before I look at anything else.

~~~
philip1209
We're still figuring out pricing. Different industries have different needs.
For example, 24/7 workforce has different algorithmic demands than a 9-5
business. Contractor-based businesses where workers claim shifts rather than
have them assigned are easier for us to accommodate too.

Shoot us an email and I'm happy to provide a quote for your particular case!

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tcdent
I've never really been a part-time employee, but I know a lot of people who
have, and fluctuating schedules are a major pain point. Human decision-making
really affects the process; people have to fit in somewhere and since one
schedule change has a ripple effect, everyone is affected. The human in-charge
goes for the easiest result, since this is something they have to do
frequently, and everyone ends up unhappy because their schedule is
unpredictable.

~~~
philip1209
We're trying to make Staffjoy as friendly to workers as possible. For many
businesses, when they need workers can vary from week to week. Things like
holidays, seasonal weather, etc can make repeating the same weekly schedule a
hassle.

We accommodate workers by only scheduling them when they are available to
work, making it easy to claim available shifts, and algorithmically-enforcing
things like enough rest time and consecutive days off.

------
dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10433010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10433010).

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tonomics
Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even
performance?

Sure, it's fair to pay for the hours you've worked, but tracking every minute
of work could be overwhelming.

I'm pretty sure that's something many managers would do.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even
performance?_

A lot of people think that, yes. I've seen it happen to some of my friends.
They can't plan their lives more than a week ahead. It's emotionally draining.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-
hour_contract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract)

To be fair, this app seems to allow the employees to specify their preferred
working hours too. I wonder how it's generally used in practice.

~~~
philip1209
We're finding that, due to better control of the workforce and enforcement of
rules, managers have been able to provide more predictability in terms of
hours to workers. This is because we make it easier to guarantee a certain
number of hours each week.

~~~
JonnieCache
The problem is not knowing when those hours are going to fall, so you cant
arrange to do social things more than a week ahead because you don't know if
you're going to be working.

An option to enforce scheduling to be fixed at least n days in advance would
protect the employees, but that goes against the entire point of the app.

Reading again, it looks like your app prioritizes the employees' preferences
over the employers desires when resolving the schedule; that makes sense. You
could set yourself to "not working wednesdays" and then safely organize social
stuff on wednesdays. The problem starts when you dont have that right, as many
workers in the UK now don't.

~~~
philip1209
Jonnie,

On our Manager App, there is a setting for configuring when we generate a
schedule relative to the work week. We've seen users be able to increase this
number over time as they get better at forecasting.

Most of our users right now are on-demand startups, and with contractors that
means that availability is a hard constraint. As we begin to onboard more
employee-based businesses, I expect that we will focus on asking workers for
their preferences in place of availability.

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sharemywin
if your plan is the mom and pop market. You could offer a free tier and you
could monetize it by offering contracted workers for like an extra couple
bucks per hour or something. when they don't have enough staff.

~~~
philip1209
I agree. The only issue is that assigning people to shifts is legitimately a
tough problem to solve, and I'm worried about high support load without much
upside potential from small businesses.

Medium and large-sized businesses known that scheduling is hard and they are
willing to pay for a good solution.

