

Show HN: iDoneThis+AwesomenessReminders, Get Work Done, Get Awesomeness - rguzman
https://idonethis.com/awesomeness/

======
vlokshin
I'm going to be as clear as can be here --

AwesomenessReminders deservers absolutely ZERO positive press and I hope
you're VERY careful in working with Zach Burt.

He underpaid my team significantly for good work (kept my most senior JS guru
busy for a month, only to underpay by a LOT), and was a hassle and a half to
deal with. The kid needs to grow up and learn how to run a business
respectfully -- not just go through cycles of picking up contracted devs,
getting 1-2 months of work done from them, then disappearing and avoiding
paying out what he owes.

Even after he underpaid my team for the work, his check bounced. The guy is
pathetic. (full disclosure, he sent the underpaid amount again + 10$ for the
bounced check fee I incurred)

When I contacted other devs that worked with him on the same projects, they
said that they didn't get paid at all. I guess the underpayment was the best
result of dealing with this retard.

Please be VERY careful in working with him, and HN -- please avoid giving a
piece of shit any positive press.

I have nothing negative to say about iDoneThis, and I wish you guys the best
of luck, but I have absolutely nothing positive to say about Zach Burt and his
projects. Please proceed with caution.

~~~
achille
+1 on this. Had a similar bad experience as a customer of Aw.Rem. After a few
months of charging $10/month, Zach increased the price to $40 and cut the
calls to my girlfriend roughly twice a week -- instead of every day.

That's fair enough. I didn't mind all that much. But then a few month later
the calls stopped alltogether, then Zach went in and cancelled the $10
subscription manually on Paypal.

I didn't complain about the frequency of calls, but sent an email asking about
the cancellation. That went unanswered. Sorry but this guy doesn't seem
responsible.

And one more insight from this interview:
[http://www.twilio.com/blog/2010/12/awesomeness-reminders-
mak...](http://www.twilio.com/blog/2010/12/awesomeness-reminders-make-a-great-
holiday-gift.html):

'...I made all the phone calls while I was high...'

~~~
ZachS
Wait. What? I'm gonna need some deets here. Please provide more context to the
story of your paying strangers to call up your girlfriend every day.

-What did you have them say? -Did she find your delegation of affection to a paid third party extremely bizarre and off-putting? -What was her reaction to only receiving encouraging calls from strangers twice a week rather than every day?

~~~
achille2
Awesomeness Reminders was a service introduced at $10/month that would call
you (or someone else) once a day to say "You're Awesome" -- as a way to cheer
you up.

I opted to have this call go to my girlfriend. Didn't tell her anything. She's
a very girly girl, and loves when anyone says "Your shoes look pretty etc".
She thought it was quirky, funny, but then liked getting the awesome calls.

After a while, the daily calls became biweekly calls. Then I got this email:
<http://i.imgur.com/iqGmE.png>

------
jwwest
Hate to be negative, but doing your job doesn't merit a trophy. Millenials
already have a bad reputation for needing constant rewards.

~~~
rguzman
current research suggests that the feeling of making constant progress and
being appreciated at work are the most important motivator for people.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>

~~~
dmix
That has more to do with getting respect from your employers and having the
feeling you're doing something valuable.

It's not merely compliments.

~~~
skore
Yeah, let me join in here calling bullshit on this.

If you need to _put a service in place_ to remind you how "awesome" you are,
you simply lack confidence. No service in the whole wide world will give you
confidence - it can only, temporarily, simulate what it would be like if you
had confidence. Ergo - the minute you stop having a service remind you how
"awesome" you are, you will go back to wondering. If you need a service to
tell your employees that they are "awesome", you are inconsiderate and
emotionally dead.

Real confidence is produced through the direct exchange of appreciation
between two actual humans who care about each other.

I'm rarely this scathing, but _this_ is garbage. It's cargo cult. It's
pathetic.

It also sure doesn't help that that advertisement for the project reads like
those dime-a-dozen "I want to sell you something you don't need" sites.
Complete with meaningless stock pictures and cliparts.

> _We think people need to feel genuinely included and that's what's missing
> from many work environments._

Yes, I think the word they have missed in their own text is "genuine". Because
this is not genuine, this is automatized, no matter how many humans you throw
into the mix at any point. There is no line of genuine appreciation going from
one human (the person appreciating the work) to another (the person doing the
work).

To paraphrase that greenpeace saying about "can't eat money" - When the whole
world is social networked and all human interaction has been successfully
automatized, people may finally realize that no technology will ever convince
that one part in your brain that just frigging knows whether something is
genuinely human or not. Because it knows. And that's why you will always
wonder until you can fully appreciate the real thing.

> _[...]a real person will call your team to tell them they are valued and
> appreciated_

"Hey, I'm calling you to tell you that the person heading your team paid a
service to make sure that a human calls you to inform you that they value and
appreciate your work but not in a way where they would invest their own time
and emotions into it, but let me not actually put it like that and instead
make it tee-hee-silly because we both know that this is somewhat strange -
yeah, I know, weird, hm?"

"Only in America", I guess?

------
AznHisoka
So this is the entreprise product you guys were talking about months ago? $6
per employee? I know wellness programs that charge less. This is something
people can easily do on their own thru a weekly status report.

Getting a daily email with a list of accomplishments can get rather old and
annoying. Plus imagine your employees hearing this new policy... and trying to
keep a straight face?

~~~
smalter
Hi there -- we've dug in a bit on this problem, and we've found that corporate
wellness programs are often not awesome.

We hope employees who hear about this crack a smile and have a good laugh.
Keeping a straight face is the least of our worries!

------
danielhope
Never underestimate the power emotional reward (as opposed to monetary
reward). Great collaboration!

~~~
smalter
Thank you, Daniel!

------
kristjan
Fun product, the calls are an amusing touch.

I built something to scratch the same itch a few years back. It's open at
<https://github.com/kristjan/stars> and deploys immediately to Heroku with
just a few ENV variables to set.

Happy being happy, everyone.

~~~
derwiki
Stars is great! Our company wouldn't be the same without it. The three most
star-getters each week get to designate a $100, $50, and $25 donation to
charity -- a great reward!

------
niels_olson
Have been using idonethis for 8 days. Love it. Hands down, we need more slow
web.

