Here’s a brief insight into the worst ‘journey’ of my life…which is saying something given that I’ve been lost at sea in shark infested waters for over 6 hours! (Java Sea)
“Opportunity follows struggle. It follows effort. It follows hard work. It doesn’t come before.” Shelby Steele
For those of you that have followed this blog you will hopefully be impressed to see that I’m now on Twitter! Twitter has been awesome at promoting this site but sadly with the secrecy surrounding MFH’s real “USP” I’m still not able to shout it from the roof tops….but the shout is brewing, and thanks to Twitter, getting louder by the day.
So, “What’s going on?” I hear you say. Well, let’s quickly re-cap to understand where we are today…
May 08 - I had a brilliant idea with great potential but ZERO web experience.
June 08 – I had an awesome Logo, Name, Wire-frames and Design Template – still no web skillz…
June 08 – HOW MUCH!?….I can’t afford to work with UK / US developers! £50/hour is simply too much.
June 08 – I start work with Indian developers. Professional (?), affordable and slippery…at least they’re affordable. But at what cost?
July 08 – I start to grow old…
August 08 - I start to swear a lot (which is/was uncharacteristic!)
September 08 – I’m getting night sweats. I have now provided 1247 pages of feedback.
October 08 – Listen to me! Put me through to the CEO, NOW!!
November 08 – 300+ hours of development costs unaccounted for…
December 08 – I finally accept the Indian guys are lost. I start on Plan B. Cultural differences mean that they say what I want to hear rather than what they are able to deliver both in terms of ability and timescales. I start looking for a UK, US developer to pick up the pieces. HOW MUCH!?….but there’s a credit crunch…
December 08 - Why did I work with an Indian company? Yea £50/hour is unaffordable but at least you get what you pay for!
January 09 - THE SITE IS COMPLETE! I pay off the Indians. THE SITE IS COMPLETELY SH!T!! Can anyone fix it?
January 09 – Anyone….? I finally find my team – a young designer working with MySpace and a great British developer.
February 09 – Richard my designer quits! There’s too much work for him… That’s ok – we’ve made great progress.
March 09 – Peter the developer is a hero* (UPDATE – NO HE’S NOT!!) The first draft of the site is ready: March 6….
April 09 – the site will be ready to Launch! I hope and pray…
May 09 – ok, what’s another month!? The developer throws in the towel! Thankfully after a week of sweat and tears we manage to resolve our differences. Phew…that was close!!
June 09 – I’ve seen the Beta phase 1 – but sadly there is no definitive deadline for a finished Beta site… I’m beginning to wonder if this will ever be finished? Maybe the signs are pointing to the fact that I’m not meant to do this 
(
In conclusion:
hmmm, the future’s not looking so bright and not so orange…back to square one.
Any thoughts?
Pete
ps: for those looking for real stories about travel I’ve had a few ‘interesting’ journeys. I’ve been lost at sea of the coast of Indonesia for example, but I’ll save that story for some other time. Here’s video of a more recent experience – night was falling and I was lost in Malaysian primary rain forest, by myself. I was considering how best to spend a night in the jungle, I felt up a tree was the best option – but not ideal!
Taman Negara - where my stroll got interesting!
UPDATE:
I have many more – but here’s an interesting email from the developer after he’d done nothing for 3 months! Amazing… (Incidentally, I got PB to quote for the job (paid for in installments) and the timescale was set by him. I only wanted what was agreed upfront….7 months previously!)
To set the tone – here’s the last email I received from PB:
From: PB
Sent: 3 August 2009 16:34:39
Subject: MFH Code
As a general rule of thumb, what I do in ten days is equivalent to what most developers do in ten weeks, so don’t expect too much of them, it will take time for them to finish it, I would have had to work 18 hours a day, seven days week for 2 -3 weeks to complete it, for anyone else that is likely to be about 6 months work absolute minimum.
THERE’S MORE….
From: Peter Kindness
Sent: 21 July 2009 13:36
Subject: MFH meeting
Dear PB,
I hope you are well and that you’ve had a chance to unwind following last weeks newspaper deadlines.
I’ve tried calling you a couple of times, both yesterday and today, as I’d like to arrange a meeting for us to discuss the project and ensure that we are both happy.
Please feel free to call me or let me know when to call you – today or tomorrow.
Thanks,
Peter
From: PB
Date: 23 July 2009 10:58:25
Subject: RE: MFH meeting
Hi Peter,
Unfortunately unwind is the one thing I haven’t been able to do as I have been working flat out the last week or so catching up on work outstanding, and unfortunately that has also meant I have had no free time to work on your project.
Now before you get angry or frustrated, please bear in mind that I donated a huge amount of my time to the project earlier this year, neglecting full paying work, using up my savings to live on and getting behind with bills and as a result I simply cannot and will not miss out on paying work, by that I mean that there is a high demand for my services and I can comfortably get through 180 euro’s of work each day, which is my standard daily rate (6 hours at 36 euro per hour), so for any day that I spend working on MFH I am effectively loosing 180 euro’s and to be completely frank I simply cannot afford to do that, and I am also not prepared to give up any more of my weekends or evenings without compensation. Now I know that you had gotten used to me doing effectively three full days work in any 24hour period earlier this year, and the time scales have always been based on that but I will not work those sort of hours any more, I did those hours at a cost to my health, social life and well being and for this reason I have now made it a strict rule that any hours over six production and two admin are now chargeable at time and a half, in other words, I’ll work them, but only if I am recompensed for them.
The ten working days I quoted for cleaning up the site was based on me doing eighteen hours a day 7 days a week which several months ago, I was foolish enough to do, but realistically that is in effect 252 hours of labour, or in money terms 9072 euro’s and unfortunately I am simply unwilling to donate this scale of work any longer, now I know you have offered payment for me to get the site completed but frankly I don’t think you can afford that level of payment and neither can I afford to do 9072 euro’s of work without being paid for it at my full rate as currently the money I’m earning is going towards the deficit built up developing your project in the first quarter of the year.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking for more money, I know you can’t afford the full price of this project, I am simply trying to point out that I am not trying to make this difficult for you, I am simply trying to get you to understand that I cannot afford to complete the project, and I WILL NOT DONATE MY FREE TIME anymore, I WILL NOT WORK THOUGH THE NIGHT anymore, I can’t, I work bloody hard enough during normal working hours, every penny I’m earning is going to pay bills and replace what I used to live on while subsidising the project before, I’m not wealthy, the rates I have given equate to an annual wage of 36000 euro a year, far less than I could earn as an employee and with a home and two children back in the UK to maintain, and having lost a full quarters money this year already, not an unreasonable wage.
If I had free time and was sitting around doing nothing all day I would gladly donate my time for MFH, but I don’t, so where does this leave us, I don’t know, I understand your frustration and desire to get up and running and if you can find someone else cheaper and able to complete the project I’ll gladly send over the existing codebase, but personally I just can’t donate any more time unpaid, time wise if you take the 1080 hours I have already put in it equates to the equivalent of nearly nine months work for anyone working a normal 8 hour day 5 days a week, that is how much work I have put into your site perhaps now you will realise how much work is actually involved because I still think that because I did such a huge quantity of work in such a short space of time you still see the effort involved as being trivial, each minor change to you, each adding a few fields, each adding Ajax to a page is not a simple line of code, its hour after hour of design, coding, testing, debugging.
I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t donate any more free work at the expense of paying work. Please don’t try to phone, I am too much of a soft touch, three times now I’ve tried to walk away from this and three times I’ve been dragged back in through emotional pressure of feeling sympathy, but being practical having already lost a good third of my potential earnings this year, I cannot donate any more.
Kindest Regards
PB
photo credit: furryscaly
Originally posted 2009-03-05 16:58:55. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
wow this guy sounds like a total psycho! you should name him so other people don’t make the same mistake.
It’s always better to be safe than sorry! To be fair he did a good job – until he started lying…something flipped and unfortunately I was caught in the middle. Sadly finding a developer to work on an unfinished project means starting again. What I’ve learned is that having a good relationship with your developer is crucial – for the project, one’s sanity and possible even personal safety!