Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 177 posts

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#31

Post by turkeyman »

First of all, congratulations to him! Amazing success for 4 months work.

However, the issue with this is, there is no incentive for the cleaners to stay with the company. My ex was with a company very similar to this one, she signed up, but after she knew the clients for a while, she realised she could cut out the middleman and increase her wages substantially. The company tried to hit her with a 900$ bill for lost profit, their reasoning was "how can we stay in business if our workers keep running of with the clients?" (what does that say about the business model?). She convinced her favourite clients to ditch the company, which allowed her to bring in more money and the clients had a cheaper rate. Further clients were found by word of mouth at that point. I think throwing up some ads in the local paper would be cheaper in the long run than lost money from going with a company like this.

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#32

Post by guynamedloren »

turkeyman wrote: post #31

First of all, congratulations to him! Amazing success for 4 months work. However, the issue with this is, there is no incentive for the cleaners to stay with the company. My ex was with a company very similar to this one, she signed up, but after she knew the clients for a while, she realised she could cut out the middleman and increase her wages substantially. The company tried to hit her with a 900$ bill for lost p…

Hmmm... that's an interesting (and scary) point. I wonder if it would make sense, from the business owner's perspective, to shuffle the employees around between clients to decrease the chances of this?

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#33

Post by gexla »

ricardobeat wrote: post #7

It's a nice personal achievement, but I can't help myself cringing at business models of this kind. It's plain old extraction of surplus-value, adding very little to the economy as a whole. The workers would be better off operating as a cooperative, I wish they had the education to know that from the outset, and the means to implement it.

I'm sure they realize at this point that they could be running the same model. The profits at this point probably aren't even enough to cover the salary for one person to be doing everything this guy is doing. The cleaners could do these things themselves, but they would still need to compensate themselves for their time. So, the profits would just go to more hours worked rather than going towards everyone getting a raise.

I imagine that as the profits do rise, then this guy will have to spend more money on fixing all the issues that the other comments mention. He is also on the hook for things like damage and theft. I'm guessing his workers would rather just do their jobs, get paid and leave the rest for someone else.

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#34

Post by viandante »

ricardobeat wrote: post #24
toyg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not playing golf all day: he did design and commission the scheduling system he now operates, and provides ongoing advertisement and management. From what he says, it looks like he gets $40 to $60 per job, whereas cleaners get $15 to $30 per job -- they work in team, so it's $30 to $60 in total (it's all pre-tax, from what I understand). Not a terrible arrangement, to be honest, especially in the Land Of The Fre…

I know, and I don't mean to put down his effort (as I said below, there is some value added). But they are just being exploited by a smaller company - it's the same. edit: what is with downvotes lately? This is not a contest, feel free to join the discussion.

Workers are not pointed a gun to do the job. Given the opportunities they have, they are choosing this specific opportunity. This means that this service is increasing their expected value from the job. I don't see how this can be bad.

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#35

Post by cynicalkane »

ricardobeat wrote: post #7

It's a nice personal achievement, but I can't help myself cringing at business models of this kind. It's plain old extraction of surplus-value, adding very little to the economy as a whole. The workers would be better off operating as a cooperative, I wish they had the education to know that from the outset, and the means to implement it.

Be careful about confusing what you want people to value with what they actually value because that's how you get Marxism.

I hired a cheap startup cleaning company (an internal startup within a larger organization). Flaky, unprofessional management; cleaners who sucked at their jobs... going by my and my friends' experiences, finding a good cleaner is pretty hard and (this is a big 'in general') the more expensive ones are more reliable. Information, quality assurance, and good management are all scarce--a lot scarcer than most people tend to assume--and cost money.

The other part is that the employers aren't "extracting as much surplus value" as you think from the sell side either. For instance, most programmers are content to work for the Man, losing significant amounts of "surplus-value". Independent contractors appreciate the freedom, the money, the flexibility, the power to say no, but it's not for everyone, because managing yourself is also a giant pain in the ass for a large number of reasons.

Finally, I think you're being down voted because all this is probably common knowledge on a forum for smart, startup-minded hackers. When you talk about "extracting surplus-value" there are prominent members of this community who do that for a living.

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#36

Post by _delirium »

cynicalkane wrote: post #35
ricardobeat wrote: post #7

It's a nice personal achievement, but I can't help myself cringing at business models of this kind. It's plain old extraction of surplus-value, adding very little to the economy as a whole. The workers would be better off operating as a cooperative, I wish they had the education to know that from the outset, and the means to implement it.

Be careful about confusing what you want people to value with what they actually value because that's how you get Marxism. I hired a cheap startup cleaning company (an internal startup within a larger organization). Flaky, unprofessional management; cleaners who sucked at their jobs... going by my and my friends' experiences, finding a good cleaner is pretty hard and (this is a big 'in general') the more expensive on…

> When you talk about "extracting surplus-value" there are prominent members of this community who do that for a living.

On the other hand, there are also prominent members of this community who focus on recognizing cases of surplus-value-extraction and thinking about how to disrupt/disintermediate those markets. :)

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#37

Post by mseebach »

ricardobeat wrote: post #24
toyg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not playing golf all day: he did design and commission the scheduling system he now operates, and provides ongoing advertisement and management. From what he says, it looks like he gets $40 to $60 per job, whereas cleaners get $15 to $30 per job -- they work in team, so it's $30 to $60 in total (it's all pre-tax, from what I understand). Not a terrible arrangement, to be honest, especially in the Land Of The Fre…

I know, and I don't mean to put down his effort (as I said below, there is some value added). But they are just being exploited by a smaller company - it's the same. edit: what is with downvotes lately? This is not a contest, feel free to join the discussion.

"Working for x" != "Exploited by x". In one of the comments he says his best team earn double when they did before.

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#38

Post by _delirium »

ricardobeat wrote: post #20
nopassrecover wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to take the surplus jobs he is finding them.

I'm not sure in what way your comment is a reply to mine. That is the "little" I think it's adding to the economy (matching demand/offer), yet it's just a misbalance of information and/or power that shouldn't need to exist.

It'd be interesting to figure out (though I'm not sure how to measure it) how important each of the factors are. For example, one factor is just a marketplace/organization kind of value, the same reason eBay skims n% off every sale, or TaskRabbit takes a percentage. On the other hand, I wonder if there are more structural reasons for why his employees wouldn't be able to cut out the middle-man. For example, is there a kind of class- or race-arbitrage going on, where people are more willing to deal with him because he's "like them", whereas the cleaners come from social groups that the typical clients are more scared of contacting directly, so it's easier for them to get work if he's their public face? If so, that's not his fault (he'd just be arbitraging an existing societal imbalance, which arguably actually mitigates it), but would be interesting to know about.

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#39

Post by turkeyman »

guynamedloren wrote: post #32
turkeyman wrote: post #31

First of all, congratulations to him! Amazing success for 4 months work. However, the issue with this is, there is no incentive for the cleaners to stay with the company. My ex was with a company very similar to this one, she signed up, but after she knew the clients for a while, she realised she could cut out the middleman and increase her wages substantially. The company tried to hit her with a 900$ bill for lost p…

Hmmm... that's an interesting (and scary) point. I wonder if it would make sense, from the business owner's perspective, to shuffle the employees around between clients to decrease the chances of this?

That seems like it would just delay the inevitable, he needs to find competent cleaners that are unwilling to strike out on their own. If he manages to keep the cleaners as contractors, then his future will be absolutedomestics.com.au. They have done incredibly well for themselves and have set themselves up exactly as this guy has.

I'm thinking it must be more profitable making a decent profit while losing clients and cleaners, than taking a smaller profit and retaining clients and cleaners.

Re: From idea to replacing full-time salary in 4 months

#40

Post by mseebach »

ricardobeat wrote: post #26
robryan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The workers may not be any good at marketing or any of the organization and running a business stuff, they are probably happy just to stick to the cleaning and get a constant stream of jobs given to them.

That's exactly what my last sentence is about. The extraction of surplus-value comes from having an economical/power/knowledge advantage: in my pretty ideal world the workers should have enough of those skills, or the ability to subcontract them. If everyone was well educated and had the means to set up a business they wouldn't need someone else to seize the opportunity for them. The whole startup spirit is that of g…

> The extraction of surplus-value comes from having an economical/power/knowledge advantage

Yes, this is called the division of labour. When not everybody has to know how to do everything, more things can be known and more things can be done.

Making a marketing plan and a website sounds easy to you, but why don't you argue that they are being exploited by the vacuum cleaner or detergent manufacturers' economic and knowledge advantage? Probably because designing and building a good vacuum cleaner or formulating an anti-allergenic organic cleaning detergent doesn't sound easy to you.

Post reply on HN