Ask HN: How to show business co-founders that I'm actually working hard

IMHO....

You are not being treated and trusted as a co-founder, you're being treated and trusted as a hired CTO. You can choose to accept this, or not.

If you're going to accept it, you have to be the one to close the gap. In situation like this, you have to make the time to show plans that demonstrate what you're doing, and the time required for each. It doesn't need to be a fancy planning tool - just a Google sheet listing the item, the estimated work effort, the deadline, and any dependencies. The blocks of time should be less than 40 hours each - even below 8 if you can get them there. Then be fully transparent about your progress. When new work gets added, ask what drops. If you have ad-hoc support tasks, add them to the log. This may add 30 minutes to each day, but it will save you more than than in aggravation.

If you choose not to accept it, the market is still good for solid engineers. You can find a job that pays more and allows you to see your kid. (Are you crazy working 100 hours when you have a baby? The divorce will take away all your equity! And besides, you'll have to work more on-site if this thing actually grows.)

As stated elsewhere in this thread, your co-founders seem decidedly immune to the sort of data that would typically demonstrate "all-in". So here's my advice: stop guessing what those yoyos want. Get them into a meeting and ask them flat-out: "what would satisfy you on this point?" If they can't come up with anything or give you a bullshit answer, QUIT ON THE SPOT.

A month later, if you've provided whatever they said would satisfy them and they're STILL whining - see previous action.

You shouldn't put up with "I'm mad and I'm not going to tell you why" in business relationships any more than you should in personal relationships.

Also, keep in mind that you may walk out of that initial meeting without a job. The sort of nasty assclowns that your co-founders sound like don't typically appreciate being directly challenged.

If the problem is that their time can be measurable in term of ROI (i.e. sales) then you should definitely try to do the same with your tasks. Implementing a A/B test ? --> Show lead improvment On-Page optimization ? --> Show CRO evolution Changing design, implementing new feature ? --> show impact on activation, retention. And so on. If you work very hard you can also share a road map to share all the things you tick each week. In your case it seems you also have more of a human issue. I think to this point you need to prove them how much money you can bring to the company. I wouldnt go for a discussion "just to have a discussion" with them. Its far better if you can prove your added value. good luck !

Based off of your telling of the facts, it appears that if the other founders were reasonable, they would be able to tell the difference in value between the previous developer's work and your own.

I don't know you, but I would suggest being more aggressive with asking them what their contribution is. Objectively, they would have $0 of sales without your work. Conversely, you may have had $0 of sales without their personal network. I think this would be a good topic for conversation to set the bar for establishing the value of each founder's contributions.

This seems like a problem that won't get better as time goes forward and needs to be fixed before you invest more of your life in it.

I would have a face to face with your partners and ask them if they are actually dissatisfied with your progress or is it just a general frustration with business progress that is reflected in a sort of "are there yet?" behavior.

Then again, they may just want you around until they can find someone who they think can do what they want.

I use Harvest to track time, use this to demonstrate time taken for tasks.

Q: "Why isn't it faster" A: "Quality code takes time" Q: "I think it shouldn't take that long, these fixes are easy" A: "Then code it yourself"

Speak out loud what you are doing, regardless if its a failure or success.

I think you should be asking them what they are doing.

git commits?