The Rise of Developeronomics

"Investing in good developers is such a good bet at the moment, that if you have money and you happen to find a talented developer who seems to like you and wants to work with you, you should give him/her your money to build something, anything, even if you have no really good product ideas (those are cheap; I’ll sell you a dozen for a dollar)."

Wow. Great article. This made me understand some reasons why I am having such a great relationship with my current main customer.

After doing a simple web design job for them to get my foot in the door, I negotiated a higher rate for a more complex project. After that, they quadrupled my rates, on their own. They then fed me more, smaller projects that were mostly to fatten up their product offerings.

Such a show of faith really won my loyalty. I was, however, a little mystified. Maybe it's low self-esteem, but I found it hard to believe how much they valued my skillset (I'm one of those "designgeneers").

This article helped to explain this: they've been feeding me work to keep me available, even if they don't really need it. Now a big from-scratch devel job has come up, and even though I'm working under my rates, I made sure to be available to do it for them. They've been grooming me for this job, and they did it in exactly the way this article describes.

I'm really grateful for being treated this way. I've been on the cusp of two industries for a while now, and this kind of positive experience has pushed me to the software side.

"Another reason is that software skills are the most portable high-end skills on the planet. Spotting and temporarily attracting talent doesn’t mean you get to keep it."

We're really starting to be valued. All in all, this article made me feel really good about my decision to commit to designing and building web applications as my main vocation.

Previously submitted a month ago.

Discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3317250