You Are the Exception to the Rule
zapier.com
zapier.com
Entrepeneurs fail every day. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Don't fall for the cheap words of encouragement.
[ADDENDUM: I still don't trust the "Most coders can't do FizzBuzz" meme that generally accompanies the flowery you're-a-special-snowflake-talk. Applicants maybe, but that doesn't say much. There's tons of decent programmers out there, and 99% of them won't get famous or found a sustainable business.]
Still, I don't harbor the delusion that I could drop everything and write a $10k/month iPad app overnight. There's a lot of luck in that, and a lot of skills are required (marketing, presentation) that I wouldn't bet my career on me having.
I think it's worth it for people to try things that have a sub-50% chance of success if they'll learn something from it, and if they've limited their losses, but I think it's unreasonable to make major bets on not being in the N-1 out of N. The academic career racket is fueled by these sorts of unrealistic expectations (more specifically, by people who haven't figured out that the academic job market up-and-died a generation and a half ago).
Others will pay you decent money to do a mediocre job, and good money to do a good job, because you are the exception to the rule of being willing and able to do the thing for them at all. Most people who have problem X would rather pay money for you to solve some problem for them (even if your solution is mediocre) than solve it themselves, because that allows them to focus on solving whatever problem they care about or think they can get paid for.
All in all, I think it's better to have the belief "I am worth lots of money" than the opposite.
(I'm not kidding.)
There tons of sustainble small businesses around. Probably won't start the next apple, but tons of fogcreek style companies are around.
Getting famous (at least for hackers) requires that your are very good at one thing and you publish that on github or something. Hard but achievable.
Founding a sustainable business requires that you know customer acquisition, marketing, management, etc.
You get zero points for being able to say "See, I was right" when someone fails. Completely aside from that, it's factually wrong; people on this site are quite likely to have skills and resources that the average person cannot comprehend. Being a "decent programmer" is a fabulously valuable skill in the modern world. You aren't guaranteed to be able to leverage it into capital right away, but if you work hard and get out of your own head it's fully achievable.
"I am not a special snowflake, the sun does not shine out of my ass. But, if I work hard and apply my skills creatively in areas where others aren't it doing it as much, I may well have a shot at something cool. At least, a better shot than if I did nothing today"
Well of course, such talk misses the point. A "Coder" who can't do Fizzbuzz isn't a coder, or a programmer, or a hacker, or a computer scientist. It's a negative test, if you can't do it, then your not ready for a real programming gig yet.
From http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-dev... (Which appears to be the source of the infamous fizzbuzz question.)
"This sort of question won’t identify great programmers, but it will identify the weak ones. And that’s definitely a step in the right direction."
To which I will add, if you can do it, it doesn't mean that you are ready for a real programming gig. Yet.
If you think I exaggerate, try staying focused on your startup after months of investor rejection (which is the norm, by the way).
Have you considered that if you had hard evidence, it wouldn't be a 'belief', it would be a known fact?
And from there, why humans have evolved an ability to believe ... at all? What function that provides in a mind? Beliefs don't have to accurately reflect reality for them to be useful in changing your behaviour for the better.
I think we read this article differently. His point is that, programming-wise, it doesn't take a lot to make a successful business. He's saying that being mediocre is good enough.
> You see most people aren't hackers. Most people can't
> build a todo app. Most people can't use an API.
Other than that: point taken.
But having recently had the experience of going to a local job fair with the goal of looking for students to fill internships, I met with over 70 individuals that day. While we didn't administer the FizzBuzz test, I'm confident that less than a handful could have completed it during the interview process.
This is by no means concrete proof. But, I think for many of us, we suffer from selection bias, because even the worse people we work with are light years ahead of what the great majority of "programmers" can do.
The author doesn't claim that readers are the exception to mediocrity. Nor does he claim that they are the exception to failure. The article is targeted at programmers. He's merely saying that programmers possess a unique perspective that makes them literally "exceptionally" cynical to paying for software. He's also pointing out that it's easy to incorrectly project one's own cynism onto others.
Every skill is valuable. What is trivial for us, could be very difficult for someone else, and vice versa.
This is because the simple case (ie, everything goes well) for both programming and most law (leave aside liitgation) are usually straightforward.
The problem comes in exception handling. This is the 80/20 pareto split (80% of labor done on 20% of scope) - at this point, even a good lawyer/programmer may have difficulties getting things to work properly.
Part of the article's conclusion is, "Get the product in front of your core audience," and I suspect that's the only way for the inexperienced to accurately gauge the value of their product.
This comes from a mindset that because I can do something, would rather than do it myself and wouldn't pay for someone else to do it for me means that no one else would either.
Just because you can solve a problem yourself, would take the time to do so and wouldn't pay someone else to do it instead doesn't mean the rest of the world thinks like that.
For most people, they can't do what you do and/or wouldn't take the time to do it and/or would rather pay someone else to do it for them. That's the rule to which you're an exception.
(I'm asking because if zapier is profitable then blog post has some merit. If not then... oh well)
I think this is particularly true if you can target a point of friction in the sales process, e.g. real-estate. I have had agents tell me that if they think something will make them one extra sale a year they won't even hesitate to spend a couple of hundred dollars on it.
But are there any DATA that corroborate this largely anecdotal statement? I figure, it has to be much less prevalent than these statements. (Or if it isn't, I better get my ass in gear and really learn to program so I can make the big bucks).