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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

Developers are an extremely varied bunch. I'd suspect that HN leans towards the wide interests side because startups tend to disrupt (in the traditional sense of the word) your ability to program rather than enhance it.

But not everyone is like that. Some developers want nothing more than a real, meaty technical challenge. Scaling up a site that's crashing every hour. Crunching huge datasets and extracting important data. If you find one, you might actually be lucky- they probably have more focus than I do.

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Personally, while the whole starting a business idea seems pretty cool to me, it's just far too grand, far too difficult and far too expensive right now!

I'm 20, I want to go to my simple 9 to 5 job, tackle a really difficult challenge, maybe debug some Magento because that's where the real challenge is at my company, then maybe for the last couple of hours I'll work on some of our in house products to enjoy the freedom of custom development.

Then I'll go home, make something to eat (at a reasonable hour) and hopefully spend a great night cuddling with my girlfriend while we watch old movies on my laptop.

While being a billionaire business man is very enticing, right now, at this point in my life, all I want is to be happy, and working 80 hour weeks to risk it on a 3% chance to make it something amazing just isn't worth it for it.

Debugging Magento is a real challenge because Magento is horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible.

It's horrible.

I like your outlook, but man, even in PHP land there are vastly better frameworks that won't make you hate your life (Magento has a nasty track record for me and several other devs I worked with). ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter, even Symfony... if you want to do PHP, do yourself a favor and do something that's not Magento.

Unfortunately, my company took over a Magento project the last developers majorly screwed up on - we didn't know anything about Zend or Magento until we jumped in to it. I do agree though, Magento is a minefield - but that's part of the fun.

That being said, I am a big fan of CodeIgniter, I love the simplicity of it's MVC system and I wish I did more work with it.

I haven't done an ecommerce project in quite a while, what would you suggest instead of Magento?

I had the dubious honor of setting up a heavily customized Magento site barely after they released 1.0 - it was a nightmare. No docs, barely any participation in the forums, blog posts with outdated (already) information... I didn't have a say in picking Magento and eventually the client moved to something else as updates and expansion became too much of a hassle.

I hear good things about Woocommerce [1] these days if you're using Wordpress for your main site. It's no where near in the realm of Magento, but fine if you're looking for something simpler but less powerful.

[1] http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/

I'd also be very interested in this. I'm looking for an ecommerce package that does faceted search, supports catering for non US regions, and doesn't require the effort Magento requires to reskin. Something where the goods-in process is easy, no EPOS integration required. Anybody got any good recent experiences?

If you already know Drupal, Commerce is awesome.

I've used Lemonstand for a few projects and really enjoy working with it. There are a few features it's lacking still (no gift certificates, no faceted search) but it's a very flexible system.

(http://lemonstand.com/)

For a developer? Hm, foxy cart, or spree (open source): http://spreecommerce.com/

Why do you say "even Symfony"? The buzz I hear is that Symfony is pretty much the most forward thinking framework in PHP and that it's offspring such as Laravel take cake if you're looking for something a bit more streamlined.

Just looking at job boards tells me those tech + drupal seems to be where all the work is (in the UK at least), so yeah, why the "even"?

Well, its 2013, you can't talk about php frameworks and leave out laravel. And I think you should've also mentioned the cool set of packages available on composer.

The one counter-argument I'd give to that is that you'll never have more time or freedom than you do right now. If you're interested in starting a business, don't feel any rush to do it immediately, but your twenties are a great time to try it.

But don't get trapped working for a startup and kidding yourself that their success is your success. If it isn't your company you probably don't own a meaningful amount of stock- it's never worth busting your gut over.

In a way, my company is a start up, I was employee 9, there are now eleven, the company is only a year or so old (and I've been here for 7 months now.)

But they showed faith in me when I really needed a job, they hired me on the day of the interview and even paid me early when I was about to be homeless (again.)

I love the culture at my company, I love table tennis at lunch and Bacon Fridays, I enjoy my work and the people I'm with. Regardless of where I want to be in 5 years, why would I give all that up for a minor chance at being rich?

You're twenty. Your twenties will continue for about nine years.

It's a good question. Why would you? Maybe it's just because it's a vast challenge. There's plenty of time though, don't worry.

Sometimes, people grow apart from the environment they're in - for what I've seen and thought, that's probably when we're open for a larger challenge and with that, some new risk/opportunities.

This was my immediate reaction.

The minute you have kids your discretionary free time drops massively (in many cases to zero for a while, especially if both parents work). Plus your view of your finances change - you have other little people depending on you so that steady income from that steady job looks really appealing.

If you're not someone who wants to set up on their own, that's great. Personally I have other priorities too (damn pesty kids...), but I'd say if you don't think you want to do it in your early / mid 20s when you have energy and time, you probably need to accept you actually don't want to do it at all.

or you start company in your late 40s ,early 50s when freedom kicks again :-)

F*ck yeah, that's right on the money.

Twenties does seem a great time to start a business, but somehow in real statistics the average age when successful entrepreneurs start their companies is 40+. You won't have more time, but you will have more resources, skills, and in-depth understanding of some problem domain, which is a key part of any successful business.

I think most people who start a business are people who worked in that sector and at some pointed decided that they can do it better. Think for example about a bakery.

That is however very different from the type of startup that we usually talk about here, which does not an have an well established businesses model already.

What would be neat to see is how many of those 40+ success stories had failed businesses in their twenties.

I can't remember the source now, but IIRC the actual measurement was the age when they founded their first company. But quite a few of them by that time had hands-on business experience managing businesses owned by others.

Thanks for the update. Though it would still be intriguing to see how past business failures affect future successes. Is it better to try and fail in your 20s, or not try at all until you are 40+, for instance? I wonder if that kind of data is available anywhere?

You have to fail a bit in order to succeed. There are very few people who hit a walk-off grand slam in their first major league at bat.

> somehow in real statistics the average age when successful entrepreneurs start their companies is 40+.

Given just this information, it's still possible that people who start companies in their twenties are more likely to be successful; but most people who start companies are 40+. I don't necessarily expect that to be the case, but do you happen to know offhand?

"But don't get trapped working for a startup and kidding yourself that their success is your success"

I hear this line a lot on HN and frankly, I have to call bullshit on it.

A real startup (which I define as "a currently small business with large, untapped potential market") with a real business, (which I define as "make something you can sell to people for money"), is a great place to find work at with a real chance to make significant amount of money (which I define as, "I can take 1/2/3 years off to do whatever I like without worrying about paying the rent") in case of success. And the odds of that level of success are not bad if you're smart about choosing your company carefully.

How do I know ? Personal experience on multiple occasions.

(btw, note that my definition does not include "this website/mobile-app we hope will catch Marissa Meyer's eye for a quick $X0 Million flip.)

You gotta start failing and learning early on. A business does not have to be huge, just sell something. Whatever.

Time is on your side. Keep learning about technology, keep learning about yourself. In this learning process you are going to make mistakes. Make them on someone else's dime.

I personally have always been an entrepreneur at heart. It wasn't until a month ago (at the age of 33, married with one kid) that I decided to strike it out on my own. Ultimately, I knew I would regret not doing it. I have built up plenty of experience both technically and leadership wise. I've made a ton of mistakes in the past 11 years, but most importantly have lived with and learned from them.

You've got time, just keep learning.

It's totally cool if you're happy doing what you do. For some people "to be happy" means NOT to got to their simple 9 to 5 job.

It's quite possible to run a meaningful startup doing 9-5 hours, without burning yourself doing 80 hour work weeks. Sure, it won't be a billion or a million $ company but it'll be a successful business.

Even Nostradamus can't predict which startups will succeed and by how much. Yet you can, simply by adding up the hours worked? That's pretty simplistic.

Yup. Some are deeply focussed on the technical and see that as their mission in life/work. Some are in a similar position but are blinkered (I think I was here) and some are simply insecure about softer skills or striking out on their own (may have been here too).

> Some developers want nothing more than a real, meaty technical challenge.

That's a big reason why I left a cushy office job - working at the Twin Towers - to work as an engineer in a factory. Coding software for robots was more satisfying than whatever the hell I did at the consultancy I worked with.

I would say all developers want more than just a technical challenge.

They just don't all look for that "more" in their job.

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