Not everyone is going to like the thing you made, and that’s okay

Looking at a site like Rotten Tomatoes, where the metric is "professional reviewer thought thing was at least decent" and seeing that there is surprisingly little agreement even on such a simple metric (even a terrible movie, like Season Of The Witch, has a 10 so 10% of the reviews like it; even a great movie, like wall-e, only has a 94 - so somebody didn't like it - and most movies are in between with lots of critics liking and lots of critics disliking the exact same thing. Yet we still try to arrive at a truth by considering all their opinions equally as a group. This is obviously doomed to failure.)

It's even more clear when you think about something more abstract, like a favorite color. My favorite color is purple. If yours is yellow, does that mean I'm wrong? Clearly there isn't an obvious objective "This Is Good" when it comes to taste or opinions. Why then is up/down arrows the current state of the art?

I know Netflix has managed to do more by looking for similar reviewers and weighting their opinions, and Pandora does audio classification, but I'm not aware of this concept catching on well in other areas, and I particularly don't know of it being applied to multiple things at once - if I want a recommendation about a new movie that isn't on Netflix yet, or if I'm tired of the repetitiveness of Pandora's stations, their clever algorithms don't help me a bit beyond their limited walls. I don't know of a site like reddit or hacker news or videosift trying to capture more than 'good/bad' for evaluating links on the web. I don't know of a site that is really trying to help me pair my taste with other reviewers, so that I can get personally curated content and we can end up with a world that recognizes some people love action movies and others love romantic comedies and recommending a movie for me to see should take that into account. How wonderful will it be when there is finally a site that can suggest I should read these three articles because -I- will find them good, maybe I should be sure to catch Pacific Rim, and a new band I might like has a video out; while giving completely different recommendations to my sister, without trying to limit to an objective non-relative definition of "good", because we're talking about taste and opinions aren't wrong.

When one of you smart folks makes that site, please let me know.

So whenever someone isn't very nice with me, I prefer to assume that they're a nice person who just happens to have bumped their toe into a table leg or something.

Man that was/is a freaking lot of work. Over 30 mini-classes so far. People get one each week. When people sign-up, I ask them for comments, and I hand-reply back to why they're there. When people unsub from the list, I apologize and ask what I could have done better.

I am learning this lesson, but very slowly. Whenever somebody unsubs from the list, I always look at what the last email they got was. Can I make it better? Am I writing the series too long/too short/wrong reading level/to the wrong audience? It's enough to drive you nuts.

But it's been a great lesson, because with any email list, you're naturally going to lose people. It actually doesn't have to have anything to do with what you're creating. Maybe they don't have time to read it any more, or their job changed, or they just clicked on the spam button on Gmail because they had too much stuff in their inbox. Yes, it might be something I can control. Or it might not. All I can do is do the best job I can, ask for feedback, and move on.

Every second and every bit of emotional energy I spend worrying about what I can't control is taking away from the things I can control. Creating things and interacting with people ain't like programming. Things aren't boolean, there are tons of hidden variables, and "debugging" doesn't work the way it does in code. Tough thing to learn.

Once my business hit substantial revenue, I realized it didn't matter, that it was more important to make a few people love us than to make everyone like us.

I also realized that a lot of hackers on HN are having a hard time making their own business because they don't realize people like things that they might not. Taste is huge.

That made me sad to hear given how much hate the character Wesley Crusher got.

I'm relaunching a website I've been running for years and I'm relentless about customer service and community management. I don't know how EVERYONE is going to react that's already a member of my site, but I know some people are going to love it, and that's way better than thousands of apathetic users with only a tiny fraction coming back every day. I can't wait.

"Most people are focused on themselves. So whatever bad interaction you have with them, is mostly a reflection of them, instead of a reflection of you."

Bill Gates did the same thing, he must got off on that.

* There are people who love you because your application is changing their life

* There are people who gives you pertinent feedback.

* There are people who just don't get it and are suggesting core modifications.

I often ignore the last kind of people because I have a principal view on how I want things to be and making something should be about that. You cannot please everyone and you should focus on pleasing you first.

Most programmers are quick to pigeonhole you and what you say. Pay attention to their conclusions and note how careful they are(n't) about gathering enough info to arrive at those conclusions. Look for signs to see if they are skeptical of their own mental models.

This is how to pick who you should work with.

I have had a hard time dealing with some of the feedback I've gotten with the things I've written, whether it be on HN or on my blog, but I'm slowly learning to be okay with the fact that no, not everyone will love what I have to say :P