Comment by boskone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boskone | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have any idea on how "hard" it is to create software? The toll on a person who is "tearing it up", without break, for a year. Oh, and not for their direct benefit?

You are seeking a person in the upper percentile of intelligence, fluent in a specialized skill set and asking them to pull off some solo Death March that should require 5-10 people minimum, and for what, to be the "coder" while the idea man is running around with half-cent business cards with CEO in front of their name.

Assume this person _is_ this smart, maybe even smarter than you, most likely he too has realized its easier to be the idea man than to be the guy who has to do all the work.

Ergo the world is stuffed with idea men and suffers a dearth of doers.

I agree with your conclusions but not your reasoning.

It's certainly hard to write software, but I don't agree that writing software is harder than the non-technical work for a start up. Programming is deterministic (for a smart enough person) in that effort goes in and software comes out.

Sales, marketing and PR is highly non-deterministic and getting it right only looks easy in retrospect. Hours and hours of effort goes in, and you might get back magic or horse manure regardless of how good you are - although there are people who have a decent average at obtaining magic.

The reason I agree with you however is that a lot of the 'idea men' pitching programmers are no better at the required non-technical disciplines than a blind man navigating a maze on a moonlit night with a bag over their head after a drinking session.

I suppose the only way you can tell if a prospective partner is good is to sell if they can sell something - and if they can sell you on working with them that test is passed. Self selection in action!

Investors can be worse. Take the average public shareholder, they do nothing except hold the equity that was once created a long time ago. It's all about the money. "He who has the gold makes the rules." It shouldn't be like that, but that's way it can pan out.

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