I’m shaken right now at a realisation that I have only recently been in the position to discover, due to the popularity of some of my recent blog posts. I’ve always been under the impression that the people I interact with are people who want to be rich. They talk about making money, they relink articles about making money, they are often also working on projects that they seem to be convinced will make them rich.
That’s why it came as a really big shock to me when I had the opportunity to actually deal with a number of the these people. These people genuinely have no intention of succeeding. I think that they perhaps they even believe that they want to succeed, but what they do is designed to make them not succeed. I see them spending months on irrelevant features. I see them coming up with reasons why their project must be delayed. I even see some even looking for money before anyone would have a reason to give them money.
But the worst of all are the people who approach me to help them. I am often enthusiastic, and immediately come up with a strategy and a plan based off my concrete experience. The minute they see extra real work though, that’s the end of it. Folks, it’s not my project, I’m not going to earn any money. At least, TEST out the stuff I’m trying to help you with.
The shocking thing I have realised, and that I really should have known a long time before this is this: people are really really lazy. Oh, they will spend time doing stuff. But the stuff they spend time on is the comfortable and unimportant stuff they already know how to do well. The things they have to think hard about, the new stuff, they will really battle to never do that. It’s difficult to think, and these so-called entrepreneurs don’t want to think. They just want to make money as if they were mindlessly put together Lego bricks. It does not work that way.
It’s not difficult for me to develop a twitter client. The difficult part is in designing a twitter client better than any client out there, and which I can make with the resources and time I have. Becoming rich involves focusing on that uncomfortable second part, the difficult part. It means accepting criticism, making bad clients till you make something good.
Programming is a way to procrastinate.
For a software developer, software development is the easiest job in the world. You know how to do it, you have experience doing it, and you enjoy doing it. And these people who say they want to start businesses are sitting and programming all the time. What type of business is made up of only code? That’s not a business, that’s a product. The business is all the other stuff around the product, and that’s the stuff that these people have no intention of doing, and without which they have nothing.
If you developed something and it is not doing well, then your problem was not in programming. Don’t go program something new. Your problem was elsewhere, now you need to find the elsewhere and work on that. That means thinking, and doing hard work in areas you barely understand. It’s real work compared to programming.
And that’s what the people don’t want to do. They have no intention of actually working. They want to mindlessly program, or read blogs that tell them how they will get rich.
That’s like a girl watching TV all the time and saying she’s training to become an actress.
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Interesting post. Could you please be more specific about kind of things you consider that people need to do, outside of programming ?Programming new software almost always requires some long thought process which cannot be compared to mindless code typing.Maybe you mean that they need to refine their marketing skills, or to interact with other people in their industry, or to find new customers. I’m curious about what you consider actual hard work that “so-called entrepreneurs” don’t usually do.
Loved this post. Really hits home
I’m the engineer type who will sit down and code a million different things, but never get around to the *other* stuff, the business stuff. Luckily, I met some good partners who can take care of that stuff and let me do what works best, and I’ve luckily been really successful.Awesome article.
Hmm. Great! How/where did you meet them?
Brilliant. care to elaborate on the picture above?
This is a notion I have pondered in various capacities relating to myself and others as I’ve been on both sides of this paradigm. Its interesting to force oneself to step into the unknown- to expand my mind, skills, productivity, etc… It’s almost as though it’s Darwinian- like muscles and physical aptitudes- some have a greater capacity and endurance to stretch themselves in new directions. Yet, it also seems, everyone has some threshold or bounds of elasticity to the new things they can and will do. Would Sergey Brin ever have studied acting to learn the nuances of how non intellectual people communicate? Turns out he didn’t need to. He chose the correct path given his skills, etc. But how did he know how to do this?Would a law student (who wants to reduce the poverty rate in his city) go and live in a homeless shelter to actually experience first had how that ecosystem functions? I don’t know. Perhaps there are some. Perhaps it’s a fusion of random circumstance and pure human will that is the governing force that pushes one. Or maybe, as Gladwell suggests in “Outliers” it is factors from childhood and emergent social forces that shape these trends and abilities.
So I agree with 99% of this posting, but I also have users who tell me that features and quality code matter
This is a good post, and I totally agree.The problem I have is that, while I want my ideas to make me money, the ideas that I’m passionate about don’t lend themselves to moneymaking. I want to design programming languages for a living, but that’s not easy to do. Sun is the only company I know of that made their money mostly on a programming language, and they got bought out in the end. The best way I can think of to make money off a programming language is that you gain reputation for it and then get hired by a big company like Guido van Rossum (Python -> Google) or Simon Peyton Jones (Haskell -> Microsoft). I guess in a way, you could say that these guys are my idols. But that idea isn’t much of a get-rich plan.In short, I do procrastinate on the business side of making money off programming, but the reason is that I don’t think any of the plans I have would work. It’s easy to say that’s just negative thinking or a cover for laziness, but I really don’t want to devote a lot of time and energy if I think it will be wasted.I don’t want to waste your time like so many other people asking for help and not wanting to put in work on the ideas you suggest, but I would definitely be curious to see what kind of a business plan you could come up with for a programming language.
Hi,I like the article, but you should consider “We” instead of “They”. You know we(all) see the straw in the eye of others, but fail to see the beam on ours.Of course coders want to code, like musicians like to play music, writers like to write, and in a lot of cases they not only like it, they are experienced(years of training) and know how to do it, and are pretty dam good at it. The reason they don’t do business is that it takes a lot of effort and we need to get out of our comfort zone with the unknown, but they are not lazy, they just feel they need years of training in new areas,like business, witch is true.Myself, I’m an industrial engineer, I’m a coder, I love marketing and psychology, but I need to focus on something of value and make it much much better than anyone else, in fact I’m doing it ,because spreading yourself too thin makes you mediocre,trying everything, (really)good at nothing.What this people need is people different than them that could complement them, not doing all different work theirself.BTW, doing business, like in a lot of areas, is easy once you know.Cheers!
I totally agree on the observed symptoms, being myself a programming procrastinator.On the other hand, I believe that people are excellent at what they most enjoy doing and that this is an asset to be exploited not curbed, unless doing the latter is part of a formative process.A business-savvy person will likely loath programming, will never get rich by learning a programming language and, as frequently observed, will be unbelievably naive when it comes to practically developing software.So is the self-punishing attitude the way to success ?Probably not, or not for everybody at least.A trustful, complementary partner is, IMHO the key.By the way, I’m looking for a partner as addicted to developing business as I am to developing software
This post is complete crap. Let me illustrate your first flaw in logic. “I’ve always been under the impression that the people I interact with are people who want to be rich.”Assuming these are the programmers you are referring to, this assumption is simply projecting your own worldview onto programmers. Programmers are creative by nature, and in this way are similar to musicians and scientists and craftsmen. Unlike many musicians and scientists, software developers are paid well for what they are good at.In my experience the people ‘least lazy’ in being entrepreneurial are the ones with the least talent for actually creating things. Rock bands hire managers and IT startups have their Steve Jobs’ to do the business stuff. You’re the guy that would call Steve Wozniak lazy for fiddling with floppy drives.
That’s a great photo.
Read “The Emyth Revisited. Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About it.” by Michael E. Gerber (HarperBusiness.See Chapter 2. The Entreprenuer, The Manager, and the TechnicianMost programmers, indeed most of the highly trained physicians, bankers, hairdressers, plumbers, lawyers, I have counseled have no real idea about how to operate a business to get “rich”
Great post. I review my self as a teen girl
Having conciseness of the problem is the first step.
The issue is that they have manipulative people grooming them, stroking their ego, telling them that “hackers” are god’s [1] gift to the economy and that they have a divine [2] right to riches, just because of their innate wonderfulness.Unfortunately, they are the perfect targets for this type of aggrandizement through flattery. Because secretly, deep down, they are very, very afraid, which is why you can lure them in like moths to a flame, and why their reflexive human urge to create an intrinsic sense of value must be riches, which can be measured.And if they let themselves believe this crap, it wrecks their chances.[1] darwin’s[2] what’s the evolutionary version of divine? super-fit? ha.
This is great advice. Maybe another solution, is to find someone who complements your skills (e.g. a great developer finds a great marketing/business person) and the two of you can both push each other outside of your own comfort zones to create something great. I think that the idea of the lone hero/visionary building and marketing an entire product is a bit unrealistic.
blogging is a way to procrastinate.
Fantastic post. It’s the unwillingness to get out there and learn new things to build a business that will ultimately kill it. Speaking from a non-technical founder’s point of view, each department has their own strengths. Mine is not coding, but I still learn enough “about” it in order to develop my product in the right way. It takes a combo of thinkers and developers working in unison to make a business work.
Of course, there is the remote possibility that something magical will be discovered through uninhibited programming…but of course those people are often not entrepreneurs anyway…
“But the worst of all are the people who approach me to help them. I am often enthusiastic, and immediately come up with a strategy and a plan based off my concrete experience. The minute they see extra real work though, that’s the end of it. Folks, it’s not my project, I’m not going to earn any money. At least, TEST out the stuff I’m trying to help you with.”I read this article where i am in a space of self-loathing at my own procrastination. Your article resonates strongly with me.How can i approach you for help in terms of strategy and plan based on your experience?I tried finding your email here. but i cannot find it. Perhaps i overlooked it somewhere.
max@cubeofm.com. True, I don’t have my email addy anywhere, feel free to mail me.
Its not just programmers! And it’s often not laziness. Its fear.In my coaching practice, I usually leave a client with some “homework” to do over the next week. Something that will take them close to their goal. I work with highly motivated people, so usually they follow through. But sometimes, they come back with all kinds of reasons why they decided not to do what they said they would do. They thought of a better way, they didn’t think it was a good idea, etc.But actually, they were just avoiding doing something that intimidated them. Which is fair enough. We all have things we avoid out of fear. The trick is to be honest about why you aren’t moving ahead, decide if it’s worth the risk, and then do it (or not).Usually, it really helps to have someone in your life who will ask about the real reasons behind your action (or lack of it).Scotty
I love that line “That’s like a girl watching TV all the time and saying she’s training to become an actress.”. Pure gold.
You nailed it! Will have to fight the urge for procrastination then…
Thanks for the post, it is so true.
Everybody tends to procrastinate everything. Something that never procrastinated is procrastination itself.
Brilliant !! something to add to life. Thank You. Keep your goods posts high
Interresting post. Could you explain more on how to become rich!!!
Everyone is lazy in a sense. But I don't agree programmers are especially lazy. They just like their craft and want to do it as soundly as possible. So they want to come up with the best solution to their current issue, even if it means more work, pulling allnighters, and it can be at the expense of other things. It's obsession, not lazyness. And even to someone that enjoys it, programming is hard work. It can burn you out.
Your analogy to a girl watching TV to train for actress is nonsense. Programmers produce something, even if it only interests only programmers. The comparison would be more striking for a game designer that wants to learn game design by playing games all day.
As to me personally, as a programmer "getting rich" is not a goal at all. I'd love to be rich enough to be able to do what I want, which is fiddle on my projects, but I'm not striving to be rich in the sense of a big house, big car, etc…
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