

To the non-entrepreneur: Everyone is running a business, including you - jasim
http://blog.sidu.in/2012/06/everyone-is-running-business-including.html

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ef4
I've found this line of argument can really help open people's eyes to the
opportunities around them.

Even if you're an employee (or job seeker), you are running a business. Your
product is your skills. Your market is all your potential employers.

What are you doing to market your product? What are you doing to improve it?
Are you selling to the right market? What would it take to develop a different
product or adapt it to a market you'd rather be in?

Everybody who works for a living is in business. Some people just don't
realize it, and therefore do it really badly.

~~~
drivingmenuts
> Everybody who works for a living is in business.

That is, to me, a very depressing thought. I'd much rather write code or come
up with ways to solve problems (related to code or that can be coded) than
have to think about business.

~~~
ef4
In my head, I translate that as "I don't want to think about whether my code
actually helps anyone."

Because if you do care, you necessary need to (1) learn what someone's problem
really is, (2) figure out how to solve it, (3) explain your solution to them
so they use it. And at that point, you're "doing business".

Business is not accounting. It's problem solving. It's designing algorithms
that run on people _and_ processors. And you measure the performance of your
algorithm in money, because money is the best measurable proxy we have for
"what people value".

~~~
dgreensp
It's completely possible to _care_ about whether your code actually helps
anyone without ever thinking or worrying about it yourself. All you have to do
is trust someone else to make sure you're not wasting your time, whether it's
your boss, CEO, or co-founder, and perhaps they can make this determination
better than you. It sounds like you feel you have to be in charge of the
business to know you're not wasting your time, but not everyone feels this
way.

I support a world with strong organizations and separation of responsibility,
where designers can design, programmers can program, and chefs can cook lunch,
and if the company fails, well, at least lunch was delicious. It's not the
back-end programmer's fault for not spending his shower time thinking about
the business model. Most people aren't looking for a financially risky job;
it's on the entrepreneur to take the risk.

Alternatively, let's just get rid of salaries and everyone can work for
equity. Then they'll _really_ be thinking about how much their work is helping
the customer.

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lotharbot
I think the most useful concept is to think of you as a business and whoever
pays you as your customer. Then think in terms of providing value to your
customer. As long as you provide value, your customer (or another like them)
will keep paying for it.

If you work for BigCo pushing paper around, figure out why BigCo thinks that's
worth money, and then figure out how to provide them better value. Whether
it's pushing paper faster, reducing the amount of paper that needs pushed,
training others to push paper more efficiently, or whatever, the point is that
if you're providing clear value to BigCo that's worth more than what they're
spending on you, you can keep them as a customer as long as you want. Even if
BigCo goes under, as long as HugeCo and all of their competitors need the same
thing, you can get them as customers.

That's where real "job security" comes from -- having skills that customers
are willing to pay for.

~~~
jleader
Sales people instinctively understand that you can't just rationally provide
value to your customer; you also have to persuade the customer's decision-
makers that you're providing value.

At BigCo, this means you can't just do what's good for the company, you also
have to make sure your boss is happy about what you're doing.

This pitfall is especially tempting to hyper-rational programmer types, who
think that providing value is sufficient, and that no company (including their
personal "company of 1") should ever need sales or marketing departments.

~~~
rprospero
There is a strategy to the rational approach, but it's rarely stated: if your
organization can't recognize value without undue effort, then it's going to
lose to one who can.

To put it differently, if your job is the ship's lookout, you don't try and
convince the captain that he needs a lookout. You try to find a new captain
who won't sink the ship.

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EliRivers
Yes, but in my case it's the kind of business done out of interest rather than
to turn a profit. Like running a second-hand bookstore in a building you own
in Paris, opening at lunchtime and spending the day swapping chit-chat and
literary references over coffee and chess with a handful of regulars and the
occasional wage-slave who sneaked out of work.

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lioneldupree
My favorite Jay-Z lyircs: "I'm not a businessman. I'm a Business, man!"

Or like that one book by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha - The Start Up of
You....its interesting mindset to view your career as a start up.

