
You’re a developer, so why do you work for someone else? - bry
http://intermittentintelligence.com/2010/08/youre-a-developer-so-why-do-you-work-for-someone-else/
======
nir
I'm happy for the author and wish him success. But the assumption that being a
good developer can make you rich is misleading.

Reading PG may create the impression that building a successful company is an
engineering-like process, deterministic and repeatable. It is not. It's a
chaotic process that cannot be reliably planned. Thinking "Zuckerberg coded a
PHP app, I can code a PHP app" is like thinking "That old lady bought a
lottery ticket. I can buy a lottery ticket.."

Building a smaller business that supports a few people is a different story
(and a worthy goal unto itself). But that's not "sitting on a goldmine".

EDIT: Just wanted to add I have huge respect for this guy, building a business
while supporting a family. My beef, such as it is, is with simplistic picture
of startups often painted in HN. The actual people giving it a go, you have to
respect.

~~~
donaq
Well, actually, I think startup founders actually _need_ this kind of slight
delusion. In my more rational moments, I think my ideas suck, my plans are
hollow and I'm going to be a wage slave for the rest of my life because of my
obligations. I look at the mountain of obstacles ahead and think, "No way that
can ever be moved. Learn to be content. Life is such." But the other voice
inside me always chimes in later with, "But you're different. You _can_ move
mountains. That isn't even a mountain anyway. Put your will to it, and it
_will_ shatter. KEEP GOING."

I am sure that there are people out there who can look at a mountain, see a
molehill, and stomp it flat. I'm just not sure I am one of them. But I do
think that if you want to start a business, you need the arrogance to at least
act like you believe you are, because conventional wisdom says, to borrow your
analogy, that you will lose at that lottery. So I think it does take some
arrogance and self-delusion to believe that somehow you will beat that lottery
and emerge a winner. If you don't, why the hell are you playing?

~~~
10ren
> why the hell are you playing?

If you build something that solves a problem that people have (ie. is useful),
and you arrange for people get to know about it somehow, then I think you
can't help but be successful. But "successful" might not be a
goldmine/lottery; it just might be making an adequate living, in a lifestyle
business - like a fish n chip shop (as DHH denigrates). I think it's actually
quite hard to fail at this, if you are aiming at creating something useful +
communicating it.

You might see this as being an independent software vendor where the total
value you produce is comparable to an ordinary employee - except that you are
free to formulate your own projects etc (which has +'s and -'s.)

Another aspect is that if you _create_ something _useful_... that's amazingly
cool and valuable in itself. As for the lottery, win or lose, doesn't matter.

~~~
lsc
"If you build something that solves a problem that people have (ie. is
useful), and you arrange for people get to know about it somehow, then I think
you can't help but be successful. But "successful" might not be a
goldmine/lottery; it just might be making an adequate living, in a lifestyle
business - like a fish n chip shop (as DHH denigrates). I think it's actually
quite hard to fail at this, if you are aiming at creating something useful +
communicating it."

This is what I'm doing, with some success. Now, if you don't count the net
worth growth implicit in how the company is growing, I'm not making what I
would be working for other people, but I think I'm a success. I set my own
hours, my baseline expenses are covered, and when I hustle, I can make a lot
of money. when I don't, like the last few months, well, like I said, my
baseline expenses are covered. Also, eh, I've probably grown my reputation
enough that my credentials now look better than they would had I spent this
effort on college.

I don't know if I agree with the "can't help but be successful" part, though.
I poured most of my income and spare time into projects like this for many
years before I hit upon a project that actually worked. Now, part of that
might be because I'm no superman... my IQ barely makes it into the 98th
percentile, which really is kinda dumb. I never went to college, and, uh, I'm
pretty lazy. I got a 2.16GPA in one of the worst high schools in the state. I
mean, yeah. no two ways about it, I'm lazy.

So yeah, uh, if you are a Paul Graham, maybe starting a lifestyle business is
easy. Maybe. but for me, it was a lot of work. Now, it was work that I liked
doing; I think I enjoyed building my company more than I would have enjoyed
taking the money and buying a porsche (and I'd be able to buy one with the
cash I dumped in before it became profitable... two or three if I got a
reasonable rate for the time I spent before the company became profitable.)

On the other hand, maybe what you mean is that you can choose to run a
lifestyle business in such a way that you don't really fail until you choose
to fail. This is what I did. When I ran out of money, I'd do more contracting,
or get a full time job. When I was flush, I'd work more on my business.
Really, I could have continued spending 3/4th of my income and time on the
business for the rest of my life; unlike a startup with investors, there isn't
anyone around to say "give it up" - it's just me. as long as I'm willing to
work, there will be money.

~~~
10ren
I didn't mean that definition of "fail", but I guess I was cheating a bit with
the "creating something useful", in that I was assuming that you already know
what would be useful - whereas that is often the difficult part.

In my defence, I say that finding something to create that is useful enough to
give a modest one-man income, is a lot easier than finding one giving a multi-
billion dollar payout. The main way to make it easier is to specialize: a
niche that is complex enough to require a lot of work, yet small enough to not
be worth >1 person's time to serve. From there, you can grow to other segments
if you want, or just enjoy your little place in the world. The key is to know
about those specific problems, so it's invaluable to have
worked/studied/played in a field. Hence the saying _a problem is an
opportunity_.

Of course, we all have different motivations/passions and abilities, and that
influences what niche will be doable and satisfying for each individual.
Currently, I have a technical/academic idea about data integration and
evolution that I really want to make work, which isn't specific to any
industry (except the data integration and evolution industry, I guess). My
last idea was about a specific problem I encountered in industry, and that was
_much_ easier to create and sell. Much easier.

~~~
lsc
>in that I was assuming that you already know what would be useful - whereas
that is often the difficult part.

Me, I focused on "what can I do" and "what would I buy" - I think a
reasonable, though very limiting, starting point.

My first problem was that amazon radically changed the market for storage (I
started by selling storage) - my second problem was that sharing pagecache?
bad idea. My third problem was that I thought using obsolete hardware was
somehow a good idea.

So, uh, yeah. of my major problems, only one, really, was external. the rest
were me being stupid. I guess that could fall into the "finding something
useful" category. But then, I am mostly filling unserved price niches in
existing markets. When I started there were already VPS providers out there;
linode was one. I do believe I was the first to switch to xen.

>I say that finding something to create that is useful enough to give a modest
one-man income, is a lot easier than finding one giving a multi-billion dollar
payout.

I assume it's harder to make the 'big exit' companies... not that I would
know. It's certainly a very different game, one that would be /much/ harder
for my particular skillset. most 'big exit' companies seem to be more focused
on selling to investors than on day to day cashflow. In my industry, if I sold
out tomorrow, I'd get the value of my servers, plus about a years revenue.
Now, there's no way I'd sell at that price, but that's market for a ISP or
hosting company. Compare that to the valuation MySpace got. They got a
valuation that assumed myspace would be the dominant social networking site
for a long time. The valuations for friendster and facebook both reflected
that same assumption. To me, that assumption seems ridiculously irrational.

Now, if you are going for a 'big exit' usually you have more than one founder,
and some startup cash from someone else. Certainly, more work is put in, but
is any one person's contribution more than what they'd have to contribute to
get their own lifestyle business off the ground? I don't know. Once you
involve investors, though, and people depending on investor money, you are
much more likely to get yourself in a situation where you have no choice but
to close the company.

Of course, my negative tone is entirely sour grapes, because my skilset means
that I'd be a very minor player in any "swing for the fences" venture, while I
can handle my lifestyle business just fine.

~~~
10ren
I think the hard thing about the multi-billion dollar exit isn't the extra
work needed, but the probability of it working out. Maybe one estimate of the
odds is how many projects are started, verses how many cash out (this should
include projects that are abandoned even after only a few weeks, if they would
have continued had they got a little traction.) Massive survivorship bias,
when only the huge payouts are publicized.

I don't think the initial founder/s necessarily must have the right skillset,
but someone, sometime must come on board with that skillset. Rather
tragically, these people seem to quite often eject the founders. One book
("Crossing the Chasm") even claims that the initial founders don't deserve the
big pay-out _because_ they don't have the skillset (and they're more
interested in making cool stuff and being their own boss than in making
money). Ugh.

To be captain of your soul, master of your destiny is worth more than all the
riches and fame in the world - they merely tighten the shackles of the worldly
and the opinions of others, not freedom of any kind, only dominance (says me,
sans riches and fame. actually, I think it would be great fun).

BTW your 98th percentile puts you squarely in the "smarter than average, but
not a genius" camp, which is where I am, and where I think most entrepreneurs
are. In business, extremely high intelligence seems to be liability. I think
what really counts is something like boldness + quick recovery. I could
certainly do with some more of that.

I agree with you about MySpace etc, it's too unpredictable; too easy to switch
(mind you, I said that about Google too; I thought their massive PR efforts
was one of their few competitive advantages, I wonder if they've become
complacent recently.)

> MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30 percent of its
> workforce in June 2009

> By late 2007 into 2008, Myspace was considered the leading social networking
> site, and consistently beat out main competitor Facebook in traffic. When
> Facebook launched new features in an effort to attract a variety of users,
> Myspace found itself in a continuing decline of membership. As of July 2010,
> the site was ranked 25th in Internet traffic,[3] opposed to the 2nd position
> held by Facebook. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace>

Kids love cool stuff, which means they switch all the time. Maybe the
sustainable business model is a business that generates (or promotes) social
sites? (analogous to music publishers always touting the next cool band - most
bands have limited lifespan, but the publishers live on)

------
nostrademons
It's interesting, when Hacker News first started (and was called "Startup
News"), I used to make ra-ra comments like this all the time. Like the author,
I had little practical experience in actually succeeding at entrepreneurship.
And yet they'd be voted up _really high_. Once in a while, some old salt like,
say, the guy who founded Digg or the guy who founded Symbolics would reply and
say "You're naive and ignorant. You won't think so poorly of jobs once you've
run your own company for a while" (in nicer terms, of course). But by and
large, Startup News loved wild-eyed optimism.

Now, the vast majority of comments hold that same sort of "Well, it's more
complicated than that, and I'm quite happy with my 9-5" view. Sometimes even
my own.

I wonder if that's representative of the economy changing, or if it's
representative of the site's audience changing. If it's the former, maybe it
means that now is a good time to found a startup.

~~~
jasonkester
It's just a reflection of the changing demographics here.

People tend to justify whatever it is they're doing at the moment. So you and
me will talk up the entrepreneurial side of things and snoot down our noses at
the "wage slaves". It's not that we actually know any better, but if we do
this enough it'll seem like we're not so far out on a limb.

Back in the day, that was the only crowd here, so this sort of article (or
comment) would get nothing but love. Now, HN is more or less evenly split
between entrepreneurs and people who actually read those articles about
programming languages. Those are guys with jobs. Good jobs, thank you very
much, that pull in more each and every day than our little "startups" gross in
a month. They have their own world view to justify, so now we get to listen to
their story.

------
danw
I have an excellent job where I get to work with lovely people and solve
interesting problems. I'll leave the admin, business development & marketing
to folks who are better skilled at such things for now, thank you very much.

~~~
derwiki
To shorten: I want to code, not do the other crap. :)

------
moultano
For me, the answer is that the large organization I'm working for actually
lets me have a larger impact than I could likely have working on my own.

So long as my debit card keeps working and I keep building up savings, the
quantity of compensation doesn't matter too much to me. What matters to me is
how much I positively impact the world, and on that front improving a mature
product with a ton of users has a much bigger bang for the buck than
scratching small itches in small niches, no matter how profitable they might
end up being.

~~~
patio11
You'd be surprised how much impact you can have even in a small niche. I've
got a pretty small product in elementary education and, depending on your
assumptions about how many teachers convert to classroom use after using the
site, I've taught between 100,000 and 1 million student-hours in the last
year.

~~~
reitzensteinm
And god help you if you write games. At some point in my career I'll pass the
billion hours of time wasted, at which point I won't know whether to celebrate
or cry. Thankfully that day is still 5-10 years off.

~~~
patio11
You entertain people. It is an honest occupation. (Paraphrased from Tom
Clancy, in response to the question "Do you write literature?")

~~~
mattmanser
And one day it will be the only viable occupation for us Humans, its the
ultimate profession in my book.

------
jon_hendry
"No, seriously, a @#$% goldmine! Never in modern history has it been so easy
to create something from scratch, with little or no capital and a marketing
model that is limited only by your imagination."

ie, high supply. Lots of competition.

It's getting to be like writing novels. Lots of people do it. The barriers to
entry are low. But few can make a living at it.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
But that's _everything_ worth doing, and isn't that how it's always been? For
every Jimi Hendrix there were a zillion teenagers sitting in their poster-
filled room with desires to melt faces and change the world with the power of
Rock. Or for every Steel Magnate, there were guys running a 10-man shops
hoping to roll enough steel this quarter to buy the coke smelter down the road
a ways.

It all starts somewhere, and almost everything with any market visibility has
hundreds if not thousands of everyone from Mom and Pops to multinationals
gunning for the big ring.

This is why the corporations dominate: They know the "little guys" like us
don't think it's worth it to disrupt their industries.

I'd say the only technology company that really takes alot of capital to start
is product manufacturing business, and even then, aren't there whole
industries catering to garage businesses like thomasnet or rapid prototyping
firms? Or just bootstrap it like DODOCase.

~~~
ohyes
'This is why the corporations dominate: They know the "little guys" like us
don't think it's worth it to disrupt their industries.'

Also, huge advantages in terms of economies of scale, financing, lawyers,
patent portfolios... and if you are successful, they buy you or you become a
big corporation...

~~~
mistermann
Not to mention meeting your local politician for a cup of coffee to "discuss
things".

------
BigZaphod
For me, the answer is: I like programming. If I did my own thing, I'd have to
do all that other non-programming crap, too. Suddenly I wouldn't be a
programmer anymore. Meh.

~~~
bry
But wouldn't it be more fun programming on YOUR terms, not your employer/boss'
terms? Even if that meant you had to spend a bit more time managing your
business?

~~~
kd0amg
Is it actually just "a bit more time"? I can only go by what I hear from
others, but the stories I read in HN comments make it sound like that "bit
more" is at least half-time work.

~~~
nfriedly
When I was freelancing, 35-40 hours per week, it was quite often that I only
got to spend 10 hours a week doing actually programing. Anything over 20 was
amazing.

~~~
dennisgorelik
You are forgetting, that if you spend 20 hours/week on your own business, then
you would spend most of these 20 hours thinking and only ~5 hours/week coding.
Which would probably move your business forward very slowly.

------
city41
If I really wanted to, sure I could scrounge up the extra free time to pursue
my ideas. But then my entire life would be my day job and my side project, at
the expense of absolutely everything else.

There is nothing wrong with that if that is what is important to you. But I
also value friendships, exercise, reading, relaxing, cooking, etc. A nice
balanced life is crucial for good health and well being. I would argue for
most people, the cost of completely throwing away all balance in your life
would not match the reward that your product would bring once launched.

~~~
bry
"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole
working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty
years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially
well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast." - Paul Graham

<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

~~~
mapleoin
It stops making sense economically if you consider the high risk of failure
though.

~~~
kranner
It's really only failure if you learn nothing and never try again.

~~~
city41
It's failure if the energy spent on the project is more than the return. Sure
you may learn something, but if all you learned was to become a better web
developer at the expense of relationships, physical health, your bank account,
etc, then perhaps it would have been better to just create a casual, hobby
webapp for fun.

~~~
kranner
We're probably thinking of very different things.

By learning I meant learning every aspect of launching a startup, including
customer development, sales, marketing, SEO, etc. If your role in the startup
was limited to programming, then I'd take a very jaundiced view of the state
of affairs.

And by no means would sacrificing relationships and health compensate for even
this.

------
gamble
Protip: if you're a founder or aspiring to start a company that may one day
employ others, try not to write blog posts that question why anyone would ever
work for you.

~~~
trustfundbaby
The headline is a little sensationalist but the writer himself works fulltime,
so I think its clear that he's not saying that you should never work for
anyone.

------
chc
I find that these really strong "screw employment!" kind of opinions like this
tend to come from people who haven't really been successful following the path
they espouse — it's always "aspiring" entrepreneurs, as this writer puts it.
Either this kind of attitude is unhelpful or reality tends to temper it.

~~~
bry
Why can't it be from someone who genuinely wants to encourage others like him?

If you read it again, it isn't necessarily all about "screw employment". It
deals with the reality of trying to build something while necessarily employed
in several places.

~~~
chc
Well, sure, but I just don't feel all that encouraged by somebody making
grandiose claims that are based on neither experience nor hard data. I don't
mean to imply that anyone's heart is in a bad place, but it just reads to me
like somebody selling himself on a get rich quick scheme. I know people who
have bankrupted themselves on that sort of thing, so this kind of baseless
exuberance makes me feel concerned.

~~~
bry
Yeah, optimism is for babies, right? :)

~~~
chc
Optimism is fine. The phrase "a @#$% goldmine!" is a flashing red warning
sign.

------
nadam
It is interesting how much this blog post is not relevant to my status. I
always wanted to create my own startup, and nearly always had pet projects for
this purpose on the side. It is no news to me that starting a startup is a
cool thing. I dont' watch TV, and I don't need a Palsma TV. But I have a
family to care about, I live in a quite poor country and I need a day job. I
think I am a good developer, but I don't think my knowledge is a goldmine.
They pay approximately $2000 per month for even very very good developers in
my country. This is not a goldmine. I made 3 projects to the sellable product
phase in my life, and all failed. The first was too ambitious and I could not
keep up with competitors like google. (natural language translation from
english to my mother language) The second was an Indie game: The critics said
it was done professionally, but it was not especially playable, it was not fun
enough. The third was not ambitious enough: This was a small software for the
consumer market (language learning), It got lost amongst the thousands of
small shareware tools on download.com and also there were free products which
were partially competitors.

I start to lose my energy. (Having a boring day job for years is not fun.) Of
course I build something again on the side. I think it is a better idea than
the previous ones. I cannot stop. But I will never ever will have the optimism
like the OP.

~~~
riffraff
i don't understand why #3 was not ambitious enough, could you explain?

There are a host of language learning tools, but a lot of them are simplistic,
or very poor, or very expensive and only support a few languages (e.g. as
you're hungarian, I've yet to find a good one supporting your language).

Language learning is not a solved problem, afaict :)

~~~
nadam
My product/approach was too simplistic. It was just a word learner tool,
basically a 'flash card' program, which tracked and modeled the user's
knowledge, and 'annoyed' the user time to time with questions. My main mistake
was that I did not research the market enough before building the tool: the
problem exists, but there are too much competitors, and there a free ones
amongst them. Otherwise this was my smallest 'fail', because this did not
involve that much work from me. My other 2 'fails' especially the first was a
more severe one. (Google translate did not exist when I started my first
project. I already had some paying customers when google translate had been
made available in my language. Then I realized that I have no chance to keep
up with them.)

------
smackfu
Because I don't have to work very hard and they pay well.

~~~
c1sc0
Upvoted because I understand that not everyone has this desire to produce
something. I'd wager that the default mental state for most people is
idleness.

------
Tichy
Wow, 20 hours? Personally I don't think I can realistically create much on the
side with a full time job. I tend to be extremely tired at the end of the work
day. So I think my only option is to quit my job again :-(

Maybe it is also my sleeping patterns just don't align with jobs. Today I
simply had to sleep around 9pm (home from the job at 8). Slept till perhaps
11pm. Now I feel reasonably fit, but to be at the office in time, it is time
to go to bed.

I experience this kind of pattern frequently.

In fact I sometimes wonder if the biggest mistake of my life was trying to
adapt to other people's schedules (also girl-friends who want to go to bed
"early" etc). Thereby I wasted most of my productive hours.

My typical work day at the office is painful because I tend to be tired...

~~~
jon_hendry
Maybe get checked for sleep apnea? If you have it, you repeatedly stop
breathing during the night. It isn't long enough to kill you, but it's long
enough to lift you out of deep sleep into shallower sleep, or keep you from
entering the deep sleep states.

~~~
Tichy
Thanks, I have been to a lab before and they said my snoring is not too bad.
They wanted to give me medication against restless legs, but I didn't want to
take it.

------
wenbert
I was a full-time programmer. The job I was in was draining my energy and
programming became really boring. While I had the job, I worked on the side
developing websites. I also had a bunch of pet-projects for fun - hopefully
people will use them and I can earn more money. But fast forward a few years,
programming wasn't fun anymore. I was too tired to finish my projects.

So, I quit my job and moved to a non-programming job. The pay as of now, is
not that high, but I am happier. The job is fairly easy on the brain. That
means less stress and I have more time to think while I am at home coding my
personal project.

Maybe my programming job sucked or it was something else. I could go on like
this until I finish my personal project.

------
quellhorst
I do contracting to pay the bills while I build my own web app. It is
difficult but by working 80 hours a week I'm making progress. Hopefully the
sacrifices I have made are worth it in the end.

~~~
aymeric
I personally work three days a week as a consultant and I work on my startup
the rest of the week. I don't have to sacrifice anything, the journey is very
pleasant and I have the confidence that one day I won't need any consulting
work anymore.

------
wccrawford
"Myth #1: I don’t have any time"

If you think this is a myth, you need to re-examine what you want from life.
Everyone needs time to relax. Playing games, surfing the web, going to the
gym... Everyone does it differently, but everyone needs it.

You can give up your 'free time' for a while and work on something, but it
will eventually crash in on you and you will start hating your life.

I have too many hobbies. Every once in a while, my hobbies will start to run
my life and I'll start getting depressed. When that happens, I stop and decide
which of them are things I really want to do, and which aren't. I prioritize
my hobbies. That relieves the stress again and I can relax.

If you can really relax while working on a programming project, then go ahead.
But when it starts to stress you out due to a deadline or other outside
influence, it stops being fun and starts stressing you out.

Being stressed out will affect everything you do and it will all go down in
flames.

I have a few programming projects that I'm working on in my spare time. Nobody
knows about them, so there's no pressure to finish them. I just have fun with
them and work on them at my leisure. As soon as I release them to the world,
they are going to get very stressful. Yes, someone else might think of the
same ideas first and beat me to it, but I'm taking my time, doing it right,
and I'll release when it's convenient for me. If that turns into something
big, I can quit my day job. If not, not.

------
mseebach
Colleagues. I get to meet and work with a bunch of interesting and talented
people, without asking them to marry me (which is what many here likens the
co-founder experience to).

Also, my employer has a quite significant sales and client management staff. I
don't enjoy sales or client management much, and consequently I'm not good at
it (or maybe it's the other way around), so I'm happier when other people do
that for me.

I might do a start-up one day. But until then, this is a pretty sweet deal.

------
giardini
Reminds me of C.S. Forester's memoirs about writers. Forester found it easy to
create plot ideas but hadn't enough time to write all of them. He had (later
successful) friends who, once given a plot, could quickly flesh out a full
story. They, on the other hand, had little ability to conceive plots! So he
passed ideas to them and they did the rest.

We're all different. Some can see all aspects of a project, others can
beautifully manage the startup, some can hone a roughly-hewn project to
perfection, and still others can document a project beautifully. They're all
useful.

Not everyone can do everything well, nor is it necessary. Man is a social
animal for a reason: groups can do things that no single man could do.

------
pibefision
I'm starting to get sick with this kind of posts. Please stop.

~~~
dennisgorelik
What kind of posts would you like to read instead?

~~~
kd0amg
While I wouldn't go so far as to say this type of post is problematic, what
really drew me into this site were things like
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1156628>

------
retube
Just cos you can write code doesn't mean you can start a business:

1) You need a decent idea. This is the "cheapest" bit, and actually even this
is quite hard. what businesses or consumers want (and how they want it) is
usually quite different to what you'd naively think.

2) Can you really execute it well? Most ideas will require more than the skill
set of one developer.

3) Do you have a route to market? This is the hardest. You can have the best
executed product in the world, if you've got no way of selling it it's
worthless. And this doesn't just mean oh I'm going to sell it to telcos - it
means which telcos, and WHO at these telcos? Are you going to be cold-calling
a massive company trying to find the right person to speak to about your
product? (if so, good luck!)

4) Are you prepared to work ridiculous hours for sod-all pay, and go through
all the stresses, uncertainties and ups-and-downs that starting a business
involves? There's a lot to be said for a regular, essentially risk-free check
every month.

Yes: you can start a software-based business with little more than a PC and an
internet connection. But so can everyone else: there's no advantage here.

------
dannyr
Suggested Title:

"You’re an entrepreneurial developer, so why do you work for someone else?"

~~~
mortenjorck
"You're a chef, so why don't you start your own restaurant?"

"You're a mechanic, so why don't you start your own garage?"

"You're a retail manager, so why don't you start your own store?"

Ad absurdum. But yes, add "entrepreneurial" to any of those and they become
perfectly valid questions.

But then it really just comes down to "You're entrepreneurially inclined, so
why don't you start your own business?"

~~~
smallegan
Each of those questions can quite simply be answered "Lack of Capital"....This
is what is unique about being a software developer. As mentioned in the
article you don't need funding to get something up and running.

~~~
enanoretozon
what about funding to keep self and family up and running?

~~~
smallegan
This was addressed in the first part of the article. It doesn't need to be a
full time endeavor to start.

------
qqqq2010
At the beginning of the learning curve, there's little better for grasping
topics than hearing someone else explain them. I've learned more (almost
entirely by virtue of genius co-workers) in the first 6 months of my current,
first, developer job than I did in ~2 years of self learning and freelancing.

------
whouweling
The thing that struck me in this post is: "it's all about money". (the
goldmine aspect)

I think money is an especially a bad motivation for starting your own product.

So if its about being creative, doing lots of different projects, having an
influence on what your working on and where the product is going: you can do
this working for the right company as well.

Of course the level of control is higher when you're running your own company,
but so are the risks.

Isn't the important question: is the process important, i.e programming &
working on interesting ideas, or is it the end result that counts, i.e having
a successful product that is generating an income for you and where you have
total control over?

------
hnal943
Posts like this that advocate working on your start up by squeezing hours out
of your day ignore the switching costs involved. Even when I do decide to turn
my hour TV-time into an hour of project-time, it takes a while to get back
into the flow and remember what it is I was working on. With start up and shut
down, I end up exchanging an hour of TV-time for 20 mins of productive work.

------
jscore
1\. Just because you build it, doesn't mean they will come. There's something
called marketing, promotion and luck.

and

2\. Development and business/marketing skills are very very different.

------
njharman
I'm working for someone else precisely because I'm a developer. I like
developing. I don't like running a startup.

Is it really that hard to understand?

------
hippich
I need to support my visa =(

~~~
keeptrying
Focus on what you can do. I was in the same boat and I used to think like you.
It was a wrong way to think and wasted a lot of my time.

~~~
hippich
i am keeping work on my own projects. but still, there is no easier way to get
legally permanently to usa without work visa and following greencard. dv
lottery is not a way (but i keep trying) and i am already married =) and do
not have 500k-1m to invest into something too =)

~~~
keeptrying
Reread your comment. What are you again focussing on? Send me an email via
hackernewsers.com . I wrote up an article that I sent to others wu had
contacted me and I think it might help you.

------
n8agrin
Two words: student loans.

------
jteo
It is better to be lucky than good.

~~~
AndyKelley
You'll notice that, as you get better, your luck seems to be strangely
increasing.

~~~
GFischer
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." \- Thomas
Jefferson.

or

"Diligence is the mother of good luck." - Benjamin Franklin

------
sabat
All this naysaying and negative, defeatist thinking: this is exactly why you
will not succeed in a startup. Positivity is a necessary -- albeit not
sufficient -- factor in creating something new.

~~~
jasonkester
Ah, but the naysaying is not coming from people trying to start startups. It's
coming from people happy in their jobs who don't want us trying to convince
them they're doing it wrong. Why should it matter if they're negative about
entrepreneurial stuff?

To the startup side of HN, this article is just another "me too" piled on top
of dozens of copies of itself every month. There's nothing particularly
insightful about it, so there's no need to jump into the comments and dump a
ton of praise onto it. A simple upvote will suffice, which explains why it has
120 of them.

~~~
sabat
You're right, of course. I was just surprised to see naysaying on a site that
has such a strong startup vibe.

 _To the startup side of HN, this article is just another "me too" piled on
top of dozens of copies of itself every month_

True. I liked it, though. I thought it was well-worded and somewhat inspiring.
Certainly I'd thought of a lot of this stuff before, and seen it here. With
the current economic tornado, though, some of us were unconsciously beginning
to lose hope and faith -- myself, at least. Reading about how this guy keeps
at it after his kids had gone to bed: that was encouraging and inspiring. I
have one kid. If he can do it ...

