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Oh I thought this was gonna be that like the entire product / company / idea was useless, not just like a small number of weeks' worth of work.

I've probably created a hundred or more proofs of concept for things that turned out to be a bad idea. Say these averaged out to a week or so of work each, and that's about two full years of useless work.

And that's ok! Most stuff you work on will get thrown away before you leave a company, and the rest will get thrown away not long after that.

This doesn't really bum me out, but I can certainly understand why people experience it that way.

Honestly though, I think it's worse when things I've created do persist for a long time. They're never nearly good enough and I hate to think that they still exist nonetheless.

I guess my point is: try not to sweat this stuff; it will drive you crazy.



A proof of concept is t really the same thing as a lot of the stories here because the entire point of a POC is to literally prove if a concept works (the clue is in the name). If a concept doesn’t work then that’s still a successful POC because you’ve then saved more time that would have been spent building out a MVP.


Exactly. Go to an artist’s studio. Look at all the sketches, the rack of canvases in the corner, the detritus of creation all around.

Software, and product development in general, is ultimately a creative endeavor. A nontrivial portion of attempts end up in the trash.


> and the rest will get thrown away not long after that.

I'm still working on a project that was mainly written by someone who left the company right before I joined – ten years ago.


Well clearly you should have thrown that away not long after they left! :)


Needed to read this, thank you!




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