<story><title>The Resistance Is Real – Why Side Projects Are So Hard</title><url>http://davemart.in/resistance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>heipei</author><text>At this point in my life I&amp;#x27;ve started to believe that whenever you talk to someone who is &amp;quot;passionate about technology X and clean architectures&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;wants to work on challenging technical problems&amp;quot; is ultimately doomed to fail when setting out to create a (for-profit, bootstrapped) business. This is a strong opinion and there is certainly a spectrum for this mindset, but at the most extreme your mindset should be more along the lines of &amp;quot;all technology ultimately sucks, let&amp;#x27;s figure out the most straightforward way and the least amount of effort and headaches so we can create value for our customers so they, and we, can get off that damn computer screen and enjoy the fruits of our labor&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re saying &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m passionate about delivering great products to users&amp;quot; or even &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m passionate about making money&amp;quot; (I respect that) then technology becomes the tool you unfortunately have to wield to arrive at that goal.&lt;p&gt;Note that this attitude only applies to people who want to take ownership and deliver a fully functional product. There&amp;#x27;s tons of great people who are in it for the sheer enjoyment of working with technology, they all will have a great time working on challenging problems at one of the many tech companies. And there&amp;#x27;s a few people who can both enjoy technical challenges but also switch to dumb and boring crunch mode when it&amp;#x27;s demanded by the task at hand.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Delmania</author><text>&amp;gt; At this point in my life I&amp;#x27;ve started to believe that whenever you talk to someone who is &amp;quot;passionate about technology X and clean architectures&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;wants to work on challenging technical problems&amp;quot; is ultimately doomed to fail when setting out to create a (for-profit, bootstrapped) business&lt;p&gt;A flight to the Virgin Isles was delayed overnight, so a strapping young man named Richard Branson chartered a plane to the Isles with money he didn&amp;#x27;t have.  His next move was to create a sign that read &amp;quot;Virgin Airline, $29 a ticket&amp;quot;, which he showed to his fellow passengers.  They all paid up and all flew to the Virgin Isles that night.  Was he motivated by a &amp;quot;passion to help people get to their destination&amp;quot;? Hell no, he had a girl waiting for him and more than likely he wanted to get laid.&lt;p&gt;That is the only attitude that works for an entrepreneur, the ability to identify problems, find solutions, and get people to pay for them. If you say you have a passion fr a technology or a clean architecture, or that you want to work on challenging problems, you belong in an established company, either as a lead, an architect, or in the R&amp;amp;D.  Entrepreneurs understand that technology is but a means to an end, and focus more on solving problems than gold plating something or waxing philosophical about software.  They use the tools at hand to solve a problem to the best of their ability.  They&amp;#x27;re not motivated by some grand scheme,  their passions are more personal.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Resistance Is Real – Why Side Projects Are So Hard</title><url>http://davemart.in/resistance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>heipei</author><text>At this point in my life I&amp;#x27;ve started to believe that whenever you talk to someone who is &amp;quot;passionate about technology X and clean architectures&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;wants to work on challenging technical problems&amp;quot; is ultimately doomed to fail when setting out to create a (for-profit, bootstrapped) business. This is a strong opinion and there is certainly a spectrum for this mindset, but at the most extreme your mindset should be more along the lines of &amp;quot;all technology ultimately sucks, let&amp;#x27;s figure out the most straightforward way and the least amount of effort and headaches so we can create value for our customers so they, and we, can get off that damn computer screen and enjoy the fruits of our labor&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re saying &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m passionate about delivering great products to users&amp;quot; or even &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m passionate about making money&amp;quot; (I respect that) then technology becomes the tool you unfortunately have to wield to arrive at that goal.&lt;p&gt;Note that this attitude only applies to people who want to take ownership and deliver a fully functional product. There&amp;#x27;s tons of great people who are in it for the sheer enjoyment of working with technology, they all will have a great time working on challenging problems at one of the many tech companies. And there&amp;#x27;s a few people who can both enjoy technical challenges but also switch to dumb and boring crunch mode when it&amp;#x27;s demanded by the task at hand.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rdiddly</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re really just talking about the differences in skill sets and interests between people who, in a bigger organization, would be sorted into the engineering team and the executive team.  The &amp;quot;passionate about technology&amp;quot; people will end up in engineering.  To the executive team, finding and serving the customer is the focus, while technologies (and engineers for that matter) are very much a cost that has to be justified.&lt;p&gt;But yeah they&amp;#x27;re different skill sets.  The only time it&amp;#x27;s a problem is when they both have to reside in the same person, for example the solo app developer.  You&amp;#x27;re trying to serve as both the engineering staff and the executive&amp;#x2F;management team, plus wearing several other hats as well.</text></comment>