Tech is moving too fast for me: I'm out.
My software has issues, lots of them. Customers are calling, there's this and that to do. The to-do list is seemingly never ending.
And then there's every day where I'm overwhelmed again:
Snapchat launches a fantastic re-design. Facebook changes its newsfeed algorithm with significant implications for marketing agencies and small businesses. Facebook replaces its complete Android SDK with a new API. You have to adapt. You have the SDK in your app? Change the references. Apple releases a completely new programming language. Apple releases new versions of iOS and OS X. Google brings Android to TV and your wrist. They release a brand-new Android version. A new cross-platform design language. They replace the Android VM. Notifications change how they work. This. And that. And this. And that.
Issues and customer feedback pile up in your mailbox. You don't know how to manage the today and the past and yet the future is waiting with millions of new opportunities, needs, demands and risks.
I'm out.
88 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadI'd just make a plan and stick to it. Perhaps focus on the problems your customers are having to stop them calling.
A trivial example: Some competitor might decide to start developing for some platform today, but with all the background knowledge, I might say: No, it's time to bet on another platform -- which could cause a critical advantage for me in the future.
But sometimes, I feel like the people who are just diligently doing their daily work and 100% focusing on their own project are not only a bit more productive, but (and this is far more important) happier.
Do this...
But as a founder, I feel I can't just work relaxedly while your industry is moving faster and faster. You impose other standards, don't you?
As a Founder, it is just as important for you to say 'I am going to accomplish as much as I can' and not go beyond that. Balancing life with work for Founders is a continual issue, but is VERY important in order to prevent the kind of burn out you are talking about.
So what if there is new tech out there? Adapt to it at YOUR pace. If you have a product that is solid, and customers on that product, chances are you can make it down the road a bit just by progressing that, and by gradually working in the new stuff. Focus on VALUE...not on buzzwords. Will that new tech help you provide value to your customers? If so, devise a plan that gets you there. If not? Forget it.
Hire the right people to help you get done what you need to get done. As a founder, your job is to provide the master plan, the vision, and the tools a team needs to succeed. NOT to take on the entire world and make it all your own problem. Delegate.
Which is exactly what I'm trying. Thank you! It's just that it often seems to me you can't have a proper work-life balance unless you shut your eyes to all the opportunities you can take and demands you have to fulfil.
You can't be a one-man shop that can stay abreast of every new and emerging trend in the industry. There just isn't the time in the day. There are like two dozen people on earth who can actually be up on all of the latest stuff all on their own. And not being one is not a bad thing.
Use a filter. Figure out what is hot and burning today, and focus on that. Demands first, opportunities seconds, because honestly, you don't time or capital to waste on an 'opportunity' while any important demand waits in 'your' inbox. So start with the demands. Address the ones that come from the segment with the highest ROI. Focus only on things you hear from a 'reasonable' chunk of that segment. No one offs. No feature that one person demands, only things that can score you points with (almost) every customer in that bracket. Plan out that work. That will tell you how long you have before you can afford to move on an opportunity.
If you have good cash flow, consider hiring a person or two to chase some opportunities while your team remains focused. Or use the money wisely, help your team by giving them more resources, and shorten the cycle time before you can afford to engage in speculation.
Speculating about every change, technology, and up and coming sounds like its taking your attention away from where it needs to be. In my humble opinion, that is on the people paying your paycheck, your customers.
If you still have too much work, then maybe you need to hire some staff to take some of your workload.
So tech progresses. But at most you're affected by two or three of these major changes. If you feel like you have to keep up with everything then perhaps you're trying too do much. If you are sure you need to handle every new technology coming out, maybe it's time to make some hires or even pivot.
We catch up with all the technology we've been missing out on only when we need to -- with a strong computer science core, it shouldn't be overtly difficult to learn a language for some new project because the concepts stay the same. But don't attempt to learn everything at once.
If it all feels overwhelming at times, I would recommend meditating for a few minutes in the morning and night. It may sound cliche but it's super easy and very conductive to a calm mood.
Watching the technological progress is fine, yes. But I can't passively watch because I'm involved. Every exciting thing is not just something I can applaud as a consumer but something I have to be after as a developer and entrepreneur.
Sometimes I do ask myself if I'm trying to do too much -- but is being present with your company on both big platforms (iOS + Android) too much already?
I can calm down when I'm not at work (e.g. in the morning). But as soon as work starts, I just see the huge piles of opportunities and demands.
I only work with stuff I can do in Python. If I can't do it in Python, I don't do it. It is nice, but I also don't make the money I'm sure you are either. So your problem is definitely self-imposed, but it's not like you're not properly compensated- you're just complaining / letting off steam. For what you're doing, I'd go learn C# and pay for Xamarin licenses.
It probably isn't difficult, but it can be tedious. And over time, tedious can turn into drudgery and so on.
I'm out.
Hat tip to the commentors on: https://gist.github.com/dhh/1285068
I get that there are busy days and overwhelming days and stressful days. If you have too many of them, that's a personnel problem or a time management problem on the part of whoever is in charge of allocating your time and your team's time. Fix that, because I hope tech never stops evolving.
e: Strange that my post would get net downvotes in addition to its parent post which it obviously very much disagrees with. Almost as though a person would downvote a post, whose meaning depends entirely on what another thing means (Betteridge's law in this case), without knowing what that thing means? Or perhaps without reading carefully enough to know what the fuck my post is even saying?
(Seriously, to whoever downvoted me: if you think I'm in agreement with aashishkoirala, go outside or grab a coffee or take a nap or something - you're not thinking clearly.)
And you don't need to necessarily use Java/C#.
I worked for years writing Python code for my government.
Yes, there is a lot of change. But other than maintaining a sense of what's going on, you should FOCUS on what your customers need and why.
If your software has a lot of issues, then is it because it is trying to do too many things? Maybe you need to segment your customer base and thus your software to be focused on a manageable set of functionality.
In your segmentation effort you could fire those customers who cause the most work and contribute the least amount of revenue. Yeah the old 80:20 rule. Focus on 20% of your customers who provide 80% of your revenue and in turn focus on 20% of the functionality in the software that delivers 80% of what the customers require.
Might be an idea to view competitors through the eyes of your customers. They might not be as important to your plans as you might think.
I see a reason to celebrate novel concepts and technologies, and incremental improvements. I don't see a reason to celebrate yet another technology with 90% of the power of the previous technology, only 50% of the problems of the previous tech, but with a whole slew of problems that that other technology from 7 years ago brought up and that the previous technology fixed. And with a packaging that is similar enough to not be challenging, yet different enough to have to make a concentrated, droning effort in order to iron out any misunderstandings or surprising behaviour.
This is one of my stock objections to package management "solutions" such as Maven. By reducing the friction for change on the part of implementers it pushes the burden on to consumers of APIs to adapt. "Just update your package - it takes two seconds" is the eternal lie of such systems. Package managers by themselves aren't bad, but the resulting mindset is.
apple and google have the power to waste most of the time of most of the people capable of overthrowing them.
somehow my employers know exactly what i would be willing to waste my life like this playing their game, and then they pay me $25,000 more than that. i'm stuck, but who cares. apple and google pay my "stay busy" tax, and i don't drop the revolution at their doorsteps. win-win i guess.
#RICH
Did you know people still do greenfield development in PHP and that it's a huge market? I bet that wasn't even on your radar! Stop reading Techcrunch and specialise in what you like.
Seeing an Oculus Rift actually work for the first time was one such example. A new Facebook API that "changes everything" is really really not.
so? how does this affect your product?
>Facebook changes its newsfeed algorithm with significant implications for marketing agencies and small businesses. Facebook replaces its complete Android SDK with a new API
yeah, that sucks.
>Apple releases a completely new programming language.
so? you don't have to use it.
>Apple releases new versions of iOS and OS X.
if your app works on Mavericks, it works on Yosemite. if it works on iOS7, it works on iOS8
>Google brings Android to TV and your wrist.
You don't have to integrate with it.
>They release a brand-new Android version.
same comment as the apple OS releases
>A new cross-platform design language.
You don't have to use it. Your product already has a design, and a brand. consistency is important. Your users are probably even more afraid of change than you are. Don't inflict google's new design on them unless they're begging for it.
>They replace the Android VM.
your app probably already works with it. most do.
>Notifications change how they work.
no they didn't. they added new features, but your old notifications still work like they did yesterday.
>This. And that. And this. And that.
Build your product, make it as good as it can be, and build what your customers are actually asking for. Stop caring about all that crap the tech blogs are posting, and focus on what your customers are asking for. You don't have to react to everything that theverge reports on, 90% of it goes away after a couple months or has a similarly small effect on the industry.
You have to decide whether you want to pursue these ever-changing trends and be a middleman between API services and users, or take charge of your fate and develop your own meaningful technology (that others in turn will use).
You sound like you might be suffering information overload also. Managing that is key to sticking around. You're only one man/woman after all. Just take it easy. Do your best, but remember it's a marathon.
Lots of enterprises embrace forward thinking architectures but don't necessarily churn languages/frameworks/platforms too frequently.
[1]My day job is enterprise development.
I know of more than one humongous application that still runs on Java 1.2. I wouldn't be surprised if the database was of the same vintage.
OTOH, there is absolutely zero chance you'll get to use Firefox, a Mac or deploy something on Django or Rails there. Ever. By 2020 they may have updated their desktops to Windows 8.
Since I am a retrocomputing enthusiast, I wouldn't mind working on a VT-200 or 3279 ;-).
True, but they're not all like that. We've got a humongous app written originally against .NET 1.1, it's still around, still getting new features, doing refactoring, getting updated with every .NET version bump (runs great on 4.5), still being invested in.
Enterprise does not always equal legacy, etiher.
I'm also working on a project that uses MVC5 and async/await features heavily.
Enterprise is fun because there's usually much better requirement gathering and a very tight feedback loop, because it's actual customers, not prospects, and honestly the developer doesn't have to worry about SEO, marketing, conversion, etc. The sales teams do all that for you.
Regardless of whether you're an engineer, founder, sales/account exec, or any other role, if you can't allocate time to important tasks, work them hard and then break away when other things come up (including time away for lunch or to take a thinking walk) then you won't be working at a top-level.
I am doing game development and I hear all the time "they expect me to do this? Forget it!" - well you are getting paid for it, so move your lazy ass and do it or change the trade. Even if it requires extra work, that what is called "work ethics" - you go extra mile, you aim for best results.