Ask HN: Why are developers so obsessed with starting their own business?
An observation I have made for quite some time is that 90%, or maybe even 95% of the developers I know are always obsessed with working on their own side-projects with the hope of one day turning it into a full-blown start-up, or at least making some passive income from it.
Many of my non-developer friends, never even think about this. Some of them are thinking about new ideas to implement in their job, but never with the same obsession that developers seem to talk about it.
(I am a developer as well, also obsessed with the idea of turning one of my side projects into a comfortable passive stream of income or maybe a startup one day)
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadOne reason I can think of, is maybe because they can - developers have the means to create software themselves though maybe not a way to market it. Anything physical requires a fair bit of capital to manufacture it, where's developers just need time. I suspect also that independence is more important to "developer types" than to others.
Another reason I can think of is management in companies can tend to treat developers as second class citizens which can make work unfulfilling. Working on your own products can make programming fun again.
Also in a lot of other white-collar areas like design, medicine or law it's fairly common to setup your own studio/practice after a few years of work experience. IT tends to create large global companies which sucks in a lot of developers.
Most non-software businesses require a much higher upfront investment. With hardware, retail, restaurants or other brick-and-mortar businesses you've got one chance more or less. If you fail in these types of businesses a large amount of capital will be lost (quite likely including your personal savings).
With software businesses you can most of the times just start over. Plus, there always is the opportunity to do consulting if your original plan doesn't work out. As a developer you have a few fallback options whereas in other industries it's mostly all or nothing. While this is an advantage for developers it can also be detrimental. Most developers want to start a company but how many actually do and how many of those persevere when problems come up? With a non-software business you can't bottle out as easily once you've started.
I know this was definitely the case in the 70s. My father's and grandfather's generations mostly started their own businesses rather than work for somebody else. Most of those businesses folded for one reason or the other in the early 80s.
Being a child of the 90s and growing up with stories of the IRS jailing business owners for a variety of crimes that their accountants were ultimately responsible for, I have a near deathly fear of starting a business without the capital to immediately hire an accountant I trust (I've yet to find one of those) and a lawyer I trust (ditto). Just dabbling a bit into consulting the way I have put me at odds with the IRS and California State and wound up costing me at least twice what I made (I didn't make much).
> I know this was definitely the case in the 70s. My father's and grandfather's generations mostly started their own businesses rather than work for somebody else.
Self-employment has fallen over the years, to be sure, but it wasn't the norm two generations ago; by BLS figures, in 1948, it was 18.5% of all workers whose primary work was self-employment; as of 2009, it was around 10.9%.
Expand your luck surface. Part of it is the understanding that while some software start-ups succeed because of really good business basics and lots of investment in marketing - there are others where the combination of a product and luck create an explosion of growth. But if you don't build it you reduce your luck surface.
Of course working on your own profitable project is much more fun and makes much more financial sense than being an employee, building a project for somebody else, and capturing only a fraction of value you create.
Obviously everybody wants to do something more fun and profitable and not something less fun and less profitable. People in other professions would too, but they usually just can't.
Having worked in the so called corporate world, for what seems like eternity, i could say with some confidence that the monotony beats the creative potential out of a developer. I have contemplated quitting technology quite a lot of times, its the passion for technology that keeps me going. I keep telling myself, i ll find my way out of this rabbit hole.
This urge to be the artist that you truly are, the creative process of building software, the art of visualizing the outcome before writing a line of code, the vision of doing amazing stuff, not just building software and being stuck in an endless loop of maintenance and bug fixes - is part of the reason some developers wish to try running their own businesses.
Rotting in a cubicle, with no say as to what could or could not be done, Technology decisions driven by sales and management team rather than the other way around, "works" is better than optimizations / solving for future with good design. - I am sure you would have come across all of these and thats precisely the reason some want to get out of this insane loop of madness is part of the reason why at least i want to start my own venture.
Another thing is that, as companies grow bigger they tend to lose sight on their initial vision / mission statements and also the culture kind of dilutes. Culture is everything. And building the kind of culture you would love to work in, is also a reason for aspiring to start your own venture. You as a developer clearly see whats not working, and you want to change that.
Another management crap that bothers at least myself a big time : recruiting people for numbers in the name of growth. how is number of people employed to do a job related to growth ? This is bullish in every sense. Hire top talents and get them to work. The arse kissing culture is very evident in these kinda growth scenes, where the management wants to please their higher-ups!
Processes : The things we do for the sake of doing! Another reason.
As steve jobs would say, this world was created by people no smarter than you - and you can change things! You will find yourself in situations, where you see that things could have been done better.
I don't want this reply to sound like a rant ( although it somewhat is! ) but i could think of these almost immediately when i read your question. All these and many more contribute to the desire developers feel to starting their own business.
I gave this answer from the vantage point of a guy working in a "job".
I said "Having worked in the so called corporate world, for what seems like eternity.."
The truth is, i have only around 6+ years of experience. The irony ? I am already feeling the heaviness of working for a "job". This heaviness is driving me to take back control of my life and design my own future rather than "settling" for mediocrity!
If you could magically will into existence a coffee shop for free, I'm certain the number of people starting coffee shop businesses would skyrocket. You'd just need to come up with a unique twist to differentiate your shop.
That's not correct. There are all sorts of distribution channels that do not require capital like trade shows, blogging, guest blogging, affiliate programs, and app stores.
Many side projects don't target existing large markets. Bootstrapping is a real thing that people do too, even in large, existing markets.
I don't think the fraction of people wanting to become self-employed is much higher than in other businesses, though.
A somewhat similar situation exists for small-scale blue collar jobs: hair dressers and nail salons, gardeners, plumbers, and the like. There, too, many young professionals dream of running their own business (I don't have numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if half the 20-year old employed hair dressers would say they want to run their own shop one day), and it is cheap to test the waters (that sometimes involves borrowing tools or a van from one's employer while working in the weekend 'for friends')
As to the fraction actually making the jump: I wouldn't dare say whether it is higher in software than elsewhere. My gut feeling would say it isn't, compared to the above. It will be different for people working in industries where a single-man business doesn't exist (I work at a shipyard/a post office, and dream of building oil tankers/doing mail delivery of my own one day), but software development isn't unique in that.
It's not yet clear how one would make a living doing this, so it remains a side project.
The recent article in The Guardian titled "The end of capitalism has begun" is closely relevant and has a lot to say on the economic situation driving these kinds of ideas.
Most of the practical experiences I've had so far have come about either through open source software development, or various large, collaborative, non-hierarchical, non-profit-oriented art and festival projects related to the Burning Man community. Several years helping run a makerspace have also contributed.
Care to elaborate? As skeptical as I am, I'd be genuinely curious if somebody manages to create a decentralized, community driven process successful enough to destroy existing businesses without creating new businesses which other people could then destroy. Commerce begets commerce.
Software development is also a very creative process, which means people who engage in it on average are probably going to have many ideas of their own that don't necessarily fit the interest of their employer.
They go to office, code what they get told, cash their (senior) pay-check and go back home.
Some have the abilities and ambition to do their own thing. Some don't have the nerve to meddle with the business stuff.
I understand both, the "I want it all!" and the "I just want to build things and be left alone!"
I want to start my own business because I want to be challenged. It's not about the money (although I wouldn't mind success). It's not about getting away from the day job, I'd be happy to continue there unless this thing hit the roof (although the chances are slim). I just want to push my abilities to their limits and then push a bit more.
It sounds like you’ve surrounded yourself with people who want to do that.
Most developers probably don’t, and are happy with contributing to or running OSS projects, or even not coding at all.
[0]: Unless you have many marketable ideas of your own. Not all programmers do, though.