> I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.
I'm not rich. I've done important stuff, that has almost certainly saved lives, and is being used daily, by thousands, around the world. I'll never get much credit for it, and never made a dime (in fact, it cost me thousands, out of my own pocket).
I have to work on projects for no pay, because folks don't think my skills are worth paying for.
As an aside, sir, I’d like to share my feelings here. For some reason, your username stands out for me, so I get to notice your comments here often in the topics that I am interested in. And I always enjoy your perspective and wisdom, and appreciate what you write. Sorry for this off-topic, I’ve just found an opportunity to share this.
Same here. Have him mentally flagged as the "test-harness-guy with the 90s website", who tries to build high-quality products I don't understand for a market I don't understand.
Well, my personal website is actually a ‘90s HTML (Dreamweaver, even) site (I’ve not been in a hurry to update, but I have been bricking up parts, as they crumble). There’s really only a couple of pages that are still relevant (my parents’ obits).
The other sites are just simple responsive WordPress sites, and aren’t designed to be eye-candy. They are actually quite modern, and work pretty well on phones. It’s just they aren’t ghastly, JavaScript-loaded, everscroll single-page sites, and aren’t trendy, at all. I’m not really trying to impress anyone. I just want to have a decent place to hang my stuff. I design my own sites, and Web design isn’t my forte.
I want to update them, but haven’t found the time. They work fine. I stopped putting my writing on Medium, because … Medium.
I like some of the static site generators, and maybe I’ll go with them, eventually.
I don’t try building high-Quality products, I succeed. I’ve been doing that for quite some time. I’m not particularly worried whether or not anyone uses them. I tend to build stuff that I (or my community) want. It’s a “market” that is quite underserved, as there aren’t vast profits or scale to be reaped. I’m happy to talk about it, but this isn’t really the venue for that.
I’ve found that there’s a great deal of satisfaction to be had, Serving a need, for folks that no one else cares about. The work interests me, more than fame and fortune. I spent my life, making stuff for corporations, only to have them destroy it. That gets rather depressing. These days, I write stuff for people.
It also held me back. Most corporations are fairly retro. HN does not represent the vast majority of developers. I like modern tech, but I also like shipping, so I tend to stay a year or two behind the bleeding edge. I also find “trendiness” to be a bit shallow and silly. I like to wait for the burrs to be worn off (I have taken OpenDoc classes from Apple Developer University. I've seen things, man). I'm a very practical person. I like writing stuff that works, not that wins Buzzword Bingo.
Most people would agree with you. It is very surprising when you manage to give ordinary people a voice what they actually articulate as fair and proper and successful.
I remember being involved in running the set up for a major program (very early phase, pre funding but the program eventually burned £billions of investment and took 20k + folk to deliver - I had been long sidelined by then). We ran stakeholder workshops to create definitions of the mission and of success for the people who would be doing the hard yards. I brought representatives in from the field and from the lower management; their verdict on what the programme was for and who should get what was light years from the accepted C-suite wisdom.
Our media parrots that money talks, and the monied classes fervently believe it, but that is still not the wisdom of people on the ground.
I'm not rich. I've done important stuff, that has almost certainly saved lives, and is being used daily, by thousands, around the world. I'll never get much credit for it, and never made a dime (in fact, it cost me thousands, out of my own pocket).
I have to work on projects for no pay, because folks don't think my skills are worth paying for.
I feel that I am quite successful.