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As a journalist turned software dev, it is not hard to write text, and it is not hard to display text on a screen at scale. It is, however, difficult to land a
by quaquaqua1 7y ago
As a journalist turned software dev, it is not hard to write text, and it is not hard to display text on a screen at scale.
It is, however, difficult to land advertising deals that are needed to fund the company.
- triceratops 7y agoI thought that "write text" was the easiest part of journalism. Most people capable of getting through college (usually required for both software and journalism jobs) are capable of writing at a high enough standard for any journalism outlet. Doing research, then understanding and distilling it, developing contacts, networks, and sources - these seem like the hard parts of journalism. If "display text on a screen at scale" wasn't hard it was it wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry with crazy high salaries. Not to mention, it's not just displaying the text but everything that goes into it - figuring out product market fit, getting hundreds or thousands of engineers organized and productive, logistics of data centers and hardware. If writing good news and good software both come easily to you, you just might be an outlier. Or you're taking a very superficial view of both kinds of work.