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Regarding your second point, I think it's good to know what interests you, but there's a lot of quality ideas out there that don't have hard tech components, an

Regarding your second point, I think it's good to know what interests you, but there's a lot of quality ideas out there that don't have hard tech components, and if they invent hard tech problems to keep their engineers interested, they're probably not going to last very long. IMHO, the "all JavaScript tech stack, connected together by a cloud provider via tooling" pattern is probably among the faster ways to get an idea from inside someone's head and in front of customers, all of the longer term problems aside. To me personally, the "challenge" comes from being able to do all of that quickly and seamlessly, basically solid execution becomes the fun part. Oh, also I would love to make a bunch of money relatively quickly. :)

handrous 5y ago
IMO the only way to make that stuff engaging is to move "up" a level and be the one picking the tools to solve the problem, interacting with users/clients, that kind of thing. Basically, start your own business or become a product manager at a place where product manager is a fairly expansive role. Otherwise, I agree, it's all of: fucking boring; frustrating; and unrewarding. But, it's also most of the market for developers. :-/
austincheney 5y ago
The business should be inventing the problems, because that is (hopefully) driving the revenue that keeps you employed. Usually the business has all kinds of wonderful ideas of which some are practical and vetted while others are a distraction. If you are thinking in terms of automation, internal training, and service fulfillment you probably aren't properly aligning solutions to expense reduction. The benefit of writing original software is innovation and IP (even if open source and liberally licensed) that can generate additional revenue for the business. If you current approach is entirely dependent upon tools it will be boxed in to a set of configurations and flexibility is lost. From what I have seen on HN the greatest challenge for most early stage startups is finding product-market fit, which means you need to pivot at a moment's notice. That ability to pivot is far more significant than whether you can have a website up in 2 days versus 2 weeks.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  For me, there's this fire of urgency that makes it feel appropriate to make some long term bad tech choices if it helps me get customer feedback/iterate in the nearer term. Honestly, as long as the tech doesn't fall over at 3am and generally lets me know when it's unhealthy, I'm just trying to grow enough to hire people who know more about making good long term tech choices than I do...

handrous 5y ago

IMO the only way to make that stuff engaging is to move "up" a level and be the one picking the tools to solve the problem, interacting with users/clients, that kind of thing. Basically, start your own business or become a product manager at a place where product manager is a fairly expansive role. Otherwise, I agree, it's all of: fucking boring; frustrating; and unrewarding. But, it's also most of the market for developers. :-/

austincheney 5y ago

The business should be inventing the problems, because that is (hopefully) driving the revenue that keeps you employed. Usually the business has all kinds of wonderful ideas of which some are practical and vetted while others are a distraction. If you are thinking in terms of automation, internal training, and service fulfillment you probably aren't properly aligning solutions to expense reduction. The benefit of writing original software is innovation and IP (even if open source and liberally licensed) that can generate additional revenue for the business. If you current approach is entirely dependent upon tools it will be boxed in to a set of configurations and flexibility is lost. From what I have seen on HN the greatest challenge for most early stage startups is finding product-market fit, which means you need to pivot at a moment's notice. That ability to pivot is far more significant than whether you can have a website up in 2 days versus 2 weeks.

TameAntelope 5y ago
For me, there's this fire of urgency that makes it feel appropriate to make some long term bad tech choices if it helps me get customer feedback/iterate in the nearer term. Honestly, as long as the tech doesn't fall over at 3am and generally lets me know when it's unhealthy, I'm just trying to grow enough to hire people who know more about making good long term tech choices than I do...