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I've gotten in arguments with so many people over this. Everyone has "ideas". Everyone has "good ideas". Most people occasionally have a "great idea". Ideas
by tombert 3y ago
I've gotten in arguments with so many people over this. Everyone has "ideas". Everyone has "good ideas". Most people occasionally have a "great idea". Ideas are free and require very little effort.
Ideas really aren't worth anything. Ideas aren't what run the world, implementations of those ideas do. I suspect that if I went to a venture capitalist with just an idea like "Uber but for X", they would laugh me out of the building (or more likely ask how the hell I got in there in the first place).
I've told this story before on HN, but I remember back in 2013, I needed a job, and responded to a posting on Craigslist for a software engineer. I met up with a nice lady who had an idea for a specific kind of travel website. She wanted me to make the entire website myself, and she was generously offering me 3% equity for doing it.
I had no idea how to negotiate this, and I was slightly less confrontational at the time, so I politely declined, in no small part because I didn't want to work with someone that thought that an idea was worth 97% of a company while doing, as far as I could tell, between 0-5% of the actual work.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoSaying "hey, you're a developer, build this site for me" is the same as saying "hey, you're an architect and a supply chain expert and a manufacturing guru and an accountant, build this manufacturing plant and distribution center for me." Just because there aren't any bricks or steel doesn't mean there isn't any labor or expertise.
- tombert 3y agoExactly; it takes a long time to build an application, and even longer if you want it to not completely suck. I don't feel I was any "good" at programming until I had been a software engineer for like 6-7 years. I really don't think I'm that great now, but at least I've gotten a lot better at knowing the rough effort required to do things. Obviously I'm not going to claim that what I do is as exhausting as digging ditches or laying concrete (fundamentally I do get to sit on my ass all day and stare at a big screen), but it's not zero effort.
- em-bee 3y agoit's more like "hey you are a brick layer. build me a house. what, i need an architect? but i already designed the house. here is my drawing"