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Oh I thought this was gonna be that like the entire product / company / idea was useless, not just like a small number of weeks' worth of work. I've probably c
by sanderjd 3y ago
Oh I thought this was gonna be that like the entire product / company / idea was useless, not just like a small number of weeks' worth of work.
I've probably created a hundred or more proofs of concept for things that turned out to be a bad idea. Say these averaged out to a week or so of work each, and that's about two full years of useless work.
And that's ok! Most stuff you work on will get thrown away before you leave a company, and the rest will get thrown away not long after that.
This doesn't really bum me out, but I can certainly understand why people experience it that way.
Honestly though, I think it's worse when things I've created do persist for a long time. They're never nearly good enough and I hate to think that they still exist nonetheless.
I guess my point is: try not to sweat this stuff; it will drive you crazy.
- saintlunaire 3y agoNeeded to read this, thank you!
- wolletd 3y ago> and the rest will get thrown away not long after that. I'm still working on a project that was mainly written by someone who left the company right before I joined – ten years ago.
- sanderjd 3y agoWell clearly you should have thrown that away not long after they left! :)
- kristjansson 3y agoExactly. Go to an artist’s studio. Look at all the sketches, the rack of canvases in the corner, the detritus of creation all around. Software, and product development in general, is ultimately a creative endeavor. A nontrivial portion of attempts end up in the trash.
- hnlmorg 3y agoA proof of concept is t really the same thing as a lot of the stories here because the entire point of a POC is to literally prove if a concept works (the clue is in the name). If a concept doesn’t work then that’s still a successful POC because you’ve then saved more time that would have been spent building out a MVP.