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I disagree because psychology. > a guy that can take you 95% of the way there The devil is in the details. You just quantified one of the most difficult thing

I disagree because psychology. > a guy that can take you 95% of the way there The devil is in the details. You just quantified one of the most difficult things there is to quantify. What were your units for that percentage ? Dollars, hours, lines of code, functions, cpu cycles ? Language breaks down as soon as you do that. I agree with you in spirit that if there's menial tasks that can be easily outsourced, then fine, outsource them. But as you used a model github to illustrate your point, let me use a model - airplane - to illustrate mine: I have this idea, an airplane. I figured out that the Bernoulli effect can be created by designing a wing that has less area on one side than the other, thereby creating a vacuum and lifting the plane up. There - the "core" of my application (of physics, not of software) is done. I have a functioning prototype and a solid theoretical foundation for proving it works. I'm at 95%. What's left is to outsource all this menial shit. My QA staff advised me that when two propellers vibrate at the same RPM, harmonics are created that destroy the airframe. They also found out the design fails in icy weather. Oh well, a subcontractor can install a heater. The current airframe design is so weak that it creates a condition such that the plane can take off but cannot immediately land, as the weight of the fuel will damage the wings. Oh well, I've got it 95% there...

bmelton 13y ago
As I stated elsewhere, and as the grandparent illustrates, there's a place and a purpose for the 95% guy. The Wright Brothers clearly moved aviation forward in real and measurable ways. Compared to what came after the Wright Brothers, it would be generous to say that they got 95% of the way there. If your goal is to prove a market quickly, the 95% guy is definitely good enough. Sure, you'd take a 100% guy if you could get 'em, but they're even harder to come by. Anecdotally, I know quite a few of the 95% guys myself, and they're doing really cool things. But what they did in their initial stake is establish that flight is possible. They took strips of wood and cloth, and turned it into a machine, that flew, through the air. Yeah, if your plane crashes because of propellor harmonics, that's a problem -- but that's a problem beyond the initial implementation. If you've invented the first airplane, that's a big problem to have, but if you've already demoed a working aircraft to the world, you've likely already moved past the 95% into a proven market, if not having fully established the market, and you can hire a team of engineers to fix the implementation details. Either way, you illustrate a very important point, which is that where the boundary is drawn is crucial, and that definitely gets my upvote.

bmelton 13y ago

As I stated elsewhere, and as the grandparent illustrates, there's a place and a purpose for the 95% guy. The Wright Brothers clearly moved aviation forward in real and measurable ways. Compared to what came after the Wright Brothers, it would be generous to say that they got 95% of the way there. If your goal is to prove a market quickly, the 95% guy is definitely good enough. Sure, you'd take a 100% guy if you could get 'em, but they're even harder to come by. Anecdotally, I know quite a few of the 95% guys myself, and they're doing really cool things. But what they did in their initial stake is establish that flight is possible. They took strips of wood and cloth, and turned it into a machine, that flew, through the air. Yeah, if your plane crashes because of propellor harmonics, that's a problem -- but that's a problem beyond the initial implementation. If you've invented the first airplane, that's a big problem to have, but if you've already demoed a working aircraft to the world, you've likely already moved past the 95% into a proven market, if not having fully established the market, and you can hire a team of engineers to fix the implementation details. Either way, you illustrate a very important point, which is that where the boundary is drawn is crucial, and that definitely gets my upvote.