Straightforward AdviceWhile everyone tries to be a contrarian, I think that the most helpful advice is often extremely straightforward and direct.
While everyone tries to be a contrarian, I think that the most helpful advice is often extremely straightforward and direct.
Patio11 tweeted out this interesting “tweetstorm” of very direct advice:
Some people really benefit from hearing advice that everyone knows, for the same reason we keep schools open despite every subject in them having been taught before.
In that spirit, here’s some quick Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already.
Here are some of my favorite snippets:
Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. You think you are an exception; you are not. You should not insist on an NDA to talk about it; nobody serious will engage in contract review over an idea, and this will mark you as clueless.
Technologists tend to severely underestimate the difficulty and expense of creating software, especially at companies which do not have fully staffed industry leading engineering teams (“because software is so easy there, amirite guys?”)
Charge more. Charge more still. Go on.
Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees.
The tech industry is fundamentally unserious about how it recruits, hires, and retains candidates. About which I have a lot more to say than could fit in a tweet, but, a good thing to know.
Startups are (by necessity) filled with generalists; big companies are filled with specialists. People underestimate how effective a generalist can be at things which are done by specialists. People underestimate how deep specialties can run. These are simultaneously true.
While I am generally no fan of advice in the first place, I find a lot of these mantras to be very true.
Originally published at gonen.blog.
By jordangonen on December 16, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.