Good essay. Though I'd err new developers to not be so easily persuaded by 'the multiplier' effect. In a company your $80K job is a specialist role. One where you focus and get good at one thing. All the million other things are taken care for you, because you weren't recruited for those roles. Just your one.
Working on your own product or in a startup is a comparatively generalist role. Or should I say multiple specialist role as you need to be good at a lot of different things that are outside of, and dare i say sometimes more important than, technology.
Believing that your 'working harder' is making more progress isn't necessarily true. Does that feature you're building excite your customers as it does you? Working for a month at 3x capacity on something that no one wants equates to zero value.
There are two things at play here. One is that not everyone is cut out to be a multi-specialist or a startup founder. Another is that there are lots of people who are, but they don't think they are capable of it.
The only way you can find out if this type of startup life is for you is by trying it. The first type will try and fail, but the second type will succeed if only they try.
Actually, it's worse than that. There are so many factors beyond your control, you could try like nine or ten times before you found out whether you are cut out for it or not. Not saying people shouldn't try, just that it's not as simple as only trying.
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Good essay. Though I'd err new developers to not be so easily persuaded by 'the multiplier' effect. In a company your $80K job is a specialist role. One where you focus and get good at one thing. All the million other things are taken care for you, because you weren't recruited for those roles. Just your one.
Working on your own product or in a startup is a comparatively generalist role. Or should I say multiple specialist role as you need to be good at a lot of different things that are outside of, and dare i say sometimes more important than, technology.
Believing that your 'working harder' is making more progress isn't necessarily true. Does that feature you're building excite your customers as it does you? Working for a month at 3x capacity on something that no one wants equates to zero value.
There are two things at play here. One is that not everyone is cut out to be a multi-specialist or a startup founder. Another is that there are lots of people who are, but they don't think they are capable of it.
The only way you can find out if this type of startup life is for you is by trying it. The first type will try and fail, but the second type will succeed if only they try.
Actually, it's worse than that. There are so many factors beyond your control, you could try like nine or ten times before you found out whether you are cut out for it or not. Not saying people shouldn't try, just that it's not as simple as only trying.
Well, PG already mentioned that you need to measure your output of hardwork in terms of users.