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Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

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Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#171

Post by exceptione »

codebeaker wrote: post #66
1ba9115454 wrote: post #8

Marketing. A developer with marketing skills can build products and achieve revenues far in excess of their skill set.

I can't speak highly enough about http://tractionbook.com/ which I recently came into - it has pragmatic advice on marketing approaches and systems justifying with real data how and why to do what. It's co-written by the DuckDuckGo founder, and as an engineer who is thoroughly tired of marketing "hackers" who justify expensive campaigns with hand-wavy nonsense, this book changed the way I view marketing in general.

A lot of the reviews are positive about the first 2 chapters, but complain that the remaining chapters lack depth. I would like to own a good marketing book for techies written for this age, but I like to see concrete advise.

How do you feel?

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#172

Post by scott_karana »

krystiangw wrote: post #167
horsecaptin wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days Ruby on Rails is fairly orderly as well.

I would use NodeJS for MVP. I think it is super important that you can have backend + frontend in the same technology.

Why? If you're proficient in multiple languages, there's no real upside, especially if each language is easily hireable.

And it's particularly irrelevant if the front-end or back-end is weighted more heavily than the other in terms of product value, when you might hire distinct rather than "full stack" devs someday.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#173

Post by brightball »

taneq wrote: post #162
mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

> Do not be seduced by the technology! I want to emphasize this, and expand on it: Your cool tech startup is not about the tech . You exist to solve a problem. Sure, you might use your Cool Tech(TM) to solve the problem. But the salient point is that the problem gets solved. Your customers don't give a rats ass if you solve it with automatic hyperparameter selection for LSTMs, or if you solve it with an Excel macro.…

Agreed. It's one thing if the Cool Tech actually gives you a competitive advantage by solving the problem better, easier, with lower costs, faster, more personalized, etc.

Outside of that...it's all about the business. That's why so many successful businesses are built with Ruby and not "benchmark winner of the week" because Ruby tends to deliver on almost all of the business cases around solving problems and growth.

If you're a larger business and planning to deploy at scale to an existing customer base, the business problems tend to change more towards performance and Right Tool for the Job.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#174

Post by gabeh »

mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

I love this advice. Here is a blog post that I keep coming back to regarding this.

http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#175

Post by cirgue »

accountyaccount wrote: post #50
jargnar wrote: post #20

It's a skill that can be learned like every other skill. You can take the "in 21 days" route or the MOOC / University course route, or constantly read business articles, Steve Jobs videos, etc. But some top tips stand out for me over time: * Talking to people, networking > Not talking to people * Bug free > Elegant code * UX > UI * Simple products that do one thing well > Complex products * Understanding entire marke…

I get some of these, but "don't procrastinate" and "understand the entire market" are kind of ridiculous. You might as well throw "know everything" and "work hard" in there.

I don't think that's what the parent meant: your time is better spent understanding the whole market than a subset, and your time is better spent getting the important trivial thing done now than working on the not-as-important nontrivial thing.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#176

Post by vinceguidry »

krystiangw wrote: post #167
horsecaptin wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days Ruby on Rails is fairly orderly as well.

I would use NodeJS for MVP. I think it is super important that you can have backend + frontend in the same technology.

Use Hyperloop.

http://ruby-hyperloop.io/

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#177

Post by wiradikusuma »

20years wrote: post #166
mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

This is excellent advice. There is a local company near me that has been working on their SaaS for almost 2 years now and still yet to launch. They started it on Angular 1 and are now re-factoring it on Angular 2 (or maybe 4 now). During this time they released a small open source Angular library but not even an alpha release of their own product. Keep in mind their product is not gear towards devs. They also hit eve…

May I know what you built and they're building? Maybe different product easier with different tech stack?

I use Scala because Google App Engine didn't support PHP for example. It's an Android app, so I use Kotlin for that.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#178

Post by baccredited »

I posted to my twitter/medium but will copy here:

I wish I knew that I could start saving and investing the money I was already earning — and retire while still young. Your odds of success as an entrepreneur are basically zero. (I know some of you are going to do the startup or nights/weekends project anyway and I wish you the best of luck.)

If I knew this I could probably have shaved years off of my FI date.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#179

Post by Kalium »

mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

A wise engineer once told me: be not guided by the beauty of your weapons. They are tools, fit to serve a purpose.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#180

Post by josebama »

mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

Couldn't have been said better.

I'd like to add: if you find the time, try to have a side-project on your own time where you apply all these cool new things you were looking to apply in your company. This will help you keep your sanity and it will let you experiment with that technology so that you can make a better informed decision on wether to implement it in your company or not.

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