Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think • Hacker News Board

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#11

Post by MattGaiser » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #9

Pmop wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be just the entry point for me, since I'm having a hard time at landing my 1st job as junior. I feel like I'll have a good time and lots of fun anyways. Any advice on how to approach clients? (I can do (full-stack) web development and solve problems/ optimize solutions with algorithms and meta-heuristics.)

If you can't land a job as a junior programmer, you don't want to go around to businesses and end up responsible for promises you can't keep.

What a lot of these businesses need is very simple stuff. Plenty of small businesses would have use for what would consider “toy” programs.

A friend of mine built a text message to email system for this rural delivery guy for the purpose of letting his office assistant manage invoices, but also allowing him to fulfill orders on the go without talking on the phone as his customers can just text him. Charges him $500 a month for that.

That kind of thing is trivial to do, but can still have a lot of value. Remember, the small businesses don’t automate anything. Excel is frequently beyond them.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#12

Post by blhack » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

I’ve been saying this for years. There are THOUSANDS of small businesses out there who are mostly being ignored.

Many, many, many companies still see shared excel spreadsheets on a windows shared drive as a technical innovation.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#13

Post by NikolaNovak » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

That is fascinating to me, because virtually all my friends have heard of SAP outside of IT - as users or recipients. My engineer friend uses it for supply chain management, a beer store hq clerk helped implement it, construction accountant has used it, etc.

At the same time, I guess you have to be at a company of a certain size for it to be relevant to your life... But that perhaps proves the point - HN is very starup focused, and occasionally in a bit of a bubble (which is fine - I come here to get away from my daily mainstream IT grind and see excited people talk about cool things:), yet a hundred reasonably successful startups won't employ or touch near as many people as a single "quietly" successful traditional behemoth.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#14

Post by MattGaiser » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

I’ve had four jobs in my life and have always been stunned by what is still done by hand. Every company had a task which could be heavily automated but was instead consuming 4-30 people.

So if you think the software market is large, consider all the stuff software never reached.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#15

Post by bsder » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

That's because this stuff isn't valuable because it's software, it's valuable because of "business value" and expensive because of "customer support".

Seriously. I can list tons of things that are reasonably profitable, but I, personally, don't want to do the hard work of customer support so I won't even start.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#16

Post by franciscop » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

Having read patio11/kalzumeus a lot (excelent blog posts and talks!), I'd say if he has a law named after him, it should be "charge more" or some fancier title like "you are not charging enough".

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#17

Post by secondbreakfast » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

franciscop wrote: post #16

Having read patio11/kalzumeus a lot (excelent blog posts and talks!), I'd say if he has a law named after him, it should be "charge more" or some fancier title like "you are not charging enough".

Lol, I agree that should be the real patio11 law

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#18

Post by NikolaNovak » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #13

_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

That is fascinating to me, because virtually all my friends have heard of SAP outside of IT - as users or recipients. My engineer friend uses it for supply chain management, a beer store hq clerk helped implement it, construction accountant has used it, etc. At the same time, I guess you have to be at a company of a certain size for it to be relevant to your life... But that perhaps proves the point - HN is very star…

And if it helps understand the ecosystem and its seeking oddness, this is the crucial part of article:

"Implementing ERP isn’t just a purchasing decision: it’s committing to redoing how you handle operations. Installing the software is the easy part; adjusting the whole company’s workflow is the most of the work."

Don't think of erp and implementing it as a software development challenge. Sure, Developers can fscrew up*, an erp implementation but they cannot make it succeed - it is fundamentally a business transformation endeavour and must be undertaken as such to have a chance.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#19

Post by irrational » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

I work for a Fortune 150 manufacturing company. When I started working here there was no IT group at all (it was all outsourced). The CEO and President said many times that we were not a software/technology company and that would never be a core focus. Nearly 2 decades later, technology is now listed as number 2 of our top 5 core focus. We are working on converting all contractors into full time employees. The IT group is no longer outsourced and takes up 20-30 buildings, out of 80 buildings on campus. We are still a manufacturing company, but software (websites) has become a huge part of the company with thousands of employees working on it.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#20

Post by chadash » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

voidfunc wrote: post #5

This does not just apply to software..., tons of small and medium sized businesses and opportunities out there. For engineers you will most likely never notice them if you're caught up in the Silicon Valley / VC thing. Of course it requires getting out of your comfort zone... a lot of dev's just want to exchange labor for cash and grind out code because it is comfortable and cozy (right now). There are tons of small…

I spoke to a guy recently who works for a company doing $300 million revenue/year as a wholesale distributor of internet networking equipment (think finger optic cables and equipment for housing them underground). Their customers are the ISPs.

The company is privately owned and not venture backed so you'll never hear of them unless you are in that business.