Reminds me of one of the 48 laws of power: Law 6. Court Attention at All Costs
> 48 laws of power Where are the others?
In the book titled "The 48 Laws of Power."
Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
11–20 of 278 posts
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#12As is typical of patio11 this is all great stuff. One subtlety I'd venture to emphasise for people just getting started with building things and putting stuff out there, though, is that you should expect the impact of and return on any one of these things to be far from linear.
That is, the 'stacking bricks' metaphor may not apply so much. Yes, you should produce stuff on a regular cadence, and everything you produce is a learning opportunity of some form, but the fact is nobody will care about the majority of it, and it will therefore have very little concrete (pun intended) capital value per se.
Don't get put off by the fact that nobody cares about the first few (several, dozen, hundred...) things you put out there, just keep going til you hit on the thing that does catch on!
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#13This was a great post and I remember reading it back when patio11 first shared it. It was genuinely helpful.
There's so much to be said for just keeping up a minimum level of output every single day (or week, in this case).
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#14>A lot of day jobs structurally inhibit capital formation. If I were a Marxist I'd say "And this is an intended consequence of Capital's desire to keep Labor subservient to it", but I honestly think it's true even without anybody needing to twirl their mustache.
I kind of assumed that at least some metaphorical moustache twirling went on in those jobs with the contract clause where you sign away every idea you have in the shower.
There's seemingly some threshold of developer job where employers stop demanding it, too (I haven't been asked to do it in years; most of my junior friends still have it in their contracts) , which suggests that it's leverage related.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#15I agree with the post for the most part. It's important to feel that your work is acknowledged to feel worthy.
I disagree with this statement however:
> I prefer being upfront with people rather than doing the "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" route a lot of folks suggest.
Asking your employer if you can work on a side project is like asking them if you can play golf on the weekend. It's your own time off-work hours and you're free to work on a project without begging for permission. If the side project directly competes with you're employer's product then that's a definitely a gray area but you'd know if you're purposely taking intellectual property or not. If you're not sure that your employer will screw you over then get something in writing.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#16Reminds me of one of the 48 laws of power: Law 6. Court Attention at All Costs
> 48 laws of power Where are the others?
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#17I agree with the post for the most part. It's important to feel that your work is acknowledged to feel worthy. I disagree with this statement however: > I prefer being upfront with people rather than doing the "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" route a lot of folks suggest. Asking your employer if you can work on a side project is like asking them if you can play golf on the weekend. It's y…
As somebody who has been on the receiving end of an employer (well it was a university system, but still...) coming after my IP, it is absolutely worth having total clarity, in writing when it comes to ownership of side projects.
It seems like a lesson most developers learn. I took a job at a startup that decided after they'd started hiring to pass around an employment agreement covering personal projects. Without talking to each other, apparently 3 of us 4 developers there had all politely refused to sign due to the side project clause. The only dev who did sign was the one fresh out of college. Ultimately developers were given a different contract than everybody else that made clear we owned our side projects and everybody happily moved on, but it was good that we all stood our ground on the issue and had clarity.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#18Hey Patrick! Thanks for the article.
"Producing Artifacts" is definitely what we called that at Fog Creek, and I think our cousins at Stack may have used a different term but followed much the same spirit. I didn't realize until now that that was a term from our little software microcosm, I had assumed it was one of the terms that was known broadly in the startupverse.
I definitely came to my opinions around it through my interactions with the Business of Software conference and (later) Microconf, and I think in parallel Stack Overflow came to much the same conclusions as we did at FC. Stack also lead with something in its early days which pushed us to go further, which was that they had a "default open" policy on all their artifacts-- code, company writing, etc. This specifically was inspiring for us at FC and many of us sort of implicitly adopted it. We doubled-down on our artifact publishing, leading to a bunch of open source contributions, blog posts, conference talks, etc. Interestingly (and to your point!) I think that those public artifacts for the most part didn't impact the company very much (as much as we did try to harvest the artifacts for blogging/marketing/recruiting purposes), but they unquestionably strengthened the careers of the folks who created them.
"Make sure your work is creating artifacts; Collect and share your artifacts to multiply their impact." Remains among my top items of career advice for software folks.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#19I agree with the post for the most part. It's important to feel that your work is acknowledged to feel worthy. I disagree with this statement however: > I prefer being upfront with people rather than doing the "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" route a lot of folks suggest. Asking your employer if you can work on a side project is like asking them if you can play golf on the weekend. It's y…
I think you misunderstood the context of that sentence.
It's about the IP property ownership, and many employment contracts have specific clauses about IP ownership. And those clauses are sometimes draconian. For example, the preceding paragraph has this sentence:
> Companies in our industry are gradually becoming more reasonable about IP assignment clauses -- there's less of the "we own everything you think of at any point in your employment" nonsense these days. Even at my very straight-laced Japanese megacorp, they were willing to write an exception into the employment contract for a) OSS work that I did outside of company hours and b) Bingo Card Creator.
I think patio11 is saying you should be on solid legal footing for your IP ownership of your outside of work projects. If your employment contract already gives you control over your IP, then there is nothing you need to ask for. But if your employment contract may ambiguously give some control to your employer, then it's better to ask for an explicit point in the employment contract about the project.
So, "forgiveness" in this context is less about getting permission from your employer, and it's more about ensuring you truly own free and clear the IP you generate.
> If you're not sure that your employer will screw you over then get something in writing.
That's exactly the point patio11 was making, I think.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#20As is typical of patio11 this is all great stuff. One subtlety I'd venture to emphasise for people just getting started with building things and putting stuff out there, though, is that you should expect the impact of and return on any one of these things to be far from linear. That is, the 'stacking bricks' metaphor may not apply so much. Yes, you should produce stuff on a regular cadence, and everything you produce…
> Don't get put off by the fact that nobody cares about the first few (several, dozen, hundred...) things you put out there
Your first few things will suck. Keep going. Practice takes time.
Ira Glass, advice to beginners: http://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-begi...