Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
1–10 of 114 posts
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#2I always call it the programmers curse:
infinite ideas vs. limited time
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#3Love it. I'll keep this post handy, so I can link to it in my next reply to an "idea guy".
If someone comes along with a great idea and suggests a revenue share, reminded him about the old truism that the idea is 1%, while execution is 99%. At least that will give you a starting point to negotiate the percentages of the revenue share...
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#4Should note that another major issue not mentioned in this post (of which I am sure there are more) is what the idea guy brings to the table beyond the idea. Majority over estimate their abilities, skills, knowledge, background, and even work ethics to such a shameful degree...
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#5Lots of contracts in London are paying £350 a day. £350 / day * 48 working weeks of the year * 5 days a week = £84,000 / year. £55,498.64 in your pocket after tax. Compare this to ~5 - 10 years of working for peanuts in a startup hoping for an exit. Keep your eye on the clients who agree to short payment terms, forget the dreamers.
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#6the first point is the most matching.
"Ideas are easy, execution is hard."
I often get requests of ideas but they are so hard to execute that you would need a bigger team to do it and a lot more money then the idea holder has...
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#7Lots of contracts in London are paying £350 a day. £350 / day * 48 working weeks of the year * 5 days a week = £84,000 / year. £55,498.64 in your pocket after tax. Compare this to ~5 - 10 years of working for peanuts in a startup hoping for an exit. Keep your eye on the clients who agree to short payment terms, forget the dreamers.
In my experience, 350 was the low end. When recruiting, we couldn't get any decent people for under 400 (and I mean decent; 350 got us a Web front end developer who didn't know CSS). 400-450 did get us amazingly knowledgeable people, though, so that extra 50 was a small price to pay.
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#8Make options vest (or accelerate anyway) on product milestones, not time and I think it would help highlight where and when the value has been created.
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#9Lots of contracts in London are paying £350 a day. £350 / day * 48 working weeks of the year * 5 days a week = £84,000 / year. £55,498.64 in your pocket after tax. Compare this to ~5 - 10 years of working for peanuts in a startup hoping for an exit. Keep your eye on the clients who agree to short payment terms, forget the dreamers.
blah blah blah. Same contracting comparison that gets thrown into seemingly every thread. As an employee you get work guaranteed, as a freelancer you have to work for every hour of work twice (once to get it, once to actually do it). You also have to do your own taxes, basically run your own business, but with only the shitty parts of it (no potential for growth, bureaucracy, scheduling, negotiating your pay all the time, often stepping into completely unknown & WTF code, solitude, the list goes on and on).
Also who gives a fuck about money above 50k GBP? If you're young work a cool job, meet interesting people and learn lots of new stuff. Freelancing is almost never that. Working at a startup is, provided you pick the right one.
Re: Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011)
#10I second it. This is much nicer response to keep away the "ideas guy".