A similar concept in business: Core Product vs. Full Package. As unsexy as the non-core product stuff is to developers/engineers, it's still important for the company to survive (marketing, legal, sales, accounting, etc.).
Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
121–130 of 278 posts
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't start another podcast. Or if you absolutely must, please provide a text version of the content. Podcasts aren't searchable, they aren't skimmable and their content isn't indexed in search engines. Text is.
Naively I would think that there must be a service out there that auto-generates transcriptions from podcasts. Youtube already do this for (some) videos. The output isn't perfect, but it gets about 99% of the words correct. So my suggestion to OP wouldn't be "don't do the podcast". Instead I would say "do the podcast, but consider that it might not be searchable without a bit of extra effort".
100% there are services! I believe that Azure ML/AI has a natural text transcription service.
In theory I could try and tweet at Seth Juarez@microsoft to see if I can get a sweetheart deal.
But the more I think about the previous poster's position on the text, the more I convince myself that it might be worth a few bucks an episode for me to pay out-of-pocket if it means improved accessibility for users with disabilities.
Not really because it's good business, but more because I've really come to believe in the value and power of implementing accessibility features.
I'm actually starting to get a little teary eyed thinking about that blindness activist's viral video where he broke down physically sobbing the words "thank you" when he saw all of the accessibility features that Naughty Dog added to The Last of Us 2. (I'll hunt the video for people who haven't seen it, but be warned that you will probably bawl your eyes out like a school-child).
From a cost perspective, I'll be putting in hundreds of fake dollars worth of time. The people I interview will be effectively donating hundreds of dollars worth of their own time.
The least I can do is put some serious thought into plunking down dozens of dollars of pocket money for a transcription service.
I'm more sold on the idea than I was in my previous post (5 minutes ago)
Edit: the tweet in question. https://twitter.com/stevesaylor/status/1271404306697158659
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#123Great read, as usual. One point rubbed me the wrong way: "And you stand an excellent chance of shipping a success -- people greatly overestimate how difficult this is." Do you? Analysis of projects on Indie Hackers [1] casts a bit of doubt. Not saying it's not possible, but "excellent chance" might be a stretch. [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/post/holy-heck-this-is-hard-8eb...
I think he meant the artifact or small thing you ship may be a success.
But, for Indiehackers, consider two things:
1. A site devoted to making business will attract lots of wannabees
2. Many successful businesses are too busy to bother with such things, especially if they get no marketing benefit from indiehackers or face risk from competitors knowing their revenue.
Indiehackers also misses the vast graveyard of failed businesses that stopped operating and went nowhere, but it is far from an unbiased sample.
$20,000 a month for any bootstrapped business with actual expenses (contractors etc) is actually not that much yet it puts you near the top of the leaderboard.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing. If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big impact. Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved.
> If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've worked at companies where the internal tools were more valuable than anything customer-facing. Yes, but they're exceptions. > Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME, especially when references are involved. The vast majority of the best paying jobs out there (FAANG), don't care at all about references. It's a big world, it depends a lot in whi…
Disclaimer: I do work at a FAANG. I'm not sure what circles you're talking about.
"References" in the traditional sense may not be an important thing. But certainly being able to back your resume claims – whether with skills from that experience, or with people who will vouch for you – is important. If it wasn't, we could all just put "Optimized SQL and improved profit 20%" (or anything else) on our resumes, no?
I participate in interviews from time to time. I don't ask a lot of trivia-type algorithm questions, but I do try to size up where a candidate has invested their effort so far. Have they invested it in trying (and learning) to solve problems? Or have they invested in in padding their resume? I'll take the former over the latter every time, even if they don't have a bunch of brag-points on their resume.
That's just me, though shrug
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll take that on board! Thanks. For Episode 0 I did post the full text of my script in the description, but I do think that for the actual interviews I won't be able to afford a transcription service for a while. For the last few years though, I've been getting a fairly significant proportion of my ongoing professional development via the medium. I think it scales well in terms of being able to get access to some of…
I use Descript for my podcast, £22 a month gets me ~30 hours of transcription. This probably sounds like an ad but really, it’s one of the best software products I’ve used in a very long time. This is the most recent episode I’ve published, giant wall of text took a bit of editing but wouldn’t have been possible without Descript. https://www.mql.fm/005-working-in-martech-dan-graap
Thank you! This is exactly the type of recommendation that I was hoping for.
I'd have been happy with the mention even if it was an ad.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nobody cares how much you saved in time because it doesn’t get reported anywhere. It shows up on no important metrics. Sales going up by $100K is sexy. Admins handling an extra ticket per day because the interface is quicker isn’t. I don’t get that. Solving an extra ticket per day should somehow correlate with either revenue increase(indirect) or cost saving(direct), right?
Revenue increase; unlikely. Cost savings? Yes. But does it? Managers want big teams. It makes them look good. Having 15 direct reports looks better than having 10. That means the manager needs his people to be efficient enough to look good on paper, but inefficient enough that he gets to hire more people. Having a bigger budget and higher headcount makes him look good.
yeah, I've read a lot about automation here where this was a common argument, also I noticed this in the company I work for as well. If you are in IT or the user yourself and automate something it doesn't really get recognized by management. I think the only time automation is recognized by management is when it's on the agenda of management itself, e.g. if it's said that 20% of the people have to go and for that to happen there has to happen automation (and outsourcing). However, in this case the idea comes from management so there would not be much recognition for the ones doing the automation (also with the reduction in workforce it wouldn't be appropriate for mere workers to ask for a bonus/raise! Of course that doesn't apply to management..). Automation really is a good example of how dysfunctional (or averse to change) big companies are.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#127Hey 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 throu…
In my experience, I have pointed people to a vast array of shipping (and formerly shipping) software, and even hardware. I have a StackOverflow story (check my ID) that is a mile long.
There are complete, top-to-bottom, ship-ready apps, with localization, testing, documentation, provisioning, etc. Someone can, literally, clone any of my repos, and produce a full-feature, ready-to-ship application.
I have many, many, articles and blog posts, explaining, in great detail, how I work, think, design, test, collaborate, and develop. I'm a fairly decent writer.
Also, in my experience, no one has ever actually looked at any of this, when it comes to evaluating me. I'm not famous, I'm not young, and I guess I don't "present" too well, so I assume that my work is not compelling (I think it is, but that's just me).
After a few of these, I realized that I am better off, not looking to work with someone else. Makes me sad, but accepting that was one of the best things I ever did for myself. As it turns out, I have found a team, working on a 501(c)(3) startup, that gave me a chance to develop an application. They seem happy with the work I'm doing (ecstatic, even).
These days, I never go a day without working on ship. I have been shipping for decades. My GH id is pretty much solid green (and it's not gamed). I just love to code, and there are few joys more comprehensive, than releasing product, and seeing it used.
Even my small projects (like the one I just released) involve full branding, testing, and documentation. Even my test harnesses are full release-quality applications, with localization.
It's just that, these days, I do it for myself; not someone else. I'm fortunate, in being able to do that. The scale, out of necessity, is much more humble, but it feels quite gratifying.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Descript for my podcast, £22 a month gets me ~30 hours of transcription. This probably sounds like an ad but really, it’s one of the best software products I’ve used in a very long time. This is the most recent episode I’ve published, giant wall of text took a bit of editing but wouldn’t have been possible without Descript. https://www.mql.fm/005-working-in-martech-dan-graap
Thank you! This is exactly the type of recommendation that I was hoping for. I'd have been happy with the mention even if it was an ad.
If you give it a try for audio editing make sure you record different podcast guests on separate audio tracks, makes the whole thing significantly better.
I wrote a few thoughts on my blog about how I went about starting with the podcast including tools used, might be useful? https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/starting-a-podcast
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#129"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…
I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.
Even better: I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20%, which boosted profits by 20%.
Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
#130I was hoping that we were moving in the opposite direction where people aren't expected to show off side projects, ship something every week or work for a famous company in order to be successful. If this article is good advice, that makes me a bit sad about the state and direction of the industry.
Totally agree. To me it feels like it’s talking around the problems in the industry. The solution to good work being ‘unmarketable’ isn’t to stop doing good work. We can’t all be fighting to do the kind of work that ‘looks’ good, and we shouldn’t have to.
Search Engine Optimisation has destroyed the usefulness of search engines. If you search for a recipe or you’re looking for blog posts about a particular technology, you’re more likely to end up on something useless that _looks_ good according to x criteria (or has paid) rather than what you’re actually looking for. Good work gets buried because of the process. The problem isn’t the good work.
Valuable work being perceived as not valuable highlights that the ‘market’ and the processes are wrong. Something isn’t right here if we have to dedicate al our time to SEO-big our careers. I don’t want to bend over backwards to cater to the ever changing fashions dictated by a market that doesn’t know or care to separate the wheat from the chaff. If I have to focus my career on work I hate and/or spend a significant amount of time building a portfolio of ‘side projects’ to ~hack my career~ to impress ...someone who can recommend me for a job (based on work I hate), I’m going to end up doing work I hate for a company who doesn’t understand software or developers, and who is part of the problem. Realistically I’m not going to (and I have no desire to) be one of those ‘rockstars’, so where does following the ‘completely lean into the capitalist crap’ advice leave me? Nowhere I want to be.