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The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

kitze.io

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Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#81

Post by protocolture »

laborcontract wrote: post #21
saulpw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean handling sales + marketing + accounting and everything else required to run a company is worth 50% (maybe more). But of course while you were probably competent enough to "code it up", odds are he wasn't competent to "run the company".

i’ve recently had a revelatory experience with my cofounder, who is focused entirely on sales. we were pitching our product/services to the company execs- and he just owned the room. He definitely oversold, hallucinated a little bit, said some (many) things i never would have said, but he didn’t lie. I have a highly diminished opinion of my talents than compared to reality and i know it. And i can’t fix it, i’ve trie…

Yes my former business partner is a rare hybrid of super competant salesperson and super competant engineer. I sometimes just enjoyed reading his contracts.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#82

Post by ZaoLahma »

solatic wrote: post #23

I wish someone would solve my problem for me. I'm working on the problem because there are no solutions that I can just go and buy. Someone else putting their blood, sweat, and tears into solving my problem, they're the ones who have to deal with being on-call for it, they're the ones who have to maintain it, would be a joy . Why is it so important for you to be the one to solve this problem? Why is it so important f…

I guess some solo dev engineers hope to implement a novel idea, curate the implementation into a somewhat successful business (have a firm grip on the market) and then sell it all off to a bigger fish and make bank.

I don't think many people actually want to run a business (long term), but most of us wouldn't mind suddenly being paid a good chunk of money for having solved or worked on an interesting problem.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#83

Post by knallfrosch »

edg5000 wrote: post #48

I found that becoming an actual user of your own system changes the perspective entirely. I had this thing that I was making for myself, and it was not ready, not usable at all, or so I thought. After giving up on the project I decided to try and actually started using it as if I was a user. I realised that as users, we are used to countless minor issues, and we automatically find ways around that. When you are the c…

Interesting point. An app I just used had an embedded ios web browser that didn't work properly.

I opened the web page directly and used it like that. The username/password were iCloud-synced, of course. Took me all of 5 seconds to resume the user flow in Safari (which only took another 30 seconds to finish.)

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#84

Post by antupis »

Culonavirus wrote: post #14

There's massive caveat with all of these "and then the story ends because we didn't just ship it :(" stories: sometimes the value of the "app" you're working on is in the technical details that cannot really be "hastened" and you can't "just ship it". Also, and this is something a lot of the managerial class people don't want to hear: Your job as a sw engineer/architect is to resist the "just ship it" pressure from t…

> The kind you'd be willing to put on your resume without feeling bad.

Usually when you are doing "just ship it" often enough you achieve this, especially at larger firms too often I see situations where engineers are doing their 3th refactoring without any customer feedback.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#85

Post by protocolture »

I have a loose product idea. I guess the difference between some ideas and others is in prototyping. My prototype works. The issue is that the market for the product is like maybe 600 people global. And its not just code thats required, but plastic injection moulding, hardware manufacturing etc.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#86

Post by [deleted] »

thekitze wrote: post #71
rob74 wrote: post #66

So, he's a fan (and paying subscriber) of his "competitor" app now, but still not enough of a fan to actually mention what app it is . Which is kind of frustrating, I read until the end of the post to see if it's mentioned, but it isn't. And it also leaves me with a nagging suspicion that the whole story may just be completely made up (or at least grossly exaggerated)...

It's not made up, I'm not using the competitor app for years, and I didn't want to give them more attention because this space is super competitive.

[deleted]

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#87

Post by vasco »

Culonavirus wrote: post #14

There's massive caveat with all of these "and then the story ends because we didn't just ship it :(" stories: sometimes the value of the "app" you're working on is in the technical details that cannot really be "hastened" and you can't "just ship it". Also, and this is something a lot of the managerial class people don't want to hear: Your job as a sw engineer/architect is to resist the "just ship it" pressure from t…

This has to be satire.

"Do the wrong thing unless it's for you, in which case ship it earlier", "your job is to make you feel good about what you put in your CV", and other amazing quotes.

The only thing of value in the whole comment is saying to not get too attached to any job or worry too much if you get fired, but even the reason given for it is wrong. Incredible to realize I probably work alongside a few people with the same adversarial attitude.

Some people do like to live life in the wrong game theory quadrant.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#89

Post by rob74 »

thekitze wrote: post #69

Author here! I need to update this article. Years later, I actually got motivated by the comments on HN (whenever this gets posted). P People are always like "why don't you just ship your app?" ... so I did! I'm happy I went through with and it's way WAY better than any competitor in this category Check it out at https://benji.so (landing page is still w.i.p)

Hi! Looks great, maybe I'll give it a try... Is it named after this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benji ? I was a huge fan of him (them?) when I was about 6-8 years old!

...and sorry about expressing my frustration (and suspicion) about you not mentioning the name of your "competitor"! I guess now that you have released your own app, the chances of you mentioning it are even smaller (if it's still around at all)?

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#90

Post by thekitze »

mriziq wrote: post #73
thekitze wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not made up, I'm not using the competitor app for years, and I didn't want to give them more attention because this space is super competitive.

Tick tick tick …

nah, back when I wrote this article tick tick was a super basic app. I've tried it a few times but it never clicked for me, not enough features.
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