B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It • Hacker News Board

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#81

Post by pestaa » Sat, Aug 04, 2012, 4:22 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #79

lmm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good and bad programming tasks in all fields. But the kind of "complex simple software" the GP talks about, where the actual task is mind-bogglingly simple but there are hundreds of edge cases in the requirements, is a lot less fun to write than something with more cohesive requirements (i.e. where you don't have to match what an existing business does)

there's a challenge in how do you structure and organize edge-case logic such that the core application design needn't be entirely redesigned every time a new requirement is revealed or an existing one needs to be altered. When the client comes to you with changes in requirements, having built an architecture that can turn on a dime is a rewarding experience.

It is definitely true. If you manage to build abstractions that don't leak in the wrong places, it'll welcome changing requirements very well.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#82

Post by OzzyOsbourne » Sat, Aug 04, 2012, 4:53 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #80

mattmanser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree with this, this isn't an echo chamber, and no-one's buying into that ethos. Let's be frank, b2b is boring as shit. It's not even vaguely interesting. The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. B2B programming is an utter pile of mind-numbingly boring crap. It's not sexy because it's incredibly simple with a colossal amount of…

So Github is boring? 37Signals is boring? Heroku is boring?, Photoshop, Maya, LogicPro is boring? There sure are boring things in B2B just as there are in B2C, but there are plenty of B2B business that are great fun and challenging as hell.

Don't forget RethinkDB, Mixpanel and Cloudera - those guys are solving some difficult, real world problems. Personally, I wouldn't classify massively distributed computation as a service boring. If anything, the scale (in numbers of users, amount of data) makes B2B of this kind even sexier than share-my-cat-at-my-location-agram.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#83

Post by pnathan » Sat, Aug 04, 2012, 6:06 PM UTC

spitfire wrote: post #37

philwelch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have a rack of exotic blue hardware at every engineer's desk, can't complain with that.

SGI still exists? What are you talking about?

We both used to work at the same company. It makes custom hardware. The company's "preferred" color is blue. Hence, blue boxes at every engineer's desk.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#84

Post by pnathan » Sat, Aug 04, 2012, 6:11 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #19

pnathan wrote: post #8

Well put. No one has heard of the company I work for, and we do some seriously cool B2B stuff. We're 100% employee owned and are #1 in certain segments of our customers. No, we're not "sexy", we're not media darlings, and "social media" is really not in our genes. But our products are really awesome. :-)

You also have a rack of exotic blue hardware at every engineer's desk, can't complain with that.

Yeah, that's an unusual dimension it's fun to learn about - don't get that everywhere.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#85

Post by spitfire » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 2:43 AM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #83

spitfire wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SGI still exists? What are you talking about?

We both used to work at the same company. It makes custom hardware. The company's "preferred" color is blue. Hence, blue boxes at every engineer's desk.

So what's the company?