Now what?

The small things add up

via Joel Spolsky’s post on User Interface Design:

That’s what days were like. A bunch of tiny frustrations, and a bunch of tiny successes. But they added up. Even something which seems like a tiny, inconsequential frustration affects your mood. Your emotions don’t seem to care about the magnitude of the event, only the quality.

UI is important because it affects the feelings, the emotions, and the mood of your users. If the UI is wrong and the user feels like they can’t control your software, they literally won’t be happy and they’ll blame it on your software. 

To make people happy, you have to let them feel like they are in control of their environment. To do this, you need to correctly interpret their actions.

Reverse engineer your job description

One of the best things I did during my recent job search was to collect key bullet points from my favorite job descriptions (see: http://jobs.37signals.com/categories/3/jobs.rss). Subscribing to the job feeds was an easy way to see what was out there, and it made my procrasting with RSS reading somewhat productive :)

Even better, if you’re lucky you’ll get asked what key things you’d like to work on at your new job, and you’ll already have a list waiting. And you can also use that same list to keep yourself honest and make sure you’re working on what mattes to you.

Twitter is what Blogger wanted to be when it grew up

In thinking about what I want to do on the web (professionally and in general) I started reading thru a lot of the Evan Williams archives (hence all these recent finds) and a couple of things have crossed my mind so far:

• Reading Evhead is a lot like reading a non-fiction version of Microserfs…only Microserfs was written in 1994 instead 1999 (well done Mr. Copeland).
• The majority of posts so far are very Twitter-esque…well below the 140 char limit - probably could have saved himself a bit of time had he just created Twitter first.

Also, thought this was funny:

Evhead, circa Feb 2000:

The new dot-com business model (via Valley Talk): “‘We’ll probably make more on subletting our own space this year than on anything else,’ says Jeff Bonforte, CEO of i-drive…”

Inc magazine interview with Ev, Mar 2008

As a cultural phenomenon, Twitter is a comer…but its status as a business is nebulous. The 14-person company is unprofitable (its single largest source of revenue last year was the subleasing of half a dozen desks to three small start-ups at $200 a desk a month)

How do I make this?

Via an old Evhead post:

Tonight I stayed up late implementing a cool new Blogger feature. I’m using it to make this post right now. From anywhere on the web, I can right-click and instantly bring up a Blogger form, populated with a link to the page I’m on, plus any text I have selected. A little edit, and a click, and it’s posted here.

Anyone have recommendations on how to build this? Is it just a bookmarklet? Where I’m stuck is that rather than posting to Blogger or another CMS I’d like to post it to my domain (does that mean I have to create my own CMS first?). Any pointers would be appreciated.

It's totally easy

Being both a follower of the tech scene and a non-coder can often be a painful combination. When reading the news about Google App Engine it’s easy to get really excited about all the potential for future apps and then very quickly get depressed when you see developers do things that seem quite challenging to you and yet they get described as being totally easy. Bret’s a good guy and I know it’s not meant to be an insulting comment, but it’s frustrating to be interested in this stuff and then slam into a brick wall when looking for a place to start.

A little background: my coding experience consists almost completely of making videogames in BASIC for my TI-82 calculator in high school and building a website with Notepad and MS Paint in ‘97. HTML was “totally easy” relative to BASIC back then, but since then I haven’t really dug into CSS, Javascript, Python, Ruby, PHP, XML, etc…hence the intimidation with the multiple barriers to entry.

The question that I keep facing is - what is the best use of my time, or how can I add the most value? Learn programming by starting at square one and get frustrated while trying to do totally easy things, or should I focus on idea generation so I’m not stuck building yet another CMS or chat system?

Maybe the ultimate example...

of a non-coder creating/running a technology company…Steve Jobs. From an interview with Steve Wozniak:

He couldn’t design a computer — he was never a designer or a programmer — but he could understand it well enough to understand what was good and what was bad.

Got any other founders of tech/web companies that aren’t coders? (did Kevin Rose write any of Digg?)

update: from the Y! Combinator newsboard, some discussion on non-hacker founders.

update #2: turns out Rob Kalin from Etsy is a non-techie and although not specifically programming related there’s this article about Rick Rubin with the following quote:

Rubin doesn’t read music or write lyrics, and has no idea what the knobs on a mixing board do. “I had my doubts,” says the Dixie Chicks’ Emily Robison. “How do you produce music if you can’t say, ‘O.K., from the D chord I want to hear going to the G?’ But somehow it just works.” 

How can non-technical people add value to a startup?

Paul Buchheit has a great post on Ideas vs. Judgement and Execution that I think indirectly raises an interesting question…

Imagine that products are mountains. To build a product, you will need to climb that mountain. Some mountains have a big pot of gold at the top, and some do not. In order to make money, you will need to pick the right mountain and then successfully climb to the top and gather up the gold…

Successfully executing a trip to the top of the mountain requires a certain level technical ability — how much will depend on the mountain and route. It also requires good judgment in order to choose the right route, or to change course when you realize that the current path isn’t working out.

Judgment isn’t talked about as much as execution, but it’s obviously very important. A technically brilliant team, upon encountering a sheer cliff, may excitedly think to themselves, “this is the perfect opportunity to use Erlang!”…A team with better judgment would notice that there’s an easier route that goes around the other side.

Are non-technical people less likely to fall into the trap of solving difficult but less valuable problems because they have a different sense of judgement? Asked in a Paul Graham-esque way, are non-technical people better able to determine what people want ?

Need an idea for a webapp? Start here

A…way of thinking about how to choose web projects is to take something that everyone does with their friends and make it public and permanent. (Permanent as in permalinked.)

When I came across this quote from Kottke it helped to give me some confidence that there was real potential in my idea…after letting things marinate for a long while (months/years) I’m finally starting to bring my vision into focus.

Steps I’m taking to shape things:

• What action will your app help accomplish/what problem are you trying to solve?
• How is this problem currently solved vs. how do you propose to solve it? (if it’s not a 10x better improvement, it might be a feature instead of a product.
• What’s the basic functionality needed to test if your app indeed solves a problem in a better/meaninful way (ie: fuck style) this is where I’m currently at
• Assuming the product’s working like you hoped, what’s the minimum feature set needed for a worthwhile v1.0?

No permission required

Have had to remind myself of this lately…The Way to Learn X is to Do X.

Rather than waiting to get hired at your job of choice, start trying to do whatever it is you want to do on your own. Of course it’s easier said than done, but it helps to have a vision of a finished product to help you learn some new skills rather than picking up a bunch of manuals and plowing through them blindly.

Here’s an example from Louis Rossetto, talking about the creation of Wired:

Six months later, I created a second prototype on my own. Learned how to use Quark, Photoshop, and Illustrator in the same month — and juggle too.

Ditch the resume to get hired?

As usual, Seth’s got some interesting advice for those hoping to do interesting things…this time around it’s resume advice, or more accurately, advice on why you shouldn’t have a resume. Some notes:

I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all. Here’s why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, “oh, they’re missing this or they’re missing that,” and boom, you’re out.

Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for… those jobs don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.

So, what should you have in place of a resume? How about…

• Three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
• A sophisticated project they can see or touch?
• A reputation that precedes you?
• A blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?

(another option is think of your own idea that isn’t on this list)

Got any good examples of an un-resume?

How can I guarantee I’m not missing anything?

A couple of posts ago I ended with a question related to Friendfeed…”how can I guarantee I’m not missing anything?”

Well, reading Susan’s post on Connection vs. Purpose I think I found my answer…it doesn’t matter.

Quoting Susan:

The consistent, ongoing nature of the updates is a great screen for the fact that I am wasting time doing something that feels purposeful, but isn’t. Or, to put it another way, giving too much attention to tools that support social network sharing and monitoring is a way to feel like I am *doing something* that has very limited results.

So the ongoing challenge is to not feel too bad about ignoring this stuff - going to try to take deeper, but less frequent dips into the feed pool.

Abridged version of Pmarca's Guide to Career Planning

Marc Andreesen’s blog is chalk full of fantastic advice from someone who’s been there, done that with regards to the web world….in this post I’ll share a summary and some notes from reading his three part guide to Career Planning.

Part 1, Opportunity:

• Career planning = career limiting. Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.
• The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.
• In life, there is generally no opportunity without risk.

Part 2, Skills and Education:

• (pulled from a Dilbert quote) Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. It sounds like generic advice, but you’d be hard pressed to find any successful person who didn’t have about three skills in the top 25%.
• Five skills that you can develop once you leave school that, in combination with your degree or degrees and your other skills, can help maximize your potential:
  • Communication
  • Management
  • Sales - Think of this as the art of being able to interact with people such that they will do what you want, predictably and repeatedly, as long as you are making sense and offering them something they should want.
  • Finance
  • International
• In my opinion, it’s now critically important to get into the real world and really challenge yourself — expose yourself to risk — put yourself in situations where you will succeed or fail by your own decisions and actions, and where that success or failure will be highly visible.
  
• If you’re going to be a high achiever, you’re going to be in lots of situations where you’re going to be quickly making decisions in the presence of incomplete or incorrect information, under intense time pressure, and often under intense political pressure. You’re going to screw up — frequently — and the screwups will have serious consequences, and you’ll feel incredibly stupid every time. It can’t faze you — you have to be able to just get right back up and keep on going. That may be the most valuable skill you can ever learn. Make sure you start learning it early.

Part 3, Where to go and why:

• Pick an industry where the founders of the industry — the founders of the important companies in the industry — are still alive and actively involved.
• Optimize at all times for being in the most dynamic and exciting pond you can find. That is where the great opportunities can be found. Apply this rule when selecting which company to go to. Go to the company where all the action is happening. always make sure that your startup is aimed at the largest and most interesting opportunity available
• Reputational benefit. Having Silicon Graphics from the early 90’s, or Netscape from the mid-90’s, or eBay from the late 90’s, or Paypal from the early 00’s, or Google from the mid-00’s on your resume is as valuable as any advanced degree
• working for a big company teaches you how to work for big companies.
• When picking a startup - look for one where you understand the product, see how it might fit into a very large market, and really like and respect the people who are already there.

Phew, that’s a lot of stuff….some scary, some challenging, all inspiring. Now off to reread everything and try and let it sink in and dwell on some of the important questions.

A difficult (or not) balance

First off, wanted to thank Susan for the very kind (and unexpected) shout-out…looks like Friendfeed officially launching is helping to drive traffic.

Related to Friendfeed, et al - there’s a problem with webland….it’s too damn interesting (see: I feel crazy! I am paralyzed!) People are starting to notice that if you don’t occasionally shut this stuff out it’s impossible to get real work done.

But the problem is that web devs are only getting better at creating the world’s most popular timewaster, and shutting off your instinct to click on a potentially interesting link is either the easiest or hardest thing to do depending on your  perspective.

So here’s how I’m going to try to reign things in and hopefully get more real work done:

• Step 1: Only check Friendfeed once a day (using their email digest) 
• Step 2: Categorize Feeds in Google Reader - created a “read first” folder and then everything else has it’s usual tags….this way, if I’m wasting time at least it’s on high quality, read first, items.
• Step 3: Continue reading the Now Habit. Less than 100 pages in, but already well worth the cover price.

Any other techniques/suggestions? (maybe a twitter support group that has a seinfield-esque “master of your domain” contest?)

update after Day 1: definitely checked Friendfeed more than once…I don’t trust their email feed….how can I guarantee I’m not missing anything :)

It really is a hunt

I had a realization yesterday that searching for a new job (particularly at a startup) really was more of a hunt than I originally thought…as in, if you look in the right places (not Craigslist) you can find better opportunities that aren’t always obviously available.

Here are some of my favorite treasure chests so far:

• Browsing Crunchbase by location
• Checking VC firms pages for job openings
• Looking at job boards of specific blogs
  

Any others?