Thank god I didn't get accepted into "Glass Explorers"

Glass. This was going to change the world. Imagine it: wearable computing. We could have been on the cusp of another wave of innovative products and user experience.

And then Google dropped this bomb in the Terms of Service:

No Fees. You may not charge end users any fees or collect any payments in order to download or access your API Client, or in connection with virtual goods or functionality of your API Client.

What.

What could Google possibly be thinking? The only reason that the app store is thriving is that there's money in the work. Rovio doesn't build Angry Birds to spread joy in the world; it builds Angry Birds to keep the company in the black.

Would we have Instapaper, Clear, RunKeeper, or Pandora? Or how about 90% of the apps on your homescreen?

Fuck no.

Building apps isn't fucking philanthropy. It's work.

I was willing to risk $2000 on a Glass unit for a chance to have first crack at development, UX design, and sales. I wanted to be an early adopter. I wanted to build things.

But instead of companies and developers aching to start exploring this new market, who gets into the program? Neil Patrick Harris. What the fuck.

And you can't sell apps. (I'm not calling it glassware. That's stupid.)

When Google Glass was first announced, I heard a mantra repeated again and again:

"I'll buy Glass when Apple makes it." 

That's a pretty fucking good idea. If I was going to build software for Google, I'd demand $140k a year and catered lunches.

Even if the next wearable product by Apple is awful, I know that I can at least get paid for my time.

Results oriented development? We're conditioned against it.

Results oriented development. The work you do matters, and not the time you put in.

If you can create a successful, profitable product while providing solid customer support in 20 hours a week on the beach with a laptop, then that's great. Right?

Every experience we have growing up is poised exactly against this environment. School from Kindergarten to high school is an 8-hour a day prison. It doesn't matter what you know,  how you test, or what you're ready for. You sit in classes for 8 hours, doing your time to graduate year after year in a pointless loop.

Are you motivated, and want to skip grades and work through the summers? Good fucking luck. Even if you're homeschooled and manage to blow through the state-required curriculum, you would be ostracized in college or high school if you weren't the right age. You didn't do your time with the rest of us.

So school is a time suck meant for the unambitious. How about work, then? Odds are, unless you were pretty well connected, your first (second, third?) job involved trading time for money. If you're flipping burgers, waiting tables, or answering calls, you make money based on the time you're present. There's no way to do service jobs that doesn't involve burning time to make dollars.

Now you're at university! It's time to learn about the world and find yourself. Except your classes have an attendance policy. You see, if students could just test out of their classes through self study, why would the university need to pay so many professors? Once again, you're forced to burn through time.

Finally, you graduate, and you get a job at a hip young company. Results are the *only* thing that matter, and they care about getting things done. No bullshit.

You notice the pace of the office, and you match step, or maybe even go faster than the norm. You get your work done by 3PM. You get up to leave, and annoyed, confused eyes dart at you.

The company owners think they're results oriented, but they really just want you to do your time.

Is anyone really results oriented?

It takes a radical worldview shift to understand what "results oriented" really means. Do you?

Meritocracy - the big myth

I like to talk inside baseball with other developers, and I've found two points that come up all the time:

1. Salaries are roughly static.
2. Older developers start at higher salaries and command higher organizational roles, regardless of experience.

Companies like to pretend that merit has any impact on position or pay, but it's just not true. Merit may put you on a scale from a 0-5% annual raise, but it's still crap compared to the salary earned by your older developer friends.

Suppose you start at a company at $60k, and you're a fucking rockstar, commanding a 5% raise annually. In 11 short years, you'll break 6 figures and hit $102k. At the same time, inflation has been punching you in the crotch, and your adjusted pay, assuming 2% annual inflation, is 83k.

So what happens when you switch jobs? In general, your future employer will lure you out of your position with money or prestige, offering a 15% or more increase in salary. If you switch jobs every 3 years (conservative in the tech world), what happens?

 In our $60k base example, you move to $80k after 3 years and your first job switch. After 3 more years, you jump to $106k, with a real adjusted pay of $85k. In 6 years, you're now earning more than the schmuck who showed real loyalty to the company for 11 years.

So when you say "meritocracy", you mean that older developers will earn higher salaries because you're playing the same bullshit game every other company is playing. Developers are a commodity that can be purchased for a function of their current salary, and nothing more. If you're "sufficiently good" to get hired, that's good enough to work the system.

And your good employees will leave you, and I can't blame them.

The entrepreneur's vacuum

I know. You're thinking - why the hell should I care about a vacuum?

That's easy.

You work tirelessly to make your business more efficient, so why would you not give this same rigor to your home life? The less time you spend managing your life, the more time you have to workout, to spend time with a loved one, or to pour back into your business.

So you could live in squalor, or you could figure out how to run your life a little better. I choose the latter.

Vacuuming is a pure loss of time. You can't listen to podcasts, or books, or do anything while the siren blare of a regular vacuum roars.

About three years ago, I automated vacuuming out of my life.

This was one of the best decisions I've ever made. For a small up-front cost, I haven't vacuumed in three years. Every day when I come home, I empty a bin while listening to tech podcasts, and then I'm done.

Last week, I upgraded to the iRobot Roomba 770, and once again, I was completely blown away. Check out this feat of technology:

On a single charge, this thing covers my 1200 sq. ft. apartment *easily*. The vacuuming unit itself sucks more dirt off the floor than I've ever seen out of a normal vacuum.

For $448, I save 20 minutes a day. Over the course of the year, I get back 15 work days.

What could you build with 15 work days? How could you improve your business?

Make the investment, and go find out.

Getting buy in

Getting buy in. This is something you hear pretty often, but what does it mean?

"Buy in" is agreement to a defined plan. I could command Bob to build AirBnB Wordpress for Dogs, but unless Bob believes in the product or technological vision, he won't be fully effective and move as fast as he could with "buy in." Buy in means that your workers fully believe in the current product development and want to move forward.

That sounds great, right? Do you see the problem?

Buy in...

• is persuasion, not discussion or experimentation.
• does not leave room for change or adaptation.
• is strictly top-down. 
• requires that a leader believe in a plan they have lain out.

You might get lucky, and a Real Smart Guy will make your business successful for a while by getting buy in and moving forward at full speed with whatever his whim is this week.

Or you could get burned, because you're running your business on political personalities and product vision not driven by experimentation.

You're a lean startup, right? Build Measure Learn?

If your development process needs "Buy in", consider whether you're building the most valuable thing.

User account creation re-imagined

I'm an app developer and I don't want your spam

If you have an app on the Google Play or iOS app store, you've received an email that looks like this:

 

Surely, cold calling presumably tech savvy app developers cannot be profitable, so where is all this spam coming from? In this particular case, I was targeted for listing in the "Health and Fitness" category, and the company itself looks legitimate.

Dear cold callers:

• I do not wish to "increase app engagement through cross promotional offers."
• My app (AppName) is worth more than your shitty pitch.
• I will not point you at "the person in charge."

Thanks,

(APP DEVELOPER NAME HERE)