You’re a builder, a creator—whether a back-end programmer, a Linux hacker, a Javascript ninja, a UX magician, a designer. You make stuff. That

The Code is your Enemy

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2024-09-25 17:00:05

You’re a builder, a creator—whether a back-end programmer, a Linux hacker, a Javascript ninja, a UX magician, a designer. You make stuff.

That’s great of course, because in a new startup everyone needs to be either making stuff or selling stuff—there’s no room for managers and executives and strategists. But this also produces a natural weakness, and when I look at what made me a successful entrepreneur—not just a great coder—one reason is that I discovered and overcame this weakness.

The weakness is the same as your strength as they often are: Your love of creation. You love to write clean, tested, scalable, extensible, beautiful code. You love converting “JTBDs” into 960-wide artwork. You love developing an entire app in the browser against a scalable back-end.

And because you love it, you do it. You wake up in the morning thinking about what you can make, not how you can sell. You open Visual Studio before you consult your to-do list because there’s something you just need to tweak. You launch xterm before your CRM (if you even have one, which you don’t) because the server was running just a tad slower than you’d expect and you want to paw through log files.