Hello! Again... from Australia.

[damien275x]

Hi everyone


I was on here two years ago following the boards closely, quit my FT job at 21, and started two ventures, which both failed. After falling into a slight rut, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and at my lowest point... I re-printed my resume and spammed it out to IT agencies. I got a job right away, at a large company as a temporary employee.


It was depressing, I turned up, 9-5, and nobody knew what I did, my boss didn't even know what I was doing there. So I fulfilled my duties with ease, and continued to read, and learn, and read, and code, and learn etc. Pretty much the cycle which led me to resign initially. A waste of time, but I made the best of it. Anyhow, I stuck with the stupid job and have built up savings and skills, and now I'm ready to try again. Resignation is in.


The ventures I worked on were:


1. A grocery delivering operation, where i designed an ordering-touch based kiosk interface for people to touch and order/collect items. It didn't work out due to poor financial planning, but mostly.. zero passion.


2. A car air fresher/china import operation, I designed car air fresheners and distributed them in Mechanic and repair stores. This made money, but once again fizzled out.. I also put it down to zero passion.


The end game was to make money. There was some, but limited value on offer to my customers... and it wasn't exactly unique or special. I also had other web based operations like blogs and eBooks running that made some money, but not enough, and I hated the work involved. I felt like a bit of a shark, going out trying to take money without delivering value and truly believing in my products. I remember one guy ringing me back the next day swearing because it lost its scent in 2 seconds. OK! Time to wind this thing up..


It's only looking back that I realised I had discovered my passion. The enjoyment and excitement from all of my failed projects came from building and programming the actual applications themselves, not selling scented trees and groceries. I loved creating the glossy buttons and icons in photoshop, planning the user interface and back-end. Writing the code, building databases, automating workflows, creating something people could touch, experience.


After talking with people I worked with, and my boss, we ended up coding applications after work. We monetized them, and people downloaded them. That was exciting. You've written and compiled code, polished it up, got it into the iOS App Store, and people are using it.. Not a whole lot of people.. but it was all about the process and learning curve. Users are still trending upwards. I've since discovered a whole new world of opportunity in the mobile applications space and aim to take my career in that direction, hopefully as an entrepreneur.

I've noticed that with Software Developers, there are two types: The brilliant code monkeys with limited ability to understand what users want - they generally over complicate and confuse people, and impose poor UX's on customers. The second type are the more creatives ones who may not be as good, but know what people want. I hope to fall into that second category.

After working alongside technical geniuses in corporations who work on poorly designed Intranets & Web Applications staff despise and hated working with- I've come to the conclusion that end users do not give a SHIT about how many lines of code it takes to light up a button they press, what server it's hosted on, or what technologies are involved in delivering the application (which is where all these geniuses channel their energy)

When they press a damn button, it either lights up, or it doesn't. End of story. With faster computers and high speed connections, writing minimal, perfect code isn't as important. It's ideal, but not essential. What's important is that it works, and works well... from a users point of view, not that of the developer. The exception here is security, that's obviously important.

It seems to cost entrepreneurs a lot of money and time to get the creativity and the developer together under one roof - but it's essential. If you've got the good idea, and you find a good developer, that good developer could be smart enough to take the idea and run with it himself. If you want to take the outsourcing approach, outsource in sections and never give away the entire idea. Get cheap labour to develop modules, and learn how to piece it together yourself. You'll need at least that.

That's just what I have learnt so far. I started out as an IT trainee in 2007, and lacked the confidence to call myself a developer, although that's all I really did for 5 years. I thought the lack of a Computer Science degree denied me the right to officially be one, (that's how brainwashed I was by colleagues and superiors) - But I now see it makes no difference, you either meet the requirements to build a project, or you don't. Nobody cares about degrees in IT.. things change too fast. If I did go to university, I'd be finishing up only now @ 24, with $30k debt and hitting the market with limited skills, trying to beg for a crappy job. So I guess the failures of the real world were better than a degree..

If you wanna PM me with any programming questions feel free, and if anyone's thinking about learning to code, I strongly suggest it... you won't regret it. Anything you need to know is on the internet. It's on forums, Youtube, blogs, discussion boards.. it's there. Go make good use of it. My head right now is exploding with ideas and it's exciting to know I have the ability to build these products from the ground up. There just isn't enough time right now with a full time job.

In the future, I see myself coding my own projects and monetizing them, and bridging the gap between small-medium sized business and mobile technology in Australia. I think we're very behind in this space. Hopefully we'll have a couple of big successes on the personal projects side.

I'm aware the space is almost like the tech bubble again, (too young and missed the 1999's) - so I aim to limit leverage, and remain profile. That seemed to be what ruined most people in the 90s . But you can see it ending in tears now for a lot of people, so many companies are securing millions in funding and nobody knows what their freaking app does or if it will make money??! Seems they didn't learn from last time...

Anyway, I've ranted enough, but I'm back. Hope you got something out of it.

Cheers

 

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