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> Long term, I want this model to grow beyond me and become a known professional path. This experiment is both easier and harder for me than it will be for those after me: easier because I have an extensive personal network and the financial means to safely take risks; harder because it’s uncharted territory for both me and the clients and because there’s a lack of legal, administrative, and marketing tools. I hope that as things progress the barriers will lower, making the model accessible to more and more people.

I feel this is attitude is honourable and should be commended for its wholesome goodness. I really like your attitude in trying to raise opportunities for software engineers and normalise paying for software maintenance.

Do people really enjoy paying for software? Do people actually just pay for bespoke development when they pay for software engineers with the silent industry wide acceptance that software is custom created and not for sharing outside that company. I'm thinking of your custom development for a wordpress blog for a small business or an ERP installation for a particular large organisation.

I feel the independent software vendor market for desktop software has stalled. Antivirus is supplanted by Windows Defender, except for Photoshop and some audiocreative software that everyone uses, I don't see the popularity of download websites that there was in the late 90s early 2000s when I was growing up.

I feel, as a software engineer I would like to love a codebase more, to do the things how I truly want to do them, but am held back by financial obligations and for my employer to be rewarded for shipping.

In my observations of internet comments, even software engineers and people don't enjoy buying software packages unless it is an application on a mobile device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download.com

What would everyone dream's computer tech jobs be? Building web apps, desktop apps, videogames, business software, mobile apps?




Find a problem people have, especially less engineering-type people, which you would love to help them solve. (Not "solve for them"; it's always a mutual process.)

Wherever people use Excel as the centerpiece of their work, there is an opportunity to help improve things, for fun and profit :)

In general, most opportunities lie on the seams between well-understood areas. Knowing more than one area helps. Many of these opportunities are too small for hockey-stick growth which VCs crave, or for huge contracts which large corporations desire. They are perfectly sufficient for a mid-size sustainable business though. Specialized things, like the bespoke work on and around open-source software from the post.

With any luck, that work may be pleasant.


So now he will start selling books and courses how he did one off thing. Because he did it once he somehow thinks that now he has all the answers.

Fairly typical as I see same with traders or rentiers.

Either they know it is one time trick and they have to milk it out before it goes bad or they are really clueless and think they have all the answers.

I don’t know which one is worse but I lean on milking strategy to be worse because they become snake oil salesmen by choice.




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