I don't necessarily think that it's an all or nothing thing, I think the author is just pointing out that optimizing before getting the right product can be a mistake. For me this article is also talking about what to prioritize.
Obviously there's nuance to each individual situation but I think there's some good points here.
I didn’t explain myself correctly. I know what I’m doing but I’m aware that I’m not an expert by any means. The skills I’m learning are essential to any startup that wants to grow IMO so I’d imagine I’d get better exposure in those environments.
You’re spot on about chasing something tho, and I am indeed not sure how to recognize if I have it
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on overstating what you can learn in a startup. From my (potentially naive) pov, you get more hands on experience and less problems are abstracted away whether it is through infrastructure, processes or whatever and also the work (might?) be more important for the company to remain alive so I’d imagine you’d have to get a better understanding faster in order to keep up?
Commercial software is mostly to solve real world problems. Real world problems can change very quickly and as such, software changes too.
Sure constantly changing in the complete opposite direction is probably a sign of something wrong, but changes are inevitable and we can’t expect to reinvent the wheel or start a new project as you say when you can potentially reuse what you already have.
> Real world problems can change very quickly and as such, software changes too.
So you keep the old product, and make a new one for solving the new problem. (You can even sell them on the same package.)
The alternative will have almost all of your customers badmouthing you because they brought your product, and you pulled the functionality out of their feet.
Well said. I'd add that aside from being hard to drop people are not generally aware in the first place of the problems that come with overusing these apps.
How can you fight a problem that you don't think of as a problem
I disagree that velocity is a terrible metric. I think a more comprehensive suggestion from the article could've been to use velocity in conjunction with other metrics. Perhaps with the ones the author points out in the article.
Measuring things is hard. Most of the time when you measure something there will be a loss of information. Velocity, in the context of software engineering, is no exemption. However, this doesn't mean that it can't be a helpful signal.
Interesting read, would be interesting to see how TikTok optimizes their recommendation algorithms and what kind of metrics they use.
Like another commenter said, it may also be that Instagram had already a use case and a "spot" in peoples minds so its harder to change that mentality to the one that TikTok naturally gained and as such people tend to upload "better" content on there.
I agree that capitalism doesn't always help in solving root problems and it is a force at play here, but the article is not saying that tech is the problem here. The issue lies in looking at problems exclusively through a technical point of view. Just because something is technologically feasible doesn't mean that it is the best solution.
> Just because something is technologically feasible doesn't mean that it is the best solution.
Agreed. But either way, it's a means. Not an ends. Then your hammer is tech then everything is a nail. We all understand at this point how foolish that is. Well, some of us do.
I’m still in my 20s and I’ve fell to the idea that if you haven’t achieved everything you want early on then you just don’t want it enough or you’re not working hard enough.
However, what if I achieve everything before hitting 30? What would I have to look forward then?
I think some things are just meant to be hard and take a long time. You just have to learn to enjoy the process and understand that everyone has their own pace and that’s okay.
Obviously there's nuance to each individual situation but I think there's some good points here.