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Ask HN: Why are developers so obsessed with starting their own business?

39 点作者 gillyb将近 10 年前
An observation I have made for quite some time is that 90%, or maybe even 95% of the developers I know are always obsessed with working on their own side-projects with the hope of one day turning it into a full-blown start-up, or at least making some passive income from it. Many of my non-developer friends, never even think about this. Some of them are thinking about new ideas to implement in their job, but never with the same obsession that developers seem to talk about it. (I am a developer as well, also obsessed with the idea of turning one of my side projects into a comfortable passive stream of income or maybe a startup one day)

29 条评论

88e282102ae2e5b将近 10 年前
Because it requires almost no capital to do so. You can start a company with a single laptop. You don&#x27;t need a bank loan, you don&#x27;t need investors (at least for certain business models).<p>If you could magically will into existence a coffee shop for free, I&#x27;m certain the number of people starting coffee shop businesses would skyrocket. You&#x27;d just need to come up with a unique twist to differentiate your shop.
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BjoernKW将近 10 年前
Perhaps this question starts with the wrong premise. Maybe, we should rather assume wanting to start a company is the normal case and ask what keeps most people from wanting to start their own business.<p>Most non-software businesses require a much higher upfront investment. With hardware, retail, restaurants or other brick-and-mortar businesses you&#x27;ve got one chance more or less. If you fail in these types of businesses a large amount of capital will be lost (quite likely including your personal savings).<p>With software businesses you can most of the times just start over. Plus, there always is the opportunity to do consulting if your original plan doesn&#x27;t work out. As a developer you have a few fallback options whereas in other industries it&#x27;s mostly all or nothing. While this is an advantage for developers it can also be detrimental. Most developers want to start a company but how many actually do and how many of those persevere when problems come up? With a non-software business you can&#x27;t bottle out as easily once you&#x27;ve started.
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FormFollowsFunc将近 10 年前
Where I worked previously it wasn&#x27;t generally common for developers to have a side project. It probably depends on where you work. I presume everybody in Silicon Valley plans to start a startup like every waiter in Los Angeles plans to become an actor.<p>One reason I can think of, is maybe because they can - developers have the means to create software themselves though maybe not a way to market it. Anything physical requires a fair bit of capital to manufacture it, where&#x27;s developers just need time. I suspect also that independence is more important to &quot;developer types&quot; than to others.<p>Another reason I can think of is management in companies can tend to treat developers as second class citizens which can make work unfulfilling. Working on your own products can make programming fun again.<p>Also in a lot of other white-collar areas like design, medicine or law it&#x27;s fairly common to setup your own studio&#x2F;practice after a few years of work experience. IT tends to create large global companies which sucks in a lot of developers.
rue将近 10 年前
&gt; 90%, or maybe even 95% of the developers I know<p>It sounds like you’ve surrounded yourself with people who want to do that.<p>Most developers probably don’t, and are happy with contributing to or running OSS projects, or even not coding at all.
mahringer_a将近 10 年前
Not sure whether developers are more likely to have ideas than non-developers, but they are more likely to pursue them because often they have the means and ability to do so.
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Vendan将近 10 年前
Speaking as a developer that did turn a side project into a very very minor income stream (pays for my spotify and a few steam games a month), I did very little to try to make it into a income stream. My primary focus was writing software for my own use, and for the fun and challenge of doing so. The &quot;monetizing&quot; was, honestly, quite annoying.
AndrewKemendo将近 10 年前
I think it&#x27;s because at the very basic level we hate working for someone else on their ideas.
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marssaxman将近 10 年前
I am substantially more interested in finding ways to destroy existing businesses, by replacing processes which previously depended on centralized rent-seeking organizations with collaborative, decentralized, community-driven processes.<p>It&#x27;s not yet clear how one would make a living doing this, so it remains a side project.
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robgibbons将近 10 年前
Being your own boss is a really enticing idea in its own right. Plus, the idea that you possess the skills -- for which other people willingly pay lots of money -- is very empowering. With the right idea, and some hard work, you stand a chance at essentially short-circuiting the traditional ladder of upward mobility. If you like to hack things already, why not hack your own career?
justuk将近 10 年前
Developers spend their day building the foundations for other people&#x27;s businesses. As a developer, you would have to be severely lacking in motivation to not want to do it yourself.
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recursive将近 10 年前
I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s really generally true. Developers that frequent this site probably are, just like developers around SF probably are. Most software developers I know don&#x27;t have any interest in starting a business. I know I don&#x27;t.
jacknews将近 10 年前
Because Capitalism.<p>It&#x27;s much better to own a business, and therefore keep the excess value that the employees create, than to just receive a salary, always held down by &quot;market rates&quot;, if not outright collusion or bullying.<p>And in tech you don&#x27;t need much actual capital to do it. It&#x27;s obviously a risk, and a great achievement to build a company from scratch, deserving of outsized rewards, but capitalism means you own the whole thing.<p>The question therefore maybe should be why doesn&#x27;t everyone start a business, with the rewards so skewed, and such a low barrier to entry.<p>I guess that&#x27;s exactly what the OP is describing.
Edmond将近 10 年前
Probably has to do with the current booming environment for starting a technology business. It is fairly easy to start a technology related business, of course it is probably harder to actually succeed.<p>Software development is also a very creative process, which means people who engage in it on average are probably going to have many ideas of their own that don&#x27;t necessarily fit the interest of their employer.
k__将近 10 年前
I know many (older) devs who don&#x27;t want this.<p>They go to office, code what they get told, cash their (senior) pay-check and go back home.<p>Some have the abilities and ambition to do their own thing. Some don&#x27;t have the nerve to meddle with the business stuff.<p>I understand both, the &quot;I want it all!&quot; and the &quot;I just want to build things and be left alone!&quot;
corobo将近 10 年前
Because the day to day doesn&#x27;t do it for me after so many years. The day job doesn&#x27;t provide the opportunity to play around with new technologies, learn new skills (business, marketing, hell.. accounting. I&#x27;ve never touched those!). I&#x27;m not even complaining about that, I get that the business runs much more smoothly without changing languages, frameworks, methodologies every few months. That&#x27;s fine.<p>I want to start my own business because I want to be challenged. It&#x27;s not about the money (although I wouldn&#x27;t mind success). It&#x27;s not about getting away from the day job, I&#x27;d be happy to continue there unless this thing hit the roof (although the chances are slim). I just want to push my abilities to their limits and then push a bit more.
mswen将近 10 年前
Part of it is the creative urge. Bring into being something that started in your own mind, not the mind of a product manager. With programming I give substance to the ephemeral. I codify and automate processes and liberate myself and others from drudgery. When starting my own company I have the potential to reap both the autonomy and economic rewards for bringing thought and process to &quot;life.&quot;<p>Expand your luck surface. Part of it is the understanding that while some software start-ups succeed because of really good business basics and lots of investment in marketing - there are others where the combination of a product and luck create an explosion of growth. But if you don&#x27;t build it you reduce your luck surface.
panjaro将近 10 年前
1. Startup Hype<p>2. Feeling of lagging behind with tech trend<p>3. NO innovation &#x2F; challenge at current work<p>4. HN<p>5. Some birds aren&#x27;t meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright (from Shawshank Redemption)
rayalez将近 10 年前
Why wouldn&#x27;t they be?<p>Of course working on your own profitable project is much more fun and makes much more financial sense than being an employee, building a project for somebody else, and capturing only a fraction of value you create.<p>Obviously everybody wants to do something more fun and profitable and not something less fun and less profitable. People in other professions would too, but they usually just can&#x27;t.
carsongross将近 10 年前
I originally began trying to start my own business because I had seen how businesses work (smallish through to large public companies) and I&#x27;ve noticed that people like me (not particularly politically savvy, not an ounce of sociopathy) ended up not advancing and losing influence over both the technical and cultural aspects of the work environment.
cblock811将近 10 年前
It&#x27;s empowering to be able to build these things, so why not take it as far as we can? I know plenty of nontechnical people who want to start a business but the barrier is usually...technology. They can&#x27;t build it themselves.
sawantuday将近 10 年前
1. Because its much easy to start a software business 2. Developers always think that the other guy is doing something wrong and they can do better than him. Most of developers start business very similar to one they are working for.
edoceo将近 10 年前
Building software for your own builds your obsession for the thing you created. Its your baby. The side project quickly morphs into obsession because of the dopamine release that comes from seeing your creation work.
sudeepj将近 10 年前
This is not unique to developers. I can say for my country (India) that every doctor &quot;dreams&quot; to start his own hospital. Every CA or lawyer wants to establish his&#x2F;her own firm.
bbcbasic将近 10 年前
I have found the opposite actually. I find developers not talking about starting their own business, while non-techie people want to do it. Another data point for you. Outside of US though.
joshuapants将近 10 年前
I think a measure of independence is very appealing, especially if your career so far has involved sitting in a cubicle doing uninteresting work for other people.
bwh2将近 10 年前
Leverage is very appealing - the idea that a single developer working independently can support thousands or millions of users.
rajeshmr将近 10 年前
Ideas are plenty, its execution ( + speed ) which is a bottleneck. Developers are in a better position to prototype ideas and refine them. Most if not all developers want to be their own bosses, cos well they have bad bosses.<p>Having worked in the so called corporate world, for what seems like eternity, i could say with some confidence that the monotony beats the creative potential out of a developer. I have contemplated quitting technology quite a lot of times, its the passion for technology that keeps me going. I keep telling myself, i ll find my way out of this rabbit hole.<p>This urge to be the artist that you truly are, the creative process of building software, the art of visualizing the outcome before writing a line of code, the vision of doing amazing stuff, not just building software and being stuck in an endless loop of maintenance and bug fixes - is part of the reason some developers wish to try running their own businesses.<p>Rotting in a cubicle, with no say as to what could or could not be done, Technology decisions driven by sales and management team rather than the other way around, &quot;works&quot; is better than optimizations &#x2F; solving for future with good design. - I am sure you would have come across all of these and thats precisely the reason some want to get out of this insane loop of madness is part of the reason why at least i want to start my own venture.<p>Another thing is that, as companies grow bigger they tend to lose sight on their initial vision &#x2F; mission statements and also the culture kind of dilutes. Culture is everything. And building the kind of culture you would love to work in, is also a reason for aspiring to start your own venture. You as a developer clearly see whats not working, and you want to change that.<p>Another management crap that bothers at least myself a big time : recruiting people for numbers in the name of growth. how is number of people employed to do a job related to growth ? This is bullish in every sense. Hire top talents and get them to work. The arse kissing culture is very evident in these kinda growth scenes, where the management wants to please their higher-ups!<p>Processes : The things we do for the sake of doing! Another reason.<p>As steve jobs would say, this world was created by people no smarter than you - and you can change things! You will find yourself in situations, where you see that things could have been done better.<p>I don&#x27;t want this reply to sound like a rant ( although it somewhat is! ) but i could think of these almost immediately when i read your question. All these and many more contribute to the desire developers feel to starting their own business.<p>I gave this answer from the vantage point of a guy working in a &quot;job&quot;.
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ctulek将近 10 年前
A follow up question: How many developers want to work in a startup that another developer started?
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jacques_chester将近 10 年前
Developers have means and motive.