The analogy to writing is false. Software is fundamentally a systems-and-teams sport. A better analogy is to legal institutions
Conversation
Google's search infrastructure is more like the knowledge base represented in US judicial system case law than like a novel.
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but yeah, great software is a few original ideas combined with an enormous heap of "case law" aka bug fixes, UX tweaks, etc.
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My point is, only a fraction of seriously ambitious software can be pursued by individuals or small startup teams.
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I'm enjoying reading through this thread. Off the cuff, I think I'd like to see a new career trajectory of mercenary->f-u money->missionary.
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But I'm also thinking I need to try to grok the "poorly understood force" and gather my thoughts into probably a blog post.
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One of my learnings post-gervais is that corporate "woke" types generally don't want to defer meaning till after fu$.
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They want to get to minimum-viable $ and then optimize for meaning right after. The free agent crowd is fueled more by missionary exits.
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Is the dynamic that they get snowed with "meaning theater" and then exit cynically to become mercenaries/free agents?
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Basically, despite inequality/precarity, if you give up amer dream (marriage, kids, house in burbs, retirement security), it's leisure nao
And a key characteristic of that condition is that you look for meaningful work the moment you've ensured basic short-term finances
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