Fighting the Hype in Technology

You don’t have to listen to the whole thing, but I thought this observation by Paul Ford (about 26 minutes in) was really great. It’s something that never really gets talked about. I feel like working in software is always talked about as this dreamy, change-the-world endeavor. But the reality is just getting something out the door that people will actually want to use can be a monumental effort. If you can do that, if you can ship something that’s good enough for people to want to use it, that’s pretty damn good. You should give yourself a pat on the back.

the fundamental problem that most people are facing is not, “how do I apply technology X to get, you know, incredible yields?” That’s a very startup-y, West Coast kind of problem. The problem most people have is: can I get a good enough piece of software shipped that people want to use? That’s it — that is it, and that is...still the fundamentally hardest thing that most people can pull off...And especially at an organizational level. If you’re in a big org, just trying to get good software out the door [is incredibly hard]. (emphasis mine)