Yesterday or maybe a couple of days ago (I’m temporally challenged) Dave Winer tweeted:
programmers are supposed to be too virtuous to want to be paid. a bunch of hooey. i don’t think programmers started that rumor!
Amen brother! It was weird to read that from Dave, it was somewhat unrelated to the rest of his Twitter stream. Even weirder is that over the course of the days (hey I already said I was temporally challenged) several people brought up the issue of the virtuous startup. You know the old: do good things and the money will follow. Hmmn maybe Dave Winer has one those “world consciousness machines“; he does have an early iPhone.
Well I’m here to tell ya it ain’t the case. If you’re building a startup and you’re not sweating the revenue model and just “doing good stuff” you don’t have a business — you have a hobby and probably an expensive one at that. Trust me I’ve had a hobby.
Revenue isn’t the devil. Revenue lets you do good stuff. Revenue lets you hire “good” people, develop even more “good” products, hire more “good” people (if you need them) and most importantly continue to make your customers happy and the world a better place.
If someone tries to tell you something different, ask them why they hate you.
S Woodside says:
So what are you trying to say here Jeff. It’s true that a lot of programmers don’t give a damn about money. I mean cash is good, higher salary is good but that’s the end of it. They have a real ambivalence that money == evil. Also they see & hear that capitalists are bad and out to screw you. And they are also not usually very savvy socially or in negotiations.
This text field is way too wide also, it goes under the twitter stream.
25th October 2007 at 11:06 pm
jeff says:
Ok what is it about Saturday nights that brings out
Yeah guilty as
the template critique in people?
charged, I’ll try to find time tomorrow to fix the css
On to the comment, I just am trying to say money
isn’t evil. Sure some people are but not everyone and
certainly not every capitalist.
Also there’s no shame in getting paid for your craft.
Similarly there’s no shame in enjoying what you do. In
fact I’d argue if you don’t love what you do, you won’t
be successful regardless of “virtue”
25th October 2007 at 12:08 am