Keeping an eye on various Slack channels at work, I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll be laid off soon along with many others. Each quarter a handful of people from different countries go missing, so it could be a good time to think about plan B.
After binge reading content from 37 Signals, I’ve been fired up to create something new and semi quickly. With two small kids and limited runway, time will be against me.
I feel the plan should be to ship as many small SAAS apps as possible and push them to marketplaces, either for promotion or a quick sale.
Their book, ‘Getting Real’ killed the idea of waiting to launch. After my first pass on this book, I stopped trying to polish all of my side project. Real feedback comes from real use, not internal debate.
I’ve started to ship early, trim scope, and embrace imperfect but live code. There’s a project I’m working on with my Wife, and I refuse to add new features until we can get people from her industry to use the existing ones, otherwise it’s just fluff.
‘Rework’ made me feel like most “business wisdom” is cargo cult. I now believe that you can say no often and aggressively. I started chasing usefulness over novelty, subtraction over addition, clarity over cleverness.
‘Remote’ gave me the words for what I already believed - talent isn’t local, and work isn’t a place. During my time in Web3, my best collaborations have happened asynchronously, across time zones, with teammates I never met in person (I didn’t even see some of their faces) - Communication mattered more than credentials.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work is still on my reading list. I became a little too hyped to continue reading without action - TBC
All of that to say this. These books gave me permission to think clearly, ship small, and ignore most advice. Although it’s tearing me up that this advice seems contrary to who I need to become in order to secure work in this market.
So for now I’ll have to become two different people to survive. I’ll never be able to change the culture of a team that I join, but while I’m building for myself, I can embody the values I believe in.