A great blog post from Marco Arment regarding doing your own thing. I particularly like this part where he describes the bucket he doesn’t fit into
- Programmer: A meaningless, easily replaced translator between someone else’s specifications and source code.
- Software Engineer: Marginally more intelligent, but still having detailed algorithmic and structural specifications dictated by management without any real input.
- Software “Architect”: An asshole.
- Web Developer: Easy programming in “toy” scripting languages for those who can’t write C++. Alternatively, Spiderman.
- “Systems” anything: CS graduates who can’t program.
- Anything “Analyst”: MBAs who can’t program.
- Interaction Designer: Floaty psychology dropouts who conduct expensive tests to determine that the software engineers suck at design.
- Web Designer: Finicky artists who don’t understand how difficult that’s going to be in CSS and refuse to budge from their pixel-perfect PSDs.
It’s reading things like this that inch me closer and closer to self employment. I have a checklist I can’t share for that and unfortunately one of the items is a calendar date I can’t move. No this isn’t some bullshit New Years Resolution laundry list of ways to rationalize bettering myself instead of doing it. I’m already building apps and reaping monetary reward. Obviously the loss of my 9 to 5 salary will be a net loss monetarily but I’m already capable of living on what the apps bring in. I just need these dates to pass…