Author: Carlos

Learning computer programming changed my life.

I remember I wanted to become a programmer after watching Hackers (so cliché) in the late 90s and later I felt even stronger about it after The Net, a movie with the same thematic but much less “technical”. I’m not making this up when I say my career choice came from watching two Hollywood films 🤷‍♂️.

I don’t remember exactly the time when I watched those movies—it was around 1998 more or less—but I do remember the sudden spike in interest about computers I had that remained uninterrupted since that time, 22 years ago.

In those years, my family was not financially well and we couldn’t afford a computer so I had to wait five years to have a second hand Intel 486 DX2 with 500 MB hard drive, and 32 MB of RAM running Windows 98. In was already 2003 and my first computer was a relic.

I recall it was so old that even Windows 98 ran slow on it not to mention I couldn’t play the newest games my friends were playing so I was stuck with it playing DOS-only games.

That same year, a classmate of mine lent me a Quick Basic book his brother was using at university that I read from cover to cover that same year spending hours and hours writing silly programs that book thought me. I was having the time of my life with that computer and that book.

In 2007 I bought my first laptop—a Dell Vostro 1500—and a year later, in 2008, I was finally able to afford to have an Internet connection at home. It was such an event that I even took a picture of that laptop with Google open to perpetuate that moment in time forever.

My shitty first computer and that book forced me to learn how to code. No Internet access and no games made my only option for entertainment to watch boring TV or to try to do something more interesting out of that boredom. Fortunately, that book was there at the right time and it thought me a skill I was able to monetize later to better my life.

It’s interesting to look back in time connecting the dots to see that something that looked like a misfortune, not to be able to afford a computer, was actually a good thing that made me discover my love for computer programming and computers in general, a profession that I ended up choosing to pursue as a career for the rest of my life.

I’m sharing this story because I believe that everyone should contemplate the idea of learning how to code, but especially the ones coming from unprivileged countries, with no access to good education or struggling financially.

Programming can teach how to think structurally, abstract yourself from a problem, give you a shot at reaching audiences bigger than you can imagine and it has the potential of altering your life for the better in a relatively short period of time.

It takes a long time to be truly good at something so you better start today. The demand for programmers is only growing and 5 years from now you will wish you had started today.

I believe the overall idea of having a balance between work and life is sane and makes sense. In the general sense of what it means, I advocate for it and pursue it for my own life actively, but I also think people want to take it a bit too far quite too often.

In the context of creating your own startup, if you think working hard is optional and that you can keep your normal office hours strictly between 9 to 5, then you’ll set yourself for a big surprise. This is definitely possible to achieve in the long run but pretending it is possible when you are just starting up is just fooling yourself.

Let me try to make you view it from my perspective and let’s agree on the following:

1. Time is precious. You only have a finite amount of it and you want to use it wisely.
2. You are building a tech startup that is more likely to fail than not.

If you agree to the statements above then you may agree with my points below.

I would work the hardest I can for the longest I can because I want to know if my startup will succeed or not. I would like to know it sooner rather than later to minimize not only the negative financial impact on my life but most importantly, the negative time impact of potentially be working on the wrong things.

I don’t know how you can get there if you only work 9 to 5, no weekends, and taking your usual vacations in the middle. Maybe there is a way and I just have not found it.

I know sustaining this intense rhythm for too long will have negative consequences and that’s why it is important to know yourself fully before doing anything. You have to know your limits, when to push harder, when to rest, and sometimes when to quit.

I’m not a competitor in the contest of “who works the hardest” either and to be honest, I wish I could work less and still get to achieve the goals I set for myself in life.

I tried working fewer hours and it didn’t work out just like the time when I tried to sleep less so that I could have more hours to work. In the end, I had 19 hours a day of a cloudy mind that couldn’t think straight and that was significantly less creative than my well-rested mind.

There are public figures on the Internet that are very vocal about working hard and smart, like Sam Altman, and those who say that working long hours is wrong at any stage, like DHH and Jason Fried. I think all of them make very good points.

Given my circumstances in life, where I live, where I come from, my socioeconomic background, and where I want to be in the future, for me at least, working the hardest I can while I can has not been optional.

I know this opinion won’t sit well with everybody, and after all, people’s ultimate goal is happiness and there are several paths that lead to it. At the end of the day, you have to follow the one that you feel is right for you and a random guy like me on the Internet should not have a saying in there ;).

It feels counterintuitive and probably against nature to choose to do the harder things when you have the option to go for the easier ones when the perceived reward feels similar. We as humans have this natural inclination towards the path of least resistance and it makes evolutionary sense that we are programmed to behave this way but I doubt that in business is the right thing to do.

Let’s say we have a business idea and we want to create a product. The next steps to analyze the feasibility of the said product usually are the designing of a business plan, monetization strategies, marketing, etc. but what oftentimes is never analyzed is the entry barrier or how easy would it be for the competition to come to steal your customers if they decide your market is sexy enough.

If you find yourself seeing that a guy is having huge success selling piña-coladas on a beach and everyone is buying from him, you can almost effortlessly go do the same thing and compete for his customers. The market for piña-coladas is big but the product is so easy to replicate you may be able to attain success fast but it is equally likely that the success will be short-living. Easy come easy go.

The software industry is no different.

Maybe you noticed that every business needs to be able to send bulk emails to their customers and decided to enter the market for emailing services since it looks easy to write a few scripts and an HTML templating system to go on and compete with Mailchimp, no?

It’s possible that you will find an audience willing to pay you for your service since the market is so big but it’s going to be hard to differentiate yourself from others and customer-churn will be an issue from day one. That low hanging fruit you saw and wanted to grab was also seen by a thousand other people.

With Toky, we went through a similar situation. Almost all businesses need to offer a voice communication channel to their customers and we exist because of that. A thousand other people saw the same thing and probably wanted to grab that low hanging fruit too until they realized that doing telephony right is very very hard.

There are quite a lot of other things that may be important to discuss regarding this topic, as the potential for your business to attract talent, something that can only happen if people find what you do meaningful enough to come to work with you. Sam Altman wrote a very compelling essay on this topic that explains this point better than I can.

All in all, choosing to go for the easiest-to-create product may not always be the right choice. You are not more likely to fail if you go through with that other project that is harder, in fact, it will probably increase your chances of making it all things considered.