It's like with musicians, for the longest time every wannabe rock star that could hold a guitar was going to make it big, and some of them actually did. But for every success story there are at least a hundred, if not a thousand failures. In twitter, facebook and iphone apps that is just as true.
So now that a few people have struck it rich let's give everybody and their brother out there the message that if they got laid off they should go and bet the farm on some wild hunch.
It's like advising all those that can hold guitars without breaking them and maybe play a cool riff or two that their kids tuition is in the bag, just practice a bit harder and that contract is just around the corner.
But don't despair, because the author of the piece has made it.
Not that I would want anybody to despair, a bit of positive thinking goes a long way to get you out of a hole, but instead of writing the next facebook app (do it, but do it in your sparetime) go find that job, any job to replace your lost income and cover the hole doing freelancing if you have the opportunity to do so.
That's not a guaranteed success either but it stands a chance.
In the tech world there's another force: everyone wants to do something glamorous and cool, and get rich doing it. But if anything, the glamorous and cool things are the hardest to strike gold in, if only for the fact that everyone else is also there digging for gold.
I know several people who have gotten extremely wealthy by going into their own software businesses, but none of them are doing "cool" things like video games or society-transforming websites. They are all doing much more mundane things like logistics and IT automation. But in these "boring" fields you're not competing with every 15 year-old high school kid in the universe.
So now that a few people have struck it rich let's give everybody and their brother out there the message that if they got laid off they should go and bet the farm on some wild hunch.
It's like advising all those that can hold guitars without breaking them and maybe play a cool riff or two that their kids tuition is in the bag, just practice a bit harder and that contract is just around the corner.
But don't despair, because the author of the piece has made it.
Not that I would want anybody to despair, a bit of positive thinking goes a long way to get you out of a hole, but instead of writing the next facebook app (do it, but do it in your sparetime) go find that job, any job to replace your lost income and cover the hole doing freelancing if you have the opportunity to do so.
That's not a guaranteed success either but it stands a chance.