[pdimitar]

> It does mean that only "niche" craftsmen, like myself, will produce anything of decent Quality, but will be unable to do so at scale, because we can't get a team together, large enough to do big things.

Why can't you get a team together?

I dream of working on big and meaningful things ever since a teenager (and I'm 45 currently) but yeah, I can't afford doing it for free. I keep being a drone.

But if somebody were to stretch out a helping hand and pay me to do the big and meaningful things I'll likely accept two days later.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> and pay me to do the big and meaningful things

Ay, there's the rub...

It is a lot more expensive to do high-Quality work, than it is to do shoddy (or, to be fair, barely acceptable) work. You need to hire more experienced (expensive) people, and then, you need to hire better managers, because you don't want the usual crap managers in charge of them.

And then, you need to pay for the time they take, "polishing the fenders."

Once you have an established brand, you can do these kinds of things, but it's pretty much impossible to start from scratch (without deep, patient pockets).

[pdimitar]

Well money is always the rub. And many people, once they become better off, become stingy and paranoid and don't want to reinvest -- which I completely understand, especially if they didn't have rich parents and trust fund(s) and had to grind their boots off to get where they are. If I ever make it I know I am absolutely joining that exact group. I owe the world nothing -- definitely not after decades of abuse and zero appreciation.

> it's pretty much impossible to start from scratch (without deep, patient pockets).

Well, I was not referring to myself here, FWIW. I ain't ever going below $10k a month (not to mention that for any meaningful life plans $18k - $25k a month is much more strategically desirable) but I was somewhat referring to many certain techies here on HN who (1) have the talents and tech skills and (2) are very well-off and could work for charity wages for 5+ years without a problem (think $3k - $5k a month).

I am just very sad that these people, who are in a 10x better position than I ever was for 23+ years of career, did not group up and did not create the next-gen lab experience, the likes of which we haven't seen since the days of UNIX. :/

As for the rest of the world, the owning class are quite fine with what they already have -- they know tech currently is not 100% reliable but they are never making 5x the investment for what they see as a 10% improvement (which is exactly the part where they are wrong -- but these people can't think beyond 2-3 quarters ahead anyway).

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yes, I have been fortunate to be in a position to pay it back (not forward). I'm nowhere near as well-off as a substantial portion of the folks here, but I have enough to live (humbly), and get the equipment I need to do my work.

But I also know that I am an outlier, and, quite frankly, an anachronism.

Just a little while ago, I made a new release of this app[0]. I talked to someone this morning, and realized that they had no idea that you could swipe the screen, to get to different times.

I added a small label to the bottom of the main screen, telling folks that they could swipe to see different times. I had to translate it to Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese, which ChatGPT was ideal for (I don't think that I'd use it for bulk translations, but it was great for a "spot translation").

That kind of thing may seem silly, but it's also exactly the kind of thing that many, many apps don't do. It's quite easy to say that "any power user knows to swipe," but that often excludes a huge number of folks. Since I started hiding the main time selection control panel, swiping has become the main navigation technique.

[0] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/VirtualMeetingFinder