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by JustExAWS
265 days ago
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I hate this mythologizing of the good old days. I’m 51 and have been in the industry professionally for 30 years and followed it the best I could before then to the point of lying about being a big spender in a corporation to get MacWeek and PCWeek. Most people even then were doing boring work in banks, government etc. They weren’t hanging out the shingles or on the street selling software on floppies like artists trying to make it big. It was even harder back then to market yourself. The time to quit is when no one will pay you to exchange labor for money. That labor can be hands on keyboard, sales or something more strategic. |
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I started professionally circa 1990, so that's the era I most remember.
Yes, big organizations had a head-start with computers. My wife went off to work for an insurance company on a mainframe.
My path was different. We built software for small businesses to run on a PC. Ironically I did go door to door at one point to find work.
We settled into our niche though, and gradually expanded our product range. We had salesmen drumming up customers.
Marketing was hard. I traveled a lot, circling the earth multiple times from 1997 to 2011. Lots of in-person meetings, lots of customer relationships.
It took a decade, or two, but we've built something that now employs 50 people, and makes a profit. It's not Google, but it's still satisfying.