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App Developers, It's Time For a Reality Check
Nerval's Lobster writes: "An article in the Harvard Business Review does its best to punch a small hole in the startup-hype balloon. 'Encouraging kids to blow off schoolwork to write apps, or skip college to become entrepreneurs, is like advising them to take their college money and invest it in PowerBall,' Jerry Davis, Wilbur K. Pierpont professor of management at the Ross School of Business and the editor of Administrative Science Quarterly, wrote in that column. 'A few may win big; many or most will end up living with their moms.' Whether or not the unfortunate developer ends up back in the childhood bedroom, it's true that, with millions of apps available across all mobile platforms, it's increasingly difficult for independent developers to stand out. Compounding the problem, some of the hottest companies out there for developers and programmers don't have nearly enough job openings to absorb the flood of graduates from the world's universities. So what's a developer to do? Continue to plow forward, with adjusted expectations: the prospect of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg is just too tantalizing for many people to pass up, even if the chances of wild success are smaller than anyone rational would like to admit."
Complete with outrageous billionaire dropout success stories, exploited immigrant workers, extreme gentrification, and a legion of Johnny-Come-Latelies graduating just in time to see the whole thing collapse like a house of cards.
Is there a startup-hype balloon? I hadn't noticed. I'm too busy dealing with the security holes of apps and services written by high school and college drop outs.
The article that was supposed to illustrate there are "not enough job openings" was just about two fairly successful kids developing, and an overall question if college is as good an idea as it used to be.
Lots of companies still seem to be strongly hiring developers, and I don't see a "flood" of them coming from anywhere. Why would you claim it's a bad idea to get into programming now? Especially if you find a CS degree somewhere you will be ahead of a lot of people in terms of building better software on WHATEVER platform you work with - web or mobile or desktop or anything.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought we needed H1-B's because there weren't enough people to fill all these jobs. What, now suddenly all the jobs are filled?
With H1Bs.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Or you'll live a miserable life of what if's and what could have beens. Are the odds against immediate success against you? Maybe. Sure. Who gives a fuck.Go for it. Even if you "fail" you'll still learn a bunch of shit and be better for the effort in more ways than you can ever imagine.
Yeah, people still want to get paid for programming for others. Until people are willing to work for free, people running these companies will continue complaining about the "shortage".
You don't need to be part of some [...] company.
You do if you're trying to make an app for a Sony or Nintendo platform.
Are you telling me that a story in the Harvard Business Journal, published by Harvard College, tells students not to drop out of expensive college courses?
Inconceivable!
So reading the NYT article, the boys had the idea in Dec 2011 and released their app in Jan 2013. So a year with two people, learning to build an app, etc. They split $30,000...
Now let me preface this by saying that the skills they learned are worth money, knowledge is invaluable. But I meet people every week who are looking to make a quick buck off of apps. I would imagine these boys put in at least 1000 hours on this initiative, plus all the spend for the traveling and stuff they did. All said and done, they probably made minimum wage at best off this app.
The new tech bubble is mobile.
There's a severe shortage of programmers with 25 years experience in Java, gimme more H1B.
For mobile apps, this is actually not a bad idea if you can afford to fail; because you are still unattached enough that nobody depends on your income in a critical way. If nobody is going to pay your way through college, then you have nothing to lose. Get your failures and experience in before you have a house and a kid. LinkedIn will light up for you as a side-effect. A lot of my friends are the top developers in the iOS music app space; and I was in the mosh pit trying to make it happen along with them (while working a good full-time job - contemplating full time app dev). A small number of them make a healthy living doing little more than occasional maintenance on long-shipped apps while using the rest of their time learning the craft and having a life. 90% of them fail badly, with improved job prospects. The 30% Apple tax is high, but the mobile user mindset is what makes it hard. The large volume of users that can drive your asking price down nicely can also be a major support nightmare because you have to deal with them directly. You will deal with fads, gaming the review system (ie: send you an email that implies that if they don't get something for free in a few days that you will get a 1 star review, or requesting refunds while keeping the app and still sending support questions for months on end). The huge numbers of apps can make it hard to get a foothold on iOS/Android. On other platforms, even a well promoted and executed (even best and only for its category) app can still fail because there really are almost no users. Even given a *great* app and somebody that's good at the business, it's still far more of a gamble than showing up to a job and knowing how much you will make. But it's far better to do this while you are living with your mom than sitting around doing nothing or working an unskilled job for minimum wage.
The article is talking about Independent App developers.
To make a living in the US and this is living cheap - you need to sell $50,000 per year worth of apps. After SS, taxes, etc ... you'll have a take home pay of about $35,000.
Now, go up to your favorite app store and see how many apps are selling at those levels - remember per year. So, if an app has been around for a couple of years, it'll need to have sold at least $100,000 worth. That's 100,000 at $0.99.
And I didn't even mention startup costs: computers, devices, developer fees, etc ....
tl;dr: the only app developers I know making a living developing apps have a W2 job working for a company that uses their apps as part of their service - examples: NetFlix, Weather Channel, The Economist, Amazon, Napa, etc ....
How about graduates switch back to solving problems in science, engineering, health. Stuff that matters. The world needs another Facebook or another "app for that" like it needs a hole in the head.
The article is talking about Independent App developers.
I am one.
To make a living in the US and this is living cheap - you need to sell $50,000 per year worth of apps.
Let's pretend $50k is not overly high.
You need to sell a combination of enough apps AND earn consulting income worth $50k.
THAT is not hard if you are skilled.
And I didn't even mention startup costs: computers, devices, developer fees, etc ....
Which can be as little as $1k if you buy lower end computers/devices. You only need to spend that about once a year if you are keeping up on newer devices, less if you skip a few generations.
You can also keep using that computer for 3-4 years.
the only app developers I know making a living developing apps have a W2 job working for a company
But the point is said companies (and lots of other smaller companies besides) still have a lot of need for developers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And I failed.
I now have almost $150,000 in debt, ruined credit, and no job prospects. What should I have done different?
I shouldn't have been so optimistic. A bit of pessimism is good for getting a reality check.
That's the trouble, we see all these success stories out there in the media and never the failures which then gives us a skewed perception of our chances of succeeding.
their moms/dads are rich. They can blow off school and go back whenever you feel like it. If you look at just about every successfully "Entrepreneur" they come from upper (way upper) middle class to very rich.
We here in America like to pretend we've got a lot of upward mobility that isn't really there. So when somebody starts making millions we pretend they pulled themselves up by bootstraps. Heck, Bill Gates started out with nothing except a 1 million dollar trust fund, his father's years of experience as a business lawyer and his mother's seat on IBM. If he can make it anyone can.
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I now have almost $150,000 in debt, ruined credit
Then aren't you the perfect candidate for bankruptcy?
and no job prospects
What the hell company did you spend $150k+ on that you have no marketable skills from? You are ether lying or a moron.
People don't care if a company you worked forwent bankrupt. Hell, in a lot of circles it's seen as a badge of honor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Looking at percentages of apps for things like the possibility of app store success is foolish.
That's because it's not random. For instance, if you develop another TODO or flashlight app I can say 100% you are not going to "hit big".
Your success in any app store is not wholly chance. It a combination of how good of an application you have developed, along with some marketing. There are random people that get elevated without the marketing, but it's not like you have to rely on that as the only mechanism to success. It's just a bonus event for someone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Programming is one of the few industries with a reasonable unemployment rate composed largely of people who are voluntarily between jobs. In my opinion (having gone into a programming career straight out of high school, then going to college at 26) skipping the fucking bullshit in higher ed and going straight for programming is a perfectly valid and appropriate course of action.
Skip the debt. Skip the "social justice" BS while money slips away from you like diarrhea. Skip the booze and marijuana and dead-end "self-discovery." Go straight to where it counts, and build a life in a field where lives and careers are still being built.
My company just upgraded their dev position hiring rec to always-on. We now are hiring (competent) devs any time we find them, regardless of whether we have a place for them at that moment.
Because without formal training in writing all the different version of Hello World, like Hello Bubble Sort, and Hello Linked List, a person has absolutely no skill as a developer to speak of. As for the Target application, it's hard to tell who coded it, cause that "leaky application" was a fucking Trojan Horse Virus installed by people with access to a system, as if the operating system being programmed by a college grad would even matter to a hacker with physical access to the machine from breaking in. So you spent 4-8 years of college and you still can't differentiate a Trojan Horse from a exploit?
It doesn't cost anywhere near 30,000$ to make an app. I have friends who 2 years ago didn't know a single line of C++, they signed up for MS Bizspark, got a free copy of Visual Studio Ultimate (I think registering a business is about 50 bucks), and they wrote an app. They have also published books/training courses on how to write software within the bounds of various frameworks. This person didn't even finish high-school, much less College, and the content that he has produced/licensed is making him about 3,000 a month while he spends all of his time working on his next release.
30k a year isn't really that bad, especially when you consider the cold hard fact that overwhelming majority of college graduates end up making something close to minimum wage, not six figures a year with limitless benefits and paid vacations like these college PR firms like to lead us to believe.
From my observation of the start-up community it seems obvious that 99% of the engineering students should continue to pursue their degrees and work on their dreams of becoming billionaires on the weekend or in their spare time. I am speaking in generalities and could be full of crap! Your mileage will vary!
Most entrepreneurs would not use the product they are working on daily; I know their are exceptions, thanks!
Most of the ideas that people come up with fit into 4 basic categories.
1. The idea is actually a feature that could be implemented in an existing piece of software but it is not worth becoming an actual stand alone business and would probably not bring in any paying business.
2. The idea is actually a really horrible idea and they are either too delusional or have been lied to about how bad it is and they just don't know.
3. The idea can make money; but it's actually an idea that is a business niche and could generate some income but it is not a huge business!
4. The idea is a copycat; unlikely to make money, why go with a copycat when you can go with the original product. Brand inertia is difficult to overcome.
Being part of a start-up is also pretty crappy, Hollywood makes it out to be this big glamorous adventure; The expectation is that you'll spend all your time and excess money into the start-up; it's like being divorced with 3 kids and your ex-wife is a gold digger and drags you back to court every chance she gets to get more money out of you.
Even if you get funded the Angel/VC , seems like the terms are almost interchangeable nowadays, they will want you to still work for free; yeah work for free! I know there's a lot of talk about how much compensation do you take out once your funded but the truth is that it is almost always doesn't happen.
If your lucky enough to make it all the way to the end and sell out to larger business or go public your compensation at the end is usually comparable to those that worked professionally during that same period of time or less.
Even with all that though it still depends on what your long term goals; if you want to get experience in building a business and leveraging finance then it could end up being worth it. If your expectation is a really painful get rich quick scheme I'd advise staying away.
I know the statistics, but I also know the apps out there. And I can say that even most of the 5 star apps just simply suck; they do one or two just wrong or not at all.
My motto is going to be "We did it just right", and I believe achieving that to be a seriously underappreciated and especially in IT underdeveloped skill. I like my chances.
I'm constantly thinking of places where more software development is needed. The problem is, most of those places aren't the "sexy" ones. The kids in school are all about being the next video game coding superstar, which only makes sense when you consider they're raised on titles like Minecraft.
To be a successful developer right now, you almost need to run away from anything that's being hyped. If it smacks of "social networking" -- pretend you never saw that! Video gaming? Saturated ... avoid it.
Niches that aren't really being adequately addressed yet?
1. Home automation. Yes, there are complete "systems" on the high-end, but that's stuff that nobody but the very wealthy even bother with. The real money is going to be with inexpensive, mass-produced systems that "John Q. Public" can go out and buy, piecemeal, and build his own "smart home / apartment" with on a budget. This was basically done before with the X10 controllers, a couple decades ago. But that was all "pre Internet" and "pre wi-fi" -- yet they STILL sell some of it today, because there's nothing more modern that's roughly equivalent in price and functionality. The Nest thermostat and smoke alarm are, by most counts, big "hits" - yet they're just stand-alone smart devices that don't integrate into a whole! There's big money to be made if someone does all of this right ... maybe using Arduino gear as a base?
2. Automotive systems. The auto-makers are starting to show they have a clue about this stuff, at LAST ... but they're still in the early stages of really "getting it right", IMO. Cadillac has the CUE system now, while Ford outsourced to Microsoft (with rather mixed results). It's probably difficult to get a foot in the door with these places -- but maybe there's room for a 3rd. party to engineer replacement stereo systems that make serious improvements on the factory designs? I don't see why I can't, for example, buy a replacement stereo that has a custom plate on it so it's a direct fit replacement for a specific make/model of vehicle, instead of buying some "single DIN' or "double DIN" stereo and then paying $25 for a company like Metra to sell me a crappy plastic "dash kit" to make it fit -- and netting a result that looks like I yanked the factory radio out? The replacement should integrate with the vehicle's steering wheel controls, out of the box, and do everything the factory unit did. It should also be able to talk to the OBDII system in the car, showing me any vehicle fault codes on screen, letting me get a readout of things like the fuel-air mixture while I drive and more! Integrate a GPS and navigation system that actually works well, like Waze, and let people with cellular data connections submit updates in real-time! There's so much to do here!