even experienced coders are usually shit at building an product from scratch.
Facts!
They know how to engineer in circles. but can’t ship a product to save their life. It’s also a mark of maturity.
For some people, coding is the goal.
For the mature, it’s a means to an end, shipping a product is the goal.
It’s also something to be said about “markers time” vs “managers time” (from Paul G.)
Coding takes up 4-5hr blocks of focus. As an owner of the company you need to communicate all day, which is operating in 1hr blocks.
Even the best devs who went to leadership I know struggle trying to balance (we all go through the motions of giving up the IDE 😅) and eventually realize it’s not worth the context shifting and mental strain.
I would say this is ok, as long as he’s not in there trying to read all of stripe dev docs and making a pull-request based on something he just learned.
This gets back to know how to talk to technical people. A couple of boxes and arrows can go a long way in getting someone not technical up to speed.
Can you expand on this more? Trial as in seeing if you would like it?
Learning to get good will take years and you’ll soon learn that good is highly subjective. I aim for shipped product more than “good code” nowadays. It’s something to be said about “founders code”, the code that ain’t sexy but raised a few millions to bring in devs to make it better and eventually exit.
I would still suggest finding a technical co-pilot if you want to take it serious as a founder. Lean on what you’re good at, you’ll need to triple down on that instead IMO.
Or… you can omit the founder title and do side projects for the love of it. If something comes from it, turn it into a business. But I would suggest removing capitalist intent to allow yourself to learn stress free.
On a personal note, I use to be deep into playing Starcraft II. Going to work and working in a scrum environment didn’t feel too different, it was gamified. At times I would drop Starcraft just to do a side-project for the sake of showing friends, this is where I did my best work. I sold one idea (just the codebase) a few months after getting bored by it.
If you want to chat more about it, feel free to shoot me a DM!