Hi Guys,
Am an entrepreneur and tech founder. I have never really built a product myself for over 5yrs being a founder but have hired developers to do so. Right now i want to learn some programming languages and fully immerse myself into the space, what do you suggest? is this a good move?
Top comments (7)
Well, if you’re tech founder you probably should know programming. On the other hand, there’s a lot of founders which are not tech-savvy at all and it’s ok.
From my experience I’d say that a dev team has much more trust for tech founders. But it doesn’t mean business/marketing folks cannot establish a good tech project. That’s what delegation is for.
Anyway, learning to code is not an easy venture and not very fun too often. So do that only if you’re really motivated.
From my experience of seeing this fail in action, I would suggest you carefully answer this question: If I take the time to gain technical expertise, should I delegate running the company to someone else, or can I really do both without destroying my life? Can I quantify the work involved in both activities? For how long?
From my personal experience in a startup: it's good to spread knowledge and skills across a team such that no one person is critical to keeping things going for short periods, however it's also important that decision making follows a well defined (documented!) process which everyone agrees with. This can be people appointed to roles who have final say on things, or a board that votes, or whatever works for your team.
Hope this helps!
This is exactly my point @phlash
The time to gain these technical expertise is the issue. I also buy your philosophy of spreading knowledge and skills across teams, which is something to pay attention to.
I'm learning new languages as part of building my first tech start up but I wrote my first BASIC program in the late 1980's. I formally studied electrical and electronic engineering in the early 1990's and a lot has changed over the last 30 years. If you like having the rug pulled out from under you every 5 to 7 years then take up computer engineering. If you like syntax errors, logic errors, and context-switching every 10-minutes then become a computer engineer. If you like scope creep because your client wants you to add new features 2 days before launch then computer engineering is for you. Otherwise there are better, and easier, ways to make a living.
Interesting @digicinematic We have the same educational background. I also studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Now am into Tech
What about when you find it hard to find these talent or cannot afford one at the moment?
Programmers, architects, analyists, and engineers charge a lot of money because of their knowledge, experience, and ability to finish the projects they work on. If you REALLY want to learn to code, then follow the 80/20 rule as closely as you can (80% of you code functionality is derived from 20% of the programming language). You might be able to slash 10,000 hours (40 hours per week over 5 years is how long it takes to become a competent coder) down to 2,000 hours. Of course, you will need to figure out which 20% of your choosen language might result in 80% of your code base.