After 8 years of software engineering, the one thing I am good at is something that nobody really cares about. This reality has hit me hard many times. Who cares about performance if it costs you slightly more investment. Who cares about architecture if it costs you more. Who cares about 0.35 second of improvement or even 2 seconds of faster load time for that matter.
This was a very strange reality I came across when I began the journey of building products few years back. If you don't find a way to exchange value within few weeks then you really need to start restructuring your path. People in business they are looking for ways to reduce cost and improve their time management. Noting else matters.
The speed and performance is added benefit that is invisible to the users. Slow load times is only a problem when they are fully invested in the system but before getting to a point where your app/system becomes a thing the speed and performance are irrelevant.
However, if the same product is already out there and have proven its worth in the market then now you can present your version of the system specifically focusing on the performance and speed. Because now you are solving problem in the industry that is not just app specific, it is performance and speed specific.
Why did I bring this up? You wonder.
- Google wasn't the first search engine; it was just faster and more relevant.
- Slack wasn't the first chat app; it was just more integrated and performant.
- Stripe wasn't the first payment gateway; it was just the first one that didn't make developers want to quit their jobs.
Nobody cares until the performance and speed becomes a visible problem and that will only happen when the product has already been proven in the market.
Top comments (1)
Performance is often one of the only objective improvements you can make to a user experience, as long as we can all agree to assume that all else equal people want fast vs slow.