Software and the Art of War

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. — The Art of War by Sun Tzu

I had finally given into the pressure, a year after graduation my freelance wordpress developer lifestyle was not working with my Gold Coast expenses. I was going to do it, the thing I had been resisting, I was going to get a “Real Job,” shutter to think… I came across a craigslist post, it was from a startup providing Online Rental Applications, they were looking for a ‘right hand man’ no coding experience needed, sounded ideal.

My first day on the job I saw something incredible, I saw the incarnation of the Art of War, the ancient book on military strategy. The Art of War will tell you when small appear big, when big appear small. Walking into this job for the first time, after checking out website, I would not have been surprised to see a room filled of people, programmers, artists, sales people all running around working about, but instead it was a guy with a split keyboard and a Python app. He was small appearing big, a mere mortal who had an ability to appear as many. Incredible power, Art of War, epic level power, all caps level POWER. The kind of power reserved for Kings… and I wanted in.

The next seven months on the job were spent setting up email accounts, setting up blogs, hiring interns, and all kinds of other random startup stuff. The first opportunity I had I enrolled in The Starter League Web Dev Course and never looked back.

It’s been a few years, I don’t yet have omnipotent powers, but I’m getting there.