Software industry is in a somewhat similar state as the demographies of some of the rich and developed countries (Germany, Japan etc) are. Full of rich old people looking for assistance. And a few young kids aggravating the stress of the old people by jacking up life’s expectations.
Everyone has evolved their own survival strategies. Big vendors and their big customers have been in business for decades. They have their own ways of surviving. There are some successful startups — they have their own survival strategies — get some quick lime light and VC money and be well-prepared to deal with obsolescence of their original ideas next year.
Big vendors and big businesses
Software world is full of old software, which wouldn’t go away any time soon and have bags-full of money to buy maintenance services. Now and then a startup succeeds, out of hundreds, introducing a new way of doing things. The big companies who are already got sucked in too deep into older technologies, groan and sigh. Because their customers would start asking for the new stuff from them, though for no reason.
The big companies have a few choices: a) buyout that kiddy company, b) spin-off yet another new unit to look into new things c) ask the familiar friendly consulting firm to do something to help d) find ways to lock the customers down to our services and products
No, big companies are not bad. Neither the successful startups are good. On a sober note, actually there are no good or bad companies. They are either successful or not.
Startup success
Defining success for a startup is not easy. Most target acquisition. Some get intoxicated with their initial success and slip into false belief of becoming a big company, but fail miserably. Some others transform and keep trying new ideas every couple of years, with mediocre success.
A very few of the successful startups accelerate to reach the escape velocity and enter into the circle of big companies. As soon as their original technology or idea start fading out, they start buying out new startups to keep them afloat, just like other big companies do. This keeps them relevant for a couple of decades.
All others (most of them) fall out on the way-side.
Consulting
A lot of work and money is going into services and support. None of your shiny technologies (React, RoR, Node, Mongo etc) are well-known in the real battle fields of software maintenance. Infact, several times more money might be being spent on .Net and Java technologies compared to NodeJS and other shiny new stuff, for example. But the media noise differs.
Every product company, big and small, is currently struggling to protect their identity, while the consulting firms are happily chugging on without tension.
Consulting firms are chameleons. They are not attached to any technology, geography, employees or their own company name. They can change and transform very quickly. They are timeless an immune because they have no attachments and so no worries. Product companies are more emotionally attached to people, technologies and their identity etc. They fall apart when times change, because of their attachments and baggage.
Your cool new ideas
Not only your new technologies, but your cool new ideas are also probably very short-lived. Sure, you might have millions of users already, and even CNN is discussing your innovation. But in 5 years from now, I doubt if someone still remembers you. Do you remember which were most popular apps 5 years back?
What do you want?
Earn money? earn fame? or just indulge in most interesting work and solving problems?
Assuming that the top 5 tech companies are out of reach for you to work at, what are your choices?
For money, work in some dumb projects that go slow, applying some unnecessary technologies, serving rich customers, or servicing old technologies. That is where all the money is. Don’t forget to use all the new stuff — may be “build a blockchain, on the cloud, synergised and vertically integrated for streamlined UX, combined with analytical models …” :-)
For satisfying your tech urge, do some side project, without affecting your money-spinning work project. That will take the extra energy and time and might possibly test your determination.
You want fame too?? May be your can try contributing to open source anonymously. But fame is the most useless thing to go for, I would say. Fame is quite illogical, unnatural and unnecessary thing to biological beings. It is not worth the effort. Ask ozymandias if you are in doubt.
