Failure so far

I recently got an invitation to participate in a Career Advice platform on LinkedIn. Initially I ignored it without a second thought. Even though I’ve spent a bulk of my career in the Corporate Universe, it’s still alien to me. Like a hostile planet where you can only survive for short spells at a time. So I really only have the one career advice:

Forget about it!

I don’t think this is the kind of advice LinkedIn has in mind, nor do I want to proffer it.

This made me however think if I do have any useful career advices. After all I’ve been doing pretty much the same stuff, or been in the same career for over 30 years.

In an interview once I was asked about my strength as a developer, and I replied that “I’ve made almost all the mistakes there are”. A bit cocky yes, to claim almost all the mistakes. But without a doubt my best lessons have always been from mistakes. The interviewer was a recruiter/HR person and I didn’t make it any further – I leave the reader to guess what my lesson was.

So I thought about writing about my failures so far. There is a smorgasbord to pick from after such a long career, so I’m only going back to the launch of Celin, just over two and a half years ago.

By late 2016 I sensed a shift with mobile ERP solutions becoming all the rage. We were moving away from fit-all desktop apps to targeted mobile apps. Moving away from customising desktop apps to cater for additional business process to targeted apps on a suitable device. New web-app frameworks were also emerging with a pathway for non-JavaScript developers to make the transition without too much pain.

I jumped right in, and within three months got my cReceiver and cWorkOrders apps onto Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.

Neither app generated any interest in what I was doing and despite my best effort I couldn’t get anyone to try them out.

The download stats for Republic of Congo was just pipped by the combined stats for Australia and New Zealand – and it’s probably my own downloads that made the difference.

When I’ve been asked about my weakness as a developer I’ve always proudly declared that “I’m completely useless in sales”. Now I have proof that I’m even worse than I thought, I can’t even promote software that’s free. And I know it’s not because of poor quality because nobody could be bothered to try it.

I once asked a colleague if he was interested in looking my mobile solutions, and he responded promptly:

Nah. I’m too old for this sh#t.

Two years later, I conceited defeat and cancelled my Apple Store subscription – thinking the money is better spent down at the pub.

So that’s two years of work ending in failure, with nothing to show for it except mildly amusing blog – or so I hope. But as I said before, the best lessons are from failure.

Ignore the Hype.

I should have known this! All this talk about mobile solutions didn’t mean there was an interest in implementing it. It was mostly verbal, a popular yarn like we hear now about AI and Big Data for example. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve mistaken yarn for actual interest – and I will make this mistake again.

Don’t assume support from colleagues.

For the past 20 years I’ve worked as a consultant/contractor. Even though the money at times has been good, the main reason is what I mentioned in the beginning. Surviving in the Corporate Universe as a consultant/contractor gives you the illusion that you’ll be ejected in time – as opposite to being permanent.

But the consultant/contractor gig has its downside. When times get tough, as they eventually do, being ejected can mean floating indefinitely in the vacuum of space – and nobody hears you scream. This leads to a dog-eat-dog mindset where the only concern is being billable. And if you can’t demonstrate the billabillity of your ide then forget about it.

Cut your losses and move on.

This is probably the hardest lesson – working hard and achieve your objective only to realise that nobody gives a f*@k. But the sooner you can accept that this was not meant to be, the better.

Expect to be seen as threat.

This really caught me by surprise, which on second thought shouldn’t. The ultimate objective of any software is improvement – why else would you bother? But the flip side of improvement is change – nothing can be improved without change. And the threat of change will always meet resistance. And that resistance can come from anywhere.

Conclusion

Looking back typically raises the question “Would I do this again?”. It’s a hard one, why would anyone venture on a fruitless journey? But then again, life is a journey so yes, I would do this again. Knowing the lack of interest however would shift my focus from trying to “anticipate others interest” to “my own interest”. And that’s probably my most important lesson from this failure:

Do it for yourself.