it is better to seem than to be. Gap. Part #2

To scammers, rogues and upstarts, this attitude is not only mine. And the cultivation of the “spirit of startups” only multiplies the number of such “specialists”.

Categories of people who have an idea, the strength and desire to implement it, it is worth looking at alternative sources of funding, instead of the tightly compromised current venture capital and startup bubble economy. No need to go to cheaters in the hope that they are interested in fair play.

You have just listed the very category that shames real IT specialists and forms the image of a smoothie with a MacBook in Starbucks for the layman. Quickly, although not always low-tech, make garbage, promote and run away hitting the jackpot.

This straightforwardness gives us food for thought and discussion. Not everything in these words should be taken as the ultimate truth, but it’s worth keeping your nose to the wind … and this, my friends, is the smell of disgust and contempt for the startup community on the other side of the barricades (or galleys, as the places of work in certain circles).

Straightness is harder to work with than the next manifestation…

Disrespect and contempt

Straightness – this is a consequence of the manifestation of a deeper internal characteristic of the personality. Contempt – this is a manifestation of a conscious desire to belittle the other side.

Working on the straightforwardness of an IT specialist is not an easy job (just listen to how recruiters are trumpeting from all sides about the need to develop those very soft skills), you can not always count on success in smoothing out corners in a relationship, but disrespect … disrespect is a sign of having opinions about their own superiority in something.

I will not do without quotes this time:

Real IT specialists, at least, do not dream of quitting IT, lounging in the Bahamas in a sun lounger, giggling at the remaining “losers”. They are interested in doing their job, constantly developing, contributing to the overall development of technologies and bringing not fictitious benefits from an enchanting little application, but the benefits of contributing to the real return on the products of their labor.

I may have written a little pathetically, but I have already seen enough of the crowds of such jumpers. It didn’t take off – we drop it and run to a new project.

The reason is that the wrong strategy was initially chosen to quickly acquire something, get success and run away. In such a strategy, there really is no point in fiddling with the doomed direction for a long time. If you have a love for IT, you need to choose something that will bring work and pleasure from it for a long time. Those. not empty projects, but work in the real sector.

Maybe startups deserve this kind of treatment? Maybe the general trend in the startup community has shifted from “make a real product” and become more like “make a presentation, make money and sell”? Who is to blame?

You can throw stones at someone else’s garden for a long time – on the one hand, we have investors with their own goals and money, on the other hand, IT people who hardly know how to soft-skills and sales, but complain that money is given to everyone, but not to them. not in their products.

Do you know why IT people only release the product they can show – the finished product in their personal opinion, but not passed through the prism of reality and the target audience? Because they are straightforward and cannot imagine that the presentation can be said about what has not been implemented and they treat with contempt those to whom these projects are shown.

But it is for those who cannot fully classify themselves as IT specialists or entrepreneurs that they came up with intermediate steps – MVP and the illusion of a product. It is this intermediate step that makes it possible to go with minimal costs along the path to the ideal product without losing touch with reality. It is this step that allows the IT specialist to sleep peacefully at night, and his entrepreneurial essence – to use his personal potential to the maximum.

To the final.

IT specialist or entrepreneur

It is difficult, difficult to combine these roles in one person and I know this firsthand. It is difficult for such people to get along with their second nature, because “entrepreneur” is the opposite of “IT specialist”.

A start-up IT specialist is a person with this kind of bifurcation. This is a person who, when implementing a project, balances between two sides of the opposite and tries to control himself – not to fall into despair if the project architecture does not correspond to the ideal picture in his head; do not give up if there are more users than expected and the servers go down; do not give up under the pressure of negativity and the first feedback; be ready for the possibilitiesthat are opened in the process.

There comes a time when you have to make a choice – an entrepreneur or an IT specialist. Sooner or later, a choice will have to be made, because the second entity, which is straightforward and inexorably prone to perfectionism, will begin to blame you for not growing as a specialist.

Those who remain on the side of the IT specialist and continue to adhere to the appropriate behavior model may look with envy at those who chose the side of the entrepreneur, but you should not do this … you should not envy, you should not blame and disrespect any side of this triangle, because, in essence, all this only means that everyone ended up in the place and in the role of the role to which he was most inclined.

Can this role be changed, you ask… Probably yes.

The correct choice of a personal role has a simple indicator – the strength with which your conscience will torment you about your choice. Losing pleasure in your actions (within the framework of your own project) – you are losing yourself and this is a clear sign that it is time to look for a partner, employee or enlist the support of a person who is able to close the competencies that you lack.

I sincerely would like to build bridges in the form of mutual understanding and mutual support between those who start the same way, but end up on opposite sides of the barricades. Who starts as an IT specialist, but then takes an intermediate step into the startup environment, and then moves (or not) to the last stage – entrepreneurship.

For those who are looking for development opportunities for themselves or their startup, a project that we will soon launch with a partner may be of interest – Speakup.business (blog on vc.ru), and for the desperate – telegram channel.

Good luck!