Want to Start a Startup, as a Software Engineer? Sell Something Online
The author of the Pragmatic Engineer once posted a list of his previous failed startup ideas. Nothing wrong with failing, of course, and it’s important to understand that it can take multiple attempts to find something successful.However, it’s worth cautioning everyone to note how much his success revolves around newsletters, ebooks (as used as an example in this article), and the job boards that go along with his newsletter.I generally like and appreciate Pragmatic Engineer content, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The premise of this post is about starting a startup as a software engineer, but the example content is an information product (ebook) and the “startup” is just selling that ebook through content marketing. In fact this basically a cookie-cutter copy of the early 2000s self-help guru books where someone became successful selling books on how to become successful, but targeted at software engineers. This feels like someone read a Tim Ferriss book from the early 2000s and asked themselves how they could resell the same idea to software engineers.The author does have some good resources explaining the internal processes at companies he has worked for (Uber), but lately a lot of his newsletter content is recycled from The Information and random Tweets. In fact, he had to retract a claim that he reported on recently because it turned out to be a completely untrue rumor that was circulating on Twitter, which he reported as a “scoop”. I suspect a lot of the quotes where he says “I interviewed an engineer at _____” might be just be sourced from random Tweets.As with all content marketers selling advice, please take this all with a grain of salt. Some of the information is definitely accurate and actionable, but framing this ebook marketing story as “how to start a startup as a software engineer” is pure marketing spin.