We are not normal people

The whole point of the post is that we are different than our users. What we want, or what we think is important, often doesn't match up with what users really need.

mathattack3• 12 years ago

This is true for many things.

In a marketing class long ago the professor asked what % of the US beer industry was imported. The answers were all over the place, with most answers between 30 and 50%. She responded with, "It's less than 10%, and this is why you have to look at the #s rather than intuition even if you're a consumer of the product yourself."

Technical complexity and fancy features aren't what helps crack the bottom of the market, which is the heart of disruptive innovation. "Because it's cool and I like it" may have worked for Steve Jobs, but he's the exception and not the rule.

hcarvalhoalves• 12 years ago

Technical complexity and fancy features aren't what helps crack the bottom of the market, which is the heart of disruptive innovation. "Because it's cool and I like it" may have worked for Steve Jobs, but he's the exception and not the rule.

I don't get that one. One could argue Apple does exactly the opposite of that. Technical complexity is usually hidden and there are less fancy features than competitor's products. Compare the first iPod vs. any MP3 on the market at the time.

mathattack3• 12 years ago

Right - everything you said is true. I'm highlighting that Jobs as the exception. :-)

dictum• 12 years ago

In a marketing class long ago the professor asked what % of the US beer industry was imported. The answers were all over the place, with most answers between 30 and 50%. She responded with, "It's less than 10%, and this is why you have to look at the #s rather than intuition even if you're a consumer of the product yourself."

You'd just have to take a look at what brands sell the most in the US to get an approximate answer. I'm not American so I can say for certain, but except for the yuppie preference for microbrews, most Americans stick to domestic light beers — Budweiser, Coors, Miller.

Per the essay, I'm not normal and most people don't really know the companies that make the products they consume, but estimating 50% of the US beer industry to be imported is something fairly inadequate for someone in college taking a marketing class.

Maybe the german-sounding Budweiser/Anheuser-Busch threw them off, but I'd guess most college students either drink (legally or not) or see people drinking, and could make a better estimate.

mathattack3• 12 years ago

This was before the craft brew revolution. I think so many folks drank Corona, Heinekin and Molson that they assumed everyone else did. But the power drinkers (multiple pitchers a night) go with Busch, Bud and Miller High Life.

The general point of overconfidence is very true.

onion2k2• 12 years ago

Being pedantic, if you're thinking “I could use this new tool I just purchased!” then you're doing things backwards.

JoeAnzalone• 12 years ago

How is that being pedantic? That's one of the main points of the article.

onion2k2• 12 years ago

I stopped reading after I saw an opportunity to be pedantic.

edw519• 12 years ago

Great post! This really hits the sweet spot for so many here at HN.

I especially like:

The problem is that all of this is focused on us, the creator, and not on the customer, the consumer.

If we're actually going to sell products, we need to quit thinking about what's cool to us, and focus on what customers actually need.

I've talked about this here so many times, I don't have much more to add. I'd just direct you to #195 and Chapter 10 here: http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html

Justin, this is important work and I look forward to it. Let me know how I can help (email in profile). I wish you great success. This community could really use it.

jiggy20112• 12 years ago

"increasing the technical challenge while creating a product does not increase the chance for more sales"

This is true to a point, but if your strongest suite is your raw technical ability then it may be best for you to pursue problems that have remained unsolved because of technical challenges that have put others off. A significant technical barrier is also nice to have if it means you can get the market before your competition catches up.

Even a mediocre implementation of something "impossible" can make a lot of impact. See bitcoin.

sillysaurus2• 12 years ago

Even a mediocre implementation of something "impossible" can make a lot of impact. See bitcoin.

Bitcoin was perhaps the worst possible example you could have chosen... The implementation was the opposite of mediocre; its code predicted and solved implementation problems that no one realized were problems, except Satoshi. And on a technical level, the client has only experienced one problem that had to be rolled back. There are few other implementations of anything that have that kind of track record.

A better example of a mediocre implementation of something would be the original Quake engine. Ha, got you, just kidding. Actually, I can't think of anything that's made "a lot of impact" while also being both a mediocre implementation and very difficult on a technical level. Even Minecraft wasn't mediocre. Difficulty and mediocrity seem to be opposites, the way magnetic poles are.

jiggy20112• 12 years ago

I should clarify. By "mediocre implementation" I didn't mean "the code sucks" I was talking more about "can my grandma use this?". Going from zero to "working cryptocurrency" is a massive leap even if only the relatively geeky can understand and use it.

It does open the door wide for someone to build a "bitcoin for grandma" but that will probably involve a somewhat different skillset to that of Satoshi.

GotAnyMegadeth• 12 years ago

Obviously what counts as mediocre is up for debate, but I think you could argue that the first mobile phones were a mediocre implementation of a very difficult technical problem.

fibbery• 12 years ago

Would Twitter v1 count?

tetrep• 12 years ago

i believe the author was referring to artificially inflating the technical challenge of a problem. e.g. if you were imgur.com, you most likely should not be implementing your own machine language for use on an FPGA in order to serve cat pictures more efficiently.

kowdermeister• 12 years ago

I argue with that point too :) My biggest problem now is getting money. After that another and another, but not he mentioned.

shas3• 12 years ago

There is a correlation between the success of a product/service and the difficulty of the technical problem you solved to create the product/service. There are hard technical problems that don't result in profitable products and there are profitable businesses that result from non-difficult problems. But there are several examples of companies which solved super-hard problems (e.g. PageRank and Google, Blackberry and messaging, Apple's UIs, TI-Intel-etc.'s transistors and ICs, IBM's early mechanical computers, Edison's invention of the light bulb, Ford's assembly lines, etc. etc.)

I think the mistake many people make is that they treat marketing as a problem divorced from technical development. They should really be the two sides of the same coin. It is wimpy and inexcusable for entrepreneurs to say "I'm good at one and not the other".

Pxtl• 12 years ago

On the barber anecdote, I think something that a lot of software solutions miss is how fast and flexible paper is. It's ready for you the instant you need it, and you can draw arbitrary shapes quickly and easily in addition to text.

We're still feeling out getting this convenience into user's hands. Keyboarded platforms suck for drawing/using standing up, tablets suck for typing.

Ultimately, the only thing I could offer this barber is a cloud-synced whiteboard with week-planner drawn in-behind the screen, and the only advantage it would have over paper is cloud syncing.

jsaxton86• 12 years ago

Does the barber need arbitrary shapes in this case?

It looks like his pain point was that he was walking to a computer. Perhaps having a tablet by his phone could fix this problem? It could be as easy as the paper calendar solution, but since it's all being done electronically, you could allow people to schedule appointments online and such.

tbirdz3• 12 years ago

Or perhaps even some kind of advanced handwriting recognition, image recording system that would automatically scan the calendar and store the information in a database (probably not practical with current technology)?

Or for that matter why not some kind of automated voice recognition system that extracts the customers schedule date directly from the phone call?

badman_ting2• 12 years ago

Does the barber need arbitrary shapes in this case?

But why is the default assumption that the barber needs software, and we must prove out that he doesn't? The barber just wants to note some info and get on with things.

badman_ting2• 12 years ago

Yes, paper is direct. There are no silly abstractions getting in the way of recording a quick piece of info, and surely a barber is mostly dealing with small quick bits of info.

Sometimes I wish nerds would think a little more about what computers shouldn't be used for instead of trying to figure out how they can fix everything with software.

gizzlon3• 12 years ago

..and the only advantage it would have over paper is cloud syncing

You would also get backup (!) and automation. Say for example that you had to cancel all appointments next week, software could do that for you.

Agree with your overall sentiment though, paper has many advantages.

epx• 12 years ago

Sometimes a software puts the business in a cast.

Me and my friends used to go to a cafeteria every day. Every day we needed to reach for change money, etc. We suggested the cashier to create a "pre-paid" account for every person so we could pay once a month, in advance, with credit card. He/she could not do it because "the system does not implement this".

In another epoch, I went every day to the same restaurant, at the fourth day the cashier offered to open an account to me. She opened a big notebook and put my name in a page, case solved. (She even offered post-paid bit I took pre-paid because I detest owing money.)

tanzam75• 12 years ago

ERP software is notorious for doing this.

Many a growing company has found itself forced to change its business processes to align with the SAP way of doing things, instead of the other way around.

At the top end of the scale, companies are large enough to write custom software. At the bottom end of the scale, you can't yet justify buying software, so a lot of processes are still done manually.

It's in the middle that you tend to get squeezed. You're too big to do things on paper, but you don't have the in-house development talent to customize the software to fit your needs.

workhere-io3• 12 years ago

If I have to walk over to the computer, I’ve already wasted too much time.

Wouldn't the point of scheduling software be that, unlike his current phone solution, he doesn't have to do something when a customer schedules a time? Ideally he'd enter his work hours and holidays into the scheduling system, and customers could schedule a time without interrupting his workflow. Then he'd only need to look at his iPad once in a while to see who the next customer is.

Other than that, I think the article makes an important point.

widdershins• 12 years ago

Barber: "Almost all my bookings happen on the phone, or via text message."

workhere-io3• 12 years ago

That's the point: If the barber has a lot of younger customers, the reason that most of the bookings happen on the phone or via text message is that the barber doesn't have a good website set up with a decent booking system that the customers could use instead of the phone.

What OP could have told the barber is this: "We'll put up a system that enables your customers to schedule a time automatically - that way you'll only have to schedule times manually in the 20% of cases or so when a customer prefers to call rather than use the website".

It's not rocket science - plenty of barbers have such a system.

janj7• 12 years ago

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing.

ryanio• 12 years ago

Did you think this article was scummy? Probably not, it provided some real value and insight. And guess what, it was a piece of content marketing for his new book. I was pleasantly surprised at the end with his CTA (call-to-action).

Marketing is just finding a way to communicate your value proposition to your target market. Yes, there are plenty of scummy ways out there -- but some awesome real-world examples come from our favorite tech startups like 37signals (e.g. their books) and Atlassian (e.g. their git tutorials).

That's the great thing about the inbound/content marketing movement these days -- you are typically not paying people to read it, so you first and have to step back and think, "what can I write about that would grab the genuine interest of people I want to reach?"

Just some thoughts from a product marketing manager at a startup in NYC.

janj7• 12 years ago

Maybe I'm just too cynical a person but I thought his CTA was awkward and couldn't help thinking about how giving his readers 'homework' was a great marketing technique to automatically place him in a mentor position in the minds of his readers, helping his readers justify buying his book.

But I get your point. This wasn't a scummy piece of marketing and I found it through a very neutral channel.

tbirdz3• 12 years ago

In all honesty, I starting reading the article because I was lured in by the title (even though it's a bit link baity). Why are these people not normal, and why am I one of them?

Then I started reading, realized it was about developers marketing. I have never really considered marketing my strong suit so I continued reading.

When he started talking about his book, I felt as though I had been tricked, and I got a little mad. To me, it cheapened the article, and made me feel as if the author didn't really care about informing people, but rather was just looking to promote his book. At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book. I normally wouldn't comment on something like this, but since you said so anyway, I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it pretends to be an article, but it actually was an advertisement. If he had said right out, "I have written a book on marketing for developers, here is a sample, and if you are interested you can purchase it here", then I might have been more inclined to purchase it (of course the book isn't even finished yet, so there would be no way to buy it anyway even if I was interested, but that's a separate issue I won't get into here.) Rather, instead the article left a bad taste in my mouth and reinforced my opinion of marketing as something scummy I wouldn't want to get involved with.

humanrebar• 12 years ago

As a guy that values earnestness and frankness (perhaps to a fault), I generally agree with you about marketing. However, marketing is simply coordinated public communication.

That is to say that marketing happens naturally when someone places a classified ad or discusses their project with friends and strangers casually.

Taking out a series of ads saying a new product launched and describing its features is surely ethical. Taking out ads lying about the qualities of your product (or omitting important side effects) is unethical. Quietly hiring journalists to write "stories" on you product and its features is likewise dishonest.

so I'd say ethical marketing is honest and forthright. Being considerate about intrusions doesn't hurt either, though being annoying isn't always the same as being unethical.

Then again, I'm not a marketing guy, so maybe I'm missing something.

mijustin3• 12 years ago

Original author here - this is really well said.

"Being considerate about intrusions doesn't hurt either, though being annoying isn't always the same as being unethical."

I'd also say that anytime you put out any type of communication out into the world, you're going to have some people who don't like it.

The key is to reach people where they're at, and try to be helpful. Being tactful (and culturally relevant / appropriate) is important - but it can also lead to paralysis. If you're too concerned about how you're going to be received, you'll never put anything out there (or you'll water it down so it's boring).

hyp0• 12 years ago

building things that people enjoy

Knowing what people will enjoy is part of marketing. "Marketing" is commonly thought of as "advertising", but the full meaning includes choosing what to build - what do people need? What will help them?

Now, a favoured open source technique for doing this is to scratch your own itch... the thinking is that if it annoys you, it probably annoys lots of other people. A kind of marketing that requires a lot of faith! But is sometimes very effective.

We can go a step further, and ask now that we have solved this problem, it's not doing much good if the people who need it don't have it! How will they find out about it? This is getting pretty close to advertising... but the least-scummy way to do it is rely on word-of-mouth. This is actually how people find out about stuff in general. You can assist this process by just articulating just what it is you have, and what problem it solves, in a pithy, easy-to-remember, easy-to-pass-on phrase. You might have a little story (or joke) that helps carry it along. But the non-scummy part about this is that people problem won't pass it on if they don't think it's any good. They aren't getting paid to shill.

One interesting advertising approach is Dropbox's referral program (where you get extra storage by introducing someone to a free Dropbox account). It's hard to see this as scummy, but it's extremely effective "advertising". Even having a free version in the first place is an aspect of marketing.

Finally, consider the problems of a charity, whose only goal is to help people. What help is needed? How to get it to the people who need it? That is "marketing". And pg argues for it as a model for a startup: http://paulgraham.com/good.html

janj7• 12 years ago

Maybe the biggest problem in forming my perception of marketing is that the good, quality marketing is the marketing least likely to get noticed consciously. The scummy marketing might not be more prevalent but it's more obvious so that's what I've been using to form my opinion.

The marketing that I commonly notice is the kind born out of much research on manipulating the thoughts, desires and behaviors of people. It's easy to find examples of this everywhere and is used by most large corporations to achieve what you describe. When thinking about the companies I respect, like Airbnb and Parse, I think of their marketing as more going out and engaging and informing their customer. Should there be a distinction between the two kinds of marketing?

jh3• 12 years ago

I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing.

What do you do to get paid?

janj7• 12 years ago

I'm building a community around the cruising industry. It was recently sold to a holding company who is now throwing some decent money behind marketing efforts. I stayed on and am strictly on the technical side. From what I've seen so far I wouldn't consider the marketing behind what we're doing as scummy.

JonnieCache• 12 years ago

Here's an example of good marketing:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/product-alerts-older-than-2-m...

The software is so good, he just has to make one post on a forum and people are queuing up to throw money at him. All he has to do is sit there and answer questions.

A sample quote from a user: "Bought it without demoing, Due to Sean's great support/dedication."

Note the length of the thread. Also have a look at the diagram on the last page. There is a lot people here could learn from smalltime audio software/hardware developers, who are quietly running scores of successful "lifestyle" businesses, away from the bright lights of the SAAS industry.

Here's another example of a product announcement thread on that forum from a popular indie developer: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/product-alerts-older-than-2-m...

But yeah, if you're looking for an example of good marketing from a big company, good luck I guess.

mindcrime4• 12 years ago

I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing.

If you think that, you probably don't understand what "marketing" actually is. Marketing is really just everything you do to communicate with your customers, to find out what they need, and communicate to them that you have a solution for them. There's nothing inherently "scummy" about marketing.

Let's say you talk to your barber about scheduling software. That's marketing. Let's say you write some scheduling software and put it up on GitHub. That's marketing. Let's say you go further and post a "Show HN: My Rad New Barbershop Scheduling Package". That's marketing.

Or maybe you go to the National Barber's Association Annual Convention and rent space for a both, and setup a PC (or iPad or whatever) to demo software, and as people walk by you talk to them about their problems and your solution. Again, that's marketing. Or maybe you buy some Google Adwords for your software. Marketing.

Let's say your thing really blows up and you're making money hand over fist and you buy an ad during next year's Super Bowl. That's marketing. Now maybe you find sales are dropping off, and you don't know why, so you create a SurveyMonkey survey asking about Barbershop issues, and email it to all of your existing customers. That's marketing. But maybe that doesn't generate enough responses, so you Tweet the link along with hashtag #barbershops and buy a couple of Facebook ads, and maybe share the link on LinkedIn. That's all marketing.

Running a few focus groups to solicit customer feedback? Marketing. Replying to blog posts related to your topic? Marketing. Blogging about your topic? Marketing.

There's just so much to marketing, and nothing about any of it requires unethical behavior or typical "used car salesman" stuff.

"Marketing" is also strategy... segmenting your market for example, by, say, geography and demographics: deciding "We're only targeting barbershops in the Southeast USA, in cities with at least 40,000 people". And that decision was probably based on market research, which is also part of marketing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

janj7• 12 years ago

That's just one side of marketing. A large part of marketing is in understanding how to manipulate the thoughts, desires and behaviors of people. If Coca-Cola was focused on finding out what their customers needed they would be out of business. If their marketing consisted of honestly informing the public of what their product is, their market share would be a fraction of the size it is now.

I agree, marketing doesn't require unethical behavior. But marketing in an unethical way is required for many (most?) large business to grow.

samolang• 12 years ago

"If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would said a faster horse" - Henry Ford

Sometimes it is hard to know what you want and marketing can help you figure it out.

agilebyte• 12 years ago

I was in that camp, but then I was honest with myself and realized that I just did/do not want to talk to people and face a rejection.

Ultimately, if I were to be helpful to others, I would ask them what they want and figure out a way to help them (sales & marketing if you will). For how can I truly build useful products, when I don't actually talk to the people that use them?

Even if you want to give fruits of your labour for free for others to enjoy, you need to market them, because there is a stack of software already doing the same thing for the same cost.

acangiano2• 12 years ago

In my Technical Blogging book I wrote the following on marketing:

-- Correct a Self-Sabotaging Mindset --

Marketing is bullshit. Marketing is evil. Marketing is everything that’s wrong with this world. Marketing is the root of all evil. Marketers should be shot. I have heard all these statements—and plenty more like them.

If you agree with any of them, you are not alone in your dislike of marketing. I’ve found that technical people, particularly programmers, tend to have a strong hatred for marketing.

Antimarketing stances stem partly from bad experiences with manipulative marketers and partly from a misunderstanding of what marketing actually is.

Wikipedia defines marketing in this way:

"Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers and what strategy to use in sales, communications, and business development."

At its core, marketing is about connecting people to solutions. For example, some people may have an interest in buying an environmentally friendly car.

Good marketing involves identifying this segment of the population, then devising a strategy to let that portion of the population know about the existence of your brand-new hybrid car and its benefits (in a style and manner that will appeal to them).

Though the ultimate goal is to sell a car, marketing isn’t about convincing people who are not interested in your product to buy it. It’s about exposing the right product to the right audience. Done correctly and in an ethical manner, it’s possible to promote without deceiving, manipulating, or forcing people to spend their hard-earned money on goods they don’t want or need.

It’s important to understand that marketing is so much more than just advertising. Marketing encompasses countless aspects of your product, including what you name it before it even exists.

If you still feel that marketing is mostly evil, I encourage you to reflect on the forms of marketing you already do, perhaps without even realizing that they’re marketing. Ever applied for a new job? Or dated someone? While you probably didn’t misrepresent yourself with your future employer or partner by blatantly lying, you still wore nice clothes and tried to showcase your favorable traits. In doing so you were marketing yourself.

In blogging, the aim of your marketing is to reach as many people who are potentially interested in your content as possible. As we’ll see in future chapters, you may also have related additional goals, such as promoting yourself professionally, marketing yours and other people’s products, and so on.

Like all tools, marketing can be used for good or in unethical, obnoxious ways. In this book, I advocate only white-hat marketing techniques that will get your content in front of the people who need to see it. So if you are the stereotypical antimarketing developer, please approach the rest of the chapter with an open mind. I promise that you won’t have to sell your soul.

amagumori2• 12 years ago

no offense...but you couldn't even reply to him without marketing your book? this also occurred in the OP, where you get to the bottom of his post and it's revealed that the whole thing was supposed to get you interested in his book. this is why i fucking hate marketing. nothing is genuine, everything has an ulterior motive. it destroys peoples' authenticity and trustworthiness.

invalidOrTaken• 12 years ago

My extremely earnest, extremely honest cousin getting his doctorate in marketing would have a heart attack over this, ha.

The chestnut for a while has been that marketing consists of 4 p's:

price (how much? how many market offerings? should price go up over time [discounts for early adopters] or down over time [getting rid of excess inventory]?),

product (does anyone want this? are we building a rocketship when they need a bicycle, or vice versa? Are we following existent demand, or creating a new market [iPhone]?),

promotion (this is what 99% of people think about when they think of marketing, but it's important to note there are good things here too. Spammers live here, but so does Apple's 1984 ad), and

place (Do we even want to sell this in Alaska, given that it costs a buttload to ship our product up there? Do the Chinese have an ancestral taboo about our product? Is it so fragile that it's hard to ship reliably, and if so, how do we deal with that?).

The full discipline of marketing actually involves some pretty darn cool stuff, that I guarantee would appeal to your developer mind. One that I'm partial to are shape grammars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_grammar), where brands try to figure out what about a design (of say Apple, or a Harley Davidson) screams "$BRAND" to a customer.

grahamburger• 12 years ago

Marketing is anything you do to help people find and use that awesome product you're building. It doesn't do anyone any good if they don't know that it exists.

jp1989• 12 years ago

I'm sorry, but I find this attitude really bizarre. You seem to confuse marketing with advertising, and even then it still feels bizarre. How are people meant to discover products, or solutions to their problems?

jiayo• 12 years ago

This never used to bother me either, but there are certain things that once you've seen, you can't unsee.

Smiling people is one of them. If your marketing site has pictures of smiling people on it, I am immediately turned off. Look at the billboard on your local subway system. Ads for dentists, graduate degrees, Trident gum, upcoming plays. 9 out of 10 of them have a stock photo of a smiling person, presumably unable to contain their enjoyment of $PRODUCT.

In very rare cases, say, for a Meetup group, or a bike tour, will I see pictures of smiling people that are actually organic. That's fine. It's when they use stock photos that it insults my intelligence and makes me feel like "marketers lying to take my money". The photos aren't even of people paid to pretend to enjoy the product, they're just sub-licensed from Getty. What it tells me is they're more concerned with sales driven by emotion than making a substantive first impression.

To test this, I just thought of the most boring thing I could think of: enterprise resource planning. The first marketing result on Google is this, complete with smiling person:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/dynamics/erp.aspx

The best salespeople in the world make you walk away thinking you got a great deal, that you got the upper hand. When I see these blatant plays for emotion, I walk away disgusted.

pstack• 12 years ago

This article:

1. Create a short article repeating common sense that everyone should know. 2. JOIN MY MAILING LIST!

snaky• 12 years ago

The problem with that kind of articles: it works.

coldtea• 12 years ago

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples.

If you cannot understand it as it is already, you'll only understand it when you stop being merely a paid developer and become a developer that needs to sell the software he writes.

"If you build it they will come" does not hold. The best product can fail (and often has) because people have not known about it, or it was not presented to them in an appropriate way. That's what marketing does.

wpietri2• 12 years ago

My take: ethical marketing is where you are trying to serve the customer. Unethical marketing is where you serve yourself at the expense of your customer.

One problem, of course, is that advertising and marketing people, being what they are, will almost always tell you they are trying to serve the customer. (And they generally believe it.) To tell the good from the bad, you will have to use your own moral compass.

The bigger one, though, is that it's an arms race. In a perfect world, nobody would push anything. You could just release your new product; those hungry for a solution would find it and become your customers. Sadly, those people right now are being aggressively manipulated by your competitors. They will never hear about your product. If you want to succeed, you will have to get your hands dirty with actual marketing.

Personally, I bridge the gap by asking myself three things:

1. Are we legitimately creating value for our customers? Would they be better off using our product?

2. Is our approach to marketing reasonably ethical, and at least no worse than the competition?

3. In the long term, are we acting in ways that will reduce the arms race, or at least make it no worse?

calroc• 12 years ago

My dad was a salesman, and a really good one. He absolutely maintained that it was both counter-productive and morally wrong to sell people things that they didn't actually need or want.

On the other hand, if you have a product you believe in, that is high-quality, and that improves the lives of the customers who could really use it, he felt it was morally wrong NOT to sell it to them.

YMMV.

j_baker2• 12 years ago

You cannot not market something. Even a lack of marketing is a form of marketing ("Customers perceive marketing as being scummy! Let's not market!"). The fact is, customers make decisions based on perceptions rather than on reality. The goal of marketing should be to make sure those perceptions match reality. Marketing becomes "scummy" when it creates perceptions that are out of line with reality. Marketing becomes ineffective when it creates perceptions that are worse than reality or it creates no perceptions at all. The sweet spot is when you have a marketing message that is in line with reality and presents your product's strengths well.

namank• 12 years ago

So what, it's the maker mindset. Add to that with the appreciation for what to make, you have a very impactful being indeed.

Geee• 12 years ago

Actually, computers aren't just there yet. Imagine if we actually had huge and paper thin displays that could be used like paper, few on the desk, few on the walls, cheaply and ubiquitously. There's still lots to do to get there, but we will.

danso• 12 years ago

I don't disagree with the OP's overall point...my favorite developers are "not normal" at least in the sense that, yes, they have an opinionated drive for perfection that I admire, particularly because it benefits so many of us who rely on their work.

What I do object to is this zero-sum attitude, that it's either "do cool technical stuff" or "MAKE MONEY", and wanting the latter implies a direct reduction of the former. To one extent, that's true...because our time is finite. But on the other hand "MAKE MONEY" gets in the way of technological innovations that could leap frog the market?

Why not think of technical innovation/investment as a loss leader? In the same way that it'd be questionable for a gas station to say, "fuck selling gas, let's just focus on selling coffee! (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23904590/), realize that tech innovation can be the underlying reason for profit, even if it doesn't have a direct contribution on the balance sheet

gesman• 12 years ago

If you own the product to-be-built and it is your startup, then you need to think like a businessman and that includes listening to customers.

But if you work as a salaried employee or contractor - lets face it - you really in a position to care more about your personal income and care less about customers who will be buying the product you don't directly benefit from. You better realize that you can and will be let go on a minute's notice and no one is going to drop a tear that you're no longer there.

And hence your survival depends on convincing the management to build the product using technologies that you can benefit from by knowing them, just in case you decided to quit or will be let go.

Even though above may sounds selfish - this does not mean your personal interests are not aligned with the company you're working for.

Quite often the opposite - and quite often it's win win for everyone.

calinet6• 12 years ago

This is a useful perspective, but not the whole picture.

Quality drives a portion of sales. Technical ability to perform, create features, respond to customer needs, and maintain a service contributes highly to quality. The technology and tools and process chosen enable that technical ability to a large degree.

Therefore, some portion of your sales is driven by your technology.

It's useful and important to think at a high level about your customers directly, at times. This is your UX role, doing user research and understanding all the intricate details and desires of your users. It's also marketing, understanding the market and who the target consumers are.

It's also useful and important to ensure you get your process and systems right to meet that market head-on with the ability to solve the problem that you now understand. Ideally these are several roles communicating seamlessly. It's not always ideal, but that's the goal.

nine_k• 12 years ago

At Yandex (Russia's largest search engine) among engineers they/we used to have a motto: "I am non-representational" ("я не репрезентативен"), reminding about just that. Another useful motto was "I'm not your target audience". Some even had these on T-shirts.

You, the developer, are not a normal user, by definition (unless you're building tools for fellow developers). Anything user-facing should be tested on real users, on members of the target audience. What they find convenient and useful may seem inconvenient and useless to you. This is OK; such a view is usually reciprocal.

BTW this is often a point of contention in open-source software. It is built mostly by engineers. If the target audience does not also consist of engineers, users may find the UI confusing and inconvenient, despite authors' best effort to make it clear and convenient for themselves.

shmerl• 12 years ago

The point is not just "listening to people" (which is important too). The main point is "putting yourself in your user's shoes". I.e. one has to think through various use cases from the perspective of the actual user. That's very important in any development if you care about robustness, quality, usability and even security.

dpcan• 12 years ago

Also, we sometimes won't ask questions or talk to potential consumers for FEAR that our "great" idea will be negated.

The excitement of building something, using new technology, solving a problem (whether it exists or not) is exciting. Then you might start seeing dollar signs, or fame, or respect among peers, etc, in your mind. Nobody wants to INVITE someone to shut down those thoughts or feelings.... but we must.

I have a few ideas on my list that I think are really good. But I haven't started building them yet because I know I have to talk to a few people in certain industries first to confirm the ideas are good. They just sit there though. For some of these ideas, I'd rather they continue being a pipe dream instead of talking to someone and possibly have them shot down.

Or maybe I'm really not normal.

Udo• 12 years ago

Sometimes, customers don't know what they might need. The danger of talking to potential customers when designing a piece of software lies in the problem that you're going to get a long list of convolute feature requests that, if implemented, doesn't result in anything usable. On top of that, the exemplary barber is unlikely to ever use anything besides paper. We might not be normal people, and normal people are unlikely to give meaningful design input.

In my experience it makes sense to talk to them twice, once to determine general needs, and then a second time to actually have them try out the prototype.

wpietri2• 12 years ago

Yeah, that is a common mistake. Customers are experts on their problems. We are experts on solutions. Good products are found at the intersection of those two circles.

I never believe uncritically what customers say about solutions. And I never believe what developers say about customer problems. Especially when that developer is me.

gizzlon3• 12 years ago

I feel the same way, and I think it's quite normal. It might not be the stated reason for not evaluating an idea, but I think it's often the real reason.

I mean, it's seems so obvious, right? Don't spend lots of time building something unless you're pretty sure there's a market. You can't be "pretty sure there's a marked" unless you actually check. Engineers & programmers are often quite analytical people. Still we somehow miss this obvious conclusion.

I know it, but it's still hard to do it.

neverminder• 12 years ago

Well if history taught us anything is that even seemingly craziest ideas can be developed into a big thing. I think it's often down to stubbornness of person (people) behind it.

wolfgke• 12 years ago

Also, we sometimes won't ask questions or talk to potential consumers for FEAR that our "great" idea will be negated.

I'd rather claim that for me the reason is that talking takes a lot of time for both sides that could more productively used for programming.

kybernetyk• 12 years ago

Hmm, sorry but the teaser didn't appeal to me.

Where can I unsubscribe? (Can't find a link.)

bsbechtel• 12 years ago

“I could build this on the Twilio API!” “I could learn that new CSS framework!” "I could use this new tool I just purchased!”

I've never thought this way when I learn about some new technology...my way of thinking has always been "This task I'm doing really sucks, how can I make it easier?" This way of thinking seems so much more intuitive and less mentally taxing. Do others here really think the way the author describes? I'm curious.

desireco42• 12 years ago

Not only that we are not normal as a consumers, but we are also not normal, for most part as developers, there are huge number of people who just are not up to speed with latest technology and simply don't use it. It helps to remind yourself often about that.

_random_• 12 years ago

My future recruiter and employer are my customers. I can assure you that they are most certainly interested in technologies I am going to use. Welcome to CV-driven development!

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

I don't know who "we" is, but there's nothing abnormal about programmers as programmers. Currently the profession is dominated by a few narrow demographics which have a limited understanding of people outside of those demographics, but that's a social issue, not one that comes along with technical competence.

My major problem with dealing with clients/customers that I'm doing custom work for is that instead of telling me what they do, or what they want to be able to do, in language that they understand, they convert it into their own private techspeak. They incorrectly drop in technical words that they've heard somewhere, and they ask for specific brands of software that they've never seen and often don't understand.

I am a normal person. Tell me your goals and your problems in plain English, and I'll figure out how to get it done. I'm pretty good at it, and if I can't help you I can probably find you someone who can.

j_baker2• 12 years ago

I don't even think that this is even a case of that. The writer is obviously not a programmer (he even uses the "Some of my best friends are x" line where x is some type of person you are trying to convince people you don't hate). It seems to me that the writer is trying to peg programmers into a hole where all we do is say "We have to do this with the newest CSS Framework using the neatest database and the coolest programming language." And I think that's clearly a load of crap.

What bothers me most about this is the idea that programmers are some kind of underclass that just doesn't get "normal" people. The truth is that we're people too who have a lot of the same needs as "normal" people.

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

You're probably right. I may have been making the mistake of thinking that he was representative of a some large contingent of programmers just because of the "we." Marketing works:)

yetanotherphd• 12 years ago

yeah it's weird, we are one the one hand said to be an underclass of social rejects, and on the other hand said to be immensely privileged. And on top of that, somehow being losers makes us more privileged, since it keeps normal people who don't want to be losers out of the profession. Go figure.

pandler• 12 years ago

What bothers me most about this is the idea that programmers are some kind of underclass that just doesn't get "normal" people. The truth is that we're people too who have a lot of the same needs as "normal" people.

I think the author was simply trying to articulate a rift that sometimes occurs between a party with a (perceived or actual) problem and the party with solutions for that problem. According to his barbershop example, that problem/solution rift is the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem statement. If I could abstract the article in one sentence, I would say, "If you are trying to solve a problem that you yourself do not have, make sure you actually understand the problem from the perspective of the party you are solving it for before you go building things."

The author may have gone a bit far in generalizing programmers/engineers, but would you agree it is fair to say that it is easy enough for _anyone_ to fall into the aforementioned trap if they are not conscious of it?

An occurring theme I have noticed while speaking with people (not just engineers and/or programmers) is that we have a tendency to project ourselves on other people. I don't think that is a bad thing in moderation (that's a different matter of discourse), but I have had at least two different conversations with entrepreneurs where they simply could not for the life of them understand why someone would rather "just get a job working for someone else" than start their own company. It simply does not register in their world view that someone does not share their way of thinking. My anecdote is tangential at best, but my point is that the object of the article is not to diminish programmers. Rather, it is to elevate the perspective of those subject to a certain myopia that they would otherwise not think to confront.

ta_tatata2• 12 years ago

You are not a normal person, for there are no such things.

One perceive oneself as not abnormal when one tends to conform to societal norm and peer expectation. It is desirable to not be perceived as abnormal, because abnormality carries a stigma and being perceived as abnormal often leads to rejection.

sopooneo• 12 years ago

Yes yes yes. I find that I often have to work backward from a tortured spec to figure out what they are actually trying to get done, so that I can then work out a solution and eventually implementation. And clients have never complained when I ditched their plans as long as my proposal helped them more.

talles• 12 years ago

This is definitely not a rule of thumb, but this point of view does fit in most of (small) cases.

Want an example? One of the most beloved practices by the software industry is kanban boards. It's at least curious how people writing systems prefer to have a physical board rather than, well, a system.

antonios• 12 years ago

Insightful post. I wish I'd read something like that years ago, instead of finding out the hard way. Thank you.

CodeMage• 12 years ago

I agree with the underlying message, which is to listen to your market. I just feel that the example Justin used is somewhat unfortunate, because I feel it describes a missed opportunity.

Of course the barber doesn't think he needs anything beyond a better paper calendar, but what do his customers think? Would they, perhaps, prefer to book online instead of over the phone?

I guess that what I'm trying to say is that you should definitely listen to your customers, but you shouldn't let that blind you. It's like that Henry Ford quote: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The problem, of course, is that very few people are Henry Ford material ;)

itsokintheory• 12 years ago

Posts with a similar sentiment seem to appear on HN occasionally. I find it entirely reasonable, but it's also quite banal compared to research on product design done by people in Participatory Design[1] and User-centered Design[2]. It has often surprised me how limited many North American PMs and software designers seem to be in their knowledge of these areas.

[1] http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/14-p-partic.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design

WalterBright• 12 years ago

I get told constantly that not only am I not a normal person, I'm not a normal programmer. This is in the context of me listing things I'd like to see in a product.

The irony is that when I build a product that I'm told that "normal" people/programmers will want, it usually fails. When I build a product that I would use myself, with weird features I'm told nobody wants, it does well.

lutusp• 12 years ago

Steve Jobs took exactly the opposite tack -- he would say things like "People don't know what they want until we tell them" -- and he succeeded with that outlook. I'm not saying the article is wrong, only that it's not a self-evident position.

Chances are a product will succeed or fail for reasons neither the designers nor the customers understand. Consider the personal computer -- the best minds in technology were offered a chance to get in at the start, and nearly all of them turned it down. Hewlett-Packard repeatedly rejected Steve Wozniak's proposals until he quit and developed his ideas with Steve Jobs in a garage. Then IBM created a rather limited knockoff PC, expecting it to serve only as an "entry system" to their main product line, which was large systems. Pretty soon the tail wagged the dog.

And the Internet -- no one saw it coming, even when it was on top of them. No one was able to predict any aspect of that phenomenon, something that remains true.

About people's tastes and choices in entertainment, Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman famously said, "Nobody knows anything". I agree, and I think it applies to technology as well.

The bottom line -- if you ask customers what they want, what they might buy, they won't be able to tell you. I disagreed with Steve Jobs about practically everything, but he was dead right about this.

mgkimsal• 12 years ago

In that barber example... selling to the barber directly might make the most sense, but better scheduling software would allow people to self-schedule (well, 'better' for end users). I hate trying to coordinate a time with my barber - his schedule is erratic, mine is erratic sometimes, the place doesn't call me back some times, they don't email, etc.

What is efficient for them as a business is highly inefficient for me as a consumer, and I may end up taking my business elsewhere because of it. I like the guy and he does a good job, but there are other places to go. If any of them make it easier on me to schedule on my terms, I'll go there.

So... yes, it might be easier for the barber to just look at a piece of paper on the wall, does it increase his business? Is he looking for more business, or an easier job?

prawn2• 12 years ago

Same goes with in-demand restaurants. If I get into a city and want to pick a nice restaurant, am I better off calling around and wasting the time of those booked-out, or using something like OpenTable which shows me what's available?

Some of the premium places will be booked out three months in advance, but then make mention of potential cancellations on their web site contact page. e.g., "Sometimes we get cancellations. Please call us just in case." Seems to be like that would make for a huge amount of wasted staff time dealing with those sorts of queries.

pbhjpbhj4• 12 years ago

IME people will do things like book online and then call because they don't trust the booking app. And that's the people that will bother to fill out the form rather than just ring up anyway.

If you're relying on an online system too it has to be absolutely solid - which means expense. Or at least more expense than a wall-calendar or a paper diary [book].

It's hard to have an over-view of, say, the next couple of months work with an online system - a big wall-calendar makes things easier to visualise. Of course you could have a massive touch-screen computer ...

If you're running a salon, with multiple barbers then I can see it being cost-effective to try and have customers self-schedule but it seems for a single barber that they'd have to be very up-market to make it worth while.

Would you go to a worse barber so you can schedule online instead of by phone? Would you pay more, how much, to be able to schedule online?

Personally if I use a barber's it's a simple drop-in service.

[Any suggestions for an appointments booking system to check out?]

gizzlon3• 12 years ago

It's hard to have an over-view of, say, the next couple of months work with an online system - a big wall-calendar makes things easier to visualis

I don't doubt that you're right, but it should be much easier with a computer:

- It can "think" for itself. For example you could ask it for all available 1 hour slots on a Tuesday or Friday in the next two months, that are also after 3' O clock, and.. and..

- Regarding overview, you should be able to zoom in and out. Think google maps vs. normal maps.

Better yet, upload your google calendar an let it suggest a few appropriate time. Click the one you want. Done.

Edit: does that last one exist? Would be a cool thing to make.. (but then again, does anyone actually want that? :)

ballard• 12 years ago

If the business is risky (which is probably is), use safer tech choices. If the business seems boring, use a few extra bleeding edge solutions to engage us technical folks.

dclara• 12 years ago

Working with software product companies, we always debated on the product is "technology driven" or "market driven". Back to the days of using EJB, often times we were technology drive (not all).

That's why we have product team and product manager to work out the requirements before the development team start to prototype and implement. For startup companies, this kind of process may seem too luxury in the early stage, we called it "discover" stage.

Once we define the target market and learn the customer needs, we will build the most compelling features first. We listen, but not tight to specific customer needs, because we know the direction we want to build, and gradually lead the customers toward that end product.

For any new product, customer friction is always there very naturally. That's why we need marketing and sales team to remove the friction. It's a lot easy to say than to do.

nicolax• 12 years ago

I wonder why this is a new topic then. Isn't it pretty established in either Lean Startup or Design Thinking that when building product, we should talk to/interview/research the people who will be using it? Especially in Design Thinking, it's required to do needfinding, which is talking to the barber in this case. And solutions in the brainstorming stage are certainly not confined within software.

We just need to be constantly reminded that our perception and reasoning about the world is subjective and often conscious. As designers, or product builders, we should be willing to understand other people's reasoning, putting aside ours.

NameNickHN• 12 years ago

What the barber shop owner doesn't realize is that an appointment scheduling software is supposed to reduce phone calls which would decrease the workload of the staff. Also, what if I want to schedule an appointment when the shop is closed?

ta_tatata2• 12 years ago

There are no normal people. By definition normal people do not exist in the world.

With the title and point of the article being formulated in a way showing a lack of understanding of the matter, it is doubtful the rest of the post is any better.

exodust• 12 years ago

There's no reason a creative developer couldn't foresee the barber's predicament without speaking with the barber.

Patiently visualised, devised imagined scenarios. Phone rings, barber says "excuse me" to his client and walks over to the phone. But does he put the comb down first? Perhaps. Barbers have trays handy, but they might walk around, tools in hand. (This is obvious, and doesn't take research to imagine.)

The phone needs to be next to the computer - no screen savers, the scheduling software always on, with clear and large fonts, minimal clutter (generally good interface design anyway). Think "high quality app design", not "looks like Excel".

A beautifully designed interface that would impress the barber if demonstrated. Custom default views and all that.

It's ok to start from the blue sky and work down to the reality instead of working up from "what the barber likes with his paper calendars". Which isn't the wrong way, but could skew the potential. Top down isn't wrong, if you've done your visualising!

Not that research and getting out into the world isn't valuable. (obvious). I'd probably take a look at the book anyway... sounds ok.

GrinningFool• 12 years ago

Ah, there.

Another programmer matures, having the same epiphany that every other decent programmer does at some point in his career.

Welcome to [career] adulthood, it's nice of you to finally join us :)

vickytnz• 12 years ago

Or as usability people say: "you are not your user".

We are not normal people

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