{"id":852,"date":"2009-07-17T01:21:53","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T05:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.red-sweater.com\/blog\/?p=852"},"modified":"2009-07-17T01:34:50","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T05:34:50","slug":"the-payoff-proposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/852\/the-payoff-proposition","title":{"rendered":"The Payoff Proposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brent Simmons writes beautifully<\/a> about a frustration that most indie software developers can relate to: the payoff proposition.<\/em> He highlights the all-too-common scenario where a user offers a cash bounty, $50 for instance, to add a particular feature:<\/p>\n

\n“The developers I know would rather rip up $50 bills, long sequences of them, than do something that, in their best judgment, is against the best interests of the software and its users.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nThis reminds me of a listener question from a soon-to-be-released episode of Core Intuition<\/a>, the podcast I do with Manton Reece<\/a>. The question asks, roughly, “how can managers who don’t code relate better to their programmer employees?”\n<\/p>\n

\nNon-coder managers and customers have a lot in common: they have a great vision<\/em> for the future of a product, with little understanding of the work it will take to get there.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis is no slight on customers, or managers. Puhleez, I need<\/em> customers, and if everything goes right with my business, I’ll be a manager<\/em> before too long.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe naivete of customers is not a problem in itself, in fact it can be inspiring and motivating. “Yes, that does sound impossible to me, but you’re right, it would be freaking awesome<\/em> if I can make it happen!”\n<\/p>\n

\nFreaking awesome<\/em> is a far better motivator than a stack of bills. You have to give the developer some credit for knowing how to evolve a product. After all, you must like what they’ve done so far, or you wouldn’t be trying to hijack their development schedule.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt boils down to something Brent nails in his write-up:\n<\/p>\n

\n“If it\u2019s the right feature and the right time to do it, the developer will do it. If it\u2019s not, then it won\u2019t get done.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is harsh but honest. Developers are always making judgment calls, for better and for worse. Yes, these judgment calls sometimes consider monetary compensation. We have to make a living, so great applications are built by choosing features that satisfy the intersection of “freaking awesome” and “financially viable”. <\/p>\n

\nIf your payoff proposition is freaking awesome<\/em>, then you won’t need to pay a developer to consider it. They’ll be overjoyed just to hear the suggestion. Otherwise, it will take a lot more than $50 to pull them away from what they know is best for the product. In the end, this is good for you. Not only do you get to keep your $50, but you get to enjoy a carefully-designed application, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brent Simmons writes beautifully about a frustration that most indie software developers can relate to: the payoff proposition. He highlights the all-too-common scenario where a user offers a cash bounty, $50 for instance, to add a particular feature: “The developers I know would rather rip up $50 bills, long sequences of them, than do something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,34,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-links","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}