It’s been brewing a while, but I’m really dissatisfied with the Web industry at a personal level. Don’t read this post as saying that I’m going to quit all my work in this field. I’m not.. as such.

The Web industry has become a crap shoot

Once upon a time, hardly anyone cared about software development, or even the Internet. In those times, both software and the Internet had almost as many capabilities and benefits as now, but the number of developers and companies producing solutions was small. It was easy to excel. It was much harder to develop products and services, but it was easier to profit once you’d climbed the learning curve. In 2007 it’s too easy to come up with an idea and immediately find several good implementations, and if there’s no competition.. then you have to seriously wonder if there’s a business behind that idea because inventing new markets is a crap shoot best left to those with the resources (but a very lucrative crap shoot none-the-less).

I see the current technology (and especially Web) industry heading rapidly toward the model popularized by the gaming industry recently. Studios of geniuses with good funding pumping out high value products of varying quality, with a small ‘indie’ underclass making slim pickings on the side. The Web industry, in particular, has reached a point of saturation where soft benefits override technology benefits. It’s becoming about the marketing, support, the experience, and the connections rather than the technology. This is a sign of a maturing industry, but one where technology is becoming a form of commodity. It’s still exciting to mess around with commodities if you work at Google or in Yahoo’s new Brickhouse thinktank backed with a healthy cushion in case of a hard landing, but the tide is rapidly heading out at the fringes of the market.

Don’t get me wrong. There will be lots more ’small’ successes to come, but it’s definitely a crap shoot now. Pure determination and skill could win 9 times out of 10 in this industry once, but no longer.

If you can’t excel in an industry, should you leave it?

I suffer from what I have only recently discovered is a problem.. the bright child syndrome. This is where a child who’s reasonably smart is praised to a point where they put themselves on a pedestal and expect to be able to master and be a success in everything they turn their hand to. When they don’t, rather than accept failure, they merely shift into areas where they can excel. I acknowledge this, and have learned to be humble in the areas I suck. That said, I’ve come to realize that I can’t be anywhere near the top of this industry, so perhaps I should be looking for somewhere I can excel. I’d rather excel at what I do rather than get rich at it.

Of course, not everyone can excel, and it’d be pure idiocy to think that everyone should change careers because they’re not in the 95th percentile. If they did, industry would disappear and we’d be living in Idiocracy. However, we’re all different and many of us are happy enough to be happy in what we do. Many even hate their jobs but enjoy a great life out of work. Whatever. After some deliberation, I’ve realized I’m not any of those people and I can’t get joy out of merely being good or financially successful, and would rather be able to retire one day as a respected expert in my field even if my lifestyle is modest. This is not going to happen in the Web industry. So.. where?

That’s the subject of the next post.

I briefly added it as an update to my latest post, but in case you didn’t see it.. I sold Code Snippets (and the entire bigbold.com domain). I sold it to the amazing DZone, who are best known for Javalobby and DZone.com (Digg for developers, as I call it). DZone owner, Rick Ross, wrote a little bit about the acquisition.

I’m really pleased DZone has it because I know they’ll be great caretakers and developers for the site. They have an absolutely massive developer community around their various Web properties and could blow Snippets up to an entirely new level that little old me wouldn’t be able to reach alone. I also have the option of working alongside DZone wherever I can to help them with the site, ideas, and so forth, so even though I’ve given away my baby, I still have the option to ‘go visit’ if I want.

If this were a really slow news week, I guess you could now say a British Web 2.0 property has been sold, but I couldn’t be so pretentious. Still, for something cobbled up mostly over 2 days back in 2005 (though with significant work much later on to make it look nice), I am pleased with the outcome. All I need to do is sell another nine such sites, and I could afford a house! Of course, I’d rather build up and sell FeedDigest in a year or two instead, and that’s the next thing on the books.

Note: Most people who read this blog don’t e-mail me on @bigbold.com addresses anyway.. but if you do, please don’t anymore! Use my name @ petercooper.co.uk instead.

Just in case you don’t read my ‘daily life log’ on the front page of Peter Cooper.co.uk, I have a new blog called SuperYay. It’s formatted in a tumblelog style and is just a place for me to blow off steam by posting crazy things I find on the Internet. There’s nothing serious or deep there, it’s generally links, weird pictures, and ‘freak you out’ randomly changing designs. It’s generally safe for work, but this cannot be guaranteed, so if your workplace has a strict set of Internet ethics, you might want to steer clear.

As I’ve been tagged by Dr. Nic Williams, and I never get tagged for anything, I figure I’d have to come out of retirement for this post. The meme is ‘five things you don’t know about me’, so here we go:

1. I was interviewed for the position of head of online media at the BBC. Back in the late 90s headhunters and recruitment agents were going nuts. So nuts, in fact, that they sent a 17~18 year old me to a job interview for the top online media job at the BBC. It was extremely funny, and there was no way in hell I was going to get the job, but it was a great experience in a very tough interview situation and I got to wander around in Broadcasting House. The recruitment agent never contacted me again. Problem solved.

2. I have OCD. I am starting to get it under control, but I am constantly checking doors, and can never trust when someone else has locked a door (unless I really try). If Laura locks the front door, I will check it after her. I can’t stop it (again unless I really try hard). I am beginning to develop an attitude of “who gives a f**k” to the situation and am trying not to check anything, but I know that approach could end in trouble.

3. I got paid £10,000 for six weeks’ work with no spec, no management, and which was immediately discarded at the end. The company involved had no technical spec (just a vague idea), did not want me to create a spec, and the supposed project management did not actually do any managing. A workable product was, however, delivered, but did not meet the unwritten specifications of someone somewhere, and the whole project was discarded, although I only found this out through my co-developer weeks later as the company in question never contacted me again. Very weird experience. This sort of experience is why I am tending not to do client work anymore.

4. Laura found me on Match.com. Actually, she found me. I had given up hope by that time, but I happened to have a profile still on there from when I was in Los Angeles the year before. I randomly got a message one day in January 2005 from Laura, and it all went from there. Yes, she pursued me, so how could a man resist?

5. I was too cheap to pay Match.com any money. You have to be a paid member to reply to messages on Match.com, so when I got the message from Laura, I wasn’t sure whether to bother signing up. Luckily, however, they had a 7 day free trial so I figured I could sign up, somehow get her phone number quick, and then cancel before I got charged anything. I actually did this.. making me the biggest cheapskate ever.

I’m not tagging anyone else to do this as I have a guilt-complex about putting on other people (#6!) so if you want to post five things in the comments, feel free to do so and I’ll enjoy them!