Re: Jobs

FROM : Steven W. Schuldt
DATE : Sat Nov 16 20:04:48 2002

Steve Klingsporn <<email_removed>> wrote:

"My best advice is to use your newfound Objective-C and Cocoa skills to
work on an independent project that you sell on the web.  Come up with
an idea, don't tell anyone about it, don't release a bunch of betas.
Finish it, put it out there, and give people a taste but make them
register after using it for 5-10 days or so.  Like Watson did."

Sounds like a great strategy, except it is very unlikely to work and I 
speak from experience.  Here's why:  Take a look at VersionTracker and 
notice how much stuff is released/revved for Mac OS X on a daily basis. 
  Some of it sucks, some of it is good, some of it is great - doesn't 
really matter because there's just too much of it.  The noise level is 
deafening - as a small ISV you simply cannot be heard above the din no 
matter what you've got.  If Watson were introduced today (imagine 
Sherlock 3 didn't exist) it would sink without a trace.  Ask Dan Wood 
and he'll tell you the same thing.  Not to take anything away from 
Karelia, but Dan's like a lottery winner that got in at the right 
place/right time.  You are welcome to buy a ticket and play the game 
but don't say I didn't warn you.

Zooming out, the tech industry has become dirty, corrupt; very, very 
ugly.  You can point fingers where you like: DELL, MickeyShaft, 
Hollywood, the DOJ, doesn't matter.  I think the decline began when the 
lawyers discovered the Internet.  My advice?  Since the future of 
professional dev work is very obviously headed to Bangalore and Beijing 
and wherever else poor saps are willing to sling Java or C# for $10 a 
week, and worse still that horrible, broken technologies like .Net and 
J2EE are going to be crammed down everyone's throat, I would strongly 
suggest pursuing other interests.  Become a teacher.  Work for a social 
cause.  Write.  Maybe try your hand at making media, since you will 
essentially have the combined financial, political, cultural and 
military might of the US and Hollywood protecting your DVD and an 
eternal copyright on whatever it is you create.  Personally, it makes 
me sick to see Adobe laying off hundreds of workers in Santa Clara and 
pouring millions into their spiffy new offices in New Delhi.  I know 
many creative, tech-savvy Americans who won't be buying PhotoShop or In 
Design ever again, even assuming they could still afford them.

Where do Apple and great technologies like Cocoa go from here?  Well, 
here's a clue:

https://jobs.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Employment.woa/wa/
jobDescription?RequisitionID=1854805

So is ObjC Cocoa is headed for the same graveyard as ObjC WebObjects? 
Absorbed into an inferior technology and destroyed in the process by 
the "genius of the market"?  Not that you could even blame Apple at 
this point, as I no company seems able to withstand the tidal wave of 
cynicism and mediocrity sweeping tech right now.  Apple's Bangalore 
office can't be far behind.

You learned a difficult professional skill but were too "smart" and 
"libertarian" to unionize.  Now welcome to the race to the bottom, 
gentleman.  We've been expecting you.

Steven W. Schuldt
http://www.aizai.com/
<email_removed>
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