Tom is no longer in your extended network

It's been almost 10 years since we saw massive changes underway at MySpace. If you don't remember what MySpace was, it was the popular social network before Facebook was king (though technically it still exists).

Tom's MySpace Profile

This was when everyone started with a new friend named Tom who was the co-founder of MySpace. Everyone could set their own "top 8" that could make or break the best friendships if you snubbed someone.

You could also set a song for your profile which would be added as a little player, back when it was “okay” to automatically play a song when your page loaded.

But MySpace is now a thing of the past, so why am I talking about it?

Making MySpace, your space

MySpace had a unique characteristic about it that you don't see in any of the popular social networks these days – it allowed you to add HTML and CSS into the page so that you could really do whatever you wanted with the your profile.

Example of custom code in a MySpace profile from dummies.com

Though from a simplistic perspective, this gives you some limited options. Maybe you can add some CSS that updates how the headers look and change a background color.

But realistically, this opened the door to adding full webpages that you could overlay on top of your profile by positioning your new layout above the original content with some z-indexing.

Custom MySpace profile for the band Filmore

The trick was, you had a limited amount of characters that you could put in each input. That had limitations, but these limitations helped promote creativity whether it was figuring out how to strip all of the whitespace in the code or by figuring out a way to add something with less overall code.

Learning through hobbies

Building MySpace profiles was addicting! It was a social medium that you could customize to make your own and stamp your name on it to show everyone what you did.

While you could do the same with your own website, it wasn't as easy at the time. And building out a profile on MySpace was easy, free, and you could connect with all of your friends.

One of my portfolio custom profiles

Each time I made a new page, I tried to think about what else I could do. I was even involved with small communities where we would share our work and help each other figure out how to hack things into a profile page (shoutout DM!).

This whole time, as I was trying to learn what more I could customize, I was learning how to code! I learned about how I could squeeze every inch of HTML I could out of a document and I also developed an understanding of how CSS selectors worked. I also learned how positioning allowed me to do cool things on the page and how to center things back when we didn’t have the option to flexbox all the things.

Flexbox all the things!

And this led to “business Colby” developing a sense of entrepreneurship. At this point, I was still in high school, but I was able to spin off a little business from building these pages.

While a modest $50 per profile seems low, that's a lot for a highschooler in 2004, not to mention that was a lot of money for another highschooler to pay to get one created!

STK Counter-Strike 1.6 team website

But this was the start of my code journey. Building off of MySpace, I started creating actual websites for Counter-Strike teams (CAL anyone?) and bands which would ultimately lead me to make a career out of coding.

Turning hobbies into jobs

I've heard others with a similar story, even others who similarly started with MySpace that eventually turned their interest into a coding career. While the MySpace era is something we all look back and laugh at, it really inspired a lot of people to find what they love to do.

Finding this kind of inspiration can be important to discovering how you want to spend your time. Whether it's a hobby or learning on the side to turn it into a career, keeping engaged with something you're actually interested in is important to learning a new craft.

But it's important to pay attention to how you engage with that new interest. You don't want to force it into a career and quickly burn yourself out. That will lead to regret and resentment.

While I got lucky that my interest in coding ended up turning into my career, I make sure to not "take my work home" as it's important to separate the work from your personal interests like random OSS projects on the side.

Find what motivates you

The important thing is to find something that can motivate and inspire you to develop your passion whether for a career or hobby. Each of us have our own journey, whether code related or not, and we should try to find something that will make us happy.

What was your inspiration for your interests? Share with me on Twitter!

What being a Senior Developer is not

Before we start, let's get this out of the way. Contradictory to what you'll see on 95%+ of the job postings online, a Senior Developer is not strictly correlated to only the number of years on your resume.

It's true, more often than not, that many years on the job typically bring with them a lot of experience. And with some companies you can get by with just that. But it's not the only quality that rightfully proves that someone is at a Senior level.

This is a common problem in the software world and can lead to high expectations with low delivery. It can also lead to conflict within the team when your new 15 year 10x Senior Developer refuses to work with others.

So what can we do to prepare ourselves for that role?

What makes a Senior Developer?

Looking back through my career at the developers on my team that I've admired and respected the most, it's really come down to four qualities:

• Experience
• Leadership
• Mentorship
• Technical Ability

It's not good enough to look at any one of these as the sole representation of how someone will perform on a team. Each developer is unique and may be stronger with one quality than another. But it's important to see how those qualities come together to determine how someone will help your team grow.

Let's break these each down a little bit.

Experience

Experience is typically thought of as years on the job, and while it's not completely inaccurate, it doesn't tell the whole story.

Just as every developer is unique, so is their experience. While one developer might have spent five years in an intensive position where they worked to solve hard technical challenges every day. And another might have been kicking their feet up at a local shop where their only responsibility was to update the website every week.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing! We each have our own journey and need to balance our lives to fit it. But it's not realistic to say those 5 years were the same.

Then what does experience really mean?

Recognizing patterns from previous work

Every developer has a story (whether they remember it or not) of a random error they stumbled into through their development experience. This could be something dealing with Javascript, webpack, or even your operating system, and it just doesn't make any sense!

But whether through a peer or by searching on Google, you figure it out. And three months later when you're working on another project and run into the same thing, you don't even have to Google it, or you already know what to Google. You already know what the issue is and can get past it quickly and move on.

This is the kind of experience that makes a difference. Being able to recognize patterns whether because of an error or because it was super successful is what helps each of us grow. These are the experiences that help a team grow when others are stuck and you can get them out of a bind.

Recognizing what you don't know

It's also important to understand what you don't know. I think part of what contributes to my own personal struggle with imposter syndrome is that the more I learn the more I realize I don't know.

But this shouldn't be looked upon as a bad or scary thing. This should be inspirational. That means that your craft that you've been working on has that much more cool stuff to explore!

It's important to realize how this impacts your work and the rest of the team. For example, it doesn't help anybody if you act like you know everything and commit to huge amounts of work. When you commit to that work and actually don't understand it, it could knock your sprint off track which can frustrate the entire team (and the client).

Whether it's when you're planning or during development, don't be afraid to ask for help. Come up for air and throw your hands up! Just because you're the only Senior Developer, doesn't mean you can't learn something from a Junior team member.

Try to take a good look at where you've been, what you understand, and where you could benefit to dig in more.

Leadership

As a senior member of a team, I would expect a developer to have a natural tendency to lead. While this doesn't mean you have to be an actual Tech Lead on a project or make any of the final decisions, this does mean that you should have a basic level of being able to help push the project forward

Understanding the bigger picture

If you've worked on projects with team members, you should know that each project or feature typically comes with a bunch of stories to work through to get it done. Each story should be a focused piece that helps accomplish a larger goal.

Where this becomes challenging is if no one on the team understands how each of these stories help to accomplish that bigger goal. As a Senior Developer, you should be able to see how each piece fits into the puzzle and why the story is written with the specific acceptance criteria. And if you don't know, you'll know how to get the answers and make sure it's communicated to the team.

If you're unsure of the direction, try to take a step back. Try to see where it fits in. Help to lead the project team to that ultimate goal.

Helping direct less experienced team members

This comes naturally in the ability to help guide those on our team who are more junior or less experienced. It's common for developers to lose focus on the big picture. But as we just discussed, a Senior Developer should be able to continuously have a good idea of the overall project and where the different stories fit into the bigger epic.

Help guide others on your team to get them on the right path. While it would be beneficial for everyone to understand how everything fits in to the bigger picture, sometimes it makes more sense to help an individual focus on how their specific task fits in.

Try to recognize this struggle when working with others whether by encouraging them to ask more questions or helping to guide them if they're not quite on the right path as you're reviewing their code.

Mentorship

It's often more convenient to be heads down on your work and not have to worry about what anybody else is doing, but is that really benefiting anyone?

Helping to build up other team members

You might be the so-called 10x developer, but doing everything yourself and not helping others can only slow down the overall team. Often you'll be stuck picking up the pieces that you could have easily caught if you spent an extra second pairing up with someone else on your team.

It's also bad for morale. No one wants to feel alone on a project and even more so as a junior. Software is a big scary world, a little guidance can go a long way to helping others to become more productive and subsequently encouraging a happier, less stressful environment.

It's easy to forget that we were all a junior team member at one time. While you might take things for granted, the concepts might be really challenging for others to grasp.

Keep in mind that we're all in this together. Celebrate the wins whether big or small. If somebody's struggling, reach out to help.

Knowledge sharing

Sharing knowledge is something many teams struggle with. While we're all usually hopeful that there's a way to accomplish it, most of the time it just goes unsolved. So what can we do?

Take it upon yourself to share what you know. Did you just rework the core business logic? Offer 30 minutes to walk everyone through the code. Pair up and screen share with your code reviewer if they're having a hard time understanding it.

This is something we can encourage everyone to do. You'll naturally learn more by presenting your work by reinforcing what you just worked on. This is helpful whether you're a Senior or it's your first time opening up a code editor.

Technical Ability

I intentionally wanted to leave this until the end. This is because, while it's important, there are more aspects to your journey to becoming a Senior Developer than just being really, really good at something.

Ability to get moving quickly

As a Senior Developer, I would expect another Senior Developer to become productive in something quicker than a Junior Developer. If they're an expert with Javascript, I would expect them to understand the core principles and patterns of the language.

But back to the idea of recognizing what you don't know, it's not reasonable to expect all Senior Developers to know everything. I wouldn't consider an expert in Ruby any less of a Senior Developer because they don't know Javascript, but I would expect them to understand how to apply what they know when building in and learning another language.

Promoting software patterns

More often than not, the code pattern you just came up with isn't new. And that's okay! The goal of building great software isn't necessarily to be unique with every solution.

And because of that, we can learn from past work by seeing what's succeeded and what's maybe not gone over so well to find patterns that work for you and your team.

Patterns like MVC (Model View Controller) didn't become popular without reason. Developers learned from the past and have learned from their peers who have solved big software challenges. With that knowledge, they can apply the solutions to their own work. It's not about reinventing the wheel, it's about solving challenges and making a good product.

We all have our own unique journeys ahead

No matter what anyone tells you, we all have our own unique code journeys. This is meant to encourage you and inspire you to become a better overall developer and understand how your work impacts the rest of the team.

While you certainly might succeed without taking these things into consideration, you could be missing out on core traits that could make people not want to work with you from a human being perspective.

Whatever your journey, keep these things in mind as you grow into becoming a better developer!

What do you think makes a good Senior Developer?

Do you think I'm spot on or way off? Share with me on Twitter!

Communities are usually built on shared struggles of individuals learning in a particular region, and the goals of each community differ per the individual's collective needs.

Over the years, these developer communities have grown across the world with different goals and missions but still with the general aim of providing a platform for developers to learn, interact, share ideas, support each other and grow.

"If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." – African Proverb

To better help those looking out for communities to join, I have put together a list of 20 best communities in no particular order ranging from Engineering, Design, Data Science, Machine Learning, Developer Relations, Technical Writing, and more.

If you know any more communities you have found helpful, please share them in the comments section for the benefit of all :).

1. Women Who Code

Women Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that provides a global community for women in tech with events, coding resources, jobs, mentorship, and more. They aim to inspire, support, and help women develop technical skills and excel in their careers.

Join now to get exclusive access to their community, events, scholarships, free event tickets, job boards, and more.

2. Hashnode

Hashnode is an online community where developers share knowledge and grow their careers. Developers from around the world participate in consequential discussions on Hashnode. You can write stories, ask open-ended questions as well as technical questions, ask questions anonymously, and start polls. You can also ask popular tech teams and developer influencers questions or learn from stories of awesome women in tech.

Hashnode's Devblog platform enables you to create your personal blog on your custom domain in a few simple steps with everything you need to grow as a blogger. (No Paywall, Free domain, SSL, Automatic backup of posts, Markdown, AMP Support and more). Own your canonical, make your contents independent and build your domain authority.

3. Freecodecamp

freeCodeCamp is a nonprofit organization that helps people learn to code for free through thousands of videos, articles, interactive coding lessons and thousands of freeCodeCamp study groups around the world.

You learn by completing coding challenges and building projects alongside verified certifications.

4. StackOverflow

Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for programmers with tons of questions and answers on a wide range of topics in computer programming.

You can learn from already asked and answered questions, share your programming knowledge by answering asked questions or share your issues/bugs here.

5. HackerNews

Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship, where you can submit a link to technical content.

This is a great place to promote your contents to a wide range of viewers and find amazing contents from other technical geeks.

6. Hackernoon

Hackernoon is a tech media site that delivers stories and opinions written by real tech professionals and read by Technologists, Software Developers, Bitcoiners, Blockchain Enthusiasts.

You can write technical articles here and learn from a wide range of available unfettered technical contents.

7. SitePoint Community

SitePoint community is a community for web designers and developers to discuss everything web development from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Photoshop, SEO, and more.

Similar to StackOverflow, you can ask and answer all web development questions here.

8. Kaggle

Kaggle is an online community of data scientists and machine learning practitioners with a vast repository of community published data and code with over 19,000 public datasets and 200,000 open notebooks. Kaggle also offers courses on Machine Learning, Pandas, Python, Deep Learning, Data Visualization, SQL alongside competitions, and discussions to help you grow.

9. Indie Hackers

An Indie hacker is "a person building an online project that can generate revenue." Indie Hackers is a global community of developers who are sharing their projects, strategies, and revenue statistics behind their companies and side projects.

You get to learn from the founders behind hundreds of successful online businesses and connect with others who are starting and growing their own companies through their global meetups, discussions, articles, and more.

10. Code Newbie

Code Newbie is the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. It started as a weekly Twitter chat made to provide much-needed support to people learning to code. It has since grown into a supportive, international community of people learning to code.

11. Digital Ocean Community

This is an inclusive place where developers can find or lend support and contribute to the community of DevOps and cloud computing enthusiasts. The community provides comprehensive guides, tutorials, trends for developers, Q/A sessions, and much more.

12. Product Hunt

Product Hunt is an exciting community of featured amazing products launched every day. It's a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and find out about the latest mobile applications, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.

13. Reddit

Reddit is global community of thousands sub communities, endless conversations, and authentic networking with tons of never-ending streams for developers like r/reactjs, r/vuejs, r/JAMstack_dev, r/Python and more.

14. DevCareers

DevCareer is a nonprofit organization that is focused on supporting upcoming developers with mentorship and resources to enable them to become world-class developers. They provide laptops, co-working space, resources, mentorship, and job placements for software developers in Africa who pass through the program.

15. The Interaction Design Foundation Community

The Interaction Design Foundation Community provides an exciting opportunity for designers to create and hone their portfolio while getting ready for a new User Experience job. They offer courses from UX experts, local UX Design Meet-ups in cities across the world, UX discussions, collaboration, and much more.

16. Daily UI

Daily UI is a free series of daily UI design challenges, design inspiration, and surprise rewards to make you become a better designer in 100 days. Their amazing daily reminders will motivate you to keep learning.

17. Dev.to

DEV is a community of software developers helping one another out. DEV provides a place for developers to collaborate and network while learning and sharing their knowledge.

18. DevRel Collective

DevRel Collective is a community of developer relations enthusiasts that exists to facilitate sharing information, resources, and encouragement among the DevRel community.

If you are actively involved in developer communities, advocacy, or event management, you should join this community.

19. Facebook Developer Circles

Developer Circles from Facebook is a program designed to create locally organized communities for developers. These communities educate and provide a forum for discussion and knowledge sharing around topics that are top-of-mind for developers in a particular market.

Find a local Developer Circle nearest to you here.

20. Google Developers Groups

GDG brings software developers with similar interests together to meet through meetups and hands-on workshops. The community welcomes everyone and anyone interested in tech from beginners to experienced professionals.``

Find a GDG chapter nearest to you here

Conclusion

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." – Margaret J. Wheatley

The bond in developer communities has grown from just "technical groups" to "family groups" where everyone is passionate about sharing knowledge, giving back, and helping everyone reach higher heights.

Isn't this just amazing? Cheers to the new age where sharing knowledge and togetherness become the order of the day. ??

Here’s why I did all this

Every day, I get emails from aspiring developers around the world who ask the same basic question:

“I’m __ years old. Am I too old to get hired as a developer?”

This is one of the most commonly asked questions in the entire field of software development.

To give you an idea of how many aspiring developers are worried about their age, I looked for variants of this question on Quora.

And sure enough, I found people of all ages who are worried that they’re “too old” to learn to code and get hired as a developer:

• Is 60 too old?
• Is 59 too old?
• Is 58 too old?
• Is 57 too old?
• Is 56 too old?
• Is 55 too old?
• Is 54 too old?
• Is 53 too old?
• Is 52 too old?
• Is 51 too old?
• Is 50 too old?
• Is 49 too old?
• Is 48 too old?
• Is 47 too old?
• Is 46 too old?
• Is 45 too old?
• Is 44 too old?
• Is 43 too old?
• Is 42 too old?
• Is 41 too old?
• Is 40 too old?
• Is 39 too old?
• Is 38 too old?
• Is 37 too old?
• Is 36 too old?
• Is 35 too old?
• Is 34 too old?
• Is 33 too old?
• Is 32 too old?
• Is 31 too old?
• Is 30 too old?
• Is 29 too old?
• Is 28 too old?
• Is 27 too old?
• Is 26 too old?
• Is 25 too old?
• Is 24 too old?
• Is 23 too old?
• Is 22 too old?
• Is 21 too old?
• Is 20 too old?
• Is 19 too old?
• Is 18 too old?
• Is 17 too old?
• Is 16 too old?
• Is 15 too old?
• Is 14 too old?

So what do you tell someone who’s panicking about whether it’s “too late” for them? Most people just say some variation of the old Walt Disney quote: “If you can dream it you can do it!”

And sure, I agree with that sentiment.

I spent my 20s working as a teacher. I didn’t learn to code until I was 30.

Before that, I couldn’t write basic JavaScript. I couldn’t write a SQL query. I couldn’t install Linux. Heck, I couldn’t even set up my WiFi router without my wife’s help.

I got my first software developer job at age 31.

So of course I believe that age is just a number. And that anyone who puts in the effort can learn to code well enough to get hired.

But how could I convince all these people who were asking this same question every day? Because saying “don’t stop believing” wasn’t working.

I gathered evidence so I could convince people to chill out about their age

I knew several people who were much older than me when they got their first developer job.

For example, one of my friends was a high school French teacher in her 50s. After taking some free online university courses, she got a job as a software engineer at Apple.

So I knew it was possible.

But my handful of anecdotes wasn’t enough to convince people to stop worrying about their age. They were watching the Hollywood movies where people under 30 are computer geniuses and all the people over 30 were clueless about technology.

A scene from the 2010 movie “The Social Network” that reinforced the worst stereotypes about developers.

So one Friday night, after trying to soothe an aspiring developer’s anxieties for the thousandth time, I reconsidered my approach.

I thought: “Maybe I can find a list of developers who got their first job in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. Then I can use that to convince people to stop worrying about their age so much.”

There were lists of older developers — many of whom had decades of coding experience.

But I couldn’t find any lists of people who had gotten their first developer job later in life.

So I tweeted.

It turns out a LOT of developers got their first tech job in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Here are some stories from a few developers who responded:

I built a list of 300 developers who started after 30

To get an idea of just how common it is for people to transition into software development in their 30s, 40s, and beyond, I created this Twitter list.

I’m going to continue to expand this list as more people approach me with their stories. So if you are a developer who got your first job after the age of 30, tweet at me and use the hashtag #DevAfter30 and I’ll add you to the list.

And if you’re learning to code later in life, don’t get discouraged. Know that this is quite common. And know that you’re in good company.

We discuss his journey to his current managerial role, what it's like to work at Mongo, how to start a meetup, and do's and don'ts for migrating from legacy codebases.

Harry started his tech career working for startups. He liked the excitement, he liked learning new things, and he liked showing off his skills. After working for a few startups, he stumbled upon a position at MongoDB. One short week after beginning the interview process, he was in.

The decision to leave his previous job was easier than he expected, and he reflected on the reasons he made the change:

"For me, it was a matter of taking what I could from my job at the time, but knowing when it was time to move on. One of the ways you know it's time to leave is when the company's getting more out of you than you're getting out of the company."

Once Harry was settled in at Mongo, he got right to work. After a couple years as an engineer working on various projects, he achieved one of his major goals and became a manager.

Harry and I discussed his relatively new position in detail. And while he's still in the process of figuring things out, he has some valuable insights into his transition.

"One of the most difficult things about being a manager is that there's no easy way to evaluate the success of your day. There are no milestones to say you've accomplished a lot. You might have a eureka! moment where you figure something out, but you're definitely living in the grey a lot more. Because it's people - they change by the day and hour and minute."

But one of the best things for Harry is how much he gets to learn - constantly, from many different people, and about many different things. In addition to reading about new programming languages, discussing what's new in the JavaScript ecosystem in his podcast, and making every effort to stay on top of new tech, Harry has learned more nuanced skills as well.

"One hard skill I needed to learn was being assertive and truthful when I needed to be. Most humans prefer that uncomfortable situations just resolve themselves...but if you wait six months [to deal with something], it becomes a dealbreaker."

In addition to managing his team, working on his podcast, YouTube channel, and blog, and reading programming handbooks for fun, Harry has been working to update MongoDB's tech stack and move away from their legacy codebase. In the process, he's developed some insights into such migrations.

"You have to have a good reason for doing it. And part of this is scolding my former self who would say 'yeah, just do it!' But having learned more, you need to have a good reason. For us, it's more maintainable, less error-prone, and better for recruiting."

"But don't rewrite everything - that's seldom the right answer. Occasionally there are exceptions, but they're exceptions."

When Harry isn't working or creating content, he hangs out with his wife and new son in New York. He encourages people getting into tech to keep at it and not get discouraged.

"Never give up. Just keep hustling. Take with a grain of salt the feedback you get from companies and have confidence in what you do and don't know. And stay humble. It's hard but you have to just want it and keep hustling and stay curious."

This interview is a 1-hour listen in your favorite podcast player app - just search for "freecodecamp" and you should find it.

If you have an Amazon Echo, you can just say "Alexa - play the freeCodeCamp podcast."

Or you can listen to it right here in your browser.

You can connect with Harry on Twitter here.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve lots of friends and classmates say to me:

“I have a great idea for an app. How about we work together?”

I’m happy that they’re thinking about creating something that they want to use or make a business out of it.

But often, all I can do for them is say:

“As a friend, I’d love to hear about your idea and give advice on mobile app development. But most likely, I wouldn’t be able to develop for you.”

Why?

1. Ideas are not enough

Often, the main motivation people have for creating an app is because they have an idea.

They think the idea is cool.

My positive reply often is,

“Yes, this is a good idea. There will be people who would like — maybe even need — to use your app.”

Then my less positive reply goes,

“Who is the closest competitor to your idea? Why do you think they didn’t succeed?”

These are the most important questions in grinding an idea.

This is also my polite way of saying: Ideas Are Cheap.

Ideas are nothing. Someone in this world must have the same idea, of some variation to yours. Nothing is original.

You should not start a company just because of an idea.

2. Startups are hard

To succeed with one is even harder.

And even if you do succeed, it will take many years.

I speak from 10 years of experience with 2 startups.

The first startup: I spent 7 years, as a founding member. The company is now 9 years old, yet it’s still struggling to become profitable. The only reason it hasn’t died is because the investor is also the co-founder, so think how much he has to lose first. How much stress can he endure?

The second startup: I joined after their Series A funding. It’s now 3 years old and recently had Series B, thus providing an extra year’s runway. Maintaining hockey stick growth is not easy, and the end of a runway is always in sight.

I don’t know about you. But I don’t have that many 10 years blocks of time ahead of me.

So I have to choose wisely on which path to take.

3. It isn’t worth risking our friendship

Any conflict between you and your friend is compounded when you become co-workers.

Mobile app development costs much more than you think. I can’t charge you less (let alone do things for free!) just because you’re my friend.

And if the business fails (90% will), then the friendship will be awkward. You will have lost a lot of money — some of which will have gone to pay me.

When things fail, people find reasons. And many times, it’s natural to blame the developer. People will say: the product wasn’t good enough.

All eyes will be on the developer, but that’s not really fair.

I value friendship, and all risks considered, I don’t sacrifice it.

4. Unequal bargains

In a tech startup, you need at least one technical person — the CTO or lead developer.

The “idea person” often becomes the “CEO” and promises to cover the marketing, sales, and fundraising.

It’s fair to split such responsibilities between two cofounders.

Yet, very often, my “idea person” friend is one with no experience in the area they handle. Neither has he worked in a startup before. And if they try to drive the product, it could get even uglier.

Having two co-founders with unequal experience and skill is a mismatch.

I love startups. But I love friends even more.

If only I had a friend who understood the risks startups face, had the experience to execute, and was psychologically prepared for failure.

Until that magical person comes along, I’m going to stay focused on working for professional acquaintances, and tell any friends who get the startup itch to do the same.