How and why I decided to start my own business

fireworks, Habr!
I recently retired from a rather enviable position (chief architect) in good company (Acronis) and with unwavering decision in the brain is no longer to be employed moved from Moscow back to Yerevan, where seven years ago in large numbers in the gold-domed-Nerezinovoy. Given the uniqueness of what happened and often asked question "but why?!" I decided to look into their own thoughts and voice them aloud to yourself and those who can draw in my reflection something useful. In short, this is a story about why I left a high-paying perspective job in international company for questionable prospects to start their own business, and how I'm going to continue to live.

a Little about me, if you want to understand the context of reflection

will a Little tell about myself that the reader was prepared for (perhaps slightly unusual) context in which I made a decision.

Thank you dotcom

Working as a programmer I started in 2000 when I was 19 years old, starting with the insanely high for those times for Armenia salary of $400. And it is in a hell of unemployment, not to mention the eternal problem of employment of young, otshivaem universal curse "and experience do you have?". You could say I was lucky as hell – I managed to cling to the last days the dot com bubble, and, having learned Qt in addition to studied at that time at least some level of C++, I managed to find a job in a company that was engaged in a losing business for the post – paid software for Linux.

Complex empty summary

So I first appeared constant access to a computer with a Pentium, which I started to eliminate "complex empty resume." This complex was the fact that when I was summary to apply to enter there except the C/C++, Pascal and basic was notorious nothing. Out of desperation I even put Microsoft Office that the paper was not too empty. But, once in front of a computer with a color monitor, I quickly began to eliminate the void summary. Quite quickly learned a lot of technologies and programs, ranging from HTML/CSS and web programming and finishing programming in the Linux kernel.

Strengthening of competence

Our miserable Desk with the explosion of the dot com bubble successfully went bankrupt, but I already had experience and a resume full of stuff that eased my career, during which I managed to pee on lots of languages and scripts to create and administer a couple of sites on LAMP, and IIS Oh-Oh, to design database, draw a design including Flash. With all this, I did not leave the complex empty summary, driven by which, I studied all the new technology, even if you are not going to use them. This quality left in me still and, I think, will remain till death – children's facilities are not so easy to win.

Moving to Moscow and financial fat

In Moscow, I moved in the same desire for professional growth. Not financially, but in terms of the professional – I wanted to be in a team of competent colleagues, and so I was quite happy and Armenian salary somewhere in the thousands of bucks. Moved from Acronis, which for seven years, was promoted from lead developer to chief architect. Revenue rose nearly three times, reaching about $6,000 per month with all sorts of bonuses after tax. However, my needs have remained at the same level as my wife (which most of my friends unanimously called device for the destruction of money) and I have not got, and he in addition to books and t-shirts do not buy anything. To buy an apartment in Moscow and get into the mortgage, I didn't either, so I have accumulated a cushion of $130K, stupidly lying on current accounts in banks, even without interest.

Reasons for leaving

Analyzing the factors that influenced my decision to leave the friendly staff, I have identified the following main aspects:

the
1. Passing the love of work
the
2. Bazaar ideas
the
3. Financial independence
the
4. Stagnation and struggle with windmills
the
5. Experiment on ourselves and the modern world

1. Passing the love of work

let's Start with the most insignificant, which, however, was the last straw.

I always believed that you can only work on his favorite work. If you don't like your job, think about that, even if you work from start to finish, no overtime, 40 hour work week takes up at least half of your active lifestyle. Accordingly, not getting pleasure from work, you only get half the pleasure of life, i.e. emotionally shorten their lives by half.

Because of its nature since the first days of work I was given to work with all my heart. With the advent of the new bosses my understanding of what it means to work with the soul, beginning to move away from the party line. As it turned out that I don't love the work, I went to look for another job that will love right.



Because my job is to love. Axiom.

2. Bazaar ideas

At some time in our organization came into Vogue the phrase "sell the idea". Particularly active I started to stumble on these trades ideas with climbing the career ladder, and having frequent meetings with those with whom we are not bound by relations of subordination. The phrase "sell the idea" is based on the marketing term "sell the idea", only an understanding thereof in the projection on the organisational structure has been perverted. If the original meaning selling idea benefits from those who are the idea buy (investors or customers), organizational structure, selling an idea, a maximum it was possible to obtain the consent of bought not to interfere with you to implement it. And as for this best exchange rate to buy it can afford even poor, in the end it was possible to spend a lot of time "selling the idea" to those who happened to be at the meeting. Suffering on such trades, I often wondered "why are all these people?". So I have the feeling that alone make this much faster than Bazaar at the fair ideas.



But really, if unable to do it himself, why to convince someone that it must be done?

3. Financial independence

At some point I found that my savings allow me to live without working, 20 years. Then I accidentally discovered that in Armenia Deposit interest not so dull as in Moscow, and up to 14.5% (and not some questionable banks, but, for example, VTB Bank branch). Such bets provide me with a percentage of my savings in the size of my Armenian wages before his departure to Moscow, i.e. three times more than you need for life in Armenia. In fact, the phenomenon is quite phenomenal and unexpected. If I put this amount in the arrangement in Moscow with the purchase of an apartment, car, high utility bills and prices, I would have a few years had to work on the money that would have gone into pockets unknown unknown uncle have overestimated the prices on everything. Meanwhile, you can just take the money and live on them.



Why work for money if money can work for you?

4. Stagnation and struggle with windmills

By nature I always loved and knew how to solve problems. Not easy to decide, as Mr. wolf from pulp Fiction, and to see where are the roots of the problem, and solve it so that it never came back again. This, in essence, is the task of the architect is to solve the problem, a problem class that implements this architectural decision. Moreover, to decide to not introduce new problems, and if implemented, then those that do not manifest themselves in the use cases expected by the system.
In the analysis of problems arising in a large organization, I noticed that the average developer spends only 2-10% of their time on the solution of user tasks, the rest of the time he spends on the solution implemented by yourself or by other developers problems that the user is even impossible to explain. For example, not understanding the interface legacy code (because someone designed it curve by solving its local problem, not thinking about the future clients), the developer writes a wrapper that makes the system's behavior even more incomprehensible, slows the Assembly, increases the code base for future readers. Then, struggling with a slow build, rather than to pant heavily and throw the extra code, wondering "why the fuck did so much code?", spell system quick Assembly, tracking the changed files and provides mapping for those modules that you need to rebuild. In this organizational swamp, the developers go into some state of things-in-themselves, solve problems, not business, not technology, but the complexity is specific to the organization – i.e. an experience that is not useful anywhere but in this organization.

Meanwhile, the world moves forward, new technologies, challenges and opportunities. Working in a large organization, it is very difficult to keep up with the world, because large organizations like to move away from third-party dependencies, because vendor lock-in is an anti-pattern, and lawyers are not asleep. In the end, working in a large organization, you solve problems introduced by a group of 20-30 people for themselves instead of trying to solve the problems, the solution of which can benefit millions.



I suddenly discovered that behind the world. You can't spell for iOS and Android, but know exactly of 20 wrappers need to cache the progress of the backup. It should not be.

5. Experiment on yourself and the modern world

Reading a book Hackers & Painters Paul Graham, a guru for startups in which he points out the advantages of web applications over desktop software, all of my subconscious feelings sort of came together. If you go to

the
1. Customers suffered with the installation of the software on the stable versions of Windows and Linux, and instead gave their data for processing to the web server, which is deployed on your own hundredfold tested environment
the
2. You had to raise its own data center with your server infrastructure, and instead you rented your desired infrastructure in the cloud
the
3. You had to look for customers, persuading them to buy your service, and instead they found you and advertise your useful site and service
the
4. You had to produce a ton of goods, to transport and store them, and instead you received the money for the calculation

what prevents you from alone to create a successful company? Why do you need a bunch of people who need to be persuaded that it is necessary to explain and to follow what they understood you correctly? A single well-tuned brain for a couple of seconds to hold a brainstorming, in which two brains, exchanging words – means deliberately serialized and slow, will lose a couple of days. Why you need many programmers, when so much has been written around the world? The more people you gain, the more bikes they will write to you. Limiting myself to the number of hands, you know the charm of reuse. Reuse, not as an act of courtesy to a colleague, and as a means of business survival.

Building the company's live

I got the feeling that the modern world is ripe for that with the ability to communicate with people and computers (gadgets) alone it was possible to organize a successful company. As successful I have set myself a criteria: to be able to sell for $5M. Being free from financial slavery "work to eat" and having knowledge in the field of IT and a bit of business, being communicative, organized, and persistent, than I am not the ideal candidate to test yourself and the modern world? It may well happen that the modern world has already matured to the programmers zapolnaya large organization, was released and began to work on ourselves – solving user problems, not their colleagues and managers.

In the book Black Swan Nassim Taleb has an interesting observation about what all of us feed only success stories, but much more similar enterprises fail miserably, remaining unknown. Rarely get to read the article "the story of an epic loser" or "why am I not fucking it." But these failures are much more useful than that to someone dumb luck, and it all turned out. So I decided to write on habré the process of building your own company is not after the fact, and in the course – as the discovery of interesting insights and facts. By showing your mistakes, bumps and failures in undisguised form. To other did not going on rake, which, because of certain circumstances I may fairly painless to go. And even if I don't succeed, then at least I'll be the first one to make "the story of an epic loser."

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru