Build In Public - Issue #17
Build In Public - Issue #17
Every "Publish" button is daunting, and exciting at the same time. I'm never ready to push it, and I don't think I'll ever be. Nevertheless, it's pushed at last. Let's see what's on the other side!
Let me start with a personal story. One that illustrates why I value building in public so highly. It was my first year of high school, and I had no skills & elevated ego. The typical Dunning Kruger effect when you overestimate how much you know. My new classmates were an incredible bunch. The type of people who’d be winning math competitions, and the sort of people that built websites over the summer to make money to buy a new Macbook. It intimidated me how good everyone around me was. I wanted to get in on it as well. I often grabbed my classmates & made them teach me how to code. On top of that, I started putting all my creations online.
The things I was putting out there weren’t good for the most part (and the code quality now kills me when I look through it!). At one point, I started re-creating in code what designers made on Dribbble. For example, the unsafe lock, created by Jan Vu Nam. And here’s my result, coded from scratch (you can click through the numbers). That was my first year of high school. And by the beginning of the summer, I received an email asking if I want a job. Someone noticed me and scooped me up.
Since then, I always kept putting things out there, regardless of how good they were or if anyone paid attention.
A couple of years after that, a new lesson came my way. I wanted to move to Prague & looking for a job & accommodation so I can sustain myself. I contacted my friend from the last job and got into a whole new thing. A non-profit co-working & co-living community called Techsquat. For me, that was one of those things that change your trajectory in a major way. Everyone in the community was incredibly accomplished in my eyes. Incredible designers, coders, and business people. And I got the wonderful opportunity to look over their shoulder while they were at work.
I can say with confidence that I've learned the most while sitting next to someone, and soaking in their process. Seeing a great designer design, make decisions, archive bad ideas, and explore the good ones. Or a much more experienced developer, walking me through the mundane process of finding an explanation of a bug so that they can fix it, and write automated tests so that it won't reappear again. It’s always humbling seeing a skillful person at their best.
Over the years, I hired a decent amount of junior people and was responsible for coaching them and helping them grow. For some time, I didn't like it very much. My ego was at fault. The juniors were always very eager to learn, so they'd ask a lot of questions. I often didn't know the answer, and when I did, it was only a surface-level answer. What a reality check that was every single time. I wasn't as knowledgeable as I thought I was. Explaining to them my work in as much detail as possible made me think about my work in as much detail as possible. If the work was subpar, it’d always surface sooner or later.
After a while, I started enjoying it more and more. With every question, my knowledge deepened, and my ego lowered. And other people's curiosity would then spark my own as well.
In retrospect, people back then saw me as way more senior than I really was. But that conditioned me to be prepared.
And that's the keyword here. Conditioning. Building in front of other people conditions you to deliver the best, and lowers your ego. Additionally, and maybe surprisingly, it builds confidence. When you’re battle-tested through a thousand questions, and if you care enough about your craft, you create a good understanding of the things you’re doing. You start understanding why something works and why something else doesn’t.
And that's what I love about building in public, or just in front of someone else. By putting your work out there, or working alongside someone, you're conditioning yourself to be ready. All while probably helping someone else be better. Everybody wins.
So, tighten the feedback loop. Publish your work, get opinions, talk to people, and get even some healthy criticism. If you’re a designer, don’t only share your finished work, share the process. If you’re a software engineer, share the code. Publish the source code of something that you keep re-using between projects. Or are you building something entirely different? Get it out there, and iterate. The world will be better with your ambitions & creations in it!
Let me finish with some words of caution, in my view, the people who always praise your work and cheer for you are not the ones you should listen to. The same way you’d avoid hearing from the haters (I never really had any of those, I guess I’m luckily not successful enough). If you allow a child to get away with everything, it won’t grow into a quality person. Don’t do the same to yourself. Get some healthy criticism from someone you know has your best interest at heart. For me, this was easy. I grew up in Eastern Europe, and people there are typically known for being pretty critical about things.
I’m occasionally asking specifically for critical feedback. I do this in my personal life, and even at my job. Very few people tend to lead with honesty. And if you specifically ask for some constructive criticism, you’ll typically not feel too bad about it.
PS: I haven’t been very active with these emails. Sometimes, life gets in the way. For me, it was mostly the fact that I didn’t know what to write about, and I was busy with my new job & side projects. Hopefully, I’ll be back occasionally, although I don’t expect to be writing every single week like I was at the beginning. If you enjoy what I’ve written, let me know! It’s a great motivation boost for me :)
PPS: I just thought of one additional benefit of building in public. Over a year ago, I spilled some liquid on my MacBook, destroying it. All my source files were there. If I wasn’t publishing my work, all of that would be gone. Luckily for me, the only price I paid was the price tag for a new laptop.
PPPS: This post couldn’t go through without me pitching a project I’ve been working on. Today it’s specifically one I kept pitching often to people. My game, Thamira: The Sorceress, is officially public on the app stores! It has a single-player & multiplayer mode (people say that building a multiplayer game is 10x more difficult than building a single-player one, and those people are 100% correct). If you wanna play multiplayer against someone, just text me ;) And also leave us some constructive feedback!