RC 10 – Understanding and Growing Business

by Charles Max Wood on February 25, 2010

In order to contribute as an employee or a freelance developer, we need to understand the nature of business. Specifically, we need to understand the nature of how our employer or client makes money so we understand our contribution and so we recognize where our value is.

Once we understand the nature of business, we can look for other pain points people are facing and find ways to solve those problems. That’s how we get paid.

Here are some resources for starting your own online or otherwise business.

Here’s the cool stuff I get to do at work.

Download this Episode

Tagged as: business, employers, entrepreneurship, experience, freelancing, initiative, process, training, work

  • ruvysiddhi

    good episode with some good tips. i would like to see a future episode where you interview a developer that was originally an artist/designer. i do not hear many stories like this. i admit that i am originally an artist and now learning ruby and then rails.

    thanks and take care

    • http://charlesmaxwood.com Chuck

      I have a few friends who have done both development and design. Would you be interested in someone who has been programming now for a while? or would you like someone with whom the transition is still a little fresh?

  • ruvysiddhi

    also, i wanted to say that I plan to design & develop web apps on my own. i do not like the idea of having employees or an employer. i should also mention that before beginning my journey in learning ruby, i was searching for developers that i could collaborate with. most of them would not work for company equity and the idea of getting angel money seemed to complex (travelling, loss of control). so i had to take a hit and start to learn Ruby. I say “take a hit” because now I am looking at up to a year most likely before my first app is deployed. perhaps it will take less time.

    ok, done. thanks again.

  • rubysiddhi

    Hey Chuck,

    I actually would love to hear from both and if possible a few from each category. Perhaps that is asking for two much but, when multiple perspectives are presented, one can see a more truthful representation of reality. Like for me, I was thinking about getting into development and was kind of unsure and scared about it because I was used to primarily the right brain activity of designing. Sure there is some, or quite a bit, of left brain activity going on in order to design user friendly GUIs but when you start talking about back end development, that is a whole ‘nother dimension.

    I think there are probably a lot of designers out there who would seriously benefit from a podcast in which several designers turned designer/developer are interviewed. It would be interesting and inspiring for them to hear about the different paths they took in learning development. Some might have just learnt from books, some might have taken a real world course in a university/college and some might have gone the online course route.

    It would also be interesting hear an interview with someone that is currently running a one person operation. Doing the design and development all on their own. All I ever hear about are big or small teams that chop up the tasks into sections. It might be interesting to also hear about the positives and negatives of doing it all yourself. Maybe that could be another episode. I don’t know. Of course most people will probably never be in that situation but its still interesting.

    Thanks,
    Xaviour

  • http://charlesmaxwood.com Chuck

    I’m working things out so I can get one of the developers I worked with when I first transitioned to full time programming. He’s an artist who turned programmer about 10 years ago. Incidentally, I have another friend who I worked with who just made the transition from graphic design to development about a year ago.
    Those interviews should come out within the next month.

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