Do Not Build SaaS (opens in new tab)

"Don't Build SaaS!" -- Created with Google Docs, including meta tags targeting Twitter, and loading Google Analytics.

The author forgets that people need to eat and only a small slice of deep tech ever becomes real. It seems to me that this is written from a place of privilege, where a FAANG job isn't true progress for your bloodline.

Strivers are amazing human beings. It's okay to be a striver that works at Google. It's okay to build logging tools. We'll need those things in the future, too.

We all learn our lessons in different orders and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If we could have solved the really big problems that remain with SaaS apps, we probably would have already. We're really good at building them. Most of the really big problems the world is facing require really hard solutions. Often this involves commercializing core research (like the foundation model companies) or building in atoms and not just bits. The sheer amount of talent and money going into SaaS feels like a massive misallocation of resources.

To be fair, Elon's journey began with ~Paypal, which funded his later, more ambitious projects.

(Also not sure if it matters but I vouched for this after it was flagged. I doubt many YC founders [or PG] would be offended by this. It's clearly in jest.)

The sad part is most of biotech stuff peddled ends up nowhere or quickly eaten up by big pharma. They do it for the money too. Somehow FAANG is worse?

This is just propaganda trivializing programming. Unfortunately all other professions put themselves on a pedestal whereas programmers constantly are self deprecating their profession.

If we already have UBI(universal basic income), brilliant people may be more willing to develop free software and change the world. I don't know why we haven't. Industrialization, education and welfare should solve every problem.

I sympathize with these ideas - I love free software, self-hosted stuff, etc.

But how are we supposed to make money without proprietary software or SaaS? People always say "it's free as in freedom, not free as in zero price" but in practice, free software usually is free as in zero price. I guess you can work for a company that will pay you to write free software or be sponsored to write free software, but outside of that, it seems pretty difficult to monetize ethically pure software.

This is like reading from zero to one, but instead in a rather well put web version of a pamphlet.

I don't think I'm the intended audience for this. I don't particularly want to build the foundations of tomorrow. I want to enjoy a comfortable life with my family. If I get to write some fun software along the way then that's cool too, but certainly a distant second place.

Sadly just about all of hard tech/engineering is heavily gatekeeped by ABET and the like, even for pure SWE roles. So those of us without the credentials are doomed to a life of "drudgery" wasted away on silly web apps.

People often build SaaS because of the business model.

If they're not interested in generating income, Open Source is typically the next stop.

This smacks of AI trying to be profound.

I was hoping more for a tear-down of how rent-seeking SaaS has ruined software in general. Instead, we got a strange flavor of whataboutism

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