Not to mention that at scale (as any D&D player will tell you), a 1% chance of anything is actually quite large. If it's a 1% chance of a bad thing, it's unacceptably large.
I've been regularly using em-dashes in my writing for most of my life -- including this sentence. Now I'm thinking, despite the plea of this article, that I should stop doing that. I absolutely don't want my writing to resemble the output of LLMs.
Sure, but those accomplishments pale in comparison to all of the deception over the years not just around those projects directly, but the larger number of projects that he talked up and that he didn't even have a chance of delivering on. Those appear to be just straight-up con jobs without any redeeming value.
Being a good con man doesn't mean you don't deliver anything. Delivering something is an important part of a good con.
I wonder how valid that test is, actually. Lots of people are aware that claims of "Made in USA" often don't actually mean the thing was made in the USA in the intuitive sense of the phrase and so disregard them.
Regardless, I would fully expect that most people would be swayed by price, especially when the price differential is as large as in that test.
After so many good brand names have been hollowed out, I am extremely skeptical that “Made in America” is anything but a sticker slapped on one SKU from the same factory line.
Given that all products need to make that mark is to be assembled in the country its something that has clearly been manipulated as a marketing strategy too often now and its certainly a part of the issue.
One of the best pieces of business advice I ever got was that a small business has advantages that a large business can only dream of. Ignoring those advantages and instead trying to act like a large business acts means that you're not playing to your strength and are instead playing a game that the large business is likely to crush you at.
If you're a small business, lean into being that and you'll have a much larger chance of success. Don't try to pretend that you're something you're not.
That is a challenging balancing act, although worth it to work on mastering.
Technology is a particularly difficult place to balance those things.
When we opened our small business we took the marketing approach that (not the exact pitch) we “bring the best of enterprise” with the “agility” of not being an enterprise.
We don’t market like that anymore because it’s not a good fit for small business customers, but we still have a focus on that idea internally.
Balancing that with the realities of a small business are hard. For example, we have internally managed 3-2-1 backups of almost all customer data, replicated geographically, and persisted with credentials that can’t also mutate backup data. That is somewhat time consuming to manage on the front end.
I’ve written on HN before about how we suffered with QuickBooks and eventually moved to an ERP. Most businesses our size would scoff at that, but some things are worth the expense to integrate various processes into a single pipeline.
Part of the problem for SMBs is that you can’t scale your humans like you can scale your servers. So for every hour I spent connecting the dots, sending DocuSigns, and fighting with QB was an hour I couldn’t spend on product/service/customer. Sometimes you can buy your way out of that. Sometimes you can engineer your way out of that. Figuring out which is which is one of the hardest parts.
Plus the ability to do extreme pivots on a dime. Also, you tend to get treated a little better generally as you aren't an impersonal corporation. You're a businessperson, with the emphasis on "person".
That was a long-winded way of not saying anything of substance.
Tautologically all business (big versus big included) are fundamentally different, and hence have different strengths and weaknesses.
Hence, it is not a priori true that the category of small businesses has unique advantage (as a category) over big businesses. You of course have done nothing to argue that they do.
It's a good point of comparison and common trap businesses make. They are pointing out that exclusively acting like big corp as a small business could lead to missed opportunities.
You basically dismissed someone for making a fair comparison because they didn't give you a concrete example like: A local coffee shop remembering customer names vs a large chain with a impersonal script.
Giving an example in this way is not a requirement, you can use your brain as well. Unless you just didn't read what they typed thoroughly enough and mistook their point.
This is true, but really the original comment was pretty abstract. It could literally be boiled down to "Small businesses and big businesses are different. Play to your strengths".
It might seem vague or rudimentary but it is a common occurrence in business. We can take the conversation deeper now if we'd like, If you don't feel the need to expand on the idea yourself or feel the poster didn't set you up to do so, that is understandable.
I think it's interesting to talk about how "act your size" can also be wrong. Sometimes fake-it-til-you-make-it is the goal. Contextually you should hold both ideas to be true and apply them appropriately.
Maybe you just thought the original post is a vague platitude and you don't want to give them the satisfaction but maybe we can share some of what we've experienced.
One thing I always think about is hiring generalists vs struggling to maintain departments you can't sustain. I understand businesses think this way, so it influences how I think about applying to roles. I'm currently in a generalist role and when searching I always look for smaller businesses because I find my impact is higher, and repetitive work is my greatest fear.
> it's interesting to talk about how "act your size" can also be wrong. Sometimes fake-it-til-you-make-it is the goal.
And sometimes they can both be useful at the same time. A while back I was contacted by a Fortune 500 company to build them some custom hardware. I'm the proverbial "one guy in a basement" so I could respond quickly to change requests without having to go through multiple meetings and their engineers appreciated that.
OTOH, as we got deeper into it, when I realized that they were planning to do most transactions by Purchase Order, I was really concerned about scaring them off by telling them I was really just one person, so I very quickly spun up an LLC in an attempt to look larger, at least to their Purchasing Dept. At the time I didn't realize that you can get an EIN (Employer Identification Number) while being a Sole Proprietorship, but creating the LLC just took a few minutes on the state Attorney General's site anyway.
> I think it's interesting to talk about how "act your size" can also be wrong. Sometimes fake-it-til-you-make-it is the goal.
This is a really interesting point, I think.
In my opinion, it depends on what your larger goal is. If your goal is to eventually become a big business, that changes your approach and "fake it till you make it" gains some validity. In a sense, those sorts of businesses are less "small businesses" and more "large businesses in their infancy".
You’ve also not added anything to the conversation. Instead of a snarky response, you could have asked for some examples of how small businesses have used their small size as an advantage. This may have led to insightful and constructive responses.
Have to disagree there, champ. This comment is now peak HN, as we've entirely derailed from the original topic but are still arguing about something with polite but arrogant undertones.
Also here's a link[1] to an article tangentially related to what I'm saying. I haven't read or, nor will you. It doesn't quite confirm what I'm saying, and it's possibly behind a paywall.
- A small business can live very well on delivering a product that makes a few hundred thousand dollar profit. Large companies can't be bothered with such small numbers so they don't even try.
I work with a recruiting agency to find short-term contract gigs while I'm looking for more permanent work. It gives me breathing room that allows me to be much more selective about which permanent positions I'm willing to take. "Short term" here means 3-6 month contracts, not a couple of days, so this may not meet your needs.
The key is to find a good agency. There are lots of bad ones. If this is an avenue that might interest you, I recommend asking around the dev crowd in your area to find out which ones are good.
> Some developers left. Most who stayed leveled up.
"Leveled up" is a subjective, loaded term. I assume what you mean here is "adapted to your way of doing things."
> And today, no one wants to go back.
Well, of course, because those who would have wanted to go back already left. This appears to be selection bias more than evidence that your approach is a good one.
To be clear, I'm not trying to imply that your approach isn't a good one. I'm just saying that the devs who remained not wanting to go back isn't evidence that it is.
You’re absolutely right to call that out — and I appreciate the thoughtful framing.
“Leveled up” is subjective, yes. What I meant more precisely is this: the devs who stayed stopped spending time on tasks like writing boilerplate logic or tweaking form validation, and started focusing on higher-order thinking — designing agent workflows, debugging reasoning paths, writing specs that are machine-parsable, and thinking in systems rather than syntax. That shift, in terms of skill depth and adaptability, is something I genuinely view as a level-up. But I agree, it’s through the lens of our environment.
And yes — absolutely fair on the selection bias. When I say “no one wants to go back,” I don’t mean it as proof the approach is universally better. It’s just true for our current team, within the culture and processes we’ve chosen to embrace. Those who didn’t align with this way of working left early — and I don’t hold that against them.
So your comment is a valuable nuance: internal satisfaction is a necessary condition for success, but not a sufficient one. Our team’s enthusiasm is a sign that the model can work — not that it will for everyone.
Not everyone wants to or has the intestinal fortitude to start their own business. Most people just want to do the job that excites them, not have a job running a business. Also, not everyone gets into the industry in order to maximize their income.
There will always be junior (and senior, for that matter, but this is about juniors) devs wanting to get hired. The industry would be stupid to avoid hiring them.
