Any truly popular art relies on finding an emotional hook that’s specific enough to identify with strongly but broad enough that most people can see themselves in it. Everyone’s felt their boss is an asshole and their underlings are idiots, so they identify with that emotion rather than the specifics of Dilbert being an engineer. Most of Dilbert’s complaints map pretty well to the conflict between any other kind of individual contributor role dealing with management.
This kind of just-so story is easy to write after the fact. It's harder to see the future at the time.
How many people read a version of the same story and pivoted their company to focus on SecondLife, NFTs, blockchain or whatever else technology was hyped at the time and tanked? That's the other half of this story.
You can replicate real life, but it's kind of boring.
- 3D printing
Became a useful industrial tool, but home 3D printing never went mainstream. At one point Office Depot offered 3D printing. No longer.
- Self-driving minibuses
Several startups built these, and some were deployed. Never really caught on. You'd think that airport parking shuttles and such would use these, but they don't.
- Small gas turbines
Power for cars, buses, trucks, backup power, and other things where you need tens to hundreds of kilowatts in a small package. All those things were built and worked. But the technology never became cheap. Aircraft APUs for large aircraft and the US Army's M1 tank variants remain one of the few deployed applications. The frustration of turbine engines is that below bizjet size, smaller units are not much cheaper.
- 3D TV
That got far enough that 3D TV sets were in stores. But they didn't sell.
- Nuclear power
Works, mostly, but isn't really cost-effective. Failures are very expensive and require evacuating sizable areas.
- Proof of correctness for programs
After forty years, it's still a clunky process.
- Maglev trains
Works, but insanely expensive.
- The Segway
Works, but scooters do the same job with less expense.
- 3D input devices
They used to be seen at trade shows, but it turns out that they don't make 3D input easier.
Metaverse (virtual worlds) did catch on - virtual offices and storefronts didn't really catch on, but people enjoy virtual worlds for: competitive and cooperative gaming; virtual fashion and environment construction; chat and social interaction; storytelling; performance; etc. Mostly non-commerce recreation activities. Look at the success of fortnite, minecraft, world of warcraft, etc. These share the dimension of shared recreational experiences and activities that give people a reason to spend time in the virtual world.
Tax, work rights, compliance, labor protections and entitlements all get pretty complicated. Some countries have high levels of public holidays, rules around dismissal that get legally complicated in the case of downsizing. It's not simply a thing that can be handled by a SAAS.
Though it is a thing that can be handled by Umbrella-corporation-as-a-Service such as Remote.com - that is their whole business model. (Not cheap though - $7k per employee per year.)
it can handle part of it, it doesn't solve for a lot of things around compliance and risk. They might help you understand local compliance, but the business still needs to be actually compliant. Just look at the mess Twitter got into trying to downsize their international operations. If you're an american startup, then you have to balance the tradeoff of risk in having international staff that might require considerable thought in managing them, vs having a single compliance profile.
The writing's been on the wall for Australian neobanks for several years. 86400 got bought for its tech, Xinja went bust, Up is mostly a front end for Adelaide / Bendigo bank, a bunch of smaller players blew up on the launchpad. The only real way to make money in banking is through lending. If you're a massive player you can make money offering transaction accounts but only if you're the holder of the bulk of your customers funds. The players that might make it through the next couple of years offer lending on their own balance sheet (banks, lenders like SocietyOne), lenders who sell qualified leads to banks who lend on their balance sheet, and possibly one or two BNPL players if they don't get regulated out of existence.
Jaycar still does a lot of this! The one in Central Park Sydney still does a lot of workshops, they have a maker hub, sell a lot of the class electronic components and things like that. Nothing like it used to be with Dick Smith and Radio Shack everywhere, but there's still a few places around.
The maker hub is pretty cool! They have a 3D printer service, where for ~$0.40 per gram you can bring your STL file, and they will print it while you watch a movie at the Cinemas next door. I wish there were more places like this in Sydney.
I have floated the idea of starting a hackerspace in Sydney City with a bunch of friends, but it has never really got beyond the talking phase. The cost of renting a small (~90 sqm) workshop/office space in the CBD makes it cost prohibitive without a large amount of members joining. I wonder how many people would be interested in setting up a co-op for this?
I wonder whether you could approach the startup hub or one of the coworking spaces there and see if they’re keen on putting some space aside for it? Occupancy is waaay down and will probably stay that way for quite a while.
Actually, I could probably have a conversation with the space I’m in - if you wanted to reach out to me?
I didn't encounter DSE until the mid 2000s when I moved to NZ, but the Jaycar of today stocks way more components than did the DSE of 20 years ago. Jaycar even keeps a stock of 74LS TTL chips behind the counter!
Jaycar has taken over the "over-priced retail" segment of the electronics store market that DSE used to hold (and Tandy before that). But most of the old stores are gone as everything has moved online.
I don't know that is entirely true. My local Jaycar (regional Australia) is still a good source for smaller bits and bobs, and I buy a lot of stuff there like circuit board varnish that nobody else would bother to stock. even then I don't mind paying a small premium for a USB cable or whatever because having a jaycar locally is fantastic for what I do.
They still have a decent selection of things like soldering irons and other tools and a little selection of Raspberry Pi and Arduino kits, along with hobby cases, switches, plugs, wire, solder, batteries etc.
Do a detailed post-mortem, ensure you can learn from it. Remember that the correctness of a decision is about whether you made the right choice with the information you had at the time, not whether the project succeeded. Many projects succeed in spite of poor decisions, not because of them. If there are things you could have done at the time to improve the chances of success, acknowledge them and ensure you do them next time.
You have a good track record, so do not feel bad about one failure. No-one succeeds every time, and the occasional failure is necessary to ensure we learn how to deal with adversity and become more resilient.
You are 23. You are not a failure. You have a passion, and a talent, and dedication. You have simply identified an area of your life that you'd like to improve. You might feel like life has passed you by, it has not. 23 is incredibly young, and many people are going through the same things you are. People go through the same ebbs and flows all through their lives. It is natural.
Tinder isn't great, get rid of it for now. Instead, focus on getting out of the house (to the extent you are able during Covid) and doing things that will allow you to meet people. Join a hiking group, take up a sport, join a book club. You will meet people naturally, without the pressure to 'match'.
third option is to go and work somewhere that builds software that helps people make product decisions - think a Dovetail, Figma, Atlassian etc. Your perspective will make you an effective engineering leader!
