Austin’s Greatest Myth: The Tech Industry

“i do have some money to produce the project, but probably nowhere near the amount to cover the creative and labor that will most likely go into it. which is exactly why i’m looking for a small team to invest as much in the project as we most likely will do.”

- Some guy in Austin pitching a project involving several blogs

Here is a prime example of what’s wrong with everything web-related in Austin.  In the short time I’ve been involved in the industry here, I’ve seen rampant greed, get-rich-quick schemes, idiotic ideas, awful code, shoddy (and sometimes illegal) business practices, and I’ve run into more than one person who was run out of Silicon Valley for being an asshole. And then there’s this guy, Oblivious Guy, who wants the world delivered to his virtual doorstep for the cost of a cappuccino.

Now, Oblivious Guy isn’t necessarily malicious. In fact, he probably means well. But like so many others in Austin, he has no understanding of the amount of work he’s asking for and probably lacks even a basic grasp of the highest-level details. Don’t believe him if he says he does; he’s lying. This lack of understanding translates to an inability to justify the cost of the project. Eventually, either no one will contract with him, or some poor schmuck will take on the project and lose his or her shirt in the process. Either way, the result is anything but what was desired.

Oblivious Guy isn’t alone in Austin. He’s got lots of friends. At the risk of sounding elitist, most people in Austin generally just don’t “get it.”

“Must have 15 years of experience with AJAX.”

By “get it,” I mean several things.

• They don’t understand the time that goes into even a basic project.
• They don’t understand the scope of what they’re asking for because…
• They don’t understand a thing about the technologies they’re asking you to use.
• They don’t understand specialization; in other words, they don’t understand why you aren’t able to fix their Novell network, figure out why their printer isn’t working with Vista, install Apache on their Linux box, design a new front-end for their website (including some nifty Flash animation!), and write code in all of the following languages: C, C++, Ruby, Python, Assembly, Perl, Java, PHP, Objective-C, C#, and ASP.

“After all, you’re a ‘computer person,’ right? Doesn’t that mean you can do everything? This stuff should be a snap, right? Which means it shouldn’t cost much, yeah? Why isn’t it done yet?”

“Can we use Facebook as a CMS for SEO?”

People here operate on buzz words and hope, and they pay in Twix and compliments. And when you can’t deliver magic on-demand, they break out the torches and rant about how technology is a total waste of time and money. If you’re really lucky, they’ll take their anger out on you, too.

Austin has been heralded as a great center of technology. That’s a lie. It makes about as much sense as applying the same label to a farming community in Iowa. The people could give a rat’s ass about technology. But the kindly folk in Iowa are probably far less hell-bent on getting rich off of some douchey, harebrained scheme.

“Like…whatever.”

With regard to technology, Austin’s got a lot of growing up to do. People here need to get educated before they start pestering others to build them a “blog/platform that will be praised, copied, written about, awarded and set the pace for blah blah blah blah.” In the process, perhaps they’ll discover the value inherent in the work that’s necessary to bring their plans to fruition. Maybe they’ll realize that what they’re proposing is going to actually cost something and that a website or an application or a spreadsheet has value. Possibly most important of all, maybe they’ll realize that the people who do all of this work are intelligent, useful, and worthy of a decent paycheck.

I hate to post such an Anti-Austin rant on the first day of South by Southwest, but this just fell into my lap first-thing this morning, and I felt the need to get it out. It’s been building for a while.

Update: It seems I’m not the only one to take issue with Oblivious Guy’s request. And it appears he’s been pitching this project for at least a couple of months.