- spend a lot of time with new products and tech (no achievement)
- try them really out (no achievement)
- do interviews and they are not fantastic (no achievement)
- nowadays build a huge network w/Facebook, G+, LinkedIn (no achievment)
It is no achievement to blog while sitting for years at Microsoft doing some wishy-washy corporate job. But it is an achievement to build a startup, get traction and raise money w/empty pockets and a family to feed -- and that's just more than "programming". Don't get me wrong but this is a different psychological level than blogging from your safe job.
Everybody can - in theory. But few people do and make the results freely available.
I'm a not a big Scoble fan, I find him verbos, and sometimes smug and self-regarding. I dropped him from my Google+ circles due to the sheer volume of marginally useful stuff.
He hasn't been at Microsoft in years, and has taken positions at 'upstart' type companies or divisions within larger companies (podtech and rackspace spring to mind).
His 'blogging from his safe job' involves a fair amount of travel, disruption to routine home/family life, and an insane amount of work that goes in to his productions (hint - he does a lot of video, not just 'text blogging').
All that said, I think he (and most of tech journalism) has given most startups a bit of a free pass, and glad to see his current stance (although it feels about 5 years too late).
Either you start a start-up or you don't -- just being employed by an startup doesn't make you a good advisor for founders -- again Scoble never founded something, he is just blogging while having a safe job.
> So you only have binary states for achievement? Blog:0, Startup:1?
We talk past each other. Blogging is fine and it's a achievement with a certain scale. But he is blogging from a safe job (!!) -- that's something completely different to starting a venture after you have burnt your boats. And he is giving advice about something he doesn't have a clue of.
- spend a lot of time with new products and tech (no achievement)
- try them really out (no achievement)
- do interviews and they are not fantastic (no achievement)
- nowadays build a huge network w/Facebook, G+, LinkedIn (no achievment)
It is no achievement to blog while sitting for years at Microsoft doing some wishy-washy corporate job. But it is an achievement to build a startup, get traction and raise money w/empty pockets and a family to feed -- and that's just more than "programming". Don't get me wrong but this is a different psychological level than blogging from your safe job.