It takes a very special kind of a person to voluntarily choose to do things that no one else wants to do. Customers shouting at you, things broken beyond repair, setups so complicated that you can barely hold the whole thing in your head at once. Ten different threads tangled together into a big messy ball.
Given a choice between this and something easy and well-defined, why would anyone choose the first one?
Some days I can’t help but ask myself this question. Stuck on a wicked problem with no easy way out, I wish I could do something simple instead and be done for the day. Some days I’m too tired, or hadn’t slept well, and all these different floating pieces are too much for my brain to handle.
But the only thing that beats the satisfaction of solving something I’ve never solved before, is solving something no one has solved before. When you go down that road, there are no signposts to show you where the next step should be. Success isn’t guaranteed. Even if you do find success, there’s no way to estimate how much it will take.
Yet some people chose to do this, not despite all of these things, but precisely because it’s unpredictable, messy and hard. Predictable and stable means boring. They’re looking for an adventure, and are not afraid to get their hands dirty.
These are my favorite kind of people.
And I’m incredibly lucky to have so many of them on my team.