Lazy Man and Money

Why I Don’t Buy Digital Media

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[Caution, I’m going to get on my soapbox for this post. If you are not interested in soapboxes, I suggest you avert your eyes]

Yesterday, I touched on the Legality of IPodMeister’s digitizer service. Bringing up the First-Sale doctrine opened up a can of worms in my mind.

I love digital media, but I won’t pay for it (or steal it obviously). I have never purchased a song from the iTunes Store. For too many years, all the songs were looked up so that they’d only play on certain Apple products. There were workarounds, but they were less than convenient for this Lazy Man. The iTunes Store is heading in the right direction making it so their songs do play everywhere (or so I’ve read). You could burn a CD of the songs you bought on iTunes and then rip that to MP3. There was some software that was a little more direct, but it just seemed to be a gamble. If I could spent money and get something without restrictions, why spend money and get restrictions? It’s no problem to sell a CD to someone, but have you ever tried to sell a song you purchased on iTunes? Good luck with that.

I like the idea of the Amazon Kindle. I was very close to saying that I love it. After all it’s a nice way to carry pile of books with you while traveling. However, when I looked at the Kindle in depth, I saw too many drawbacks. People aren’t likely to steal a book at the beach if you go for a swim. If I like a book, I can’t lend it to a friend. And like the iTunes Store, you can’t sell the books you bought to others.

Amazon gets around this by stating in their End User Licensing Agreement (EULA), that you aren’t really buying the book, but the rights to read it. You can read more here. Okay, I can play ball with that restriction, but you need to give me something else in return… like a much cheaper price. Of course as CNET’s Rick Broda points out you often don’t save much money on eBooks. You would expect a lot of savings considering that eBooks eliminate the need for: Paper, ink, shipping (gasoline, trucks, and drivers), warehouse storage, shelf space, sales staff, etc. but that’s not the case. When you give up the rights to sell the book it’s looking like a worse deal.

I don’t want to pretend that there are no advantages to eBooks. There are features like search and digital annotation in addition to the aforementioned portability that are quite nice. In the end though, I think it comes up to be a wash or regular paper books having the advantage. This disappoints me, because I think we should be making moving forward with innovation and eBooks could be a large part of that – except that arbitrary restrictions hold them back.

It’s that right of first sale that I don’t understand. It would be technically easy for Amazon (and others) to implement one of two things

  • Credit an Owner’s Account a Percentage for Deletion of the eBook – In this scenario, you are essentially selling the book back to Amazon. Why would Amazon buy the book back? Simply because they know you A) are more likely to buy a book in the first place knowing that you can sell it back and B) will use the credit to buy more books hence making them more sales.
  • Allow People to Sell their eBooks – It’s easy to transfer the “Amazon license” from one account to another. In fact, Barnes and Noble’s new Kindle competitor, the Nook allows you to lend eBooks to others, as long as you only do it once per book for a maximum of 14 days. It is a baby step in the right direction.

Some say that publishers don’t want this digital media transferable because it’s simply too easy and would cut into sales. People might just buy the first hundred thousand copies while the cheap guys (like myself) wait for them to finish and then buy them for the lowest price. I don’t know why publishers fear this so much because that already happens. You can buy used books on Amazon. You can use PaperBackSwap.com to get books for free. And then there is that library system.

The Best Digital Media Solution

The RIAA should maintain some kind of huge database that notes the digital rights that everyone has. As long as you paid for the rights, you can get the music in any form you wish for a nominal free (downloading for free, a mix CD for a buck or two, etc.). Sure it’s a privacy nightmare. However, I think consumers would buy into it. There are a lot of consumers out there who are fed up after buying Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic in 5 times (vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, iTunes). The RIAA says that a lot of the cost is paying the people producing the album, but if you paid those people with your vinyl purchase, why do you have to pay them again for the cassette version? If my CD gets scratched, it should be replaceable for the cost of the CD as all the parties are already properly compensated. If Toys in the Attic gets remastered or if we are talking movies with DVD extras, it’s fair to charge the consumer a bit more to upgrade their license. However, the consumer should get the choice to keep the license for the previous work which they’ve paid for.

This solution would work for all digital media. If I bought a book on a Kindle and later decide that the Nook is a better device, whatever organization that binds book publishers should transfer over that license for easy downloading.

It’s inevitable that we get there, it’s just going to take time for media publishers and owners to realize that this is the fair way to make sure that everyone gets compensated fairly.

What if History Doesn’t Repeat Itself?

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Back in 2006, I had a revelation. I was a software engineer and I made decent money. However, there was a lot of talk about off-shoring all kinds of software projects. I looked into it and with companies like Elance, I realized that there could be a major shift coming sooner than I thought. I looked at into my heart and it didn’t take long to realize that software engineering didn’t interest me enough to motivate me to be the expert I would have to become to justify my salary. That’s why I started this site. I needed to find other ways to supplement my income for the day when I would transition out of software engineering. That day happened in October, 2007 and I haven’t looked back. If I could talk to my old manager again, I’d give him a great big hug, say thanks, and ask if he’d do one more impression of the old child molester on Family Guy or sing a Kelly Clarkson song.

What does this have to do with history? The world is changing – extremely fast. Detroit used to be a thriving hotbed of wealth. Now it needs bailouts just to keep afloat for another few months. At last 2007’s American Pharmacists Association, a distinguished speaker said that companies were exploring outsourcing clinical pharmacy studies oversea. Shoot the data over the Internet, have a pharmacist there analyze it and shoot the results back. It’s that simple and a lot cheaper. At some level, either Americans have to start providing more value (how?) or one of two things is going to happen: American wages will drop or other countries’ wages will rise. I imagine it will meet somewhere in the middle.

This has me thinking… for years financial advisers and Money magazine have repeated the 8-10% historic rate of return on stocks. Can we trust this history? What were the factors that contributed to that history? When I was growing up, I remember seeing things that said, Made in USA. I don’t know if I’ve read that phrase in the last ten years. Might that impact the historical rate of return of US stocks? I think it might.

I often read the historical rates of return on real estate. It’s had a big run and it seemed that around 2004 everyone was living by the “it always it goes up” credo. Well today we’ve learned that it’s not entirely true. Perhaps the reason real estate jumped up over the 30 years is due to women getting more lucrative jobs and families finding themselves with more money. If people have more money, they can bid up the price of homes. If that theory is right, the blast of extra income was a one-time event. In the end, real estate prices have to track wages or people will be forced to stop buying.

What I take from this is that you should believe the popular mutual fund disclosure: past performance is no guarantee of future results. I’d take it a step further and say that past performance might not even be a good indicator of future results. Does that mean you should stop investing? I think you should look for opportunities in this changing world. If you think that television is going to go Internet via sites like Hulu and YouTube, perhaps a investing in Internet infrastructure is a good move (Cisco comes to mind). If you think that we are going to be slow to adopt solar technology, perhaps you should invest in oil. If you think that solar technology is going to be big in ten years (a point I wouldn’t argue), perhaps you could invest in Claymore/MAC Global Solar Index or Market Vectors Solar Energy.

Does this mean that everyone in the United States is doomed? No. Now is the time to be proactive and think about the future of your field and your career. It’s time to take a few minutes and not think about what’s for dinner tonight, but what your long term plan is (unless you are already nearing retirement. In that case just carry on :-).

A final thought, this month’s Money magazine points out that Japan has been in a bear market for 19 years – very much a whole generation. I wonder what the Japanese version of Money magazine says about historic rates of return.

Five Thoughts To My Future Children…

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I got the latest edition of Money Magazine yesterday, and Pat Regnier in his The Bottom Line column used the letter to his children as a literary device. It’s not unique (I’ve even written a letter to my high school self in the past), but nonetheless, I thought the idea was worth stealing flattering Mr. Regnier with my own letter to my own children. [Note: I probably wouldn’t use bullets and bolding in a real letter to my children, but I think you’ll find it easier to read.]

Dear Xetra and Dax,

  • Your Names – Sorry about the names. They seemed cool at the time. I didn’t think your mom would take my bet. Even so, Matt Cassel himself didn’t expect to win the Super Bowl.
  • Your Education – I’ve seen a lot of specialists make a lot of money. I was a specialist myself – one of a dozen or so people in the United States who could program a computer in a very propietary computer language. However, like me, a lot of specialists lose their jobs when that specialty goes away and have nothing to fall back on. There’s something to said about doing one thing and doing it well, but there’s also a lot to be said for networking well, writing well, speaking well, and knowing technology well. There are a lot of other valuable skills as well, but that’s a fine start.
  • Your Time – It’s the most valuable commodity you have. Right now, you probably view it as an infinite resource. It gets more finite with each passing minute. Look for ways to do something well once instead of having to do repetitive work. Many mistake your Dad as Lazy, but it’s more about being efficient with your time.
  • Your Money – If you haven’t learned it by reading Dad’s website by now, money is important. It buys you freedom from doing things that you don’t want to do. It buys you freedom to do the things that you do want to do. It also buys you the ability to help friends and family in time of trouble.
  • Your Happiness – I don’t have it quite perfected yet, but I’ve been working on a recipe for this. Beyond that, I’ve found four factors of focus: family, friends, freedoms, and fitness.

Money Does Buy Happiness… Imagine that!

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It’s long been assumed that money doesn’t buy happiness. There was a famous study in the 70s (PDF) that supported this claim. It concluded that as long as your basic needs are met, money doesn’t buy happiness – it’s money relative to the people around you. If you don’t believe the study, what about the anecdotal evidence of lottery winners reporting that they are less happier after winning? When I think about it, some of the happiest people I know aren’t particularly rich, but have good friends, family, and hobbies that they enjoy.

New York Times published an article yesterday saying that maybe everything has changed, money does buy happiness after all. In my opinion, this is the defining statistic:

In the United States, about 90 percent of people in households making at least $250,000 a year called themselves “very happy” in a recent Gallup Poll. In households with income below $30,000, only 42 percent of people gave that answer.

I think you have to look at money as a way to buy various freedoms. If you win the lottery, you might not need a day job, which gives you a lot of freedom. However, you now have cousin Nick asking you to help him out of his credit card problem. You trade one stress for another. If you are a CEO of a big company, you have plenty of money. But then you have to deal with all the responsibility that comes with it. If a friend comes up with great tickets to the big game, you often have to say no and get back to work.

I think it’s very difficult to find that happiness balance. Having money (and not the responsibility that comes with it) seems like a way to reduce those obstacles to a very happy life.

Responses to “Is Software Development Slowly Killing Me?”

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I got a lot of intelligent responses my question of “Is software development slowly killing me?” I thought I’d like to cover a couple as a weekend bonus. Since it’s a borderline personal finance topic, it may be worth skipping if you are not into that kind of thing.

One of the best responses was from Programmer who said:

Have you tried learning a new or growing technology? Go where the demand is, become an expert, and work as a consultant to maximize your earnings… The best paid people aren’t the code monkeys, but the ones who learn new tech. on their own, love what they do, and as a result have excellent skills because they’re passionate about their tech… But, if you’re lazy, then you’re probably not worth a premium consulting rate anyway. Right?

My points:

  • I have consulted and at $150+/hr. Unfortunately, I was skilled in a rare technology that no longer has the demand or potential to earn that. I’m not sure consulting is the answer for everyone as Programmer implied to be.
  • I have gone where demand is (Silicon Valley), learned new technology (for me that was Java), but I have not become an “expert” or a consultant (yet). I didn’t get to mentioning it, but one of the conversations I had with the friend was how Java (which is where the demand is nowadays) is extremely slow to get an application up and going. Someone in my last company had the equivalent of 200 lines of code to simulate a light bulbs state: on or off. That is not something to be passionate doing or something that motivates me to become an expert. It’s something that motivates me to create a website that can me money in way other than programming and leave it to brilliant people in third world countries who will do it for much less than myself.
  • As far as being lazy, my name is a reference to many articles about lazy programmers being the best kind of programmers: see this article and this one.

Here are some statements that I found myself nodding in agreement with…
Used Vans Girl said, “I think the problem isn’t programming its monotony.” Brip Blap echoed that with “Anything you do as a routine becomes dull.”
East Side Food Geek said, “It sounds to me like software development ISN’T killing you, but rather the jobs you’ve had…. In any case, your side business gives you some freedom to be picky, to rebuild your personal brand and reenter the marketplace on your own terms.” This comment was dead on and a reason why I started to look to side business. And I’ve found that as I start to look in the workplace, I can be extremely picky.
Ryuko mentioned “coding would not be a viable job, especially since more and more of them are being outsourced.” I agree with that. AskDong said, “I often feel the same way. I’m burnt out, and often feel i’m letting my coworkers down. It really is a terrible feeling to want to do more but somehow not being able to muster it.” Yep, I couldn’t agree more with that.

And the one thing that I found wasn’t true IN MY EXPERIENCE (I might need to just be in different places) as a Senior Software Engineer…
Kitty said, “One shouldn’t confuse a software engineer with an application programmer, though, as some posters above seemed to do. Software engineering is not about coding, it is about system architecture, design, algorithms, problem-solving, ability to learn new technologies, creativity. Programming is the most trivial part of the job.”
It should be that way, but I’ve found that companies often already have architecture and technologies in place and just need to extend it. That reduces the amount of design, creativity, and even algorithms that I could use. It left me with only programming. Often times I was doing very repetitive cut and pasting. This leads me to believe that it was more the job than anything else.