Can Y’all Give Writing Platforms A Break Already?

A software engineer’s fight against all the criticism popular writing platforms get.

Undoubtedly, over the years I’ve been known to be a harsh critic of many things. I tried to put an end to it, but failed miserably, so ended up somewhere halfway at tamed pragmatism with a side of devil’s advocate. The reality is, I can’t un-see problems, nor can I ignore them, but what I can do, is express my view or at least attempt to do so fairly, in a non-aggressive manner.

This exercise, however, doesn’t seem to be all that popular with the masses, and after Simily’s latest outage in January, I started looking into it, and thoughts started brewing in my head. The short version? Y’all are (mostly) wrong. The not so short version… well, keep on reading. I’ll limit my context to Simily and Medium, but feel free to apply it to more or less anything else out there.

A way overdue lesson on startups

While Medium itself can hardly be called a startup, it’s important to understand that the definition of what a startup is, isn’t all that black and white. Takes less than a 10-minute read on LinkedIn to understand not just the main characteristics of a startup but also the potential variations, and perspectives on what constitutes one.

As someone who worked in a startup before, that failed after three years, I can tell you that Medium for instance in my view still operates in many ways like a startup. The first reason for that is the space it tries to disrupt. It’s extremely competitive, and the business model itself still seems to be in a minimum viable product stage. Perhaps proven to some extent, but still a very risky endeavour. You’ll have to remember that while Medium is 9 years old, its partner program only started in 2017, and it wasn’t just a new feature, it was an entire pivot. I know, I was here when I got the email! Perhaps not everyone will agree with me, but to me, that feels like a new startup, and this one is barely 5 years old.

I’d like to say that startups change a lot over a short time-span, but that’s increasingly true of larger businesses as well, especially those operating in the digital world. Having said that, looking at both Simily and Medium, one can safely bet that plenty of change is on the horizon. Some good and some, inevitably, not so good. Simily of course is expected to go through the largest number of changes, should it survive its startup phase, which it 100% is, as it was registered in the first trimester of 2021. 80% of startup survive their first year, but 50% don’t exist by their 5th year, which means that while the next two months of Simily are all but guaranteed, the next four years are entirely unpredictable. The domain name itself is only registered until 2023, which means the owners are likely trying to play it safe, as the registrar allows for up to 10 years’ worth of registration upfront if they wanted to do that.

Simily, in every possible way, is at the very early stages of a startup. I have no numbers on what team-size they’re dealing with, but I’ll bet anything, it’s small and takes the challenges of running the business on a day-to-day basis. Any startup owner will tell you, at this stage there’s a big dream, and there’s the daily challenges, and you’ve got to marry the two somehow to move forward.

A quick reminder of how the internet works

But not everything depends on the startup itself. Somehow between no concept of the internet, the dot-com bubble and the modern interconnected world, all of which happened in the time-span of just 30 years, a crucial piece got left out — education; namely what the internet is, and how it works. How do I know that? Every time Medium, Simily or any website out there goes down, people flock to social media with pitchforks, swear-words and all the socially unacceptable behaviour they didn’t get to express anywhere else in the last 24h.

As someone who worked on web platforms used by tens of millions of users daily and with a Cisco CCNA under my belt, I can tell you that when stuff works, the page loads, it’s a small miracle. The path the information takes from your crappy little phone or laptop through a maze of wires, wireless waves, routers, switches, internet service providers, firewalls, content delivery networks, cloud providers, their own third-party infrastructure and I could keep on going for another 10 minutes just listing out stuff that happens when you request a Medium or Simily page, is absolutely mind-boggling and no startup, no single company on this planet has control over it all. Every single time you click a link, write a word in the online editor, so many companies make fractions of cents, that just reading them all out to you would probably take an EP’s length, if not a full LP.

Now imagine just one of those links in the long chain becomes unreliable or breaks entirely. More often than not, when that happens, many minutes go by until someone discovers where the fault is, and the major incident update is propagated to the actual affected startup. Except, we’re talking about a startup, which means, it could even take hours to track down the problem, because of limited resources and experience. All the while y’all keep screaming like spoiled little brats on Twitter because you’re loosing your precious 3 cents, or you couldn’t save that last paragraph you wrote. Here’s a tip. Don’t. Any of that!

Stop screaming, nobody died

Seriously, the amount of shite people throw at platforms they write on is unbelievable. Merely hours after Simily went down, articles started popping up across the web, pointing the finger. Why? Who does that help? Is that really the most productive, immersive, educational article one could write? So, your favourite writing platform is down for an hour or two. Big whoop. If that ruins your “business”, your business wasn’t viable to begin with. If that bothers you, you really need to chill the feck out, and drink some tea. There’s a million genuine reasons to get your pitchforks out in today’s world and start shouting on Twitter, and this is what you decided to use your fingers’ energy on? Seriously?

And it’s not just the pitchforks, it’s also the constant unnecessary pressure and bad rep Tweets generate. Maybe instead of tweeting the 20th tweet that the site is slow, or unresponsive, check if there is already a broadcast issued acknowledging the error and working on a fix and if so, just shut up and have a beer. Imagine, if every 10 seconds, someone would go into the kitchen and complain about dinner not being ready yet. How would you feel about that? Now imagine thousands of people doing the same at the same time, while a small team — or potentially even just one person — on high alert is trying to fix something, and that something might not even be in their power to fix.

So, you don’t like the latest design, the latest feature is not up to your “standards”, or the user experience feels abrasive to you? They’re all valid feelings, but there is a huge difference between public bashing and asking or even requesting a change in an email. Furthermore, ask yourself, do you hate the change because it’s different, or because it’s genuinely making your life harder? If so, explain. Saying something sucks, then storming off like an overly presumptuous date expecting sex at the end and not getting any, does nothing good for anyone!

Everybody’s winging it, including you

The truth of the matter is, if you ever worked in a startup, a startup arm of a company, owned a startup or know someone who does, you’ll know that we’re all winging it. The great ones did it too. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Amazon, and the list goes on. The software engineers, the designers, the product owners, we’re all trying to improve things, wing things less over time, try stuff out. Some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t. Heck, all the writers here, the YouTubers, the TikTokers, anyone trying anything new, we’re all winging it.

How would you feel if suddenly everyone would start tweeting about that typo or grammatical error you made in your latest story?

Would you think that’s fair? Oh, so these platforms are companies offering a service? Hmm, well, you’re writing, and getting paid for every minute of read, so you’re doing the same — offering a service, as a self-employed freelancer. How does that make you any bloody different? I’ll tell you, it doesn’t.

Everyone is trying to build something, and while we’re all doing so, the last thing everyone needs, including the platforms we build on, is tons of unhinged criticism, spoiled princess whining and pitchforks-sharpening. It’s really up to you what relationship you’ll have with the platforms you use. A collaborative one or a foaming at the mouth demanding one. At the end of the day, I know who they’ll listen to more. The former.

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!