I’m going to name posts song lyrics I think. Maybe not all of them, but I quite like the idea.
Anyways…
This isn’t really a devlog, but it is related to this project. Last I left it, I believe we were still making some solid changes to the site. But now, we’ve reached a point where we wanted to ask a few people to try the site out for smoke testing. After a small period of time, we were hoping a week, we were going to try to reach out to even more people in hopes of gaining traction with an audience. We hope to create an online community of sorts.
So we started the “ask a few people” phase. Pretty much nobody responded. Some people did, but it might as well be zero people. Like .5% of the people we asked actually signed up. Like 1% of those people actually engaged with the site.
Not even 24 hours later, my partner started freaking out. I was remaining calm. He started pulling levers and pushing buttons. He wanted to skip steps and start going full force. He didn’t receive immediate release, so he wanted to change things up. He didn’t want to trust the process. I asked him to chill.
He kept pressing on about it. Finally, I let him try some not-super-extreme measures. They didn’t work either. He wanted to try more intense things. I asked him to chill. This was the moment that he fully raged on me. Started calling me a micromanager. Claiming I wasn’t letting him work. Saying that this was all his idea and that he brought me on. During the argument, he even asked if he could buy me out. I was so taken aback.
Mind you, this person is a great friend of mine. I love this person. He switched up hard during this moment of frustration. To be fair, that is what this was-a moment of frustration. But some of the claims he was making were hurtful. Especially since I had spent the last eight months coding my ass off while he micromanaged me. I did damn near all the work while he did data-entry and used ChatGPT whenever I asked him to write something up. I think the most hurtful thing he did was make me feel like the ‘tech guy’.
This is something that keeps happening to me. No matter how big or small of a role I play in a project, I am always looked at as just the help. The guy who does the fancy computer-y stuff that nobody else understands. In truth, I designed large parts of this website, I guided him while he attempted to do UI/UX, I was pulling up photoshop and making graphics on the fly, I wrote forward facing texts, I made huge decisions, and I coded the entire fucking thing. But when the cards are on the table, this great friend of mine thinks that I can be replaced by some gpt or fiverr programmer. It’s insulting. It’s infuriating. It’s hurtful.
I’m sure this will pass, but right now I’m pretty pissed off. I think from now on, as a rule, I cannot work with friends anymore. It just isn’t worth it. If a great idea is brought to me, the most I should do is consult. I can’t jump on projects as the tech guy anymore. Fuck fuck’s sake.
I told him that I need some space. I made a new review form (it’s actually pretty fuckin slick tbh) and cleaned up some code. I will wait for him to hit me up. Hopefully the conversation will go smoothly. If it doesn’t, I’ll be taking my ball and going home.