Having been on the dev side of the conversation with many (mostly MBA students), I can agree with you here. However, this is only one suits v. nerds issue.
Often, I can see that the idea will be large-impact, but the job itself is boring. Sometimes, it's even a simple CRUD app you could Build in a Weekend* but hmm... what I'm doing now is quite exciting so.. "I'll pass. Btw, if you learn Rails, you could build it in a week or two yourself".I can see why this gets people angry. But it's the way demand-driven markets work.
The other side to the coin is that if you knew a little about programming, you could make your project (at least sound) a lot more interesting. (It's a CRUD app, but it needs to be always consistent, and we're trying to offer a zero-downtime service with queues for when the data store goes down, yada yada).
The problem there is the fundamental misalignment between a boring CRUD project and a technical founder. If the project isn't technically challenging, then the success of the business doesn't even depend on the technical skills, so equity isn't an appropriate incentive for the technical contributor. What they really need is a contract/salary programmer, but are attempting to sell it as "you'll get rich with equity" to avoid paying up front. In essence, they're attempting to raise seed funding from a naive engineer.
Often, I can see that the idea will be large-impact, but the job itself is boring. Sometimes, it's even a simple CRUD app you could Build in a Weekend* but hmm... what I'm doing now is quite exciting so.. "I'll pass. Btw, if you learn Rails, you could build it in a week or two yourself".I can see why this gets people angry. But it's the way demand-driven markets work.
The other side to the coin is that if you knew a little about programming, you could make your project (at least sound) a lot more interesting. (It's a CRUD app, but it needs to be always consistent, and we're trying to offer a zero-downtime service with queues for when the data store goes down, yada yada).