I know that most people's first pithy thought is "they think they can build it themselves". But I don't buy it. Most software develops know how hard it is to build solutions that actually feel polished and usable. Our laptops are literally graveyards of projects that never get completed.
What I'm saying that if anybody in the world understands why good software is worth paying real money, it should be us. But that's often not the case. Why?
This question goes deeper for me. As a person who has managed engineers for many years. Engineers definitely think they should be paid for their labor. And in fact, many of them are underappreciated and deserve a raise. But when you ask those people who is supposed to pay for the software so they can get a paycheck, they don't have an answer.
I could pick on devs more, but that's not really the point I'm making. I don't wanna fight about that specific thing.
Instead, I was having a larger conversation. It's easy to talk to the average person and have them tell you how they wish things were different. But it's harder to dig deeper on whether those same people make sure their own actions reflect what they want to see in the world.
The other thing that happens when you talk to people is they feel helpless. Nothing is working the way they want. But they don't think their own actions have any impact on anything. And as a result, they don't do the thing that might help. It feels like we've lost that art of "I'm gonna do my part, even if it's small."
FWIW, here's where I had the conversation about paying for software a while back over on the bird site. I got a mix of responses. By there was definitely a lot of "I can't believe you actually pay money for things!"
Don't forget to be who you wanna see in the world. Do it all the time. Do it even if you think it doesn't matter. It actually does.
The money I pay for software is part of somebody's raise. It's part of some dev being able to have their own small business instead of being jerked around by a big company. It matters.