For years, I believed that simply writing code, getting servers up and running, and keeping systems operational was the hardest job. While designing complex workflows in a manufacturing ERP, resolving PostgreSQL's WAL bloat issues, or protecting systems against DDoS attacks, I would always think, "This is it, the real challenge." Technical problems have their own unique, usually logical, solutions.
However, at a certain point in my career, when I started developing my own products and bringing them to people, this perspective shifted. Technical issues can be solved, optimized, and progress within defined rules. Marketing, on the other hand, is a completely different world – often unpredictable and impossible to fully control.
In this post, with my 20 years of field experience, I want to share the challenges of building and marketing a product from my own perspective. In my opinion, the difference in difficulty between these two areas is much deeper than we often realize and is frequently overlooked.
The Sweet Difficulty of Building a Product: Tangible Engineering Victories
Building a product from scratch has always been an engineering challenge for me. Managing Linux services with systemd units, adjusting cgroup limits, optimizing GIN index strategies in PostgreSQL, or ensuring idempotency in an API... These are tangible, hands-on problems, and with the right knowledge, their solutions are generally clear.
