Episode 329 | James Long - Seeking Deep Knowledge

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James Long talks with Dave Rael about working at Mozilla, building products, making it harder to make costly mistakes, and understanding why something works

James Long worked for Mozilla for 6 years on various projects ranging from Firefox OS to Firefox developer tools. Last year, he quit to pursue self-employed contracting, and recently has been working on launching his own product, Actual, a personal budgeting app. He enjoys leveraging powerful technology to solve real problems for end users, pulling ideas from remote places like academic papers and such.

Chapters: 2:19 - Dave introduces the show and James Long4:51 - Completion of projects and the project currently capturing James's attention: Actual10:33 - How James views the success criteria for Actual12:05 - The reasons James is building Actual14:15 - Developers as users of software16:51 - Barriers for developers to launching a product as a business23:44 - James experiences at Mozilla27:37 - The true nature of contract work for James29:50 - James's story of failure - a production site that was set in development mode with costly consequences36:25 - James's success story - spearheading moving Firefox Developer Tools onto React42:02 - How James stays current with what he needs to know45:14 - James's book recommendation49:36 - James's top 3 tips for delivering more value52:27 - Keeping up with James

Resources: James on GitHub Firefox Developer Tools "If you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late." - Reid Hoffman Prettier Actual Mastermind Group You Need a Budget (YNAB) Thomas Watson on Firing an Employee who Made a Costly MIstake 4+1 architectural view model

James's book recommendation: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: The Definitive, 4th Edition - Betty Edwards

James's top 3 tips for delivering more value: Seek deep knowledge - understand why it's working Take time off Everyone does hacks - don't beat yourself up