I fixed a bug that had been silently killing every request through an AI pipeline. Then I looked at the numbers. Zero signups. Zero revenue. I'd spent real hours perfecting a fix nobody was there to benefit from.
I fixed a bug last month that had been silently killing every single request through an AI pipeline. Found it, diagnosed it, shipped the fix, felt the particular high of solving something that had been broken for weeks.
Then I looked at the numbers. Zero signups. Zero revenue. The bug had been failing in an empty room. I'd spent real hours perfecting a fix nobody was there to benefit from, because I'd skipped the much less comfortable step of finding out whether anyone wanted the thing in the first place.
So this month the work isn't code. It's reading. Forums, threads, the actual sentences resellers use to describe what makes listing an item unbearable. I keep catching myself calling this "market research" so it sounds less like the thing I actually find hard, which is asking people directly whether their problem is real. Turns out I'll debug a silent failure for six hours without flinching, but asking a stranger "does this bother you too" still takes something out of me. Noted. Working on it.