Free work Memes

The five stages of being ambushed with an app idea: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally reaching for your beer while contemplating how many "million-dollar ideas" you've heard this month alone. Friends somehow believe coding is just typing random characters until an app appears. Bonus points if they offer "exposure" as payment or say "it's like Uber but for [literally anything]." Most developers have mastered the art of the thousand-yard stare while mentally calculating how many weekends this conversation is about to cost them.

Ah, the classic "I know a programmer" tax in action! Nothing says friendship like asking for a free app at 8 AM and expecting you to both design AND build it. The smooth "That's where you come in!" is basically code for "I have absolutely no idea how this works but I'm sure you can whip it up by lunchtime." This is the digital equivalent of asking a doctor friend to check out your weird rash at a dinner party. Bonus points for the early morning ambush when your defenses are down and you haven't had enough coffee to calculate the 300+ hours of unpaid labor they're casually requesting.

Every developer's internal reaction when a non-technical friend starts with "I've got an app idea." The threatening pose perfectly captures that mix of dread and irritation we feel when someone's about to pitch their "revolutionary" app that's basically "Uber but for hamsters" or "Facebook but people are nice." What they don't realize is they're the 500th person to think they're the first to come up with it, and no, we don't want to build it for free in exchange for "exposure" or a mythical 2% equity that'll totally make us rich someday.