charlespwd

SEEKING WORK, Montreal, Remote

Pragmatic Front-End Engineer working on big projects (50M+ Revenue).

Areas of focus:

  - Mentoring/Lead
  - Optimization (A/B testing)
  - Performance
  - Stability
  - Deployment
  - Automation

  - JavaScript (React, Redux, NodeJS, Mocha, Webpack, etc.)
  - Scripting / Build / Automation (Bash, Docker, CircleCI, Jenkins, Capistrano)
  - Monitoring (AppDynamics, SumoLogic)
  - Clojure + ClojureScript

  - Performance optimizations that equates to 3M extra revenue (data obtained with A/B testing with 95% statistical significance)
  - Reduce CPU lag on our fleet of servers 10-fold (Optimizations)

Contact: charles[at]cpclermont.com

That's exactly what I did. I'm doing it on poloniex, but I'm pretty sure you could do the same for bittrex too. However, they are a bit limiting on the kind of orders you can make (I believe it's limit orders only). Poloniex has fill or kill orders, which makes some things easier to handle.

https://github.com/charlespwd/crypto-trader

Same here. Precision 5520 (the business edition of the XPS). Only thing I wish I took was the better GPU. 4K screen + external screen can be a lot to ask from the onboard graphics.

Other than that, it is so much more performant than my old MBP. Couldn't be happier to have 32GB of ram and the infinity display.

I understand where you're coming from. But that's kind of a slippery slope argument. It is based on the premise that manipulation is evil. Manipulation isn't evil.

Let's consider for a minute an event where persuasion psychology is used to have someone buy services from a personal trainer. This PT helps the lad. She becomes healthier, happier, and fit as a result. Isn't manipulation good, in this case?

What if your product is awesome and makes people's lives better. Isn't it your moral imperative to market it to people? Isn't it moral to manipulate people into using and buying it if it makes their lives better?

Am I trying to convince myself here? Maybe. But I was reading "The Ultimate Sales Letter" this morning and there's a passage in it which says

"ALL Successful Selling is by Nature and Necessity manipulative"

That's just how the game is played (?)

There's a couple of things I do that I've found beneficial to deal with this problem.

1. I've found it very beneficial to "Lock down" goals and objectives for the entire year.

Spend 2 days thinking of what you want, with a 4 day review period and match them with a list of habits. Then put them somewhere you'll see every day.

For instance, I put them on the right hand side of my main Trello Board. Every day, I see there's seven of them and that perhaps playing with this shiny object won't "move me" towards their realization.

2. The purgatory list

To deal with the shiny object problem, I've come up with a system for reviewing my urges of curiosity. A "purgatory" Trello board for instance, which I review at the end of the week. "Should I do it?" "Will it move me forward?" The answer is typically obvious. During the week I'm focused on the things at hand, and when I'm done with my week I choose what to do next. Separating the thinking from the doing is always beneficial.

3. Systems.

Read "The War of Art"[1], or "Daily Rituals"[2], or listen to any kind of podcast by productive people. They all say the same thing, losers have inspiration, productive people have systems. Taylor Pearson has the "Weekly Entrepreneur Review".[3] I've implemented it. Tweaked it. It's great.

4. Information diet.

It's good to limit your consumption of information to X amount per day or to specific periods of the day. If you're like me, you love to learn and you want to do it all the time. At some point though, you'll know much more than you can show. Remember "Show don't tell", how much do you know that you would not be able to show other people? Probably a lot! Nobody cares that you "learned X or Y". They want you to show that you know those things. Projects, experience, etc.

In that case, stick to your goal and do.

[1] http://www.amazon.ca/The-War-Art-Through-Creative/dp/1936891... [2]: http://masoncurrey.com [3]: http://taylorpearson.me/weeklyreview/

For the lazy:

  grep -i <password> 10-million-combos.txt

I can't remember from whom I read/heard this from, I think it's from Rob Walling in "Start small, stay small", but what resonated with me was the following:

1. Put yourself on an information diet, and

2. Filter out any reading that you cannot turn into an actionable item.

For instance, I have pocket open right now. There's an article named "Cache is the new RAM". I just removed it. Why? Yes. It is interesting. But the information cannot be translated into something of value with respect to what I do.

Believe me, you won't miss out on the things you forgot existed.

This concept is absolutely fantastic. I can't wait to see this cover more cities. The potential for this is enormous.

Keep it up guys!

Fantastic piece.

I believe in similar things. Here, where I currently live, we spend so much time working and being productive that we forget to ask questions. "Why am I doing this?" "What is the meaning of it?" "What is really important?" Then we end up lost, depressed and what not. Not all of us do, but some? Certainly. We do it because others do it. Because we believe that pursuing a different venue is not realistic. Others have that? Hell, I should have it too.

"I should totally run a startup."

Anyways, it happened to me. Went to SEA for four months. Dreamed. Life is amazing. I can do whatever I want. I don't need money to live. yadi. yada. Then you come back, and no one understands you. You are a hippy. I'm not.

In periods of doubt, I write things down. Then I remember what I believe. Then I remember I'm going back soon. That it is what I should be doing.

Being productive is ok. It's fun. But, in the end, it's not important. People are. At least, that's the conclusion I came to.

I guess I'm just rambling. Carry on.

Note: when I write "We", I mostly mean "I".

Thanks for the tip; they went straight onto my list of books to read.

I, too, was a bit disappointed. It felt like a videotaped blog post.

But then again, maybe I was expecting magic tricks where there aren't any.

Interesting talk. Thanks for sharing!

I love it! Thanks for this.

I'm going to emphasize this and add that writing Stanford's course example apps in Swift instead of ObjC is really a great way to learn the language.

I don't know... Obviously you do. As to whether I should laugh about it or not: That's a different discussion.

During that trip I have met lots of different types of people. Relevant to this discussion would be the ones travelling with their kids, and a grown up kid who was raised for a couple years on a sail boat (turned out to become the youngest surgical clinic manager in his home country, was also a lobbyist before that and now refused an even more prestigious job for the sakes of travelling for a while)

This is anecdotal evidence. True. But it is/was enough for me to question how we live, raise children, and the norms.

Obviously, I don't intend to keep going with only 20k a year. I'm finishing my degree soon. What I'm actually really questioning is anything beyond 40 hours a week. Maybe I'm young and hopeful, but I'm sure there are ways. Different ways. And they may even have better returns than what we are used to. I'm going to try at least.

Both, and guesthouses and homestay (one of the best experience of my life).

I maintained a travel diary but travel blogging isn't something that interested me much. And I worked as an intern turned into a web developer before leaving.

Noble, makes lots of sense.

Thanks

Hi, I've been a lurker here for some time now. I rarely ever comment on stories because, well, I have better things to do. But now, I really need to broaden my perspective. I just don't get it.

*Disclaimer : I am young (23), broke but happy.

This past year, I spent four months in Asia travelling. I rock-climbed for a while, tried bungee, canyon swing, diving, trekking and the motorcycle. I was able to afford all that on my student's salary working and studying for my degree. I met amazing people and I'm just excited about everything since.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the 80 hours work weeks and quite frankly, I just don't get it! I did work 66 hours work weeks this past fall for my honours thesis. I started getting anxiety attacks. It wasn't healthy.

I don't mean to make a point. I want to hear some. I want to understand how some of you do it, and, more importantly why. I keep thinking that "Hey I was able to have this experience with less than 20k a year. Imagine what I could do with the salary of a `real` job! (Or freelancing)"

Why do you do it?