chlee

SEEKING WORK | USA | Remote | Senior Product Manager / Head of Education

I believe strongly in helping people reach their potential through education. As such, I have worked as a tech learning product manager on MOOCs (massive online open courses), tech education programs, technical training, and other technical learning products for the past 10 years.

I've worked at edtech startups (like Udacity) building massive online open courses and micro credential programs to big corps (like Amazon Web Services) crafting company strategies for teaching AWS customers about how to better use AWS products and services.

I am the right person if you need:

1. someone to figure out the vision, strategy and curriculum for teaching your customers about how to better use your company's SaSS product (which will hopefully lead to increased product engagement and higher product spend)

2. someone to help you craft the strategy and curriculum for online tech education programs

2. someone who's experienced in edtech to manage a newly formed learning/education team and to provide guidance, structure, and best practices to the team

Open to 1099s and part-time contract work

Email: lee.chenghan at gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hichenghanlee/

Isn’t this idea simply gumroad? Which launched on HN about 10 years back.

Politics has become increasingly hyper-partisan since the 90s [0]. It has become been more about your team vs my team + purity testes and less about politician's policies. As a result, conservative democrats and moderate/progressive republicans of the yesteryear are becoming increasingly rare nowadays.

For example, 13 house republicans voted for the infrastructure bill b'c their constituents will benefit from the bill. Shortly after, Trump and the ultra-right wing members of the house republicans publicly called them traitor, RINOs, and even democrats [1]. Additionally, they've received angry messages and death threats from their constituents b'c one of the house ultra-right wing republican shared their phone numbers on her twitter account.

0. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-po...

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-criticize-13-col...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/10/us/politics/republicans-b...

The chinese govt is indeed throwing their weight behind developing a local semiconductor industry capable of rivaling TSMC. They are making heavy investment in SMIC for example.

However, at the same time, unfortunately the Chinese government doesn't play fair, and they are ramping up state sponsored industry espionage and hacking of American and Taiwanese semi-conductor firms to speed up the process.

This best describes China's perspective towards "technology acquisition"

“They want technology by hook or by crook. They want it now. The spy game has always been a gentleman’s game, but China has taken the gloves off,” said John Bennett, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco office, which battles economic spies targeting Silicon Valley. “They don’t care if they get caught or if people go to jail. As long as it justifies their ends, they are not going to stop.”

See:

https://www.wired.com/story/chinese-hackers-taiwan-semicondu...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-basf-espionage/basf-worke...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-technology-secrets-come...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/inside-...

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-china-economic-es...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/prc-state-owned-company-taiwa...

Exactly like you said.

The 1 child policy is leaving China with a low birthrate and hence an increasing smaller population of young people. The problem is further compounded when Mao encouraged Chinese people to have as many children as possible, which lead to ~6 childbirths per women in the 1960's.

This means that, at some point, there will be too many old people to be supported by too little young people. Japan is facing similar population issue for example.

Now, with the population index slowly inverting, China is running out of time to grow rich before it grows old. Otherwise, its social infrastructure will at some point become overburdened by old people who require care/safety net and not enough young people to to provide that care/safety net (either directly as children taking their aging parents or indirectly by paying taxes).

Also, China needs to figure out how it can overcome the middle income trap. Otherwise, its growth potential is severely limited, and could be more fuel being added to the rapidly aging population problem.

In addition, some analysts believe that China's official GDP growth numbers are overinflated, and the actual GDP growth is 1-2% lower than the official government data.

for example, Li Keqiang, the current premier of China (the #2 guy behind Xi) measures a different set of numbers [1] to approximate China's GDP growth because he doesn't trust the official GDP figures due to inaccurate local government growth data.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index

A quick note --just because China is not a major player in the semiconductor industry today, doesn't the CCP is not placing its state resources (both state financial backing [1] and the industrial espionage kind [2][3][4][5]) to try and incubate a semiconductor industry

[1]https://outline.com/j35sNG

[2]https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3005738/ch...

[3]https://www.wired.com/story/us-accuses-chinese-stealing-micr...

[4]https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/prc-state-owned-company-taiwa...

[5]https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-technology-secrets-come...

What I've read about made in 2025 in the past few years, the motto of CCP can be distilled down to:

1) Whatever CCP can't build, it will try to buy

2) Whatever CCP can't buy, it will try to steal

Well, according to the US Department of Justice, China is behind 90% of espionage and industrial theft cases that it has handled over the past 7 years [1]

To use a less biased source [2], SCMP (which is a HK newspaper now owned by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba) mentioned:

John Demers, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s national security division, said that by stealing trade secrets through computer intrusions and the co-opting of company insiders, China had “turned the tradecraft of its intelligence services against American companies”.

Between 2011 and 2018, Demers said, more than 90 per cent of his department’s cases alleging “economic espionage on behalf of a state” involved China. Among such cases are the recent prosecutions of Chinese national Xu Yanjun, suspected of trying to steal trade secrets from US and European aerospace companies, and 10 other Chinese intelligence agents suspected of similar offences.

“The playbook is simple,” Demers said. “Rob, replicate and replace.”

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/china-involved-90-percent-economic-...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2177727/fb...

updated the formatting. Hope it makes the text easier to read.

Wall Street Journal has recently published an article [1] detailing some of the most high profile technology thefts and espionage related to Huawei.

According to the article, here's a list of thefts and espionage attributed to Huawei, employees of Huawei, or people related to Huawei.

1. Stealing tech at tradeshows:

On a summer evening in 2004, as the Supercomm tech conference in Chicago wound down, a middle-aged Chinese visitor began wending his way through the nearly abandoned booths, popping open million-dollar networking equipment to photograph the circuit boards inside, according to people who were there.

A security guard stopped him and confiscated memory sticks with the photos, a notebook with diagrams and data belonging to AT&T Corp. , and a list of six companies including Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp.

2. Secure rooms impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping built in Huawei’s U.S. offices :

Alarm bells included the discovery around 2012 of secure rooms impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping built in Huawei’s U.S. offices, akin to facilities in intelligence stations around the world, American security officials say.

3. Former staff admits stealing :

“They spent all their resources stealing technology,” said Robert Read, a former contract engineer from 2002 to 2003 in Huawei’s Sweden office. “You’d steal a motherboard and bring it back and they’d reverse-engineer it.”

4. Stealing tech from Cisco :

Eighteen months before the Supercomm imbroglio erupted, Cisco accused Huawei in January 2003 of copying its software and manuals—the first time Huawei had to fight a major international allegation of its theft.

“They have made verbatim copies of whole portions of Cisco’s user manuals,” Cisco said in its lawsuit. Cisco manuals accompany its routers, and its software is visible during the router’s operation; both are easily copied, Cisco said.

The copying was so extensive that Huawei inadvertently copied bugs in Cisco’s software, according to the lawsuit.

5. Stealing tech from Motorola :

Email fragments recovered from Mr. Pan’s laptop and included in Motorola’s complaint show Mr. Pan wrote to Mr. Ren after the meeting, “Attached please find those document [sic] about SC300 specification you asked.” Huawei later made a similarly small device, weighing half the SC300, which it marketed to rural communities in developing markets.

5. 5G related tech theft:

Mr. Barker had never heard of “user specific tilt,” which could multiply the number of signals from an antenna and tilt them to provide greater accuracy in communicating with mobile phones.

Mr. Barker had, however, heard of a conceptually identical technology, ”per user tilt." He coined it seven years earlier, according to a Quintel lawsuit alleging misappropriation of trade secrets by Huawei. Quintel said it had shared the technology with Huawei in September 2009 after Huawei proposed a business partnership.

The partnership never came through. Huawei filed papers to secure a patent for the concept a month after their first meeting, using a document still emblazoned with Quintel’s name and the words “commercial in confidence.”

6. Camera theft :

Rui Oliveira, a 45-year-old Portuguese multimedia producer, told the Journal he flew to Huawei’s Plano offices in May 2014 to meet Huawei executives, who were interested in his patents for a camera attachment to smartphones.

In a conference room, surrounded by a dozen empty chairs, Mr. Oliveira recalls, two Huawei executives listened as he shared data on his product which he hoped to license manufacturing to Huawei. He recommended pricing it at $99.95.

“We’ll talk later,” he says Huawei told him.

Three years later, a friend in Portugal asked him why Huawei was selling “his camera.”

“Huawei? That’s impossible! What?” he remembers saying.

7. Stealing songs :

Paul Cheever, a bespectacled preschool teacher who records music as The Cheebacabra, said his life has become overrun with paperwork and costs since he sued Huawei in California last year for taking his song “A Casual Encounter” and pre-loading it on Huawei smartphones and tablets for free distribution to its customers.

Mr. Cheever said in his court filing that he discovered the alleged theft after noticing user comments on YouTube that associated Huawei devices with his song.

8. Stealing Tappy, the mobile phone testing robot, from T-Mobile :

In the U.S., Huawei engineer Xiong Xinfu had endured a nine-month fusillade of demands from Huawei’s China-based engineers for information on how to replicate a robot called Tappy developed by T-Mobile to mimic an ultra-fast human finger and test a smartphone’s responsiveness. In May 2013, Mr. Xiong eventually stole part of Tappy at Huawei’s behest, U.S. prosecutors say.

9. Stealing Solid State Drive technology from Silicon Valley :

In October last year, Yiren “Ronnie” Huang, a longtime Silicon Valley engineer and co-founder of San Jose’s CNEX Labs Inc., accused Huawei in a lawsuit of stealing his firm’s solid-state disk storage technology, used for managing data generated by artificial intelligence. CNEX said at a hearing in April that Huawei deputy chairman Eric Xu issued a directive that led to a Huawei engineer in June 2016 posing as a customer to steal CNEX secrets; Huawei denied wrongdoing. The suit is ongoing.

10. finally, forcing employees to be dishonest :

Jesse Hong, a software architect at Huawei’s California unit, said in a lawsuit that his bosses ordered him in November 2017 to use fake company names to register himself for an industry conference organized by Facebook Inc. The social-media giant had invited other companies to a Telecom Infra Project meeting, a collaboration on network design, but excluded Huawei. The suit was confidentially settled in April.

Mr. Hong said he refused to carry out the directive, leading his supervisor to unleash a stream of abuse and a threat: “If you don’t agree on this, then you quit right now.”

After Mr. Hong declined, Huawei fired him. The company says it acted in good faith.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/huaweis-yearslong-rise-is-litte...

Does anyone have experiences using GraphQL in production? Trying to understand if GraphQL will be a good alternative to REST for new projects or is GraphQL being hyped up like mongoDB was 7-8 years ago.

SEEKING WORK - Dallas, Remote, and/or willing to travel up to 50% of the time

I have experience build and teaching MOOCs (massive online classes). In addition, I also have experience developing tech/computer science curriculums.

I can help if you need someone who can

1) design an engaging course experience and course feel for online settings

2) develop educational and interesting assignments & learning tools to accompany lessons

email: lee.chenghan at gmail.com

linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheng-han-lee-97b12920

Ken Stanley came up with the idea of NeuroEvolution while he was a phd student at the Neural Networks lab at UT-Austin.

You can see some of the older NeuroEvolution papers here: http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/project-list.php

I believe Ken Stanley has gone to become a professor at UCF to continue his research: http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~kstanley/

Location: Dallas, TX

Remote: Yes

Willing to Relocate: No

Technologies: MOOCs, EdTech and online education (in the technology and programming space), specifically with experiences in content/curriculum development and product management.

Resume/CV:

--https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheng-han-lee-97b12920

--https://www.udacity.com/course/data-analyst-nanodegree--nd00...

--http://blog.udacity.com/author/chenghanlee

email: lee.chenghan at gmail.com

-- Was one of the early employees at Udacity and helped design and teach 3 online courses on Parallel Programming, Data Science, and Java

-- Lead the design and implementation of the Data Science Nanodegree at Udacity

-- Looking for remote consulting and/or contracting opportunities

-- Thanks for reading and looking forward to talk to you

It's already happening.

Recently, I've asked my high school aged sister and colleged aged brother about how many of their friends and peers use FB nowadays.

Brother -- He and his friends uses it sometimes. But most of their social activities are shared on Instagram or Snapchat and occasionally twitter.

Sister -- Barely at all. FB is seen as uncool and old school by her and her friends. She and most of her friends share their social activities on instagram and snapchat.

Ironically, my mom (in her 50's) uses FB fairly regularly, both for sharing updates and checking up on her friends/acquaintance.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend that you attend a bootcamp if you already have a graduate CS degree because the cost (time and money) isn't worth the benefits (an entry level developer job, which you can probably obtain on your own given your credentials).

For you specifically, the only things that you'll get of a bootcamp are probably: 1) An expedited and structured learning process 2) Mentorship and peer support 3) Introduction to startups in the valley looking to hire entry level, junior developers

However, if you feel compelled and really want to attend a bootcamp in the valley, I have heard good things about: Hackreactor and Hackbright for web-development App Academy for mobile development Insight Data Science and ZipFian for data science

Hope that helps.

I have not personally gone through the GT OMSC program. However, I do have colleagues and friends who are/were responsible the GT OMSC program at Uadcity.

From what I heard, a typical student in the program takes about 2 classes on average per semester due to the workload, and that should take up all of your free time outside of work and family. Some do take 3 if they are ambitious.

Outside of hacker school (now recourse in NYC), I would recommend against attending a boot camp if you have received a quality CS education from you undergrad years.

Specifically, going to a boot camp is both a time (3-4 months) and a $$$ (20k - 30k) commitment. They will teach you the tools of the trade well, e.g tools and frameworks and will make sure you come out with a certain level of knowledge that fill most junior level roles.

However, if you have a bs computer science degree, you probably won't get much value of of these boot camps other than learning the tools of the trade, which are things that you can pick up on your own since you have a solid cs foundation.

However, it's not a bad option if you have both the time and the money, and feel that the commitment of a boot camp will be beneficial to you.

bur the quality of these boot camp varies and I would only recommend going to the highly recommended one, eg hack reactor, hack brite, app academy, and recurse.

It's legit.

The quality of education that you receive through the GT online masters is on par with the in-person version, and you'll receive the same ms degree as a "regular" student. It is not watered down at all.

However, since you'll receive the same education as a regular ms student, the coursework is heavy and intense especially if you hold a FT job.

I would recommend hack reactor as I have consistently heard good things about the quality of training from their grads.

my ex-company hired 1 junior engineer from hack reactor and she has since then gone on and accomplished good things at other companies. And 2 of my ex coworkers transitioned into dev roles after going through hack reactor as well. They have all had positive experiences.

I have also heard good things about hackbrite if you are eligible. One of my ex-coworkers is an now instructor there and she cares passionately about cs education.

Source: I used to work in edtech in the valley so I have relationships or heard 1st hand accounts about these boot camps.

On a tangential note.

I've spoken to a few hiring managers who have expressed disappointment with some of the hires that they have made straight out of bootcamps (w/o prior CS knowledge or fundamentals).

Specifically, the bootcamp graduate are smart, motivated, and know their specific toolsets well. However, they tend to struggle a bit if you place them outside their comfort zone.

Is this a sentiment that others have heard through their work colleagues or friends as well?

Front-end programming is very visual. You can immediately see/sense/feel what you have developed/program, so there is a expedited positive feedback loop.

This can appeal to beginner programmers because it gives a immediate sense of satisfaction and accomplishment vs. backend programming where you see lines of output spit back to you in a terminal.

I agree. I would also love to see an example combining both as well. It would be a very useful reference.

I would highly recommend basscss

Small, light-weight, and gets out of your way for the most part. It also supports flexbox if you choose to go down that route.

UT Austin has a top 10 CS program.

It's just below MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkley. Typically just as well regarded as UW/Cornell/Princeton/UIUC/Georgia Tech/Caltech.

Dijkstra used to be the department chair in the 80s and early 90s.

Sometimes companies would pay (or reimburse) for their "preferred" reviewers to purchase a product off amazon so they can leave favorable reviews as a "verified purchased".

Sometimes the reviewers would be honest and say they are reviewing on behalf of company X. Sometimes not.

Anyways, all of this is a roundabout way of saying that even reviews from verified purchasers may not be 100% honest.

A slightly tangential question.

What is the benefit of using react-router (I am assuming on the client side) versus using a server side router that comes with whatever web framework that you are using?

Udacity has the grad level, Machine Learning Course available as well. However, they are heavier on theory and algorithms, and less on programming:

https://www.udacity.com/course/ud675

https://www.udacity.com/course/ud741

Course Developer Udacity’s Course Developers are dedicated, talented, and technical teachers. They are movers and shakers who thrive on solving problems big or small. They are innate helpers and they will always find a way to come up with creative solutions for their students and peers. Course developers create and record classes, develop exercises and challenges, help students, and push the limits of teaching and learning online.

Responsibilities: 1. Work with exceptional instructors to generate high quality creative courses targeted to a wide range of students. Lead and contribute to class discussion, providing timely responses to students, and understanding what problems students are having. 2. Write quizzes, homework assignments, and exams. 3. Record lessons, explanations, and content on camera and on the tablet. Work as liaison between students, professors, engineers, and video editors to help guide the future of the course and company. 4. Work on a wide range of projects, including ones you develop yourself, from content production to instructional design to software development.

Desired Experience: 1. Be proficient with python 2. Clearly and accessibly explain course material to a wide range of students. 3. Ability to connect with and motivate students. 4. Resourceful - you naturally know how to find answers and are not afraid to ask for help. 5. Technical background, specific skills required differ based on the class. 6. Excellent critical thinking skills, including the ability to accurately link cause and effect and to generate relevant 7. solutions to problems. 8. CS or related experience teaching CS material is required!

What we look for: 1. Love of teaching, learning, and/or a passion for education! 2. Demonstrated excellence as a teacher in some context.

Other details: This position is located in Mountain View, CA - You must be open to working in this location to be considered.

Ready to apply? Send us your updated resume and cover letter on what you like about Udacity.

Check out https://www.udacity.com/jobs for more details on perks and benefits!

We have lots of fun here!

Hey, I was in a similar boat. I also resigned to start my own thing about a year ago.

I had a well paying job in one of the top tech companies. However, I felt unsatisfied with my job responsibilities and disconnected between what I enjoy doing and I was actually doing.

Therefore I took a year off (this month marks about 1 year and 2 months off) to work on my own thing/project. With that said, I hope to share some of my experiences with you.

1) Take regular breaks and avoid burnout

I was working on my project 24/7, from the moment I woke up to the moment I fall asleep ... 7 days a week. In hindsight, that was a recipe for burning out. I was mentally fatigued after 6-8 months into this routine.

Looking back, I should have taken regular breaks from work and not think about the project at all. Maintain an active social life, go on trips, spend time with friends, or as simple as forcing myself to take a day off every week would have done wonders for my own mental health.

2) Maintain your physical health

Physically and health wise, I was in a fantastic shape before I left my job and started on my own venture.

However, my health quickly deteriorated because I neglected my physical well being. For example, I exercised less and eventually none at all. I ate less than I should (I would go as far as eating 1 meal per day). My sleeping schedule quickly fell out of whack.

Take good precautions and maintain a good physical and mental health. This will go a long way in preventing you from falling into a negative feedback loop and damaging your well being.

3) If you build it, they will not come (think about marketing)

I gave vague thoughts to marketing while working on my project. I demoed my product to my close friends and family. They loved it, so i thought, if I build a great product, users will automagically show up. Boy, I was wrong.

It is good to develop a plan on how to reach your protential users and/or customers. Think about SEO. Think about finding a niche or community of [potentially enthusiastic] users to whom you can demo your product. Think about finding bloggers who can help you spread the word.

4) Everything will take twice as long to implement

Think a feature will take a week to implement? It will probably take two weeks if not more. I saw the iceberg effect firsthand while developing my own product. So be careful, be cautious, and plan accordingly.

5) Just ship it. D@mn it.

You will always notice issues, flaws, bugs, and imperfections within your product. As creators/founders/makers, we all do. However, we can spend eternity tinkering and fixing those issues, but our product will never ship.

Therefore, you should give yourself a rough deadline or an idea as to when you'll ship, no matter how imperfect your product is.

6) You'll need to hustle after you ship

Shipping is only half the battle. It is unlikely that tens of thousands will show up on your front step after you ship.

Therefore you'll need to go out and hustle. You'll need to think about things like marketing, customer acquisition, customer, retention, customer service, and so forth.