crewtide

Yeah, the biggest issue with management in general (and performance reviews in particular) is that it's focused on what people are doing poorly at/where they need improvement.

Good managers find out what each employee is awesome at and get them doing it. If you hire someone and what they love to do and are great at isn't what you need at your company, then you've hired the wrong person. But I know lots of people who left a job because they kept asking to be moved to a different role, different team, etc, and nothing happened.

Managers: focus on what each person is great at and loves to do.

Great article. I learned to code in my 30s, and about six months later the full meaning of it dawned on me: I could make any of my crazy ideas happen myself! No need to find someone else, no need to wait, I could just do it. It was awesome.

REST is a great starting point for an API, but generic REST interfaces (in Rails, Django, or any other framework) are relied on too heavily. I'm especially interested in mobile APIs, which have very specific considerations that REST doesn't answer well.

Building a generic data back-end for mobile is very hot right now, with lots of funded startups in the space. Some of them are just offering a REST API, which frankly any Rails or Django developer could produce in about 10 minutes. Mobile APIs need to be different, mostly due to slow or non-existent connections, and require additional thinking. More details here: http://ow.ly/9YMrM

Anybody know of any mobile back-end providers that are thinking innovatively about this? I've consulted a few of these startups and they all seem hesitant to make any choices that go beyond REST...but as far as I'm concerned, offering a generic solution for something that mobile devs have to develop every time they create an API would be well worth it. A simple example is to accept a guid for every created object and return that guid in the response. It's something you have to do to know that the object has been sent successfully to the server, so why make the developer code it every time?

Not only a nifty idea for fuel, but a way to deal with our ant overpopulation! As with other biofuels, it may have the downside of increasing the price of formic acid as a foodstuff.

And if you've never tried ants over shoe-string potatoes, you should -- they add a delicious, lemony flavor! Just remember to check your teeth for ant-legs after dinner. :)

"Some economists argue that mass privatisation would have worked if it had been implemented even more rapidly and extensively." This is always the argument about any failed policy. These researchers should do a wider study that includes privatization efforts before 1990.

We could conduct some pretty sweet experiments in virtual worlds. Would libertarianism really work if it were the law? A real welfare state? Privatization of a communist country? Start a virtual world with those laws and see what happens. Some obvious drawbacks include: - self-selection of participants (you could get around this by controlling who is allowed to participate) - lower motivation (being unable to pay your actual rent has a pretty different effect from having a low virtual bank account balance) - natural anonymity of avatars (there are plenty of things people do online they'd never do in real life)

But a well-done research study could probably account for a lot of those things.

Maybe the IMF should conduct some virtual world experiments before shoving their current pet policy down the throats of millions of people whose government just collapsed. This isn't the first complaint I've heard that goes, "The policy forced on X country by the IMF turns out to have ruined everything. Oops."

Yeah, I don't see the benefit. If you default "from" to Current Location, the maps interaction is three taps (edit, bookmarks, choose). While this app would be one swipe, there's the added decision of which app to use when wanting directions, and I think that probably takes up more brain space than the extra tap.

Taking a day off is much harder than doing something in particular that's fun. I rarely "take a day off" -- frankly, it's boring. But doing something in particular is much easier. He's your friend, so you probably know what he likes -- suggest something. An all-day hike, paintball, star-trek marathon, you could even toss around romantic ideas he could do with his wife. Give him something specific to do that's compelling, and I bet he'll be more likely to do it than "take time off."

It's hard to tell from your post how much of this is about you and how much is about your startup's culture. For each case, figure out what you can do to improve the situation.

You: I completely agree with patio11's diet & exercise point. Strenuous exercise (over 30 min) releases endorphines that act as both analgesics and sedatives, and are shown to reduce depression, increase self-esteem, etc. You owe it to yourself and your startup to do this life hack no matter what the cause of your current unhappiness.

Of course, diet, sleeping well, and taking time off/socializing are also great ideas. The important thing is to take action now before it affects your life/startup any more than it has.

Your startup: If you think some of your resentment or depression is due to dysfunction in your startup, then come up with ways you can improve it. Focus on actions you can take rather than on ways other people/the group could change. I also find that people are more likely to change when asked to do something than when asked to "not do" something.

For example, if workaholism is an issue, it's easy to fall into outward/"don't do" thinking like this: telling the group that the amount of time required is making you unhappy, and that it should change. Instead, try saying something like, "I think I'll work better if I take a whole day off every two weeks and I'd love it if people joined me. My first day off will be x day, and I'm going to go hiking, let me know if you want to come." People love to join a good idea.

Good luck!

Yep, just what I was going to mention. I started using GTD a few months ago, and it is a great way to rip the bandaid off of dozens of little not-yet-made decisions. As part of GTD, you regularly turn every "to do" into a next action step...or throw it out. It really cleans out your brain from all the things that you "might do someday" but haven't decided yet.

As someone who learned to program in my 30s (spent my 20s as a professional musician) I can't agree more. The book that was recommended to me was K&R, which I found so dry as to be impossible to read through. The first book I really used was C++ in 21 Days, which has you writing working programs from...well, from day 1.

I always thought the reason for this problem in teaching programming is that what you need to know when switching to a new language is totally different from what you need to know when you don't know how to program. If you already know how to program, the first thing you need to know is the syntax: data types, iterators, etc. It's like being a carpenter and going to a new shop -- what are the tools? But if you don't know how to use the tools, being told the torque on an impact wrench is completely useless information. Not only is it useless, it's easy to look up, and therefore a waste of time to teach.

I now help teach the Boston Python Workshop, a weekend workshop for non-developer women and their friends. We do cover loops and data types on Saturday morning, but then all afternoon is projects -- building programs that cheat at scrabble, access twitter, and draw colored grids.

I totally understand why experienced programmers teach the way they do -- it's what they'd want to know. But the focus should not be on the language, it should be on the skill of how to program regardless of language. And yes, that's really hard to teach.

The term "creative" has multiple meanings, and I think in the sense they intend, the software engineers at Pixar are in fact not creative.

The following story may make the difference easier to see. I've been interviewing a lot of independent filmmakers, asking if they'd be interested in pitching ideas for webisodes to brands that want entertaining content. The prize if their pitch is chosen is that the brand would pay for them to produce the series. So far the filmmakers I've talked to fall into two camps (actually one camp and one individual, but I'm sure there are other filmmakers like this person): the first absolutely love the idea, and the second basically said the money would never be worth it. The essential difference is whether they are creatives.

All of these filmmakers are paid very well for taking someone else's creative idea and converting it into a video. All of them love their jobs. But the first group of filmmakers then spends all their extra time and money making their own creative work. The second group has no narrative films of their own, and talked about what a relief it is that they don't have to be involved in the script, the storyboard, or any other part of "creative" (their word).

Software engineering is similar. I became a software developer after being a jazz trumpet player for 10 years, and the single biggest surprise for me was how creative programming is. You can come up with an idea and create almost anything with nothing but your brain and an internet-connected computer! The creativity in that is awesome.

But many developers don't actually have an interest in coming up with the concept or UI. And certainly most developers, whether they'd like to or not, have very little involvement in the core concept behind the software they're developing.

At Pixar, the software engineers have little to do with the plot, characters, dialog, or storyboarding. While I'm sure they solve problems creatively, and they do actually create the story by bringing the already drawn characters to life with realistic animation, this isn't what Pixar means by creative.

Glad to see people suggesting exercise (spacefood, chaostheory, juliano_q, others), as well as other tools to change the underlying depression. I think the important takeaway is that this is not "startup depression" -- it's depression. You'll be happier/more successful if you find a way to get rid of it.

Sure, running a startup is going to have ups and downs. Sure, you'll sometimes fail at what you're trying to do, and you'll sometimes feel that failure deeply. Failing comes from trying to do something really difficult; taking that failure personally comes from being human.

But as a general rule, the founders I know from the (pretty hoppin') Boston scene are born optimists. More than any other group of people I know, they believe despite the odds, they bounce back quickly, and they have pretty tough skins.

Depression is hard to sort out, but totally worth it. It's worth it for anybody, but necessary for founders because of the up & down nature of running a startup. I spent much of my adult life beating my head against a wall, occasionally being depressed, and not understanding why I couldn't make sh*t happen. Then a few years ago I figured myself out (combination of exercise, gratitude, & therapy), and since then everything has been different. Externally, my life took a major turn for the better in every arena from relationships to finances. Internally, I just don't have the resistance I used to really suffer from, and my downs are pretty short. It rocks.

So I guess I feel your pain, but don't glorify it. Do the work to get over it. You'll be much happier.

While the title made me wonder if this was a spoof article, I'm surprised that no one here finds the article chilling. Forget the politicians, the intended use is for modifying people's behaviour. From friends' anecdotes (both Japanese friends and those who spent many years in Japan), there is strong pressure to conform in Japanese schools. Imagine this scenario:

Speech jammers are introduced into Japanese schools. From the article: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking." Sounds like a school to me. This type of technology used on kids could have long-term impact on their ability to think during public conversations. And once the teacher realizes they can silence any student at will, do you think they'll stop at the "louder, stronger" voices? Any student with an opinion the teacher doesn't like could get zapped. And the worst part is not that other students won't hear their ideas -- it's that the student herself will have those thoughts disrupted.

Entrepreneurs are who we are because we think outside the box -- we do things we're told can't be done. Most people aren't like that. And imagine if every time you talked about anything "out of the norm" as a child your very thoughts were stopped. Chilling.

I guess if Japanese authorities want that kind of conformity, it might help the US economy...but I'm still not a fan.

I totally get why this rfs was posted. SOPA is pretty egregious, and the YCombinator folks went beyond complaining and decided to do something about it. There's nothing more positive than funding startups to create the better world you envision.

I certainly appreciate that they didn't gloss over the fact that SOPA's potential damage to civil liberties and the world economy was what raised their awareness of the viability of startups in this space. People should publicly stand up for causes they believe in.

I've been looking into this space for a while with plans of disruption. I see a lot of posts on here from people who work in the industry talking about how expensive it is to create high-quality video. As an independent filmmaker and entrepreneur, I only somewhat agree (on the price of hiring indie filmmakers: http://crewtide.com/2011/11/03/price-of-video-narrative-vs-v...). There are a number of things that make Hollywood productions so expensive, like name actors or car crashes/explosions. But another big one is location, location, location. Hollywood production studios are expensive because they can create any location you can imagine. Crowdsource to award-winning independent filmmakers (as my startup will do) and each of them will shoot in whatever amazing-looking locations they know they can shoot in for free.

sanjiallblue writes as if every independent film shoot uses non-professional cast and crew -- that is ridiculous. In my recent shoot (we're releasing a six-episode thriller-romance web series around Valentine's Day) the only conflict was that one of our leads got into a play with the American Repertory Theater. I'm interviewing 20 independent filmmakers for my blog this month and all of them are full-time filmmakers -- some have day jobs shooting for local TV stations or editing for production studios, but most are full-time freelancers doing commercials, corporate work, music videos, and their own shorts and features.

By the way, brands are beating Y Combinator to the punch. Who has funded television since it began? Brands, and they're starting to skip tv and the exorbitant price of advertising there and create their own content. Since BMW's The Hire series early last decade, plenty of other brands have jumped on board creating their own mini TV shows (http://crewtide.com/2011/10/14/branded-entertainment-example...). You should really read these guys take on it: http://www.reelseo.com/every-brand-will-be-a-studio/. ReelSEO always has the latest news & best commentary on this industry.

Right now BMW, Kmart, YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu are still going to Hollywood to get their content produced, and they're paying through the nose. Kmart spent $100,000 per 8-mninute episode of a low-budget web series by going to Hollywood; an indie filmmaker could have made that for 1/10th the price with an all-professional crew.