HN user
Related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34530052
Recently went through this discussion with two friends. For now we are doing PocketBase for a simple, extendable BaaS, Flutter for front-ends.
We are starting to drool looking at Elixir, Phoenix, and LiveView from afar. But the learning curve would slow us down for the next MVP that we need to put out on a schedule.
Following up, a note on infrastructure. We are cheap, so our LAN is Tailscale. One of us provided a Mac mini where we installed Dokku to host containers and development servers. For internal use we've been very happy.
For exposure to others we'd likely deploy an MVP to the cloud in Dokku as well.
For production we plan to use Kubernetes, but that is an artifact of our skill set.
What a timely question! A couple of friends and I have been wrestling with the question, and coming from the enterprise world, have been retooling for producing code over producing production code for the MVP. We currently are looking working with
* Flutter, with FlutterFlow for UI * Pocketbase for quick, extendable back end code and basic BaaS * Heavier emphasis on market validation and strategy than technology
We set a goal that the MVP is barely a mock-up. The other understanding we have is that the backend would have to be 100% rebuilt if / when there is traction, but we were able to get to work in one web meeting.
Pretty much a continuation of what I started in late 2022
* I want some certifications, and just finished studying for Microsoft PowerApps. I'm going to scheduled that test, go for an Azure certification, then Kubernetes. Most of that is for personal interest.
* I started learning F# and have a couple of projects I intend to complete. Right now I'm starting with a serverless Identity Sever. Rust continues to beckon from the sidelines though. I might be distracted, or even worse, try to take the middle path and master both at the same time.
* On Saturday mornings I meet with some friends and we have been working towards our own MicroSaaS efforts; in January we enter market validation for various ideas we have. Ideally at least one idea will survive and I'll be working on that in 2023, which should involve a bit of a learning curve.
* Intentional use of a Zettlekasten is bearing fruit, and I've relaunched my blog with the intention of creating writing products as a result. Need to get RSS working first though.
I have battled this since programming became my profession. Over years I was trained to create in ways that maximize income, and stop when there is no income link. Decades later, this made working for passion very difficult.
Here are a few ideas that seem to consistently help me.
* one, sheer willpower. It's a muscle that needs building, but keep going when you don't have any further interest for the sake of completing the task. Even when it feels like torture. It's about forcing yourself to the finish line. Often the interest comes back later.
* Move the finish line closer. Formally write down what you want to develop with milestones, with a go/no go decision at each milestone. If you decide not to continue at a milestone, that was part of the plan, so you completed the project.
* work on things that develop skills you expect to bring to the workplace and apply there. That's a pretty direct link to income.
* work on things you want or to keep current with younger hires -- I'm learning gitops on k8s at home, and packaging charts to self-host some things I've wanted at home anyways. Even though I manage these days, it's important to understand how things work to a decent degree in order to have meaningful discussions with the broader team. I know managers who get by without that, but I'm not one of them.
For what it's worth, continuing on because that's what you planned to do sometimes leads to a renewal of interest later in the project.
I would assume that you will have basic utilities without interruption -- water, electricity. Supply chains could, theoretically, have disruptions as the disease runs through the world. I am not saying they will; just that they can. If it happens the affect on you and yours of not having extra is extremely significant. That's enough of a reason to buy what you can.
You cannot go back and time, but after things settle down (they will) look at your budget and what it takes to have a couple of weeks extra of necessary items. It's not super expensive to buy rice and beans if you are on a budget, then rotate your supply when the rice starts to get old. If you have more money you can get something with less monotonous flavor: canned food, dehydrated, freeze dried, whatever. You may need it twice in your life, but when you do, it will be the wisest thing you have every done.
This is the key issue. If a company is built to be remote -- over documentation; excessive communication; no two people are local to each other; a culture around the online communication tools (to replicate the watercooler); and most importantly 3 - 4 overlap of all teams so you know when meetings can be scheduled. Have that, and you can work extremely well.
If you are "distributed" in the sense there is a HQ full of managers, and a bunch of other offices because that's where people could be found with the right skill set, no set overlap hours, and HQ still has the practices on of non-distributed culture (conversations about important topics happen face to face for instance). Well, then, you have to accept you will be out of the loop and work very hard to be remembered and involved.
This is a common issue, but most do not recognize it. Fewer do anything about it.
My feeling is that the author's definition of what is needed, and what is normal, is out of whack. The author has apparently made an income that allows for survival, but along the way has become conditioned to only work for profit. When you feel profit is survival, this makes sense. In the United States for example, you are given this message all day, every day.
But once you get past survival needs, and want to turn back to things that give life meaning, you can find you are wired to only evaluate the profit potential.
What helped me in the past when I was in this trap was volunteering for a 2 week "vacation" helping people much worse than me. I like to travel, so I would volunteer for 2 weeks at someplace like La Joya orphanage in Mexico. The founder needs help teaching and building sustainable homes for children that can't even imagine the good life. Give some of yourself to them, and see how fulfilling it can be.
When you get back suddenly just enjoying music, reading poetry, or doing something else for personal satisfaction will seem much more worthwhile.
Technically my advice is to expand his focus to building wealth from more than just increasing income. But yes, you get the idea. Stock, options, etc.
Much good advice has been given here. You should consider it all. I am here to offer another approach for consideration. My perspective is from working in Silicon Valley in the US most of my career.
During my 20+ years in this field I have seen when
- IBM was declared "dead" before Gerstner came in, and it's capitalization was below the value of the real estate it held. It's hard to imagine now.
- Apple dropped to almost nothing in stock price, and Jobs was pushed out by Sculley.
- Cisco became a real company.
- Netflix came on the scene.
- Amazon came on the scene.
- Facebook IPO'd way too low. (I know someone who piled in, and bought a Tesla 6 months later).
2 of those opportunities, because I understand this industry, I recognized and took advantage of by buying the stocks. Others I did not even see. I lost a little money alot, but made alot of money a few times. The key is never to bet too much on the same company, so you can win if you are right only 20% of the time.
Today I am following the economic shift from the U.S. and companies that are capitalizing on the rapid maturation of machine learning. I've also taken a job at a machine learning startup where I negotiated harder for equity than pay.
Don't even get me started on blockchain. I did not make free bitcoin early on, and sometimes still berate myself. But banks and governments will increasingly regulate cryptocurrency, taking away the liberty it brings while reaping the benefits of more efficient operations. Those are trends I can safely invest in. Look at hyperledger, JPM coin, Ripple, that sort of thing.
(As an aside, every 5 years in technology has been "the most exciting time ever to be alive". We are lucky to be around at this point in history, and in the countries we are in.)
My theory has been: you can see what your industry is doing to the world. Place your bets. Ride the ups and downs for a few years (3 to 10 -- Netflix took along time to become obvious; so did Amazon). Reap unreasonable profit.
To summarize, the biggest dollar per hour wins in my life have been investments, not income. Being higher in the hierarchy has only increased this trend. Make sure you think about this avenue as well.
(For another example, during the dot com boom I saw a co-worker use naked calls to turn USD $20,000 into millions. But they were naked calls -- he lost it all when the market crashed, less than 6 months from his planned retirement. That level of risk is not for me.)
This. Though I also may be old and crusty. Mark Twain said it nicely: "If you have to eat a frog, do it first thing in the morning. If you have to eat two, eat the bigger one first."
The longer you wait to do something you should but don't want to, the more difficult it will be to do. On top of that, you'll have the mental "weight" of knowing in the back of your mind it's sitting there, waiting for you. Best to just do it and get it out of the way.
Congratulations on your promotion! Let me recommend the classics: _The Phoenix Project_ and _High Output Management_ by Andy Grove. The latter is from 1983, but the principles are in use in my company today, and it is the start of OKRs, used by Google and others to this day.
I am not the original poster, but you can do much worse than reading and really thinking about _The Phoenix Project_ and _High Output Management_.
I read alot on Kindle Unlimited, but mostly it's garbage. Fills the time while waiting in lines. My better quality reading is on Audible as I have one of those long Silicon Valley commutes each day.
I'm sure 10s of books, or more, passed my eyes this using Kindle Unlimited. Most are mind candy that pass odd moments of time. Two books caused me to rethink how I work and actually take notes with time to stop, reflect on how it applies to my world. They are:
_High Output Management_ by Andy Grove (from 1983!) _The Phoenix Project_
These have led to spirited discussions with the two co-founders of the startup where I work, and eventually to changes in process. There are some clashes, but logical ones, between the Scrum and Kanban approaches that are hot now and some ideas here. Mostly it's another way to think about the same core issues -- another tool in the toolbox.
Also, as time allows I am slowing going through _Blockchain Revolution_ by Don & Alex Tapscott. I'm a few years late on this one, but loving the updated 2018 version.
I've also enjoyed numerous offerings from Audible, especially:
_The Addictive Brain_, a Great Courses series of lectures. An overview of current thinking; dopamine does not play the role I thought it did in addiction.
_How Emotions are Made_, by Lisa Feldman Barret. The end of the book seems to be her preaching her political views with the theories she develops in the first 75% of the book. Her thinking and information is so excellent that it's worth putting up with her moralizing towards the end. Completely fascinating research by a top rate mind.
_The Girl with All the Gifts_, by M. R. Carey. Why did no one ever tell me this was a zombie story? Excellent!
_Unfu*k Yourself_, by Gary John Bishop. Offensive title; great book. Advice is dead on, if not new. People need to review a book like this once every year, and the narrator has the right voice for it.
_Judges for You_, by Timothy Keller. I used to really study the Bible; now I rarely get in deep. Keller always has something to say that's worth hearing.
_Elon Musk_, by Aslee Vance. Hate or love him, he's a major factor in moving human civilization forward in what I think are good ways. The wife and I got a few lively conversations while listening to this book.
I am having trouble relating. As an engineering manager, not jumping in and doing what the team should do is a major challenge for me. It turns out that as a manager I've greatly increased team productivity, been able to stop them working every other weekend as a result, and the team skills and happiness are visibly improving. But I just have a constant temptation to code instead of work on all that because I love it to the point where it is almost compulsive.
To satisfy that I get up early 3 days a week to work on side projects to satisfy that desire.
I'll be counter-cultural. Get a Bible.
My approach is to try to make the discussion irrelevant. Instead, I'm going a bit extreme and making all my real machines VMs, and working off a chromebook. The theory is that I can easily configure VMs to be more powerful when and for as long as needed, then get rid of them. If the chromebook is lost, I lose nothing. If I don't have it, I can work from whatever computer is around, provided I have a USB drive with my SSH keys.
I make my living providing web application development services, and have had to make some changes to my workflow.
- My online video meeting solution was not a SaaS application, and was replaced.
- Google Docs works, but it's not as flexible as Microsoft Word for me. But Word online did not seem appealing, so it's Google Docs here. Key company documents have been put there to act as templates.
- Lastly, I need a decent internet connection to get anything done.
Other than that, everything remains much the same. But take me offline and there is little I can do. On a recent international trip I had to plan what I took on the plane to be productive carefully as I could not guarantee there would be a decent internet for the chromebook to connect to.
My corporate IT infrastructure is in an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), fronted with a VPN server. Internal corporate applications run on a private subnet on the VPC. I do miss the Retina display from the Macbook Pro I used to have before, but not as much as I expected. Lastly the wife retains a beefy iMac as she is the lead designer. I can borrow if it becomes necessary. So I'm running with a safety net. Since we are making a living off this infrastructure for our small development shop I wanted to have a fallback available.
This setup has been on a trial run for three months so far. While some changes had to be made in my workflow, to date I am as productive as I was before. Currently I predict continued success. There is very little left to test, and I am running the team as before while contributing live production code.
Steve Gibson of the _Security Now!_ podcast recommends ProXpn. They do sponsor the show, but Steve has vetted them, and in the absence of vetting services myself I'd go with his recommendation.