patrogizmo

From my experience founding companies, you've gotta commit 100% to it to have any chance of success. That doesn't mean working on an idea in your free time. Consider the fact that someone, or even a funded team of someones, are out there putting in 100% effort to solve the same problem. How are you going to outcompete if you're working on this problem in your spare time (which I imagine is quite limited having a wife and kids)?

You should also consider what success looks like for you. Do you want to start a company to gain creative freedom? Do you want a better lifestyle for your family? Are you prepared to spend the next 7 years on this endeavor? How will you balance the high workload (I'm talking non-stop work for a month at a time) with spending quality time with your family?

You should think through all of these questions, then have an honest conversation about it with your wife, and don't sugar-coat it. She might surprise you.

As far as funding goes... You'll want to put away a fund to pay your salary for at least the first 6 months. Your goal in those first 6 months will be to create a believable story you can sell to investors about your vision. If they like it, you'll be able to raise funds to continue working on it and to deliver that vision.

Top Ones:

- Github Copilot (pays for itself many times over in the time I save on mundane tasks).

- LinkedIn Premium (helps with outreach)

- Pandora (only because I still have most of my stations on it)

- Evernote

- Sketch

At the end of the day, only you know how you are feeling. If you are not feeling secure about your standing in the company, it's for a reason. Starting your search now gives you the ability to negotiate from a position of power, as you can say no to an offer and wait for another better offer.

Now, WRT trusting your gut... You aren't in a position to know for sure how things will turn out with this company, and you won't know for sure until someone tells you ;) You deserve to be in a place where you feel secure.

Glad you like it!

Agreed! It certainly does seem to elicit thoughtful discourse.

Communicating work schedules and recurring tasks. These industries deal with a lot of turn-over and no-shows.

For context, I designed a laundromat management system for one of the largest manufacturers of laundry machines in the world. Part of the work was flying out to meet with laundromat owners to find out their biggest issues. Scheduling and communication of schedules was a big sticking point (though not something that we ultimately designed into the system we launched).

I'm a firm believer in learn-by-doing. Take a look at these stats:

Learning Retention Rates:

- Listening only - After 3 hours: 70% - After 3 days: 10%

- Seeing or Observing only - After 3 hours: 72% - After 3 days: 20%

- Hearing and Seeing / Observing - After 3 hours: 85% - After 3 days: 65%

- Doing - After 3 hours: 95% - After 3 days: 90%

As you can clearly see, nothing comes close to the amount of information you actually retain by doing. You should try to connect your passion to learning new skills.

For me, I did this by working on personal projects that used the newest web technologies that related to my interests (horticulture, education, biotech). I quickly became proficient in those technologies and became a resource for other developers in my organization. My career accelerated and I rose from junior javascript developer to chief software architect before I was 25.

I try to choose products that are not sold to me. It's a red flag when a SDR has to reach out to me to tell me how great the product is. I want to use a product developed by a company that invests heavily into the quality of the product, rather than the act of selling it (marketing + sales). So, that means word-of-mouth, helpful articles that lead me to the product, and free trials / evaluation periods.

Trust your gut. Start looking for another position now. You don't want to wait for someone else to tell you your future.

As a side-note, recognize that people lie to prevent panic. It may quickly turn from "you are indispensable" to "your position has been eliminated".

Laundromats, gas stations, restaurants, and other companies in the service-industry would find use in a technology like this.

Listen to The History of Philosophy without any Gaps podcast. You’ll get a lot of insight into the evolution of human thought.

Web4

The new CEO of FTX just released a declaration: "Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls..."

"In the Bahamas, I understand that corporate funds of the FTX Group were used to purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors"

Sam Bankman-Fried's hedge fund lent billions to... Sam Bankman-Fried (Paper Bird is his entity), so that's at least part of the answer where the money went.

I came across this really good summary of FTX's fraud on Reddit the other day:

"SBF/Alameda's initial strategy was arbitraging price differences between US and Korea/Japan. The different crypto exchanges in different countries would have different prices for the same coin. In theory this was possible but in practice it was basically impossible. They lost money in Korea due to capital controls, they made some money in Japan but still lost money overall due to the enormous amounts they had to borrow and the high interest rates they were paying.

The arbitrage strategy wasn't working so they switched to shilling shitcoins. Basically they would create a new token backed by say $5m seed money, put like 1% of the total number of tokens created on the market, then use their own money to pump up the token price by 100x. Since they owned and controlled 99% of the total amount of tokens, this was easy to do. Now their initial $5m is worth $500m, but only on paper because liquidity on these tokens is tiny and if they actually tried to sell it would immediately crash.

Alameda did this in order to get loans using the tokens that they created and pumped as collateral. Then they took the borrowed money to make large directional bets on crypto prices. However it turned out they were bad at trading crypto and took billions in losses and the margin calls started coming in for their loans.

At this point Alameda was stuck, the collateral backing these loans were all shitcoins and if they started selling them the price would crash causing the entire company to go under. Since SBF couldn't meet the margin calls by liquidating the underlying collateral, he and the other founders decided to steal money from customer accounts at FTX to meet the margin calls. Basically they would give Alameda their own FTX token(FTT) and then have FTX loan customer funds to Alameda using the tokens they just gave them as "collateral". It was essentially the same scam as the one they pulled on lenders, only now they're doing it to customers while promising they would never touch customer funds.

Alameda kept losing money and eventually the scheme was discovered and it ended up being they stole something like 2/3 of the customer funds at FTX. Current estimates are at about $10 billion they lost gambling on crypto with customer money. It was a classic case of a gambler kept doubling down and borrowing and stealing until it came crashing down."

I've been working fully remotely for the past 8 years. Slack is great for sending over clear instructions for people to follow, but doesn't communicate attitude and can be slow as typing out long messages is a big time sink. I highly recommend using Huddles / Slack calls to quickly get to the bottom of things. Don't feel obligated to respond to a message immediately either. Respond when it makes the most sense for you (within reason).

Definitely focus on embedded. You might try looking for startups. Many may list prior experience as a must-have, but will make exceptions depending on the candidate and skills of the other candidates who are applying.

As a general rule, the key I've found is to have a system in place that doesn't let things slip through the cracks without acknowledgement. It's fine to not complete something if it's less important than everything else, so long as you are making the conscious decision to do so. What you can't afford is to let something go by unnoticed that'll catch you off-guard. Practically what this means is having a place to record all of your outstanding tasks, a way of prioritizing them, and a regular review of those tasks. Tools like Shortcut, Jira, and Basecamp do this really well.

Also, keep notes and action items from meetings, and make sure to block off time to put those action items into whatever tool you use to track tasks. A lot of useful insight gets lost the moment a meeting ends if you don't!

Let's talk about the reality of software development. Some projects are easy to estimate, especially in domains a developer has tackled before. As an example, consider a developer who has written five static pages who's asked to estimate how long it'll take them to write a sixth. Think of these projects as a well-defined path through the meadow to success. However, some projects are closer to crossing glacier for the first time; you never know when that fluffy bit of snow on the ground is hiding a crevasse of challenges.

While it may be true, saying "it'll be done when it's done" isn't useful. All tasks involve some aspect of uncertainty. Coming up with an at least half-way decent estimate requires a team to break down the problems they're facing into smaller chunks that can be estimated. This is a useful exercise when it comes to prioritizing projects, budgeting, and go/no-go decisions.

There are many ways in which estimation as an exercise can be corrupted. Some people, particularly those who haven't written software themselves, treat all estimates as accurate. In their mind, that "I guess 3 months" estimate a developer gave quickly turns into "I can 100% deliver this to you fully tested, with all of the additions you added along the way in 3 months". This over-indexing often leads to the situation where a developer is disciplined for not meeting expectations, even though they tried their hardest to do so. Some people don't like the estimates they are presented with, so they seek out a lower estimate. They are then shocked when the project takes longer.