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pauldjohns

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Paul Johns. Co-founder, Else (https://somethingelse.ai). I run GTM – outbound, content, design partners, In Production newsletter. Previously Parsec (through the Unity acquisition), Druva, RingCentral. What I'm working on at Else: helping PMs and designers ship working prototypes on their real codebase. Backcountry kayaking in Montana when I can.

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I've been plugging away at a dev tool for a while and trying to find PMF (sound familiar?). Usual challenge: there's a lot of different things we can do but finding the right niche has been difficult.

The most compelling use case has been surfacing in a collaborative review env. We've had installs using it to consolidate the fix-it feedback rather than decipher screenshots from Slack or tickets from Linear. They're using our product as an instant DevOps stand-in, hosting branch-based review environments and allowing in stakeholders to comment directly or even propose a simple fix (copy, color, etc. - things that shouldn't need a ticket).

I'm wondering if this is just a use case for smaller teams w/o dedicated DevOps or more valuable for review in general. Anyhow, try it if you have time or interest: review.somethingelse.ai - it's been fun to build and we're thinking this may be the right area to spend more of our development time.

DOS Zone 2 months ago

What happened? Where did the day go? I guess the good news is the world has fewer demons and Raiden is no longer a threat.

This advice is unfortunately spot on. I've tried my fair share. Found a well researched piece on acupuncture. Didn't work. But, they did stick needles in my head which was an experience in itself.

From my several visits to the audiologist, it still seems noise therapy is the most highly regarded therapy.

Get a white noise machine for sleeping. Hands down the best thing for me until I just got used to it always being there.

Cloud sandboxes to run your full stack (https://eng.somethingelse.ai/). Primary use case is with PMs to prototype and build on the codebase, shipping non-opinionated PRs for review, but our dev is using Else to build Else, so we published the eng site so others could try it out.

Personally, I'm working on a river TierBlend seasonal forecast (currently 6–15 weeks per gauge) — in-house ML model trained on 35+ years of weekly discharge plus NRCS SNOTEL snowpack features (https://pauldjohns.github.io/usgs-discharge-poc/)

I am an extrovert myself. My wife, an introvert. Check out "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" - genuinely helped me understand how my wife operates and why. I mention this since we live in the same house, akin to working in person with an introvert.

This made me happy. I didn't realize the UO world was still alive. CC. Raiding guild towers. Setting rune stones inside another faction's castle walls. First website I built was for this game, good ol' Angelfire and some really course HTML.

There's no harm in the relationship being strictly related to work, especially if that's what brought you two together in the first place and you found that you complement each other well. You help each other out, and you're able to have constructive debate, particularly if you both have different views on stuff or different outlooks. Those are all really healthy things.

If you want to try to build more of a personal connection, it's more about introducing small talk and banter into whatever frequency you guys meet (stand-ups, etc.). Learn a little bit about each other and what the other person's interested in. You may find common ground that you didn't know existed. For example, my co-founder and I both learned that we both really enjoy cooking.

At the end of the day, as long as it's strictly professional and focused on work, there's no harm in it. As long as you guys enjoy working together, are driven toward a common goal, and get joy out of the time that you do spend together, even if you're not going out and doing things together when you're not working.