spacecowboy

This environment sounds like a case of no accountability and negligence. If a intern can make this type of decision without review and accountability, what other decisions are being made under the same environment of no review and accountability within the company?

Seek to understand from the ones that promoted you what expectations they have of you and from the new role.

Saw your post earlier today and it left me wondering on how to help. Then I came across this tonight, thought it might be helpful in some roundabout way. https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2013/05/22/7-steps-to...

(edited) I went on to discover this article, I found the comments just as interesting. https://lifehacker.com/steve-martins-advice-for-building-a-c...

I would share the following principles to apply to your career (from my martial arts studies):

Be Honest.

Be Humble.

Respect self and others.

Practice diligently.

Seek perfection of character.

And would also share the following quote from Hiroshi Saito (CEO of Chateraise) which I came across later in life and thought it helps to change your perspective:

Everything outside of me has something to teach me.

Discovered it by accident. I'm not into the religion but I discovered meditation by listening to the talks recorded by an American Buddhist monk. You'll need to distill it but the knowledge is in there and the workings and mechanics of the mind is described in such detail that I have never heard about it anywhere. https://www.dhammatalks.org/mp3_collections_index.html

Will take a look. Thanks!

45 here. Two in college, two teenagers and my wife is back in school. I've managed software teams in the past and have done my share of coding but today, I work from home and code for a living which I truly enjoy but would definitely entertain the opportunity to have my hands in more things. I think the biggest things I have discovered in my 40s is a refocus on my physical and emotional health especially by discovering meditation - at this point I feel that meditation has had the biggest impact so far. I also try not to overreact to things in my life and to try to enjoy the moments more and try to be supportive of my wife and kids as much as I can. As far as professional development, try to do side projects that scratch an itch and allow you to develop skills you wouldn't normally be able to develop at a day job. Try to stay up-to-date in industry and attend conferences when you can, they are great for the exposure to what's going on in industry but its also nice to meet other professionals, network and get out of the office.

Those moments are always awesome and a great feeling :)

Totally agree! Big congrats to the SpaceX team on this historical accomplishment.

Keep a dialogue with everybody, don't shut yourself off from friends and family - no matter how uncomfortable it is.

Stay active physically and socially, get involved with your community and work wise, seek new employment and "keep moving".

No matter how bad it feels, just remember that this time in your life will pass - you will get past it.

I like the focus on variables and values - very cool! congrats!

When I first started working as a manager for a group of folks, my own manager insisted that if one day someone in my group didn't show up for work and there wasn't a phone call or email or a note, he said to always try to get in touch with the individual to see if everything was ok. My manager was so insistent on following this practice so I asked him why he felt so strongly about this. He said he had an experience in which he had one of his folks not show up for work - no phone call, no email, no note so he tried to reach the individual by phone. After no response given multiple attempts to reach him, by late afternoon, my boss decided to drive out to the individual's house. When he got to his house, he found the gentleman passed out in front of his house. Thankfully, this story ended up with a happy ending.

Nice :)

You are not just a statistic, you are much more. Your an inspiration to your family and to all of us just like all of those that have responded to you with offers to help. Let us all know how we can help.

So sorry to hear about the current situation, found myself filled with a lot of emotion as I read through it. Reminds me of a talk I had with a good friend of mine where we basically acknowledged that we're not afraid to die but that we're more afraid of the dying process.

Came across an insightful video and presentation given at the Konsoll 2013 conference on "marketing indie games on a $0 budget" that might be of interest to folks. It was given within the context of indie game development but its really addressing a common problem.

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkEQtMP2CuA slides: http://www.indiegamegirl.com/konsoll-2013/

Don't be afraid to make a decision on choosing a specific path in life. The sooner you make a decision, the sooner you start learning and finding out things about the path. If you find yourself having a life where you are not happy for a really long period of time, re-assess things and make another decision. You have the rest of your life to figure out what you want to do, many people who are much older than you are still trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up and you know - that is totally ok. Grow your network of friends and mentors and never be afraid to ask for help - you are doing good so far :) Get involved in things that you wouldn't normally do, these opportunities lead to other opportunities and also help you grow your network - many organizations with great causes out there. Always have something that you care about and is personal to you on the side, no matter what happens in life, you always have that one thing that matters to you and no one can take away. Hope you have a fun and great 16th bday!

The following youtube video is a decent intro on binaural beats - make sure you listen with headphones. Also, everything after the 5:55 mark starts becoming an infomercial so you can stop there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCfUbFjin00

The key is to relax your eyes, let them get lazy like you stayed up all night and cross them just a bit. Focus on just one spot and it should come into focus - eventually :)

That was a pretty cool crash course on Lua Tyler! Thanks for putting that together and sharing it. After having had worked with numerous languages over the years such as Fortran, Pascal, Ada, C, Java, C++, C#, Python and Objective-C, I must say that working with Lua is my favorite. I'm thankful to a buddy of mine for introducing it to me. My own personal experience has shown me that working with Lua really allows you to focus on solving the problem versus getting wrapped around the axle at the programming language level. Thanks again

Sounds like an opportunity for Turner to use this situation and the attention this can generate to amplify his own idea, brand and work.

If you decide to stay, how you handle this situation and how you get to the end of the project will be remembered by everyone involved. Assuming you dig in, do the best you can and try to keep your chin up, this can help lead you to better opportunities on new projects where you are asked for by name. Also, the relationships you make now, can also follow you and can be leveraged down the road as the company grows and as you maneuver through the growth of your career.

I have four children between the ages of 9 and 17 and they all play Minecraft. One of the most interesting things about them playing it is that they'll play together as a team building elaborate home structures. At one point, they built an amusement park with roller coaster rides and everything. One of the other games I have introduced them to is the game Fez. It allows them to simply explore another colorful 2d/3d world as a single player.

This reminds me of an observation I made while out at lunch one day. I was at a local restaurant having lunch and realized that two tables away, there were some of the ladies who were janitors at my work. After a couple of minutes of over hearing them talk about my work place, they were pretty outspoken, one of them said "....and they just sit there and stare at the screen all day......and they get paid all this money - I don't get it...."

Try to surround yourself with others, spend time with people either online or face-to-face. Start one or two other physical activities to help you get your mind off things.

Then, start with a really small bite-size idea, something that seems so trivial and implement it and get it done. Then slowly start building on that tiny idea and keep adding to it. This will help you show progress, will allow you to focus and get a feeling of accomplishment. Over time, which by the way,you have the rest of your life, you can build on that and figure out what you really want to do.

Hang in there.

Accept that being a lead is going to be challenging. That whatever tasks you have taken on for yourself, you may or may not get to them when you want to. Accept that you will be the bridge between upper management and the technical folks and that you will be dealing with any number of issues.

Also, keep in mind that there are lots of resources out there about how to lead people and be a better leader. Look to the Harvard Business Review ( http://hbr.org ) for some good resources on how to be a better leader.

At the end of the day, as a lead, there is a process that you can follow to help you along. The process includes the following: 1) Meet with your team and work out what tasks are assigned, follow up with each team member and confirm that they understand the assignment by asking them to describe to you what they think they are doing, follow up with each team member on their assignment and measure their progress, and finally, check in with them to review their work and let them know when they are done or have completed their assignment - then start again. Use this process no matter how small or big the assignment is.

Some folks use an agile like approach to management of projects and one of the nice things out of this world is SCRUM and the concept of daily stand up meetings. One of the things I would recommend is to get into the rhythm of meeting with your team for about 15 minutes every day to check progress, see what they have accomplished and see what they are working on for the next day and to see if there are any things keeping them from meeting their goals. If you ever hear a complaint, that is a red flag and try to use whatever resources you have to remove those obstacles.

At the end of the day, you only have so much time and energy. Do the best you can and never loose your cool no matter what the situation is.

Best wishes and a great new year!

If you were a CTO then you know what it takes to get to where you want to go.

I am thankful for the fact that I continue to have the opportunity to live another day, to be able to breath on my own, walk on my own, and think on my own and to have the opportunity each day to make a positive impact on my wife-kids-family-neighbors-friends-strangers and the world.

A couple of suggestions and they're not listed in any particular order:

1. Run a spell checker on the content of your site (ie, Installation is not spelled Instalation )

2. If you're not going to provide source or open source your product, provide debug and release versions of your product; don't tease people that your release version is much faster

3. If you know you have "many bugs", then document them and and give folks a head's up - don't leave people guessing!

4. Explain to people "Why" they want to use your product; there are so many other products out there with tons of support and documentation - why would anybody want to use your product?

5. Open source it and consider still taking donations, consult on its use and maybe even release a book on it if you're going to continue on its use

Again, identify who your audience really is; there are lots of packages being used to fill the niche of web app frameworks; what is special about your product and in what circumstances would someone need to use it

Good luck!

To the original poster on this topic...

I know you made a deal with this developer but the fact that your original deal was to build your app within 2 months and it has been almost a year now - you REALLY need to walk away. It hurts both emotionally and financially, but based on all the feedback you've received - you should really consider what the community is telling you and move on.

I write software for a living and I have been in positions where other contractors have written software for my groups so If I ever made a deal with someone that included having software done in two months - waiting almost a year later for the project to be completed is just plain ridiculous and totally unacceptable. Especially when you take into consideration all of the things that you have mentioned.

It hurts us to hear about your story, we wish you the best but help yourself and start over. Take what you have learned from this experience and apply it to the next iteration. The fact that you've worked through a lot of questions, issues and the conops of how your application would work - take this experience and knowledge and find someone that comes recommended and is trusted and give it another shot.

Best wishes.