HN user
Thanks for the detailed response. You certainly have an optimistic way of looking at the situation.
My problem is that I'm 32- the way I see it is I have 3-4 more years of going balls to the wall before my wife starts popping out kids and I'd really hate to waste this time doing low level unchallenging work.
The funny thing is I can see myself 10 years down the line WISHING I had a job just like this.
Just out of curiousity, which one did you go with?
We're in the middle of doing this ourselves and would like to hear a random HNers thoughts on the subject.
This is the quintessential hacker news post, IMO.
A topic that on the surface seems run of the mill (a train station)
Technical in its essence
Authored by someone notable (in this case really notable, which is not a requirement)
My comment on the other hand, not in the spirit of the discussions on HN but I like to celebrate good posts when I see them.
The truth is youre more likely to find the skills within a talented team and not individual.
Someone with a knack for product AND great engineering chops is extremely rare.
Not disagreeing with you, if anything bolstering your point.
Thanks, I did it quickly and thought I'd gotten the whole paragraph. Went ahead and added all of it, there was a page break in between.
Shit could always hit the fan though.
I joined Zenefits when everyone had dollar signs in their eyes. It felt like the roaring 20s (or at least the accounts I've heard of them).
How are they doing nowadays?
I always say don't compromise on salary for equity. Compromise for the experience, for an entrance into the field, because the chick at the counter was digging you, but not because of some payout you think you'll get in the future.
For the lazy:
>> In 2014, 2015, and 2016, we generated $77.8 million, $340.8 million, and $795.4 million in net revenue, respectively, representing growth of 338% from 2014 to 2015 and growth of 133% from 2015 to 2016. In the three months ended March 31, 2016 and March 31, 2017, we generated $172.1 million and $244.8 million in net revenue, respectively, representing growth of 42%. In the years ended December 31, 2014, 2015, and 2016, we incurred net losses of $(30.8) million, $(47.0) million, and $(54.9) million, respectively, and in the three months ended March 31, 2016 and March 31, 2017, we generated net income of $3.0 million and incurred net losses of $(52.2) million, respectively.
Edit: there is a page break in between, added the rest of the sentence
I'm going through this change right now.
Some words of hard earned "wisdom": make sure the pendulum doesn't swing too far out in the other direction.
I went from being an accommodating person to an intense asshole - trying to dial it back now but it's hard, especially when you notice that people definitely respect you more for good or bad reasons when you're like that. Take it too far though, and it will of course go all the way around and bite you in the ass.
I'm 32 and work as a PM at a Big Hip Tech Co. in the bay area.
Once I was on a team with 2 QA analysts, 1 Eng Manager, myself as PM, 3 BA's (that I did not want), and 3 developers, and one platform architect. All this plus 1 director overseeing our tiny team. Not to mention the 1-2 BA's I worked with whenever I worked on something that impacted another team.
During my 1:1 with said director, I once lashed out - I hadn't slept well in 4 days and I simply sounded off. I literally said everything that's been said in this thread: everything from why the fuck do we have so many people, give me 5 engineers and fire everyone else, to all you care about is the headcount that reports to you.
Luckily, I was a top performer, and while this tarnished my reputation with this director, I was able to smooth things over over the course of a few months.
This director explained to me that I was no longer at a start up. That this team should be resilient - that anyone should be able to take 2-3 weeks off at a time without interrupting the work. That they didn't want us working pedal to the metal 100% of the time. That it was ok that it was slow, and that I shouldn't be so self-conscious or hard on myself if I wasn't always working my fingers to the bone.
Now, I still thought we had way too much fat. Some of those BA's had no business being on a technical team, even as BA's and we should have traded in the architect and dev manager for an extra QA and developer.
But what that conversation did was bring me back down to earth. So much of what we view as right and wrong is personal preference. While I still disagreed with the amount of waste, it removed the chip on my shoulder and now I simply make sure to join teams that I like.
That's more of a ramble, but gives you some context as to where I was coming from.
Meh - there are just as many people making the same accusation you are as to render it useless.
I read countless anecdotes on HN and hear many more in person of people with just the shittiest managers, of people who rarely see "competent" engineering organizations, of people who have "never" seen a competent project manager, that it really is a wonder we have any profitable companies at all.
In reality, if you don't understand the value someone is providing them, you should make an effort to understand what they might be doing before making claims like the ones you're making.
Yes - I agree.
If this were a TV ad there'd have to be the word 'Dramatization' in soft white lettering at the bottom of the screen because this is definitely going overboard.
I've gone through this process and it's pretty damn easy - contact anker, send the the serial number (the rep even tells you it's so they can do proper QA) and get a new one in the mail.
The alternative would be for them to make you send the old one back which would be significantly more annoying. I think asking for the serial is reasonable on their part. Helps them verify you have the cable, prevents people from filing multiple times on the same cable, and allows them to control quality better.
This is such a tired trope in the realm of mental health that it's become cliche.
CHOOSE to be happy and you will!!! Embrace change!!
What a load of crap, you shouldn't be commenting on things you aren't familiar with.
Go stay up for 6 days in a row and then tell me how well you function, how well you can make sound decisions and control your thoughts.
This is very similar.
My comment judging myself and about my childhood is in retrospect after now having spent a year in therapy. It's really brought these things to light and now that I am aware I can attempt to fix them.
And I can assure you fixing them is a lot more fucking work than making some trivial declaration that I choose to be X or choose not to be Y.
What a fucking a joke to hear people talk about this when they have no clue.
You have no clue how this works and you clearly didn't read the article.
It's not about identifying yourself as the victim etc., it's about identifying patterns that you're not even aware of.
My comment was now in retrospect - I didn't even at the time consider my childhood to be especially bad until after therapy.
This post is riddled with misunderstanding and you have provided a classic example.
Look, I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to reply, but this advice is a prime example of how some people just don't understand mental health.
This sounds an awful lot like the "happiness is a choice" speech. If self improvement and changing deep seated thought patterns were as easy as just choosing and deciding to act and think a certain way, the world would be a much better place.
The truth is it is a lot more complicated than that - it takes effort, practice, and guidance over a long period of time to actually enact these choices and decisions.
I do choose to fix this, I do decide to be easier on myself, this is why I've been seeing a therapist weekly for almost a year.
For sure man, appreciate the words. I've been working on this with a therapist for a long time, it's only now starting to make sense or I am only now starting to internalize it.
Stuff is hard.
I hear you man, and that's a good point. It's just a lot easier said than done. I've been working on this stuff for over a year and it's just now starting to sink in, but barely.
Heh. My problem is that I am so damaged that when I become friends or find girls that care for me unconditionally, I devalue that relationship because it feels un-earned.
Something that comes un-earned to me has no value.
This extends to my relationship with myself. I'm hard on others so it only makes sense that I'm hard on myself.
This is what happens when your parents get divorced and you're raised by a shitty step mom. Not that my own mother was that great to begin with (cheated on my dad etc.)
Ha - yes DOS commands hold a special place in my heart so to speak.
The very first "terminal" like thing I learned as a really young kid was how to load a floppy disk, which usually just meant typing a:.
Memories.
Trains to SF on the Fremont line are already crowded as hell before you even get to Oakland.
If you live there and are trying to get to the city, good luck finding a seat, plan to stand for as long as 30 minutes in a crowded cart.
I hope they thought this through and are adding more trains so that it doesn't make it even more unbearable.
This is not true - have to disagree.
The touchpad on a mac is not mechanical - you get a uniform "click" no matter where you press.
For PC laptops, the touchpads are still mechanical and work almost as if on a hinge. The hinge is at the top of the pad so clicking near there sometimes is impossible.
Interesting, always nice to have history/a name for a concept.
It's one of the most annoying fallacies I encounter in everyday life: because I fail to see the value in something - surely that something has no value.
It's such a narrow minded approach to problem solving.
On top of the benefits you mentioned, there is a mindful aspect of religion that I'm sure contributes to people's overall feelings of well-being. Everyday it seems there is something new in the news about the benefits of mindfulness.
I personally am not religious myself - but people should keep in mind that the extremists we encounter in the news aren't representative of everyone who is religious. I certainly don't begrudge anyone simply because they are religious.
This doesn't even begin to get into the effects different macronutrients have on you. It's a complicated subject that has reached religion-like levels of zealotry.
Why not?
Even if you disagree it's an interesting thought experiment.
>>"The book is brilliant beyond belief," wrote Morrow editor James Landis before publication. "It is probably a work of genius and will, I'll wager, attain classic status."
Amazing when things like that are foretold. (Yes I know, survivorship bias blah blah)
Off topic: I've trained myself to look for a McDonald's first when in a pinch and need coffee. This vs looking for a Pete's or a Starbucks.
If all you need is a basic drink, they get it more or less right for several hundreds of a percent lower.
The sad thing that I've observed is that any mention that this gets in the media or any earnest attempt to address this gets met with:
"Oh now that it's white people dealing with drugs, it's a crisis. America is so racist".
That's a load of crap on so many levels. I hope we figure out our next chapter here as a society.
The author mentions this themselves:
>>The great thing about TODO comments is that, as a very old programming trick, they are already supported out of the box by most tools IntelliJ, SonarQube, Rails, CodeClimate and I guess many others. Only one day after I refactored to TODO comments, a team mate fixed one that had appeared in his IDE’s TODO tab
No one-thing will make or break your resume aside from the obvious egregious mistakes that I won't go into here.
Get your certifications - they will certainly help. Just don't pin all your hopes and dreams on these certifications.
The will add to your resume as a whole - so that when someone is reviewing your resume they can put an extra check mark in the pros column (experience, check; skill set, check; oh hey he has certs too, nice. check;)
In my experience working in technology, most people aren't as vocal about certifications as you would think based on the chatter you see online. They are a nice to have, not a must have, to get started. Sometimes depending on your actual job, they become a job requirement and work will pay for them.
Also in my experience, the people really against certs are people who for some reason don't like the idea of other people "invading their turf". As if you getting a cert in their field somehow trivializes their experience or effort.
In other words, keep doing what you're doing. View your certifications as milestones along the way, not the be-all-end-all of what you will need in your career. Continue learning and getting valuable experience, and you should be alright.
Update: One last note: certs are like a lot of other things you will encounter in any type of education. You get out of it what you put in. If you work just enough to be able to pass the tests, well, that's what you will get out of it; a way to pass the tests. If on the other hand, you try hard to learn and understand the concepts, then, that's what you will get out of it and it will certainly add to your learning.
I typically dismiss these sometimes overly cynical comments, but as a product manager myself, I really have to agree.
I wonder if the irony dawns on them at all.