When I was a little kid, I rented out Apollo 13 almost religiously. Kept watching it, admired the guys in mission control (and the astronauts too, of course).
A little later, in April, I sat in mission control and helped launch a spaceship to the ISS.
Along the way, I realized:
Engineering in the real world is maybe 30% calculations and typical "sciency" work, the other 70% is documentation and communicating to people. The day-to-day in the aerospace industry is way different than the way things are taught at school (from an EE perspective). It's impressive to me how much design happens in everyday back-and-forth conversations, versus the common image of "one guy, hard at work, cranking out equations at his desk".
Being smart isn't enough sometimes -- you need to have discipline as well, and even then, there is a considerable amount of luck in the mix. Getting the timing for a presentation, or a forcing a decision at the right time, can make a huge difference in the success of a program. You kind of have to check all three boxes to max out your success counter: smarts, determination, and luck.
> the other 70% is documentation and communicating to people
I still remember my profound sense of shock when I realised software development involved a great deal of communicating with other people and not just cutting code. Fortunately I got over it.
Yeah, I was definitely surprised when I realized that too. And then when you think about it, almost any type of work involving a large number of people working at the same time should have the same dependency of documentation and communication. Being able to work well on a team is a skill that I feel often gets overlooked (or maybe it is just hard to judge in interviews).
> Engineering in the real world is maybe 30% calculations and typical "sciency" work, the other 70% is documentation and communicating to people.
This is why I spend at least time coaching public speaking skills when building engineering teams, nominally in the context of giving tech talks within the team -- followed by specific, actionable, and kind feedback.
Presentation tools exist for good reasons, but are generally disliked because they are seldom used to convey information effectively.
But when you figure out your personal speaking style, and can stand in front of a room and keep them engaged during the course of a presentation... that's a game-changer.
cyanoacry just learned another viewpoint. If you work in a heavily political environment, a process heavy environment, or one in which the "calculations" are not appreciated, then yes, your viewpoint would be to put down the keyboard/slide rule and just communicate. In other environments, actual working results can silence people that are trying to "communicate" their way to success.
After years of R&D, heartache, and rough decisions --- I finally turned my hardware company (http://pavlok.com) profitable! We make technology to break bad habits, wake up earlier, and reduce cravings.
I decided to try to build a hardware company without raising VC --- which is probably one of the hardest decisions you can make. And required about 30 people to make a reality.
But now that we have finally got our manufacturing and supply chain working, I've been building our sales & marketing team --- and I can't wait to see how 2017 progresses :)
Just wondering, do you dropship or sell to webshops? Seems quite nice usage of a watch. I also have another proposition which i would like to share / ask.
We manufacture in Massachusetts and we sell on our own site, Amazon, and as of last week in retail(!!!). We are certainly open to wholesale, whitelabeling, and partnering --- we have a totally open API as well! (http://pavlok.com/api)
Does this have sensors on it? Does it support variable power shocks? Does it support "no shocks for 5 minutes"?
I could see something like this being useful for things like anger management....detect rising heart rate (or some other physiological changes) and give some small warning "calm down, be mindful" shocks.
Another thing I'd like to see on vendor websites like this: a "remind me in <x> months" email signup - I'd like to buy a future version of this with more features, but I don't want to get an annoying email every week advertising other things I'm not interested in.
Awesome idea and the website looks great too! Congratulations for bootstrapping a 30 man team!
Does Pavlok have any other automated detection capacities other than wrist to mouth? You might consider making a video on how that works and how to temporarily disable it when eating: if that's the only "magic" feature, I for one would definitely want to see it in action before committing. If you have more magic, I think those features could use more exposure
Yes! We integrate with chrome, rescuetime, and todoist to be a productivity trainer (http://pavlok.com/productivity). We integrate with slack as a team haptic conversation device (http://pavlok.com/slack). We integrate with IFTTT so it zaps me when I text my ex girlfriend, walk into a mcdonalds, or do other trackable stupid stuff (http://pavlok.com/ifttt).
Looks like a great product! I'm not a designer the design feels a bit confused between extremely durable, male focused and mass market (lightning bolt, yellow on black) and very tech focused (thin fonts, use of icons.)
I'd love to see an a-b test or a landing page which is more female/fashion focused. I hope you don't take this is an insult, its a very good landing page!
I would LOVE to get your advice on this! We NEED a female-friendly page, and honestly we are just kinda figuring out what we are doing. Any resources, design firms, contacts you might recommend?
Hey I've been a follower for awhile, both you and your brother have been huge influences on my growth mindset. It's amazing to see you posting on HN and I will leave it at this: thank you.
Awesome! You should go through our intro course (in the app) to see the power --- and we now have a new integration with Pavlok Coaches for the New Year! Let me know if you're interested and I can help you make 2017 your best yet :)
2015 was a pretty rough year for our family. A miscarriage, several relationships ending in painful ways, etc... Our motto coming in to 2016 was "Well... it can't get any worse!". Our hubris was 'rewarded'...
In February, my wife was admitted to the hospital, 25 weeks pregnant with twins, because one the babies was not getting enough blood flow through the umbilical cord. The doctors were hoping to get another week or two before his condition deteriorated to the point that delivery was necessary. Things did not go downhill as quickly as expected, and we were able to put off delivery by two months, to 33 weeks (technically one day shy...). While this was a huge blessing, it still meant my wife was in the hospital for two months, leaving my as a 'single parent' of our three year old, while still providing the support my wife needed (spending two months in the hospital is pretty rough on anyone, let alone someone coping with the stress of a high risk pregnancy).
Our sons were born 7 weeks early, weighing 3 lbs, 14 oz, and 1 lb, 13 oz. The bigger one spent three weeks in the NICU, and the smaller one was there for almost two months (coming home just before his original due date). So, at one point, we had a three year old at home, a newborn at home, and a newborn at the hospital (and my wife still recovering from a c-section).
Everyone is doing well now (the little one is lagging behind his 'little' brother (younger by 1 minute), but still within the normal range, and on the right trajectory).
So, my greatest accomplishment was managing to set aside more or less any concern I had for myself and spending every waking minute, for four months, either working or taking care of a family member. In the process I learned just how fortunate I am that, generally speaking, I have a tremendous amount of freedom in how I spend my time. Being in a position where every moment is consumed in the care of others is exhausting, both physically and emotionally.
Our motto for 2017 is "It'll be what it is"... (why tempt fate again?)
I finally admitted that it was time to start back on antidepressants, and also discovered propranolol (anti-anxiety med); it's changed my life in the most dramatic ways I can imagine.
As of today I weigh 319 lbs -- from a peak of over 400 -- and just a hair over half way to my goal of being at 240 lbs. This is the biggest change I've ever made in my life, and I couldn't be prouder to have come this far.
Oh cool! Glad to hear you've had success with it. I wish there was a list somewhere of Benjen-powered blogs; I often wonder how many folks are actually using it.
That's awesome progress. I would strongly recommend trying a lifting program like strong lifts 5x5. You can start from home & get familiar with the movements you will need to learn with this: http://goo.gl/HnViBp (get the 20lb one) After you're comfortable you'll need to go to a gym where you have access to a squat rack and a bench press.
Strength is something everyone should have. The best way to build it is with bodyweight exercises (push up, squat, pull up, etc) and barbell training (see SL)... with this you can look forward to more than just a declining number on the scale.
It doesn't really work for general anxiety, but I personally have a lot of physical symptoms of anxiety -- racing heart, tightness in the chest, pain, etc -- which mimic (but aren't) cardiac symptoms. The propranolol (once or twice a day) completely cuts these out. When the psychological symptoms of anxiety are too much, I have Xanax I can take as needed, but that's only every other day or two.
The only drawback is that it can make me a bit more tired, but only if I'm already quite exhausted. Outside of that, it's virtually side-effect free for me.
I accepted a job at Rothenberg Ventures in 2016. After discovering numerous breaches of fiduciary duties and wire fraud, I blew the whistle to the SEC.
Lesson learned: Even engineers have to face ethical dilemmas.
I started selling online, total sales so far over $300k. Multiple sources, some retail, some wholesale.
What I've learned:
1. Not all rules matter. A large part of my business is stretching certain rules, either from the marketplace, or from the source (e.g. a store that doesn't allow resale). That said, you can't get away with breaking rules unless you have a very good understanding of why the rule exists, who's motivated to uphold it, and generally what the risks are. Don't screw over customers.
2. There's a lot more to be made by taking risks than there is to be lost. I've easily lost over $1k multiple times in various ways, but when I "win" it's to the tune of 10 or 30 times that. Take smart risks, only where the realistic upside justifies it.
3. Be willing to pay for information. There are courses out there in almost any topic. Personally I've largely carved my own path and paid very little , but I'd still recommend courses for others. Also read a lot of whatever free information is out there, and network with people who have more experience.
4. Don't do too many things at once. It will kill you. I've been full time in college and it's extremely tough to balance everything. Delegate as soon as you can afford to, anything others can do that doesn't take a lot of brains pay people to do.
5. Don't be afraid to scale, but do it slowly. My first purchase of over 10k was 6 months after I started, iirc.
(Several of these are probably specific to this kind of business, may not be generally applicable. Startups have a much different road where profitability isn't the most important at first.)
It's very easy to run a report and get gross sales. It's not so easy to track profit. My margins are guesstimated from how much cash I have in the bank versus what I had a year ago, but I've made money in other ways so need to exclude that.
On a per product basis it's relatively easy, but the question is what the average is.
My philosophy is that if you know you're making money, it's not so important to track exactly how much. I'll probably need to adjust that when I file my first tax return next year, though (so not looking forward to it.)
A lot of the people I follow in the industry have blogs and alternate income streams outside Amazon/eBay. (Paid lists, software, coaching, paid groups, etc.) Definitely something I want to do but I need to get my business onto maintenance mode first and definitely not happening anytime soon.
My short term goal is consistently 100k/sales a month, and my long term (6-12 months) goal is 250-500k/month.
Vast majority Amazon, some on ebay but it's much harder to handle and sales are lower anyway so haven't been devoting a lot of time to it.
Many different products, really whatever sells fast enough with a large enough margin. I've sold things for less than $5 and things for over $1000: generally the cheaper the more it sells.
What margin I want depends on how fast it sells, competition, and some other things, don't have hard and fast rules as of now.
Many categories, from toys to electronics to tools to grocery to beauty. Amazon requires approval for grocery, health, and beauty, so there's typically less competition.
2. I very rarely create product pages or change them. For the most part, I'm listing against existing, popular listings. I have created on occasion (when the last raspberry pi came out, I bought 10 from England and made a listing and sold quickly before others got stock and the price went down. Something I wouldn't do now, not worth the money for the time, did it to learn. I might buy a couple hundred when the next one comes out and outsource fulfillment though.)
Finding items: I look for items that are already selling well, ideally multiple times a day (you can determine this from sales rank and keepa charts, easy to find out how to read them, use google and you'll find many blog posts). Sometimes I'll look at a store and see which items are good for amazon (enough margin, fast selling, etc) and sometimes I'll look at amazon and then try to find items at a store (when I have an item that does well, I'll often look for other items from the same brand or category.)
I use oaxray, a paid tool, costs $100/month to find products. It searches through a webpage and tells you which products are profitable for amazon, then I filter through those. Recently I've begun training employees to use it and make me lists of finds which I then go through.
1. Not everything is sourced from a store that people can go to. I've gotten a lot of inventory from other countries (think amazon.co.uk selling the same ASIN for half the price), which people won't do and also shipping would raise the price if bought individually.
2. Some stuff is bought on sale, which may be over by the time the item sells
3. Yes, people absolutely pay a premium for not having to go in store. Even stuff I can buy online people often pay more on Amazon. I do a lot of drop shipping from retailers directly to customers.
I landed my dream job 20 years after I decided what and where I wanted.
It took me a lot of time. Battling low self-esteem, giving it up for a while, following the wrong path, surviving after being fired for the first and only time.
I learned perseverance. Once I set my mind on it and worked around distractions, people and my own mind, I got what I truly wanted and I'm loving and learning every single day.
That would be interesting to read about this journey. I am pretty much starting my first steps in the same direction, don't know where I'll be but I don't have any other plans or choice.
It was an accomplishment for me but then it became a frustration.
I always hated mathematics but I always loved programming, making appls but cool things like algorithms design, data structures are the base of real cool things e.g. programming languages, RDBMS, artificial intelligence, etc. are all mathematics
So I enrolled to Mathematics on my local university just to see how it was and I fell in love, I never saw so much perfection with just paper and pencil. I loved calculus it was really funny solving problems, making proofs, etc. I got good scores the first half of the year and I really wanted to continue but then frustration began, the need of money, so I started working and I couldn't go to lectures anymore. Of course I try to keep reading books and solving some excercies but help from professors or extra tips they used to gave us is what I really miss.
The course has an average rating of 4.62 and over 200 students. To date (since end of June), it has made $1182 for me.
This was quite a learning experience - aside from putting the course content together, I found out a lot about recording audio. I tried doing this in Thailand and quickly learnt that I was in a very noisy environment. First there were the echoes of the room itself which I fixed by cramming my microphone in the cupboard in-between blankets and pillows. Then there were the scooters, neighbours, air-conditioning, airplanes! This was a very frustrating experience.
If you ever make a course, make sure you have a nice, quiet recording environment!
I've also learnt that you can make a bit of money from having Udemy promote you, but if you want to make any decent money, you have to promote yourself.
I also believe from this experience that making one online course just isn't worth doing. If you're going to do it, you have to keep doing it. There is a learning curve at the start, and I believe the trick to being successful is to really work on promotion, and do up-sells to other relevant courses from your existing student base.
Maybe you can give some more insights. What would you say is the ratio on "How much Udemy helps to promote your content" and "How do you have to do yourself to promote the content"? Did or Do (maybe they came up in the same time as your course) you have competitors in that topic?
There are courses on the same topic for sure. What I did was I took all the courses out there on Neo4j myself, learnt from all of them, and then created my course based on everything I learnt, and the pitfalls that I personally had come across that weren't detailed in other courses.
With Udemy your revenue breaks down as follows:
* Your promotions
* Udemy organic
* Ad program
* Affiliate program
* Corporate subscriptions (if your course makes it into this bucket)
90% of my sales so far have come from Udemy's marketing - I have put very little effort into doing promotion myself. With some affiliates (ones Udemy has set up), I get as little as 25% of the revenue generated - and they'll be at heavily discounted amounts anyway - so maybe $2.50 on a $10 sale, others I might get up to 50% of the sale.
So basically, with me doing next to nothing (apart from the odd question - which I get hardly any of), I'm getting about $200 a month on average.
This might seem pretty good, but keep in mind this course took me a seriously long time to build out (like 6 months, with prob half of that working full-time on it), and I can get the equivalent of about $400+ per day contracting.
My plugin for Visual Studio Code is nearing 1000 followers and 200k downloads: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim (Last year it was nearly nonexistent.)
I learned a lot about managing an open source project, but probably the biggest thing was that I learned that even something as uncontentious as a Vim plugin can get a ton of hate online, including from Hacker News. I would hate to be working on a more contentious and visible project.
And don't let the haters get to you! (I know it's hard sometimes), the people enjoying your plugin likely vastly outnumber the haters, but they are usually making stuff, so the haters is all you see, since they're the people that have the time to troll you online.
My personal achievement is similar, but smaller. Almost reaching 1000 downloads for my extension, but never made something like this before, so I am happy when I receive positive reviews.
I wrote this answer to a similar question a few months ago:
"I'm not dead" probably ranks highly. I am sometimes cast into a tournament against a patient, relentless salesman for death. The problem is, he knows everything about me. Everything. Every thought, every recollection, every secret shame, every regret. Everyone I've ever hurt, how I hurt them, how I let them down, how I failed them.
And he can, in a moment of pain, turn all of those into an impulse that I have to remind myself is just a feeling and even while I do that he's whispering "is it?".
Most of the time I am OK. But I know that I my emotions can just overwhelm me so suddenly and completely that it scares me. I am still learning how to live with me.
The Bible describes that salesman as a liar and a thief. Remember that. He's a liar! Don't buy what he's selling, because it's a lie.
And he's a thief. He wants to steal everything your future could be, will be, and replace it with nothing.
As a Christian, I can look at those moments of shame and regret, and say "Yes, that was wrong. I failed. I hurt people. But it's forgiven. Paid for. Totally, completely, willingly paid for." And then I can remember, once again, to forgive myself.
But I don't wrestle with the salesman like you do, so I can't claim that it will help you. I think it will, but I can't really say.
For what it's worth, I'm very glad you're alive and thinking about this stuff friend :) I heavily relate to that overwhelming feeling stemming from meta-emotions.
If we keep thinking about the past we will never move forward. Shit happens in our life and a lot of it some it we can control some of it and we can't. It is called destiny my friend. It is not easy to let go of the past but learn to come to understanding that everything happened for a reason. I am sure there are people that loves you and want to share countless moments with you so stay strong fight hard and never give up
Created a beer bread recipe blog in the hopes that I get big enough that breweries will send me beer. Last month, a brewery decided to send me beers to "play around with". Mission accomplished.
Digging a natural pond was probably the best project of 2016, turning a boring corner of the garden into an incredibly popular area for birds and wildlife with a lot of new visitors. Grafting some trees, making hoshigaki for the first time, and also a relatively decent home brew helped also to deal with an, otherwise, complicated and unstable year.
Casual acquaintance became a friend and almost immediately turned to me for help with 20+ years of drug and alcohol addiction (they were an often-functioning addict, on whom it didn't physically show).
9+ months later, they are still sober.
Unfortunately, the friendship didn't survive. They really pushed my own boundaries, early on, but I hung in there, hoping and waiting per advice for their circumstances and perspective to settle down.
But, while they are no longer using substances, they are still, in my now more informed perspective, using people. Once they had other means of support, they didn't have time for me.
Still hope it all proves to be of benefit to their kids.
As for me, things I really needed to do, this year, nonetheless got placed on hold. This may even have contributed towards negative judgment towards me -- despite my circumstances making all the time I committed to them possible, in the first place.
Lesson learned: Take care of yourself, first. As also observed, ultimately, in the activity and choices of the person I was helping. They certainly took care of themselves -- sometimes at the expense of those around them who were willing to help.
I feel compassion for your situation because I've gone through something similar with a past relationship, and IMO your takeaways are spot on. "Take care of yourself" -- reminds me of a quote from an old man to his wife. "You take care of you for me, and I'll take care of me for you." The best gift we can offer the world is a well-cared for self.
Finally learning, playing, and enjoying a sport - Squash! I have successfully gone from just about 0 activity (aside from walking everywhere - NYC), to playing squash 3+ times a week.
Growing up, I had never had interest (or natural ability) playing sports. Like many here, I'd prefer tooling around on computers, reading, etc. Likely, this became a self-fulfilling prophesy about "not being a sports person".
Well last year, after some thinking of - "if not now, when? When I'm 40?" I went to a gym, bit the bullet, signed up, bought 10 hours of private lessons for squash (first racquetball, but I switched immediately after trying squash once). It is probably some of the most fun I've had in years, maybe decades. Met so many great people, actually feeling fantastic shape for thr first time in my life.
I'm 34, and am actually a "sports person" now. Laughing even saying it in my head. I've used this achievement/habit also to become more of a morning person (by deliberately scheduling games with people at 7 or 8am), and also to do different activities at the gym (e.g. high intensity interval training group classes; running, and even some weight-lifting). It's even propelled me to think more about the food I'm putting into my body, cook more, etc.
If you have never heard of squash, check it out. It's intense (1000+ kcal per hour), easy to learn, low risk of injury compared to other sports, and is often cited as one of the healthiest sports out there. It's tons of fun (even if you're terrible), has a nice long and rewarding learning curve, is very strategic (the chess-like aspect of it appeals to my technical brain), and again - just tons of fun.
A trusted technology friend passed on the advice to try it to me, so I'm passing it on to you all! Try some squashing!
- squash: more control over ball placement. Since the ball is fairly "dead", there is more time to think, and there are so many potential "moves" on where to place the ball. I found with rball, a lot of the hits were more instinctual reactions, rather than deliberate placement. Obviously player skill levels on both games vary, and there are some super sniper rball players
- the "tin". Squash has a spot on the front wall which you cannot hit. This is a bit of the secret sauce for squash, as it prevents some of the rball instant kill shots.
- moving towards the ball, rather than ball to you: in squash, you really need to read where the ball is going, and get yourself there. Since the ball is barely bouncy, its not coming back over to you easily. This requires you to move a lot around the court - lots of soccer-like movements, quick sprints, deep lunges & reaches, side movements, etc
- volley-time: you'd be surprised how long they can go! But you're right, its usually shorter. For evenly matched opponent, I generally have really good long intense ralleys, where its feels like a fight to the end - tons of fun.
Other thoughts:
- squash is pretty international (uk, india, france, egypt, colombia, etc) whereas rball is fairly usa-centric
- rball has been reducing in popularity, whereas squash has been increasing. Shouldn't matter too much, but for example in NYC, I found it harder to find rball players (most were older people; courts often un-used); meanwhile, the squash courts were always popping - people of all ages (even kids). Also, I found the rball courts were older and lesser maintained, whereas (many, not all) of the squash courts seem to have been recently renovated. E.g Equinox in NYC has 5 really nice glass squash courts.
I do think both of the sports are tons of fun. Each has their own personality. The instructor I learned from teaches rball and squash. He started with rball - competed nationally, and till plays it - but fell in love with squash as his true love, and only does squash competitively now. Anecdata... give it a try, and give it some time. Took me a few sessions before I really just got hooked, then it was just magic. Best of luck!
I wrote a step-by-step tutorial on SaltStack. In the process, I worked through my psychological hang-ups with writing. For as long as I can remember, writing has always made me feel just this terrible anxiety. It made me want to dig my nails into my skin. Throughout high school and university, had come to view writing as this mysterious process. From literary essays to hypothetical military campaign net assessments to design documents to historical arguments, it seemed that I was never able to write anything (other than internet comments) without at least a minor emotional meltdown. As someone who deeply cares about developer experience and good documentation, As someone who believes in the power of well-written text to convey ideas that meaningfully change people's lives--I was ashamed and frustrated and hated myself.
But I had set out at the end of last year to write this tutorial. In starting a task that wasn't assigned to me by someone else, I could control and understand so much more about it: who the audience was, what its scope was, and what even was its point? I had enough of an understanding of the subject that I could grapple with and explain it. I was able to break it down and start to approach it as just...
work.
It worked.
I got into the habit of approaching it like I approached writing code: just a matter of structuring ideas and reflecting on whether they were understandable to people. At the end, I had a working running product that someone could read and follow and learn from.
I used to have similar hang-ups about writing as well. I'm pretty sure that that stemmed from inadequate instruction about genres of writing and the purpose of writing in my education.
Where education teaches writing to pass a language exam, the purpose often seems to be about showing that "i am very smart" by using obscure words to communicate a pseudo-argument. What I didn't learn was that writing was about conveying information to an audience, and that the audience and the topic determined the primary requirements.
Yea, I think part of my hangup came from not being able to pursuade folks to answer me when I asked "why are we doing this? What is our goal?". It turns out in real life, people appreciate that question a lot more because it keeps FTE time from being ill-spent.
I'd taken it down because I was hosting it on a DO box and wanted to save some money. I should get it set up somewhere cheaper like github.io
I would like to get into software training, but I haven't actually configured SaltStack in a real production environment. I've only used it on the prototyping side of a project. My tutorial was focused on giving a basic intro through setting up Django+Postgres+Nginx. I also haven't touched SaltStack since finishing the tutorial because I got a job in London doing ruby and have been focused on that.
After a rough first year when nobody wanted or saw potential on my product, my SaaS (http://boxfactura.com) is profitable, healthy and we have high hopes for 2017.
I learned the hard way to stop focusing on liking everybody, and making better business decisions, especially regarding partners. I have a marketing background, and I knew that saying that «code is easy, marketing is hard», but I didn't know how hard. However, it has been a blast!
Also, this december we open sourced and launched a pull to refresh library[0], which has been a great success!
Screenwriting. Finally tried my hand, persevered and finished a spec pilot. I thought it was passable. More crucially, that feeling of writing "Fade Out" at the close of my first draft was indescribably joyous. Triumphal. "I can do this" was my mantra. And with full confidence I submitted it to a review process by industry professionals. Believing they would instantly go gaga over it and I'd have an agent shopping it around Hollywood within days.
They massacred it. I don't think anyone got past page 9. The feeling was worse than being told "Sorry, but I just don't love you in that way," after putting all your heart and soul on the line.
But the remorse lasted only an instant. I put that piece of refuse in a drawer for later re-working. Then immediately finished another longer pilot. Incorporating a very obvious yet fundamental change in attitude from "they just will never understand my genius" to "how can I effectively tell this story in the most economical yet artful way so that anyone can relate to it?" The response this time around was much more positive. "Awesome." "Would watch this." The spark had started a flame.
And so in just over four weeks I committed myself without reservation and finished my first full length feature (100pg). The result: through a small cohort of fellow writers I met via stage32 I will now be collaborating on a paid gig for a webseries that starts shooting soon!
What I learned: respect for the process and the craft. Telling a story well (and especially visually) is so much harder than it appears. Heed the advice of your elders and those with experience. And write. Every. Single. Day. Without excuses ;)
I'd wager a sizeable portion of HN possess the desire or idea for a screenplay. We need more accurate portrayals of the hacker ethos in media. As well as sci-fi with some actual science in it. So I highly recommend facing your fear of the blank page because if nothing else, the effort will make you a better writer, and perhaps a better person.
I bit the bullet and released Gorgonia (https://github.com/chewxy/gorgonia) to the wild. I braced for harsh critiques but it turns out releasing open source software is like running a startup: 90% of the time, nobody cares. Nobody uses it.
Helped teach the entry level class for CS at my university (again) with majority of the students scoring in the top 10% of everyone taking the course. My students were only beat out by the honors sections of which the margines were slim.
I had a 26 student class. 9 studens got below a 90% on the final, I think 1 or 2 got below an 80.
I'm also going to stop being a TA this semester. I think I've been a big help to the students but I got offered a position to do real software development at the university. The pay is going to be crappy but it's ham-radio related so it'll be fun.
Teaching students let me actually teach myself better. I found that after breaking stuff down to explain it to my students I better understood it myself.
Out of curiosity, and if you are allowed to, could you elaborate on this ham-radio related project you are working on? I am genuinely curious about what a university might be interested in coding for a ham-radio.
It's going to involve RBN and then physics that go over my head.
I'm just a ham, the people who I'm working for are the more Marconi-esq people doing something important. It is going to involve the total solar eclipse QSO party so I'll see you on the air during that (if you're in the USA)!
I gave away $2M.
I know it doesn't sound like an accomplishment but i worked at a place that I really didn't like. I decided to quit my job and not chasing after my unvested shares. Still not sure what to do next but at least I know that money doesn't worth my happiness.
What I did was (not intended) becoming friends with a extremely proficient meeting booker, and through a lot of talks and some coaching he learned me his brilliant techniques.
That is half of it, the rest is understanding (yourself and) people, psychology and being a balanced person.
During this time of the year last year I was at a very stressful period at work changing to a new leadership role. I started working out more seriously, and signed up for a half-marathon, that I completed successfully (I had been running occasionally on my own, previously).
As the rewards of physical exercise were kind of immediate and didn't depend on external factors but myself it motivated me to put together a training schedule, and set the goal of finishing an ultra, inspired by some friends. I didn't communicate it to many people but just a few close friends. It was an endurance challenge, and I am very happy to have it accomplished.
I landed a great job as an iOS developer at a great startup in Toronto.
I accomplished this by building a unique iOS game that uses animated gifs for jigsaw puzzles. I wrote the app several times, and after giving it enough time, I was able to incorporate functional and generic programming concepts to reduce my code down to less than 1,000 lines.
I also ditched my resume because I didn't have substantial previous experience developing software (just 3 months) nor a degree of any sort. I just took videos of all my apps and put them up on a dead simple github pages site: https://danielhhooper.github.io
I interviewed and accepted an offer the following week.
Hey I really need some help I am in a similar situation and was wondering if I can get some advice on getting a job. I just have questions regarding what to put on my portfolio page like you did, and also what was the interview like? What sort of questions did they ask.
The main takeaway for me was that, unless you can tap into a preexisting pool of demand, grabbing people's attention is as hard and effort-consuming, if not more so, than actually solving a problem. One-on-one, I always had an easy time convincing people I knew that the program is useful for them, but simply throwing it out there and hoping someone would notice it was unexpectedly fruitless.
I am working on a networking algorithm and think this would be useful for testing and visualizing algorithms. But I had to look into the source and then the screenshots folder to figure out what this actually did.
You just have to develop some skills on how to better communicate your work to people. Everyone has this problem unless they develop the skills. Here's some things you should work on for promoting this project:
- User brainstorming. What kinds of people would find this tool helpful. I'll start off your list with 'anyone doing node algorithms, e.g. mesh networking, video game AI'
- Googlefu. Find these users across the web using Google's special operators. Note what kind of sites and communities they are a part of.
- Community reachout. Go to those communities and figure out how to communicate. If it's a blog or content site, could be as simple as leaving comments to more involved like writing posts.
Well, there's a README.md (that includes the screenshots) that Github displays under the repository listing, but I suppose there are sufficiently many files in the repository that not everyone would automatically be inclined to even scroll far enough down...
Visualising algorithms is an interesting angle I have largely neglected so far, since it's pretty different from the purpose I originally built the program for. I could try adding some more examples in the spirit of the sandpile model from the animated GIF, like pathfinding or selfish routing. Thanks for the suggestion!
This was very difficult for me. I love working, but I'd been doing startups for a little more than a decade, and startups require lots of attention. When I had my first child 2 years ago, I thought I could do both. I was wrong.
My family and I moved to the wife's home country where it is very cheap and I'm spending 6 months just being "dad." In my downtime, I'm working on some residual income side projects (I've already got one going that brings in $2k a month).
It's an inflection point in my life. Truly unknown future. When I go back to the workforce, what lies ahead?
I am in technology, so must be you. Though I really find it hard to get any such work (projects) that you said you finally were able to get.
Any help on how i can do same for me?
Closing all my loose tights, burning all bridges, finishing my toxic relationship, putting my startup into the grave, moving countries, finding my second half, traveling around Europe, settling down finally to start a new life and a new project in January.
To learn and teach React and Redux were my greatest accomplishments in 2016.
Very late in 2015 I started to learn React. I did a lot of JavaScript before, read a lot about React, but never used it before. Early in 2016 I wrote my first application in React and Redux - a SoundCloud Client (source: https://github.com/rwieruch/favesound-redux , live: http://www.favesound.de).
I didn't expect the enormous positive feedback. I continued to share my learnings. Eventually I found myself in the position to teach a bit about React and its ecosystem on my website.
Finally I wrote an eBook: The Road to learn React (http://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-learn-react/). Again the feedback of the community was overwhelming. In the end I very much hope that it helps people to get started in React like I did. At this moment I improve the material whenever I can.
Besides of programming, I learned a lot about writing and teaching itself during the process. Still I try to improve my skills by reading books like "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser.
Yep, ditto. I went from learning about React and Redux myself, to trying to share what I've learned, to actually being something of an expert on them. (The fact that some people actually want to know what I have to say is still _really_ amusing to me :) )
I've spent the last year+ hanging out in the Reactiflux chat rooms, and apparently have consistently been the top contributor by message volume every month - and not by small margins, either ([0]). At a conservative estimate of 3 people helped a night, that's somewhere over 1000 people I've helped there, which is pretty cool.
In March-ish, I created a links list for tutorials, articles, and other resources related to React and Redux ([1]). I've continued to add links on a weekly basis, and that list recently hit 5500 stars. I've also maintained a Redux addons catalog ([2]), which just hit 1500 stars.
I wrote two major sections for the Redux docs: the FAQ page ([3]), and the "Structuring Reducers" how-to/recipe section ([4]). Those have been very well received. As a result, Dan Abramov added me as a contributor to the Redux repo, and eventually handed the keys to me and Tim Dorr as the official maintainers. I also helped offer advice and critiques for Jim Bolla as he built the new React-Redux v5 implementation ([5])
Finally, I started up a dev blog, where I've been writing about use of React and Redux ([6]). In particular, I've been writing a tutorial series called "Practical Redux" ([7]), which is intended to demonstrate some useful techniques I've come up with in the context of a sample app that's _not_ yet another TodoMVC clone :) I also wrote a recap of how I got involved in Redux in the first place ([8]).
So yeah, it's been a pretty crazy last year, but I love being able to help people learn how to use React and Redux.
Wrote a web scrapper backend and mobile app as frontend to scrap my university online portal to check if any lecturer announced class replacement / cancellation and send notification to the mobile app if there is any class replacement/cancellation. The original goal is because of laziness to check the online portal. I have learnt Ruby, Rails, Linux server setup, Nginx configuration and iOS (Objective-C) from scratch during the development.
The app spread in the campus with word of mouth and gained 2000 monthly active users in the first two months. University found out and sent me a cease and desist letter and then later implement recaptcha on their online portal login form.
Thanks to this app I managed to get a decent paying job as an iOS developer. Kinda wild ride
I've done a lot of regular programming and some basic electronics, but never a project that involved getting a microcontroller to talk to a bunch of ICs. So, I learned a lot about how electronic components don't necessarily behave the way I expect them to. I also learned a lot about what can be done by using MIDI in ways it wasn't meant to be used.
I made service that allows anyone with a domain to create their own private email server in less than 10 minutes: https://sealmail.net/
Using Postfix, Dovecot and PostgreSQL, you can read your mail securely via IMAPS on your phone and your desktop mail client. If your account gets hacked, you can just SSH into the server and reset your password yourself. No more getting locked out of your email account in an endless GMail password reset loop (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/HjW2Pj5...)
Where there's a will there's a way. I kept getting stuck at different points trying to automate things. I kept persevering because I figure anything a human can tell a machine to do, it should be able to do it by itself somehow. I managed to jump over all the roadblocks and achieve a reliable way to recreate a mail server (which is a real pain) altogether with SSL certificates included.
If you have any trouble please email me with feedback at the email listed on the homepage.
People don't seem to make it past the DNS records though. Don't know if it's because they just looking around or they're having trouble. The DNS A record at a minimum is needed for SSL certs to be installed correctly. Even google hasn't been able to automate that part away :)
Backend is not open source, but I'm thinking of shipping a front-end for server owners to administer their accounts. Have to figure out the security part of it though. I was thinking client side SSL certs.
As to how it compares to mailinabox, this is pretty much the same, although it's lightweight with the bare minimum of Spamassassin, and anti-virus and supporting mail server software. Also, it 'makes' the box for you, rather than having you find your own hosting solution.
I learned A LOT in the process, main one being that you should keep meticulous and separate records for anything that has the chance of being spun off. The company I sold grew out of my freelancing but was separate with a separate name. Unwiring the financials as well as the logins and everything else was a headache. It also looks better to your buyer if you can quickly produce accurate records on sales. I had to back-track and re-calculate several times, leading to more back-and-forth than was necessary.
Mine biggest accomplishment (probably of my life) was turning our almost bankrupted company into profit just in 4 short months [0].
I learned many great things, but the most important lesson is that if you treat your employees with respect and you don't hide things from them, they will stick around and help you to push through. Without them, I would have nothing today.
I learned that putting more pressure on myself wasn't working, that there isn't a linear relationship between pressure and results. Instead, there is what I call a sweet spot, beyond which more pressure decreases results instead of increasing them.
This. Elon Musk is quoted (?) as saying "If you work 100 hours while others work 40 per week, you can do in 3 months what they do in a year." But the truth is that overwork leads to unproductive work, burnout, and loss of passion.
I'm definitely most effective when I'm happy. If I overwork myself, I quickly get into a negative feedback loop of "never being caught up and satisfied with work."
I learned to internalize the idea of keeping myself happy (stable work/life) first, as in the long run this is the most effective situation.
Finished a multiple-year quest to complete a marathon or longer distance in all 50 US states by finishing in Hawaii in January.
Oddly enough, what I learned is that the type of shape I was in to run/walk a marathon slowly on back-to-back weekends (or even back-to-back days) was actually not all that great.
I switched my exercise focus to building up muscle mass, and getting faster at shorter running distances, and started running with some free running groups in Austin. Much faster now, and in much better shape. I was able to drop 55 pounds (210->155) and keep it off.
I finally went on the round-the-world backpacking trip I've been dreaming about since I was a kid watching National Geographic. It was surreal, hard, beautiful, smelly, and everything I ever hoped it would be.
Growing up poor and growing into a lot of family responsibility made me think it was never going to happen for me, but I made it happen, and now I feel freer even in my day-to-day life.
Although it sounds like a burden, it actually freed me from a lot of stress. I broke out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, allowing me to invest and even set up emergency funds that helped pay off an auto accident I got into.
Most importantly though, I've gained a lot of self-confidence. If I got fired or laid off today, the last thing I'd have to worry about is paying my bills because I'm prepared to handle this scenario. So I've started making more bold decisions at work like saying "no" to overtime or responsibilities I don't want to take on, which has further improved my quality of life.
I've tried to do this for years but never been able to figure out how it works in practice. My wife and I have settled on just looking at our accounts every week and seeing that we have enough buffer, but I really feel like there is some skill that is missing.
It wasn't until I really grokked YNAB's methodology[1] that I got out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, saved up for an emergency fund, and begun seriously paying off school loans. Their 4 rules and their app have changed my financial life. Like atarian said, having a budget really does free you.
I don't know if I have ever really lived paycheque to paycheque though. I've pretty much always been in the situation where I was able to cover a surprise $500 expense. My level of spare cash has fluctuated pretty wildly from $500 to $3,000 though and my long-term savings should be higher.
Pretty small fish compared to everyone else in the thread, but outside of work, I'm pretty happy I published my first actually useful open source project: https://github.com/underyx/structlog-pretty
To be honest, it's the first notable project that I've shipped.
I learned that I have a lot to learn, even if I'm comfortable with the stack. It's interesting balancing the migration between what we know right now and where we want to be. For instance, jQuery -> Vue -> SPA (?) + API.
We're also learning Docker, testing (frontend and backend, and CI / deployment. We've got a long ways to go, but I think if we're patient, we can figure out a solid foundation.
I also did the same thing several years ago (defended my PhD thesis and got married within the same month), and it was insanely harder than it looks. I don't recommend anybody go through the dual stresses of writing their dissertation while simultaneously planning a wedding.
I married my wife within a month of her receiving her MD. I believe I was more stressed about wedding planning than she was about medicine at the time. That said, surgical residency is no picnic.
Started my "dream job" at Google in January and fought through a very steep learning curve towards being a fullstack engineer there. I learned our team's frontend in AngularJS (despite no frontend experience nor any idea how different JS is written inside of Google), webserver in Java, backend in C++ and data pipeline in Go (with tangential previous experience in JS & Java and none in the other two). Add on that the myriad configuration languages and SQL-ish dialects and tools and it has been a pretty heavy year all around, I'm glad I'm still standing.
As someone applying for a front-end position and made it all the way to the on-site, doing the on-site interview soon. Can you explain to me what you mean with js being "so different" inside of Google?
Also that sounds like you learned A LOT. How does that affect your work/life balance?
- Strongly typed everything. I get it now, I really do, but I was resistant to compiled and strongly typed Javascript at first and didn't like writing JSDOCs all the time, I'd say 30-40% of my development / code review time came from those issues.
- goog.struct.* instead of <normal JS way on StackOverflow>. There are a ton of internal libraries that improve on basic JS objects and have different APIs than the standard library. So you get used to using the internal version of Map/Array/Set etc., plus a lot of binding, etc. Basically the whole "Stack Overflow the question and adapt the answer" strategy doesn't work quite as well inside here. There's also a fragmentation of front end frameworks, so there isn't a lot of deep documentation or examples in any given framework.
- Readability. Once you've gotten code review from your team members someone with "readability" has to approve your code as conforming to the Google style guide. If no one on your team has readability in the language you are working in (which happens) then you get bogged down in lengthy back and forths which can be stressful when you're under shipping deadlines. Definitely one of my least favorite parts since I prefer to hack a solution together and refine it afterwards.
The interview process is really bad at getting front end engineers, in my opinion. I think the best way to get hired as a front end engineer is to be really good at algorithms and data structures. I was essentially a data engineer on my last 3 jobs and picked all of the front end stuff up on the fly. It would have been much easier if I had known any framework before I came here and hit the ground running.
I think it was a lot to learn but it seems to be expected around here. Work/life balance has been a big struggle with me this year, the perks are insane and it makes it really easy to stay late. I think if you really want to get ahead and climb the ladder at Google you'd better be young, single, and unattached.
Best of luck on your interview, it's a wonderful and strange place.
Thanks for your answers! My recruiter told me the front-end engineering interview is a bit different and would also focus on HTML/CSS. I guess it's still going to be algorithm heavy hm?
But yes, focusing really heavily on algorithms. I still have a couple of weeks to work my way through "Cracking the Code interview". Practicing a few hours a day on my whiteboard! :)
As someone who did an on-site, I wouldn't worry too much about that. 95% of your interview is going to be on your whiteboard skills solving algorithm-heavy problems. Spend as much time as you can practicing for that.
Technically I was brought in for mobile/ios, but I was asked almost nothing about my mobile experience. It was pretty much just whiteboard question after whiteboard question and then a (do you have any questions for me?) at the end of each one-on-one.
I don't trust what recruiters tell me for preparation much anymore after a recruiter told me "oh, don't worry, they're desperate for people, they just need people with any programming experience!" for the Mortal Kombat team, and on the phone interview they grilled me about 3D graphics (I had only made 2D games at that point), giggled quietly at my unprepared answers, and told me they weren't interested while still on the phone call. I would have done much better if I had brushed up, but I was lulled into a false sense of security by that recruiter.
I published a book, and I've read 171 books so far this year. I think all the reading has made me more confident in daily life. A nice side effect of the confidence is I'm more okay with making mistakes.
Finally followed my dreams of leaving my home state.
So I quit my corporate job that I hated, left Louisiana and moved to California taking a epic road trip across country in the process, then arrived and got more or less the job of my dreams a couple months later.
Been a pretty interesting ride so far out here.
Depends on your need for creature comforts. I am ok with alternative living situations like crashing on couches, tents, and in the back of my car. I have kind of a no debt policy and my bills were almost zero without rent so my savings went a really long way. :) Get a gym for showers. No one ever said adventures were supposed to be comfortable! Life is too short to be trapped by materialism!
Professionally speaking, the 1.0 release of gRPC for ObjC. I think I learnt to be less conservative to offer public API surface. The porcelain / plumbing approach of Git looks like a good architecture to try.
Personally, I became a homeowner. Some learning! But I don't want to spoil the fun for anybody.
Realizing that I couldn't have a day job + a real passionate side project. Quit that day job, realized while contracting that I was probably undercharging for compensation, and currently bootstrapping that side project into a startup. Wish me luck, etc.
One of my websites was featured in brutalistwebsites.com Quite a big surprise since I'm a self taught designer.
What I've learnt is to avoid the hype and trust your gut. Don't go with the flow, the 99%, you'll get nowhere.
The content of that website is something very meta and I'm writing it since 2006. I thought only robots will read it. This makes me think secondary values are more important than the day job you do and think is the most important.
I went from an 11 to 6 handicap in golf, which took a lot of practice, patience, research and self improvement. Golf is one of those games that you cannot easily double your improvement without the strong will to improve. It also requires focus and improvement is several areas at once to post good score. Having a good fundamental full swing is necessary for hitting tee and approach shots in regulation (36 total shots), but putting makes up 50% of for remaining shots in regulation (2 putts per hole = 36 total). Putting improvement is the easiest for high handicap players who 3 and 4 putt a lot, but obviously shows diminishing returns for better players. Therefore short game was critical for improving given I don't hit all greens in regulation and must make "up and down" with a 1-putt to make a lot more pars. For 2017, I look to better track my strokes gained statistics which will tell me specific areas to practice on. The HN crowd may find strokes gained stats interesting.
http://www.pgatour.com/stats/academicdata/shotlink.html
Since then I've taken up personal projects again (like a set of interactive economic model solvers for students), and really gotten to love the process of learning again.
I've also finally truly figured out what field I want to get in to, while it won't be easy to break in to quantitative in finance it at least gives me a direction to take my studies and an end goal of where I'm aiming to be soon.
I turned mathbreakers.com (a download game) into supermathworld.com (an online game), with the added bonus of making our internal game building tools a part of the software.
I learned that it's difficult to sail across the pacific in a rowboat. Meaning, even though your startup aspirations may be wild, it's important to have the right timing and right team to move forwards -- going with blind energy leads to waste and burnout.
Being part of a team that built the 1st open hardware satellite that also happens to be the 1st satellite made in Greece (https://upsat.gr)
I learned that through hard and passionate work we managed to create something that seemed impossible to do in a country like Greece. Seems like it's not.
Now with a March 16th launch date we will be launching on ISS.
A big one for me was to finally put a product out that I've created http://www.curie.me/.
I never was able to finish anything. With Curie it's also an important one for me, and probably because of that I was so determinated do finish it.
One of the biggest reasons was that I knew that the product could help other prevent having the same back problems as I had.
I worked on Curie with 3 other co-founders for nearly 1,5 years now after hours, but we never had the energy or time to get it done. Because I was feeling that my teammates didn't put so much effort in it I finally decided after a couple of month trying to motivate them to let them go. As you can imagine it was really hard to do that, and I felt in a kind of depression about that I knew I needed to be make Curie happen.
Now it's in open beta and soon we'll be launching a chrome extension.
I'm still alive and I think this year I would have made $1,000.00 at most as a freelance web developer. I should add I was working full time as a factory worker for a bit(for the most part till I became unemployed again).
I was working at a factory. Maybe if I'm lucky I get hired at a tech position.
Looks like a great project. With best of intentions, I just want to say that I liked the style (maybe just the fonts) better before enabling javascript. Seemed cleaner and more professional/credible.
I think it's the ratio of font to non-font on my screen becoming too high, looking messy. Or too much text looking too important.
Anyway, the effect is exaggerated on my rather big screen with rather low resolution (22" 1680x1050).
Looking again on a 15" 1920x1080 ... I actually prefer the webfont. Consider my criticism withdrawn.
Launched the public beta for WhenHub https://www.whenhub.com and mobile app. It's a SAAS app that lets you tell stories with time. You create a rich-media schedule of events and then embed it as a visualization on web or FB where it can be viewed, then optionally time-shifted and added to calendar. The mobile app uses geostreaming to answer the question "when will each person arrive" for any scenario where multiple people are meeting up.
It has been an interesting journey grappling with creating a responsive, embeddable, interactive JS player on front-end while dealing with the idiosyncracies of iCal and Google calendar synch on the backend.
I learned how to work well with a distributed remote team and get a product released.
Started a company from concept stage on a minimal budget, achieved functional UX walkthrough, team build-out, office space acquisition and fit-out, lots of research, multiple hardware iterations, multiple hardware prototype iterations, acquired multiple interested investors willing to commit funds exceeding total capital investment to date.
Learned mostly in the areas of mechanical engineering, robotics, manufacturing, materials science, product design, Solidworks. Refreshed electronics knowledge.
http://8-food.com/ - network of wholly owned, automated food preparation and retail service locations. Basically, robot chefs inside vending machines initially targeted at mainland China that produce custom food from fresh ingredients, the logistical system behind it and customer experience in front.
PS. I really liked your "VR Meditation app" idea, maybe a little ahead of its time but I am sure that it would work well with those brainwave sensor things that keep almost coming out...
I built my first major side project / application - https://www.artpip.com/. It's a free app for setting fine art as your desktop background.
It was a real culmination of what I've leart over the last few years and it was satisfying to actually produce and ship a finished product. I also leart A LOT about the world of art during the process which has been amazing. The feedback I've had from users has made it all worth it.
After quitting a job with a lot of commute time in it, and having failed to monetize a side project, I finally landed a teaching position on a local technical university.
I always loved learning and teaching, and a side effect of this is that now I've regained the curiosity I always had about the fundamentals of our industry (I've a CS PhD). So now I'm back reading about the fundamentals of electricity and building 8-bit digital adders with basic AND/OR/XOR logic gates [0].
There's still lots of fundamental things that I want to re-learn, and for 2017 I'm thinking on writing a book about learning programming from exercises (with just enough theoretical concepts) starting from flow-charts and pseudocode, up-to some basic algorithms / abstract data structures/types (probably using Python). My idea is that there are lots of students out there that could benefit of learning how to program by solving focused exercises and learn enough about algorithms and structures to feel capable of doing more complex things (i.e, not feel the "impostor" syndrome).
What did I learn? You would not believe what people commit to their source control. Gigabyte text files, millions of files in a single directory, files with the immutable bit set etc... Some of the most bizarre things I would have never encountered.
My defensive programming skills when file processing have improved greatly as a result.
Sure, it was small, and far from the biggest thing I've written, but it was really and legitimately useful, and actually helped me with a real problem that I had. Most of my code is just oddball projects and weird experiments. It felt good to make something and see the effect right away.
It taught me that in the future I'd need to make my projects more immidiately applicable to Real Life. It makes them more interesting, even if the actual code is fairly banal.
2016 was another miserable year filled with 24/7 intrusive/harassing/distressing thoughts and physical pain/discomfort that left me unable to do anything but sit around being harassed.
I'll be 31 soon, and thus far have spent the last 6+ years sitting around in this state unable to do anything, work, think, etc.
Others say it's some sort of mental illness, but I say I'm a Targeted Individual (ie, someone did/is-doing this to me).
I finally wrote a book. This book is about how to break into consulting, and it's addressed specifically to programmers. I feel like people were always asking me about how to break into consulting so I just sat down and knocked out a book over the course of four to six weeks. Details and an exclusive discount for the HN community is available in my profile.
Also, I learned conversational Swedish and traveled to Stockholm twice. Fun times!
Just picked up the book. A friend and I are looking to start our own software dev agency in 2017, which will probably be closer to consulting work in the beginning. I look forward to giving your book a read.
Thank you for your business! Let me know if you have any questions and send me an email if you want to hang in the Slack channel.
Giving talks at meetups is a great way to build credibility (and attract clients) for a software agency or consultant. In the book, I give a step-by-step formula for building a pipeline of scheduled talks.
Thank you for the congratulations! I am grateful for your business. The books in your profile are awesome; I hope to rate one day. Please do send feedback..
1. During 2nd half of the year I've finally started to work with two open source projects from scratch (I've planned one, but 2nd has come to my mind couple weeks ago).
2. Yesterday I've finally managed to restart my blog.
3. I've learnt my little kid couple nice stuff.
4. Despite the fact I was overworked in December and started to work on side projects mentioned above, I've managed to spend more time with my family.
Launched my time tracker, Qbserve[0] and learned that even a huge boost from being in HN top posts doesn't help to reach press or bloggers "automatically".
Gaining visibility even in a relatively small market like Mac apps is a huge effort and nobody cares about you and your product on its own.
Published my first e-book -- https://leanpub.com/data-engineers-manual -- and made my first sales. 37 paying customers so far, and I just got my first "review" (an encouraging tweet) the other day. Not bad for doing zero marketing and promotion. It has encouraged me to do more of the same.
2016 was awful, just awful. My parent's home burned down (luckily they had good insurance), my startup failed (no VC investment in sight, no bank would give us a loan, my co-founders went separate ways, etc) and now with 27 years I had to find a "real job" (was in academia before the startup) in another city where I have to pay a huge rent for a shitty apartment. Then, two days ago, the consulting firm where I working just gave me notice that they can't pay salaries to everyone in January so the last two guys getting in have to go. Nice xmas gift...
Now I don't know what to do, it's so hard to find a job in this country. I'm taking MOOCs about data science and python because there are so many job listings for such positions but who will hire a forensic anthropologist? I was lucky enough to get into this job and now there's nothing for me in the horizon.
i decided to face the fact that i'm trans, which threw a huge wrench in my startup plans, but it turned out to be for the best. i'm learning a lot about self-care that i'm hoping will help me be a more effective entrepreneur in the long run (i.e. less prone to burnout). my quality of life has skyrocketed.
Started the year by "flipping the final switch" on our months-long migration from colo-hosted system to EC2. The final operation was to promote our secondary in EC2 to primary, and point all read-write systems there before restarting the entire stack. (It was bit of an anti-climax.)
Then proceeded to work on and push through any pending changes that allowed us to pass three separate audits.
Towards end of the year, finally hosted the first meetup at our office.
As to what I learned:
1) Implicit couplings are incredibly easy to introduce, even with designs that were explicitly set to avoid them.
2) Auditors mean well but rarely have a wider technical background. In gambling industry they are also terrified of running production systems in the cloud. Architectural decisions must be paired with what amounts to a PR effort aimed at third parties.
3) Organising even a casual event is a lot of invisible work.
I wrote a concatenative Donald Trump text to speech engine [1]. It kind of sounds like garbage right now since I rushed to complete it before the election--I had no idea he'd win. I read lots of literature on speech and linguistics, synthesis algorithms, and more. I also had to curate a large sample of Trump speech.
I wrote the backend in Rust, so I was able to learn quite a bit more about Rust in the process.
Since Trump won the election, I'll devote some time in Q1 2017 to improving the voice quality. I'm especially interested in applying deep learning techniques to generating a larger n-phone data set.
My second largest accomplishment will be what I'm going to pull off for New Year's, but that's a surprise. It involves multiple watts of lasers, though. :)
It never fails to amaze me that if you can prove you gave the FAA the legally required minimum 30 days warning you can do anything up to death star experiments and they can't say boo about it, but skipping the paperwork and trying to beg forgiveness after the fact is like a dozen separate felonies, so be careful. Assuming you're doing what I'd do with many watts of lasers, LOL.
Learning Tango. Or should I say, starting to learn it -- it takes a couple of years of sucking at it to become bearable for a leader.
It is an incredibly deep and rich discipline which invites me to multi-dimensional mastery: kinesthetic, emotional, sexuality/boundaries, musicality, finding place in a complex multilayered society and communities, relationship to learning/failure/frustration, intimacy, discipline... and more. It is incredibly beautiful and complex, difficult and rewarding.
Mastery with infinite possibilities and thus no ceiling. No graduation :)
I'm fortunate to have found a school that approaches it in a profoundly deep and felt way, and has redefined teaching in the process.
I feel extremely grateful. It's changed my attitude toward leadership, relationships, music and community. What a gift.
It's nothing special and there's not a lot of content, but I hope to learn a lot and make more connections as the editor.
I definitely learned to share my accountability with other people. I had enough to launch in Feb of this year but I didn't launch until December when there started to be external pressure.
Additionally, I learned that for things outside of typical teamwork, it's necessary to put hard deadlines on things. When someone signs up to write a blog post I can't expect them to work on it in preference to sprint work unless there's a deadline or incentive.
I achieved one of my long-term career goals, getting a job at a Big 4 tech company. In the process I learned that a growth mindset is one of the most powerful assets you can have. I also handed off my pet open source project after taking it from 30k to 7 million downloads.
I rediscovered happiness, the art of living in the moment, closed a round on my side project so I can go full time next year, spent 3 months collectively travelling the world, and realised that things are actually pretty bloody good and I should stop worrying about anything
I've partnered with GitLab and developed courses on Git and on GitLab CI. In successfully developing the CI course on short notice, I've learned I'm usually operating way below my potential. I need to push myself more. Don't get comfortable.
Launched a product that is on the shelf in stores across the US.
Things I learned:
Be extremely careful with your demo apps, people will see the demo work and think its most of the way there and just needs polish where reality is very different.
Grasping new technology stacks is harder for many people than I anticipated. I chose Erlang/Elixir/BEAM and I wouldn't change that, but onboarding has been a challenge. What I see as mostly syntax and just learning what philosophies work best on a new VM others see as a sea change that takes much longer than anticipated to understand.
I've been using Blogger to annotate James Joyce's Ulysses, with an emphasis on linking all the many freely-available online resources. But there's so many that pagesize becomes problematic-- not load time, just requiring readers to scroll through many screens of information that may or may not interest them. So my new plan is to classify and summarize individual notes, and only gradually reveal them by request: http://ulyssespages.blogspot.com/2016/12/button-test.html
I was a mobile developer and always wanted to step up my game. So I left my that job and joined a start-up with just an idea.
Now I am CTO of a data capability company,
And in process I learned two new languages, frameworks, exposed myself to new technologies such as mongo, data scrapping, API writing, handling whole product development. Last few months were great from work perspective, though not from money perspective.
Now we are on to raise some money, and hopefully i will be alloted a good amount of equity.
That's it for this year.
Cleared technical interviews and joined Microsoft as a Software Engineer working on Azure. Having been around 3.5 yrs in the field, it lifted my self esteem and made me realize I'm not so bad.
I ran experiments and wrote a paper aimed at providing an information-theoretic explanation for why deep learning and hierarchical Bayes modelling work. It's under review right now.
I put two PhD applications in to top departments.
I got married.
In the process I mostly learned the same lesson from my MSc: research is mostly a lot of background knowledge to acquire and legwork to do, but if you've done it right, you can address a big, difficult question by wearing it down until it's small enough to work with.
Was offered a position as a technology summer analyst at Goldman Sachs next year. Maybe not too impressive for some people here, but it was my first big offer and I felt proud of it.
I licenced software I made to my current employer and turned that into a mini-SaaS business.
I negotiated my own job role in a specialised area but turned it down in favour of moving countries with my girlfriend.
I gave a TEDx talk on legal technology.
2016 has been a rough year globally but a pretty good one personally. Whilst it has had its challenges, overall I've learned to take more risks and to say no to more people.
Next year, I want to create more SaaS businesses - though right now I've got a bit of creative block around it.
I finished my PhD in neuroEconomics. I learned that I don't want to spend the rest of my life writing (most rejected) grant applications, so I left academia and founded a startup.
It's not over yet. I want to say surviving but given the spate of celebrity and personal friend deaths and my own health problems there's not enough wood on Earth to knock.
I started a local meetup with a few friends and ended up finishing the first year with 9 meetups, a hackathon and 250-ish people in the community - and the first 3 months of next year already booked with hosting companies. I had never done anything similar so it was a huge thing for me.
I learned a lot about developer communities and what makes 'em tick.
We landed on our first paying customer on a product that we had been working for more than a year and half. And many more sign ups later turned profitable too. And about to release a major upgrade in the first weeks of 2017.
The down side was that I hardly had any holidays in 2016 and was consistently clocking 12 hour work days. So exhausted to the core as well.
Started a part time product http://www.barber.pk (Online barber booking service) and its going very well, though not yet able to generate money but have positive feedback and able to won FBStart services grant, this is best thing happen to me in 2016 along side some bad ;(
looking forward to 2017 now with lots of positivity
I was the lead engineer on a new financial exchange that we launched just this month. Honestly, it involved some of the lowest lows of my career to date and while it is assuredly my greatest accomplishment of the year, it in no way felt triumphant -- just flat and empty, which I'm sure is either a symptom of burnout or a sign to move on with a decent notch on the resume. I am so very tired of 2016.
I was in my very first performing arts role, a musical parody of bay area tech, and lauched a webapp during the show (http://birthdaymob.com/) and integrated audience participation to introduce people to it.
It's the very first app to ever launch as part of a musical and yes I realize how ridiculously "Silicon Valley" this is :-)
I wrote a Bitbucket add-on that puts a rebase button and a squash button on the pull-request screen. At this time it only works for the on-premises version of Bitbucket, aka Stash aka "Bitbucket Server".
I graduated college and learnt how to code for my job! I've loved it so far, and am always fascinated by the tech community, YC and all of the resources out there that help me learn more everyday! I think my biggest learning was that even veteran coders forget commas and semicolons sometimes, so I shouldn't be so hard on myself.
Campaigning for Brexit - learnt that no one is objective, everyone interprets information through their preconceptions.
Also finished my Masters and got a remote job at an awesome startup. Learnt to be less afraid of failure - better to apply to as many universities/jobs as practical and then accept the best offer. Wish I realized this a few years back.
Worked on a 3 month rapid product development with a team of 4 using Scrum methodology. Technologies used: React-Redux-TypeScript
Learning: Was in product development first time. Scrum is tiring in nature but good when used for rapid development. React-Redux-TypeScript is a great combo. Still not sure on using inline styles for react components
Check out the webpack style loader if you don't want to go full inline with the styles. We had to monkey patch Module.prototype.require to get mocha happy with "requiring" sass files but it was only half a days work. Now, styles don't leak outside of the component we want them in. Stylesheets are absolutely my least favorite part of development and having one stylesheet per component actually makes it tractable for me.
Getting CrocodileJS going, I learned ES6/ES7/Babel/Async/Await and so much about React and React Native too (building some RN apps at the moment). I still need to ship V1, but I am looking for help. https://crocodilejs.com
I finally got my general purpose chess program (Tarrasch Chess GUI, see http://triplehappy.com ) to a point where I am happy with it. After about seven years off and on.
I think what I learned was, don't spend seven years on the next project :- )
accomplishment: building my own social app from scratch and putting on app store
learned: you literally have to treat your goals as gods and worship your ideas daily. i made enough branded t-shirts and wore them everyday so my friends would see me wearing the same logo everyday and then ask me "is your app done yet?" and I would be embarrassed if it wasn't done yet and work on it after work. but now I got a ton of feedback and know what i need to do to make it great, so working on the 2.0 version.
Finally launching the software I/we were building for one of our businesses for the last 1.5 years... only to have said business shut down a few weeks later for unrelated reasons.
My biggest accomplishment is that I did quit mine :)
I had to take a vacation to interview full time. That finally did the trick and got me the offer that let me jump ship. Also, practice not shitting on your current company. It's really hard to dial in the story about why your leaving without making yourself sound disgruntled.
Created an online book cms, launched a series of career and self improvement guides, a food calorie burn calculator with a twist, a multipurpose heath stats calculator, and am currently finishing a small ecommerce platform as well as a small community for sharing polls etc.
A little later, in April, I sat in mission control and helped launch a spaceship to the ISS.
Along the way, I realized:
Engineering in the real world is maybe 30% calculations and typical "sciency" work, the other 70% is documentation and communicating to people. The day-to-day in the aerospace industry is way different than the way things are taught at school (from an EE perspective). It's impressive to me how much design happens in everyday back-and-forth conversations, versus the common image of "one guy, hard at work, cranking out equations at his desk".
Being smart isn't enough sometimes -- you need to have discipline as well, and even then, there is a considerable amount of luck in the mix. Getting the timing for a presentation, or a forcing a decision at the right time, can make a huge difference in the success of a program. You kind of have to check all three boxes to max out your success counter: smarts, determination, and luck.