Agreed. Put another way: because software has low marginal cost and high up-front cost (even higher in very competitive markets) it makes sense to raise venture early to hire a great team and build an awesome product that then scales incredibly well (great investment returns).
Oh cool! Thanks so much. (Btw, I didn't mean to suggest that the project should address an unanswered question. Ok to repeat known experiment if it's fun/insightful).
The gravitational acceleration one is cool. I remember doing this in high school back in the 90s. Let me suggest that to him. Thanks again.
Xpertly | Founding fullstack engineer | Remote (US), ideally Bay Area | $150k + 1% equity
Seed-stage company, backed by top-tier investors. CTO is former YC co-founder.
Founders previously built and sold startup so fewer dumb mistakes this time around (i.e. smarter about when to invest, such as in this hire!)
You: 5 years backend/fullstack experience at Series A/B company
Stack: Vue/Node/Postgres/AWS-lambda. Use of vector DBs/AI where it makes sense.
Why join? CTO is one of the smartest and nicest engineers to work with and learn from. We are building something enduring and useful, both for our customers and the world at large.
ps: we're somewhat in stealth so not much info on our socials yet about the company/mission etc.
Sorry for tangent but any recommendations for small smart phone (i.e. <6" screen)?
I like my iPhone 12 mini with its 5" screen (though it is glitchier than one would hope) but now all phones seem to be 6"+ which is hard to fit into a pocket or even manipulate with one hand.
I know the Samsung ZFlip 6 and Motorola Razr+ are small, though rather pricey at $800-1000. Any opinions from folks on reliability/usability etc of these?
I am embarrassed to say I have some Apple lock-in with earbuds and even basic conveniences like "find-my" working for my children's watches so not sure if these are worth staying with Apple for, even if I dislike their latest devices.
I'm very curious if experienced staff is available and less expensive now. As a venture-backed startup founder myself I'm quite eager to hire such folks and don't have the money to compete with larger firms. Maybe silly question but where are such folks hanging out, besides HN? :-)
Thanks for sharing your experience and glad to hear you've found a good job/team/product-environment!
My experience working with junior devs is that while they may be smart they haven't worked in teams and contributed to large codebases. So they may struggle to understand how a larger codebase is structured, where is the optimal place to fix an issue, how to structure their own code to be maintainable longer term etc. So code-reviews take longer, with seniors sometimes having to refactor a large amount.
I think some younger devs that contribute to open source projects do much better in this regard.
I don't have a view into many large tech companies but I imagine some level of tech debt exists in all of them. Are you suggesting that hiring fresh grads to resolve tech debt is unwise given the complexity of doing so?
Sorry to hear you're burned out. Do you want to work after your current job? If so, curious why you feel this is your last tech job. Is it because of ageism or something else?
thanks. i no longer find the work interesting, and the job market is very punishing. and i've seen 2-3 responsibilities being repackaged into a single job became normalised in the last 10 years.
But I am quite sure I saw similar sentiments at least one other place in his work, and I think a couple places—years and years ago I read most of his novels, plus most of the collected short fiction and short stories, but it’s all pretty fuzzy now.
His first novel, Player Piano, is about a different, but related theme.
It's about machines replacing human work, but it's not at all about the machines. It's about the people. It's about human dignity. Or, as Vonnegut says, it's about "a problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use."
Hi Richard - I'd like to donate as well to help you retire your debt.
I'm sorry the company didn't work out but I am so happy there are people like you in this world doing such a good thing. I hope there is a way to resurrect your project in future.
