They refused to roll this out (HTTPS) across the 4-5 servers of this brand we managed.
Something just broke in their brain, because I was coming at it from a security angle, they thought “this must be a waste of time / I am a power-hungry sysadmin resistant to change”. I still think about it to this day, and will get anxiety every now and then suggesting a mildly taxing security fix, because if ppl can say no to HTTPS checkboxes will they agree to anything?
Why didn't you just roll it out yourself? I would've just checked the boxes and moved on to something else.
I can't leave due to my stock options otherwise expiring (standard 90 days window), and I don't want to put the liquidity necessary to exercise them and leave, too risky due to the appreciation of those shares, nor I want to take out a loan or stuff like esofund which will eat into 50% of my profits, and would still leave me with a taxable event if the company went belly up and the loan was forgiven. So, I'm a typical example of "golden handcuffed".
So, my "never again": never again work for founders who are already rich and are not looking for a reasonably early exit in case of success. My fault for not checking during the interview process, but I was young and naive.
If the founders were not already extremely affluent, I could assure you they would have already sold the company by now (probably at the 2-3 years mark), very likely realizing low 8 figures profits for themselves (and low 7 figures profits for me), whereas they are now shooting for high 8/low 9 figures for themselves, "hurting" me by exposing me to insane time cost opportunity, and also making the whole thing much riskier since as you grow your acquirer pool shrinks dramatically.
Realistically, I end up being a rest and vest employee, meaning I don't do much work these days, and I likely won't get fired since I have so much context, so I spend a lot of my working time avoiding getting burned out and mostly learning about new technologies, but it's still much less than ideal and it's hurting both me and the company.
At the same time, my emotions these days are very weird and nothing I ever thought I would ever experience: I am usually equally happy if the announced quarter results are a big win (meaning my equity valuation is preserved) or a big loss (meaning we are approaching the end of this company so I'll be free without having to voluntarily forfeit a potentially large payout).
2.) Paying (a lot, $35K) a high end IP law firm to "finish" two patents I'd drafted an file them. I now write and file my own patents for next to nothing; it just takes time.
3.) Letting a law firm convince me to pay even more ($40K) for foreign patents, which are pretty much worthless unless you're an Apple or Samsung.
4.) Not getting an up front firm quote for legal work (said firm tried to collect an additional $90K, which of course we did not pay).
5.) Not watching the company bank account like a hawk to make sure my partners weren't wasting precious raised capital on worthless overhead expenses (e.g. empty offices... and they were).
Oh, the list goes on...
Hmm that would be a great website - for anywhere, it tells you who the right law firms are for what, with user stories, ratings, etc. And links to orgs who give good advice about those things etc.
For a Startup, destination obviously matters, but making the journey enjoyable should be one of the top priorities.
Anyone that says "we will just do this temprarily" will get charged double and need to send that statement in writing with firm start and end dates along with the consequence of not meeting the deadline.
Once your average deal size hits >$250k touch nothing less than $100k if it's a new client, leave it to inside sales.
If someone (or a business) has ever paid you for anything they never get free work. Free product? Maybe, but never free work.
Put it in a contract, regardless if buying or selling, or it doesn't exist. When asked to modify something on the fly from that contract, "we'll let you know" is the only acceptable answer until you review with your team.
"I don't know but will try to find out" is acceptable. "Yes if..." is preferred.
"No." Can help you live longer and healthier.
That being said, for small bundles and with the right tools/technique you can route pretty well and make cable ties aesthetic.
But you are still responsible for fixing all the problems.
I’ve mostly done R&D work in my career so I guess my real question to you is what are all the problems that happen when zip ties are used in production.
This of course works best when you "can" say no (i.e. multiple clients and other sources of revenue)
I have clients right now that I won't be able to attend to for a few weeks or so. If that doesn't work for them, I'll help transition them to a situation that works for them. But likely they'll stay around since good help can be hard to find.
Unfortunately, I haven't see any existing OSS options that quite work for me either.
https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours
Then the only thing that would remain is to take the hours registered in Hours and stuff them into invoices somehow...
Time tracking though - if it's not a button in my menu bar I can click start on (and helpful stuff like noticing inactivity and pausing/prompting etc) I'm going to forget to enter times.
I've wondered sometimes if it'd be possible to fork the toggl desktop app (its open source) and reverse-engineer a backend to support it (or just update the desktop app with new backend calls).
Even if it takes two or three people, they can be replaced.
edit: s/pool/poor/