acconrad

> Really, what the average person would consider “good” table manners these days boils down to common sense: Chewing with your mouth open is, and always will be gauche. But the more specific etiquette practices — the rules for how to hold your utensils or scoop up your soup — are no longer uniform, and therefore, mistakes are less likely to be met with the same bougie judgement they would have been a century ago.

More specifically, every place has toxic people.

It is your responsibility as a citizen of that community to speak up (either in the form of a flag or hiding that person) if you see content that is objectionable, off-topic, or offensive.

We will never rid the world of bad people. But we can choose to prevent their voices from echoing any louder.

How are you supposed to know passion at 18? I do alumni interviewing for my college and most kids have no singular passion they want to pursue (and more often than not, they are hoping college will help them find that passion).

And I don't blame them. Finding a singular passion to center a degree around at a young age is not the norm. And yet we put a lot of pressure on our kids to be specialists before they're even able to vote. It's a very difficult situation to put children through.

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We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0].

Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trillion dollar marketplace services industry [2].

We're growing so fast that we have to add 35-50 engineers in 2019. Back-end, front-end, devops, data science; you name it, we need the help (including PM and UX roles - see all of them here: https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ).

Our tech stack includes AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (DevOps), Postgres (DB), Node & GraphQL (back-end), React & Apollo (front-end), and Python (data science / comp bio).

We also offer incredible perks. Free lunch (a rarity in Boston), massive commuter benefits (both MBTA and bicycling), fitness reimbursement, ample vacation; we really focus on and believe in both health and sustainability.

I'd be happy to tell you more, so feel free to PM me and I'll personally refer you to the company.

[0] https://www.builtinboston.com/2017/09/26/agtech-startup-indi...

[1] http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2018/#trends-and-takes

[2] https://andrewchen.co/how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-ser...

As someone who has a CS background who wanted to work in front-end, I think a big portion of the "looked down upon" piece comes from an older era where front-end just meant HTML and CSS. Since there isn't much logic to HTML or CSS, it was looked down upon as easy from people with a CS background who generally gravitate towards the backend.

Now that the front-end is more robust with arguably just as much logic on the front-end, the thought is shifting. In addition, some people just don't like handling the GUI layer. For the back-end, dealing with the GUI layer is their least favorite part. So if you have a CS degree and you want to tackle the front-end, you could be one of the rare few who has the technical chops to handle this new world of front-end complexity.

* It has a laptop sleeve

* It's big enough to pack for I'd say 3-5 days

* For the day-to-day I can also pack all of my gym gear (shoes, belt, wraps, clothes)

* It's so heavy duty that you'll never have to worry about it breaking down (and if it does they have a guarantee for repairs)

Go is great if you do a lot of scripting or web dev. But wouldn't be so good if you're making chatbots.

A chatbot or real-time message passing would be great to use Elixir for.

Rust is great for WebAssembly or desktop programming as a replacement for C/C++.

Swift and Kotlin are the obvious choices for mobile development. Are your customers asking for mobile apps? Do you want to build mobile apps? These would be obvious choices.

Chase the problem you're trying to solve and use the right tool for the right job rather than trying to learn a language just for the sake of learning it. I find trying to learn a language I won't use to be something that quickly drops off my radar.

So no, its not worth it and hasn't been worth it for some time (I was there nearly a decade ago)...

...financially.

However, what was worth it was the experience I gained. Being the 1st non-founder engineer means you own a whole stack or specialty and you have no one to lean on. You have to figure everything out. Doing so propelled my career immeasurably. Without that experience I'd still likely be a very mediocre engineer. As much as it wasn't a good financial decision it was a great decision in terms of upping my skills, becoming a harder worker, and building a network with VCs and the local engineering community.

I had already worked at the Big 4 prior to switching and I didn't thrive in that environment. The startup ecosystem provided me the opportunity to work hard, network, build skills, and give me the tools & learnings on how to start my own business.

Not everything is about money.

We have more than enough.

We choose to not to.

https://userinterfacing.com/tag/algorithms

If your body needs energy it will convert carbohydrate stores to glucose. Even if you go keto and ingest 0 carbohydrates, you can still convert substrates to glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis.

I say all of this because I always worry about people who go SOMETHING-free, whether it's sugar-free, fat-free, carb-free, etc. Someone reads a person is sugar free but their body isn't exactly free of sugar. They just haven't ingested it and that's a big difference. And I say this because even if you don't go sugar free you can achieve roughly the same effects provided you keep the junk sugar (i.e. candy bars, soda) to a minimum.

I do strength sports and I have 30g of sugar with my workout drink during every workout. My resting glucose is 90 (near ideal) and all of my blood markers are healthy. Outside of that I have virtually 0 added sugar but plenty of carbohydrates from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. In other words, living life in moderation can produce amazing results and doesn't require a monastic devotion to be completely free of something.

One last thing I will say is that the human body is so complex. The OP isn't just going sugar free. He is also exercising and making other lifestyle choices. That combined with the power of all of that positive reinforcement and changes only magnifies the other effects he is seeing. It's just too hard to solely attribute a sugar-free diet to all of these positive effects. It's really that his whole lifestyle has improved so he's seeing positive changes in lots of places...perhaps even changes where they have nothing to do with all of this but he attributes it as such (not sure x2 hair growth is really correlated to reduced sugar intake).

One way to source these questions is to observe whenever you have a small product ticket that requires some algorithmic or systems design complexity. Strip away all of the proprietary data and IP and see if you can create a problem around the real-world thing you experienced. If you can constrain it to a solution in 10-25 lines that takes less than an hour to create, you can feel good knowing you've got a real problem with a real solution to give to your candidates.

Also: let them use Stack Overflow/MDN/Google. We use it everyday at work, why should you hold that back from your candidates?

And the people that do need help (like my younger brother), what irks me is that he certainly does not think he pulled himself up from his bootstraps. He knows that he was dealt a bad hand and painfully acknowledges the help he's getting.

This comment from the article is incredibly myopic because either you did in fact bootstrap against harsh circumstances or you know you didn't because the recession has dealt you a tough hand. I think the outlier is the individual who think they did it themselves and really believes that (when they didn't).

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We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0].

Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trillion dollar marketplace services industry [2].

We're growing so fast that we have to add 35-50 engineers in 2019. Back-end, front-end, devops, data science; you name it, we need the help (including PM and UX roles - see all of them here: https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ).

Our tech stack includes AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (DevOps), Postgres (DB), Node & GraphQL (back-end), React & Apollo (front-end), and Python (data science / comp bio).

We also offer incredible perks. Free lunch (a rarity in Boston), massive commuter benefits (both MBTA and bicycling), fitness reimbursement, ample vacation; we really focus on and believe in both health and sustainability.

I'd be happy to tell you more, so feel free to PM me and I'll personally refer you to the company.

[0] https://www.builtinboston.com/2017/09/26/agtech-startup-indi...

[1] http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2018/#trends-and-takes

[2] https://andrewchen.co/how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-ser...

I'm a UX engineer so my focus was on a site that loads quickly, is accessible, and is easy to read. It gets 100s across the board on Google Lighthouse because it's built with one HTML file.

The CSS was ruthlessly cut down to a single style tag and I believe there's only a tiny bit of JavaScript for lazy loading images and Service Workers for offline capabilities (in case you need my email in a Subway tunnel?). The service worker file needed to be separated (so I guess it's two files then) but the single HTML was compressed as much as I possibly could to reduce the size down. I even downloaded the Google font file to preload it faster and to strip out all of the unused glyphs.

It definitely loads quickly.

I also have some interest in design, so I wanted to express myself a bit, choosing lots of fonts and designs to create a somewhat eclectic homage to computing past and present.

The only thing I would push back on is the 1:1s - evidence shows it's most effective to meet weekly[1]. Delegate the 1:1s to your team leads (effectively making them the real EMs) and then have your problem-solving meetings become your 1:1s. Now you're managing managers, which is what makes you a director in the traditional sense.

[1] https://www.manager-tools.com/2019/01/manager-tools-data-one...

I had one very short-term client who was dissatisfied with our service in spite of very clear deliverables. Nonetheless, I didn't hesitate for one second to give them back their money.

In simply offering to give them their money back, they refused the check and completely shifted their mentality towards us. They became advocates for us and then said they appreciated our work.

I've never had to give money back with a money-back guarantee and it has only strengthened our brand.

================

We're the fastest growing unicorn you've never heard of [0].

Indigo is revolutionizing agtech by offering better crops to farmers through technology. Agtech is one of the most underhyped technology trends [1] and we're serving a multi-trillion dollar marketplace services industry [2].

We're growing so fast that we have to add 35-50 engineers in 2019. Back-end, front-end, devops, data science; you name it, we need the help (including PM and UX roles - see all of them here: https://www.indigoag.com/join-us ).

Our tech stack includes AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (DevOps), Postgres (DB), Node & GraphQL (back-end), React & Apollo (front-end), and Python (data science / comp bio).

We also offer incredible perks. Free lunch (a rarity in Boston), massive commuter benefits (both MBTA and bicycling), fitness reimbursement, ample vacation; we really focus on and believe in both health and sustainability.

I'd be happy to tell you more, so feel free to PM me and I'll personally refer you to the company.

[0] https://www.builtinboston.com/2017/09/26/agtech-startup-indi...

[1] http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2018/#trends-and-takes

[2] https://andrewchen.co/how-marketplaces-will-reinvent-the-ser...

https://vimeo.com/118740253

(start around 35:40)

For things that don't have a specific date and time but I know I need to do them: I put them in Asana. And I have them organized by day, so my main Asana page has subsections labeled "Monday:" "Tuesday:" etc and I just put all of my todos and spread them out throughout the week.

These two things have done enormous things for my productivity.

1. Capital/equity appreciation - the value of the home + land is worth more in the future. This is not a guarantee in most parts of the country. There are a few areas that are fairly resilient (usually within the metro area of the largest cities in the country) but the barrier to entry can be impossibly high for most people.

2. Hedge against inflation - the value of your mortgage stays the same, but rents (and, in turn, the value of the dollar) increase. This is the classic "rent vs buy" scenario. If rents / sq ft are more in your area than owning the home it's worthwhile. This may not always be the case but even if rents dip they may (will) rise again and the predictability of a mortgage payment over 30 years can offer stability. Again, though, it can require considerable upfront capital to secure that steady payment.

* D E L E G A T E => Your job is to keep your people productive and effective. Doing that starts with yourself - do the things only YOU can do and delegate the rest to the people who are better served to handle that.

* Check out the Manager Tools podcast and focus on the basics (https://www.manager-tools.com/manager-tools-basics)

* The 2 books I got solid, actionable advice from were "The First 90 Days" [1] and "The 27 Challenges Managers Face" [2]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/First-90-Days-Strategies-Expanded/dp/...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Managers-Face-Step-Step/dp...