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c_t_montgomery

474 karma · joined January 2, 2011

Building a better way to use the internet @browsercompany. Prev: long time @pinterest, a summer at Apple & first employee at Lift (now @coachdotme).
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c_t_montgomery··on Linear.app
Hey there, I'm an engineer at The Browser Company (who makes Arc).

It's critical to our eng, design & product processes.

We switched from another tool because the other tool was painfully slow. It was a night & day difference. It's been about a year now since we've fully committed to Linear. I'm very glad we have!

We use their cycles feature heavily. We ship our app weekly, and our product development process is split into three 2-week cycles that form a "milestone". We model that work accordingly in Linear.

We also use their "Projects" feature quite heavily. We'll often have folks working across a few projects a time. This feature helps my ADHD brain understand what the most important thing across any number of ongoing projects is, and then focus on accomplishing that.

Personally, the best feature for me is the speed of the app. That, alongside the keyboard shortcuts, make it pretty hard to give up.

Another thing I particularly like about Linear (aside from speed, product polish & wonderful design) is how you can opt-in to using it more. If you just want to use it as an issue tracker for teams, that works great! It's how we started. But you can also grow into the product more as you harden your processes or figure out what works best for you.

tl;dr — I can't imagine ever using another tool to help build products besides Linear.

c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?
Hey there, I worked remotely for 4 of ~7.5 years at a medium-to-large tech company (I left in February). I'm very thankful I had the opportunity, since 99% of the engineering team was either onsite or in satellite offices.

In my experience, it was far easier for me to get burned out when working remotely versus in an office with other people. And when I did get burned out, I found it harder to get back on the other side of the hill when I didn't have a community around me.

Also, if I look at the ~7.5 year tenure at the company — my most productive and happiest times were when I was located onsite at their HQ.

Just my $0.02; happy to talk more in detail over email (in profile).

c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: My new employer have a stock options program, what should I know?
I’d highly recommend spending some time familiarizing yourself with what options are.

The best resource I’ve found so far that does that is this - https://www.holloway.com/g/equity-compensation

Good luck!

c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: Are you glad you dropped out of college?
Hey there.

I dropped out just over 6 years ago to join Pinterest (I still work there). It’s the second best decision of my life (besides asking my wife to marry me).

How much longer do you have left in college? Do you enjoy it?

Obviously this is a case by case basis, but my thought process was -

1. I went to a decent regional school (nowhere near Ivy) and had a below average GPA (2.7 IIRC).

2. The cause of that low GPA was due to me spending my free time hacking on things, not studying.

3. Worst-case, I try and interview at a bunch of places and don’t get any offers so the decision is made for me.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have a ton of student loan debts due to scholarships, so financing the education was not a factor in my case.

I had 1.5 years left. I loved college and some parts of school. It was really hard to leave. Looking back, I’m glad I did it but it was a rough few years seeing all of my friends have the time of their lives while I was working (even though I’ve loved my job). Once everyone graduated all of that FoMo went away. That’s also when new grads who were my age also started working there, which was nice.

Graduating from the university I went to wouldn’t have put me in a better situation relative to other applicants (meaning, I would still be going up against Ivy grads for the jobs I was after).

I ended up dropping out after being offered a promising job opportunity and I’d recommend that route to you if it’s possible. It makes the transition a lot easier.

Hope that helps! Happy to chat more via email. c at cnnr dot me.

c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: Examples of great landing pages?
https://www.instapaper.com/
c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN Air or Pro?
What will you be doing? Unless you're spending your day in a heavy application (i.e. Photoshop, XCode, Eclipse), I'd say the Air, hands-down. I'm on my third one and am hoping to never get another brand of laptop - I love it. You just can't beat the size.

It has to hustle to keep Photoshop or XCode open longer than an hour or so, though.

c_t_montgomery··on Who took a chance on you?
Tony Stubblebine, co-founder and CEO of Lift. Can't thank him enough.

https://medium.com/unforgettable-moments/36369a6063d1

c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition
Yep
c_t_montgomery··on Not for sale
Unrelated: Dan (the guy who owns this domain) is an incredibly brilliant engineer. I had the honor of working with him during my time at Lift (he worked for Obvious at the time). Cool to see his site pop up here.
c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: What's the going rate for software internships?
Like you say — it depends.

In the bay area, I've seen from $15—$40/hour. In my home town (Kansas City) and college town (St. Louis), I've seen between $8 and $20.

c_t_montgomery··on Show HN: A Smart Name Brainstorming And Domain Search Engine
Glad to hear you're a Domainr user! Let me know anything you'd like to be improved on it.
c_t_montgomery··on Codemirror v3 released
Codemirror is much more pleasant to develop with, and also (IMO) much better to use.
c_t_montgomery··on Thoughts on dropping out to do a startup
I agree, but I think it's fair to say that education definitely exceeds the classroom in our fast-paced industry. I learned a lot during my 2.5 years in college, but very little of it, IMO, was related to classroom or homework-based criteria. It was almost all side projects.
c_t_montgomery··on Thoughts on dropping out to do a startup
I recently (2 months ago) dropped out to join Pinterest full-time, and I am extremely happy with my decision.

I was in a similar situation as you, except the opportunity came to me as a sophomore, instead of a freshmen. Let me preface by stating that I think college is an extremely invaluable resource to grow up and learn outside of the classroom. I did, and love it.

If I were you, assuming you do get an offer, I'd register it as a co-op with your college. I did that last year with Lift (http://lift.do), and think it was the best way to go about the situation. Here's why: it's still a full-time job, you're still technically a student, and you don't pay any tuition. If you like it, great — stay out there. If not, no harm-no foul, and go back to school.

Happy to chat over email with you, if you'd like. Look in my profile for contact info. Good luck!

c_t_montgomery··on PonyDebugger: Chrome Developer Tools for Native iOS Apps
Square pays their interns.
c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: Good iOS Tutorials?
Post a link when you get it all set up!
c_t_montgomery··on Bootstrap Tour: Quick and easy way to build your product tours
Don't study/do either of those, but was thinking the same thing. Keyboard nav would be great.
c_t_montgomery··on Show HN: 51,000 6 character domains
Nice. You should run the domains through domai.nr's "info" API (http://domai.nr/api/docs/json#info-api), so the user doesn't have to manually test by clicking the button.
c_t_montgomery··on Zurb launches Foundation 3
I sure hope Bootstrap doesn't become "standard".
c_t_montgomery··on Show HN: CLI for Domainr
I made a CLI for domainr a few months ago, too - https://github.com/connor/domainr

Very nice.

c_t_montgomery··on Your first Node.js module
I agree it would have been nice. Apologies for not including it.
c_t_montgomery··on Your first Node.js module
Ah great catch. I just changed it. Thanks!
c_t_montgomery··on Your first Node.js module
...and the post has been updated. Thanks again.
c_t_montgomery··on Your first Node.js module
I was debating whether or not to put it in there. Since Isaac mentions it in his article that I link to, I figured most people would see it there. Very valid point though. I think I may edit the post and put it up there. Thanks!
c_t_montgomery··on Your first Node.js module
Great point. I'll update the gist. Thanks for bringing this up!
c_t_montgomery··on Microsoft launches so.cl
Was thinking the exact same thing.
c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: Where Could I Find Beautiful JS/CSS Charts?
+1 to d3.js.

http://d3js.org/

c_t_montgomery··on Firefox 12 released
Completely agree. I've heard some people like it - I am struggling to see how it'd be useful, or have any benefits over firebug.
c_t_montgomery··on Ask HN: How to look for jobs in silicon valley , especially start ups
The best advice I can give, if you're looking to get hired, is to find a startup that is fixing a problem you're interested in. See if they have an API, and if they do, build something with it. If they don't reach out to them expressing interest in one, and take it from there.
c_t_montgomery··on How does Elegantizr work?
It's an April Fools joke... :D

As far as how it works, there is a CSS property called "content" (more on it here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/content).

This utilizes the :before pseudo-selector on any given HTML page and outputs "April Fool ô¿ô" several times above the page (since it is a :before).

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