357 karma · joined October 17, 2017
You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private?
Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian.
It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!
But please also see:
Ovaltime Window: the period where you can drink a hot drink Oval-Time Window: a real window where you can watch cricket in SW London Overdone Window: when food is just perfectly overcooked
$5 a month works for apps with huge user bases and they just take the small conversion and that makes their business run. And this is never web apps (certainly not new ones because the easy ones already exist).
If you charge $30-$100 a month you have to find 10 times less people which is way way easier for a small web dev. Yes the problem you solve will have to be more acute but a. There are actually loads of rich people out there - more than you think and b. You now basically only have to build for your most committed users.
See 1000 True Fans for better, fuller explanation: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
Personally I think it’s a. Immoral b. Dangerous and c. Self defeating.
Immoral because deceiving is actually quite bad regardless of your justification.
Dangerous because you will attract true-believers who are neurotic, mentally ill or misguided and really believe what you’re saying as a strategic thing. You will create a movement that you don’t control and is just wrong about the world.
Self-defeating partly for the above reasons but mostly because you may discredit your position with the people who understand “just enough” and those people run many major companies, countries etc.
A one-hour collaborative problem-solving interview is a great idea.
But, the challenge I have is that I want some kind of measure of aptitude that isn't subjective. I've seen that founders tend to overestimate their ability to basically 'vibe' someone based on interview and the point of this question is to try to hedge that.
I know it sounds silly but as a startup grows, later in the process investors will want you to have a 'co-founder' who could basically take over if the original founder couldn't for any reason. It's de-risking. Probably needs a different title than 'co-founder'.
e.g.
"It's important that the UK government prepare for the collapse of RU Fed because it's a possible, extremely bad event. Planning should be updated and maybe a little contingency put aside."
Errr yeah. And no one should have to tell you that.
"Sunak should put the 3rd Division on boats and starting sailing them to Estonia. Move King Charles into a bunker. Somebody read the manual for how the nukes work. etc"
Obviously also a bad idea.
"Well ackchully they should take appropriate and reasonable action somewhere in between the two"
Yeah well obviously that's trivially true as well.
For me, the tell-tale sign that I need to make a big change is because I've never liked any job I've ever had which involves being sat behind a desk. Although my employer is _challenging_, I've felt like that about five or so different employers and even working for myself.
On your first comment about not looking for your job to fulfil your life. I agree and disagree. I think that's fundamentally right and you need more in your life than your job and, honestly, right now I get a lot of my identity from my job and money and all that. Which I'm not proud of.
But the 'no' part is that I work hard and I always have done. 40 hours minimum and usually more like 50. And I work in the best part of the day when it's sunny and light. To squander all that time through my working life just seems horrendous. It's not like a couple of hours a day, it's the best hours in the best days in the best years of my life being spent switching pixels off and on in a grid using little buttons.
Don't want to be a selfish bastard but equally don't want to be a sad bastard.
In the UK (and British English) there are professions. Those professions are things like Doctor, Banker, Salesperson, Teacher etc. I didn't write the rules of how British English works.
I don't really understand your question. In the UK there are professions and none of them (apart from maybe Surgeon) are manual.
You can split hairs about terminology and how it's 'telling' - but it's just words.
I left this out of the OP because I didn't want to to be too verbose but this decision is a long time coming for me.
In the last two years I've started volunteering, I repair and sell coffee machines as a hobby and I row and play rugby three to five times a week.
I've really considered this deeply and I think I'm like the example you gave - I was never suited for the world of offices. I was good at school but hated that, and good at university and I hated that too. Then I just got jobs in the highest paying fields I could find and went from there.
I think you give good advice but I can't help thinking that life is short and if I had a heart attack and was being wheeled into A&E, I would think that I was fucking moron for having spent so many days sat behind a PC.
Medium and long term, you would likely go self employed and then the roasters contract work out to you.
You work for a roaster to start with and I have some background with repair coffee machines as a hobby. Once you're good at what you do, people tend to become independent but my goal would be to open a shop where we repair and sell machines.
You're right that from any reasonable standpoint I'm absolutely living the dream. I'm debt free, have a good income in a country where incomes are a bit fucker and I do a pretty cushy work from home job. But, I hate it 90% of the time.
There's been a lot of good advice here but the overwhelming thing all day at work is just how excited I am at the idea of not having to do this bs anymore.
I like being on the road - it's a bit like going on an adventure.
We love play.ht and we're already using it in our new start up called Aloudable. We convert email newsletters into podcasts (for now).
This is our MVP if you'd like to sign up: https://aloudable-frontend.vercel.app/
Will
This type of stuff is very concerning but it's been around for a while. Section 5 of the Public Order Act is essentially a catch all to arrest (and typically take them to a police station and de-arrest them). It's fairly common during disorder and I've seen it personally.
@TotoHorner above/below makes the joke "cool to protest provided it's something popular' but that is basically the case with Section 5. The wording is something like "likely to cause widespread offence or alarm" which means that the offence is defined in line with what the police or judges believe is the public mood.
One example of this was that during COVID, a woman was murdered by an off duty police officer and there were protests in London during a lockdown. Many of the people at the protest were arrested (as had protested during anti-lockdown protest) but subsequently the police apologised and said they regretted what they did. There's no doubt they were implementing the law as written but they implemented it against a popular and sympathetic group - which didn't work out well.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part....
Hotellings Law (https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2692.htm) means that when there are two competitors on a spectrum, they will move closer and closer to one another to be as competitive as possible. Even passing beyond the other until they are both either side of the center.
You have two ice cream trucks on a 1D beach.
|-----1-----------2-|
Ice cream truck 2 captures all the business on its right, and 1 captures all the business (more) on it's left. Then they split the central. area 50:50.
|-----12------------|
Now 2 moves all the way to be next to 1, and takes all the central space (including what it used to have on the right.
|------21------------|
1 now comes to the side the grab almost all of the right hand side, surrendering the less valuable left.
|-------12-----------|
|--------21----------|
They'll now work back and forth until they're either side of the middle.
This is what you might imagine political parties would do and what they do in some countries. Something is stopping this happening in US politics and I would hazard a guess it's be because of a. primaries (were votes aren't evenly distributed along a 1D spectrum) and b. social cues (people are in politics for more than just winning votes).
It's directly (and I believe explicitly) modelled on the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA creates a model in which private citizens can and do bring lawsuits against all types of organisations for any type of harm they can define.
This has spun out a cottage industry of disabled people who's full time occupation is visiting everything from websites to restaurants, being harmed and bringing lawsuits. While that may sound like a bad thing, it is in fact a very very cost effective way of enforcing the law quite effectively without bureaucratic bloat. Strangely, it's been quite successful. The history of why this decision was made is very interesting.
For all your devs, this is why large American companies care so much about accessibility on their websites - because it creates an almost unlimited liability on their end if you do it badly. Companies now scan websites for accessibility as soon as they're launched, then others will buy the set of companies which 'fail', then visit those sites in order to be harmed. It's an interesting little cottage industry which keeps legitimate disability rights enforced quite nicely without too big a government.
What's different about this generation (esp in the UK where I live) is that they're becoming reasonably asset rich but they feel poor day to day. This is because they spend a lot of their income on mortgage payments (much of which is equity) and they're auto enrolled into pretty decent pensions which also is a building asset (but not one that they 'feel').
Getting things you can certainly afford on credit (which may be the right decision given low rates plus high inflation) compounds the problem.
You're going to buy a car for 40k after a year of saving. You spend 11 months looking at a big number building up in your account thinking 'hey I'm rich' or you spend 12 months with 'no money in your account' feeling poor. But the outcome is the same. Cheap credit creates many situations where credit is better than cash - so will make the feeling of 'no money' worse.
I'm willing to entertain the argument that thousands of low-skilled migrants out compete indigenous low-skilled labour and push down wages. But that obviously doesn't apply in this context.
If anything, US DE and JP workers would actually need higher salaries to justify their coming to, and staying in, the UK.
I don't mind whether or not people 'share my enthusiasm'.
Last year, UK net migration was up a lot (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...) mostly driven by student visas, mostly driven by India and Nigeria. This is a good thing for the UK - a country which already specialises in Education. We make money for each student, companies get the pick of talent, it's good for soft power and gives optionality. It's also morally right that we offer legal ways for people to move to the UK.
Boris is bad yes, but he brought back the two year post graduation visa (under May you had 3 months to find a job - I saw this up close and it simply wasn't enough time for any specialisation). This is also a really good thing.
Commentators below talking about 'going remote' but this is relevant for SWE and some professional services. Roles in labs, R&D, education, media, law are almost always hybrid which means you can't hire overseas.
What's important is that most of these people would have got into the UK anyway on the points-based systems if they spoke a bit of English and worked in an in-demand field. What this policy essentially does is say is that if you went to these Universities then you don't need to be a SWE and you don't need a certain level of English. I can't see how this isn't a good thing.
And by the way, we already do this for people later in their career. https://www.gov.uk/global-talent
Meetup.com is now rubbish (mostly singles events, walking tours, scam investment talks etc) and Discord is too geographically distributed to be the right answer.
I've seen a handful of apps that claim to work but none have achieved network.
Been thinking about launching a no code app that basically sets up whatsapp distribution lists plus a low touch website. That's all that's really needed.
1. Started playing rugby again after 12 years. Good male relationships. Physical exercise. A sense of time passing and a season in the year. 2. Violin. I wanted something I could spend ten years learning. And a creative hobby but that worked with analytical approach.
Time? Both take a lot of time and effort - but maybe less than you would expect.
Rugby: Email ten teams in the local area, attend the training of the one who was friendliest in their response. Training twice a week and a game on Saturday. I now go to the gym as well. All the above is optional.
Violin: Cheap violin is £100. Online lessons are cheap and convenient. After a year I bought a more expensive violin. I practice on my lunch break - little but often.
Do it. It's a made a lot of difference to my happiness.