meowtastic

I'd say it depends on how much effort it'll take to deliver the work. Want to spend a day clearing up a piece of technical debt? Guesstimate how much faster you'll end up adding new features after resolving it. But the bigger the piece of work the more effort you should put in quantifying it.

Ha, I wish!

I've noticed a common theme across several such posts/comments - our definitions of a "good" company can widely differ. I, for one, find it's important that the team can always quantify how every feature adds value to customers. Others are happy just focusing on highly-technical, challenging work.

We're already starting to see examples of these differences in the thread started by @JonChesterfield; I'm sure others will pop up.

The only conclusion I can draw so far is that interviewing the employer remains as important as ever. Don't just write off a company because of what you see online, just have a 30 minute chat.

Hmm, it depends on whether you do want to talk to others over a call. If yes, then I need ti figure out a way to force people to get together and talk. If not, then the project would probably not be useful for you.

I have the same issue. I hate leetcode, am a good communicator and want to always connect what I build to the value it delivers to customers. But the companies that care about this the most are startups, and I've had some really bad experiences.

Didn't know Discord doesn't encrypt messages. How do you go about doing it then? If I send a message, wouldn't it automatically go to Discord's server?

Interesting, thanks for the feedback! What would you want to get out of a group chat? And I'm guessing you wouldn't want it to be time-limited to like an hour right?

Alrighty, this little project didn't really work out so I'm going to log off for the day and go to bed. I'll keep the coffee tables open until tomorrow morning, in the off chance anyone wants to chat. And allow everyone to message on the text channel, go crazy. Thanks again for checking out my submission!

Had a chat with someone, hurray!

Nothing new in my latest update, crickets can be clearly heard on the server. I'll keep the server alive until tomorrow, won't delete the tables anymore.

Another round, another fail. Had one person joining the server and :gasp: waving at me, but they disconnected afterwards :sad_trombone:

While a very small sample size, even those who did end up joining weren't interested in having a chat. So it might be the case that this isn't as needed as much as I thought it would be.

On the flip side, I'm glad I didn't put that much effort into it. I had some friends who suggested a much more sophisticated bot.

2nd session over, looks like this is turning into a majestic fail as no new people joined the server T__T.

HN seems to still be pushing the post to viewers since I have some comments on the post (thanks sanity3141 and cloudking!) and upvotes (thanks random strangers!). But I think the lack of a website is the major turnoff. I initially thought that the allure of the title would be enough; clearly I was wrong :D

I think they went with Discord because it's by far the easiest way to get started. And it still kinda works, although you can get lost in the flood of messages.

The reason they have the generation prompts in the public channels is to generate free marketing around how many people use them. It's like how levelsio only replies to messages on Twitter.

Also I've got a friend who's built a ChatGPT Discord bot - check it out, it's entirely free: https://twitter.com/firtozb/status/1610344330236989440

Greetings first commenter! I agree, Discord is pretty amazing because it gives you a lot of features for free that you'd need when starting out. The flip side, just from observing other servers, is that you constantly have to manage the channels. Too many, and people are barely posting in them because they can't find them and/or they're too niche; too few, and you get lost in the torrent of messages in a single channel.

1st session down. 3 people joined the server, but no one wanted to have a chat T_T. I probably should've set up a website as many will be turned off by the direct link to Discord, but ah well, wanted to get it out there for today. And someone actually upvoted this submission, I'll take that tiny win!

Will be posting my learnings from each session on this thread.

I'd say 0.1:1 from personal experience. Often you see founders who want to build facebook-but-better type of stuff from day 1. My advice is to avoid first-time tech founders, it's very hard to coach them into adopting the lean startup mindset until they feel the pain.

Wouldn't it be easier just to attend meetups? Plenty of them in London.

Makes sense. I just can't find something that interests me so much that I'd want to work on it in the evenings/weekends. Maybe with time...

What kind of InfoSec role were you doing? I sometimes find team dynamics too draining :)

Is it a good time to get into it now though? I would've thought InfoSec roles are first on the chopping block when budgets get squeezed in a tech downturn.

I think they're valid points. A lot of people argue that it's easier than ever before just because the costs are lower, without factoring in many other crucial aspects like timing, competition, and so on.

Great idea, but wouldn't it better to just have a web app that takes the link to the page as an input?

> It is harder to build something today than it used to be.

Interesting viewpoint. I really want to a bootstrapped software business, but I find it so hard to come up with a financially-viable opportunity.

Do the majority of self-taught devs in the US get that kind of money within 1 year? I honestly find it hard to believe.

Sales.

I live in the UK, don't make nowhere near 200k nor do I know anyone who makes that amount (across all levels).

I'm self taught, spent 4 months entirely on my own going through freeCodeCamp and The Odin Project. My tip - only do it if you enjoy it, there's plenty other professions out there with a better ROI on time invested.

I'll go against a few fellow commenters by saying that I wouldn't recommend an accelerator if you just want to educate yourself about fundraising. You might end up wasting a few months going through their programs, with not much to gain. You're way better off connecting with a founder in your domain who's been through it and asking for advice/mentorship.