scheff

Mis-naming your app can have benefits. see http://www.macgasm.net/2013/03/27/mans-map-app-blows-up-afte...

Missing is - 1. Wall of death. 2. Collapse of the mosh when one person trips over. 3. Crowd surfers and the effects of a boot to the head.

2 reasons I can think of.

1 - nobody would get a pay rise because "If I give you a pay rise, then I have to give everyone a pay rise" would be the mantra of managers in an established organisation. Anything less would create arguments.

2 - the ego of every employee. "Oh, right, just because he's an engineer, he's more important than me in marketing ... which one of us improves how much profit you generate?" ... and so for every other class of employee. even between engineers - "I'm sorry, but I'm better than that guy because of X, Y and Z (subjective reasons) and I should get paid more."

The extension of 2 is - "If I don't get paid the same as that guy then I'm not working nearly as hard as I have been ... I mean - what's the point?"

This is good. I apply these to ALL aspects of my life, not just the work place - "something here sucks. what is it? how do I fix it?"

I fixed my sucky job by identifying the main factors, then finding a job that doesn't have those.

I identified issues with my energy levels and concentration and addressed those with sleep/diet/de-stress methods.

Ultimately my problem is - work is unsatisfying. Nobody has a paid job for things that interest and fulfil me. So I need to find a replacement for "something that pays the bills" and that's what I'm working on. Then I get to work on whatever I want, however I want.

I imagine I'm not unique in having that goal.

tl;dr - "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!"

I disagree with just about everything in that article and my rejoinder would be "when life gives you lemons, realize that you don't have to accept them. then go and plant a tree for something you prefer and years from now you will be having mangoes, or whatever it is you really wanted."

In answer to the question "What’s the greatest lesson that you learned from a job that you hate?" it's that working in a job for someone else is the least productive utilization of my time, skill and energy.

I did a HN search and nothing came up originally, I must have done it as one word. I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge/experience of it, other than media hype.

I hear 'the next big thing' and immediately think 'what makes you think that?'

Am I the only person who was disappointed that this article was not about "Taking an engineering approach to pornography"?

Wouldn't it be interesting to hear someone's lessons learned from using Lean Startup and A/B testing when entering the porn industry to discover best practices, instead of just using "Tried and True" methods?

Is porn an industry ripe for disruption?

I wonder if anyone has applied to YC with a pornography startup.

Maciej Ceglowski is the Flounder of Pinboard.in - http://idlewords.com/resume.htm

We all flounder sometimes, but it's good to admit upfront that it's your full time (pre)occupation.

I have installed Bump twice now, 1 year apart - on my iPhone, then on my Android. Both times it failed to bump files. I wonder if it has inherent issues.

That would account for "100 million downloads!" but not actual active users.

Just now it said "Network unavailable" while I was connected to WiFi. It found a network when I turned off WiFi, but still failed to Bump.

Uninstall.

I would guess Facebook because they would be changing it on a daily basis to keep it consistent with their web version, and adding dedicated functionality unique to the mobile platform.

The last thing they ask you to enter is your postcode, which if you did enter it, vastly reduces the number of people that you are being compared with. That, and most people here would be on a high income for their age compared to the rest of the population.

Re: "Your brain finishes forming in your 20′s" See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

Specifically: "During most of the 20th century, the general consensus among neuroscientists was that brain structure is relatively immutable after a critical period during early childhood. This belief has been challenged by findings revealing that many aspects of the brain remain plastic even into adulthood."

A FAQ/Resource of the knowledge that gets submitted via our blogs, our code, our recommendations, our solutions. While many submissions are news, a lot is also problem solving and solution sharing.

Think about it - the people contributing here have some of the most valuable grey matter in the world. They are coming up with tomorrow's technology. Obviously not all of them want to share that, but many share their knowledge and experiences in hindsight.

The solutions that HNers implement today filter down into the common practices employed by the masses tomorrow.

'As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions".'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

It's good to be skeptical. I have seen people get fleeced by get rich quick schemes, and have concentrated on not being one of those victims.

Just to be clear - the strategy I'm proposing is NOT a get rich quick scheme. It's "create a passive income stream", with the focus on "passive". The definition of passive income is simply "I don't have to work for this money."

There are several reasons why I'm writing a book. 1. because it's not a simple strategy - it requires explanation and details. 2. I know that a lot of people here would be looking for the same solution that I have found, and they shouldn't have to go through 10 years of exploration and experimentation to find it, like I did. 3. My knowledge and time is worth money. People who recognise that are willing to pay money to access it.

But the key reason why someone like yourself might pay someone like me money to learn from my book is the same reason that I have done the same for others. Without paying for that knowledge, I would not have this opportunity to earn passive income.

I'm about to write a book on precisely this topic. I have been looking hard at addressing this issue over the past 10 years so that I can focus on what's important (Startups!). And I believe that I have finally found the best passive income source, given the limitations that people like ourselves are working with.

I'm still in the process of experimenting with my method to see how far I can take it, but the basics of it work already.

A lot of what people define as "passive income" is questionable. Most, if not all, passive income investment strategies require you to hold down a job, or other income, while financing assets that some day, HOPEFULLY, will be paid off enough that you don't have to work ever again.

Most of those plans take too long for my satisfaction. There are other means and methods if you learn and apply yourself. My book will hopefully detail and compare my method with a majority of others.

The obvious ones to look at, if you can invest time and/or money -

* Share trading * Property investment * Property flipping/options * Google AdSense (or similar) * Affiliate marketing * Tim Ferriss' muse / 4HWW * Network marketing/MLM * Website flipping

All of them have varying degrees of learning curve and time commitment to make happen. Few people will tell you how much commitment you need to make, they just focus on dangling the carrot.

I've been through this myself. I realised that the problem was me, and the projects that I was working on. I was fortunate enough to be able to step away, then go and find work that IS rewarding (for me it's playing with the front end, where people play with the app and go "ooooh!" and "aaaah!").

The key for me was to document the things that I hated about the job, and avoid them at all costs, but to acknowledge that criticism is something that feeds back into an application improvement process. ie. Don't take it as personal that someone is criticising you/your work. Find methods of improving the communication channel so that you don't spend days/weeks coding only to find "that's not what I wanted! that sucks!"

I'm fortunate to have an ex hacker/programmer as my manager who knows/understands/addresses my needs very well in my current role.

At some point I stopped chasing the higher paycheck, because I recognised that with a higher paycheck comes higher expectations, demands, hardships. Look at it from the employer's perspective - "We could hire 2 graduates at your cost, at that rate we expect you to not make mistakes, and to get twice the amount of work done."

A friend earns almost twice as much as me, with similar years of experience, but he is expected to miss lunch, stay back until midnight, answer calls to China/India on a friday night. No please/thankyou/you're doing a great job. Just "do it".

Keep searching until you find the right role.

2 cups per day. I find it sharpens my attention and problem solving, both in traffic (on a motorbike) and when programming. The longer I can spend away from it, the more effective it is when I take it up again.

Not essential part of work life.

Don't wish I drank it less.

Might consider alternatives, but I would need to be convinced that other stimulants would be sufficiently advantageous vs deleterious.

It appears to have been reclaimed as SEO bait.

Ideally, yes, that's what I'm looking for. However, having completed the application form, I am eventually told "Your application has been submitted and Melbourne Area, Australia only needs 48 more applications to be unlocked". So I'm guessing it's useless to me for the foreseeable future. Melbourne has an extremely small pool of entrepreneurs, few of which read HN, even fewer who would know about this website. So as a discovery tool, it has mostly failed it's purpose.

Agreed. However I managed to spend 5 years being determined on a startup that ultimately failed, so I need to focus more on the other aspects he mentions.

Thankyou. That's perfect.

I would have thought the solution is simple - release an extremely primitive Android app of the same name and splash screen that says "Coming soon", and report back to Apple "Yes, I have an Android version of my app."

Finding users.

I'm constantly brainstorming ideas, and rapidly prototyping them, but without being able to find the early adopters to begin the feedback loop, the ideas die. What's the best way to find early adopters for my ideas? I'm based in Australia, so meetup groups tend to be very lean around specific interests/technology, but geolocation shouldn't be relevant to internet startups.

How hard can it be when that screw-up in sector 7G down at the old Springfield plant can keep his job after all these years?

In support of what you're saying - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_g-EOWoads

Some great feedback, guys. Thankyou for contributing and sharing. I'm happy and surprised by how well it has been received, it suggests that there is a genuine need there that needs to be fulfilled.

I figure that many people on Hacker News are probably having similar issues that they are trying to solve independently, or have already solved. If we can share our solutions, we can get to where we're going much faster. The reason this will work is because we're all in the same mindset and want to see each other succeed.

I only went with the Google spreadsheet because I was short on time. So how's about we brainstorm it a little and see what we can come up with to make it really helpful? I might export what's already in there and put into more of a web app.

So let's address some of the issues together.

1. "It's going to fall into the background when it falls out of HN's attention."

I was hoping that if everyone shares the link on Twitter/Forums/wherever, then it would generate enough circulation to be self-sustaining.

Assuming that's not the case, how else can we encourage people to keep going back to the list and contributing/helping?

Some ideas: A. Ask PG if we can actually integrate something with HN so that people DO get rewarded karma for both sharing the link and solving people's problems.

B. Turn it into a knowledge portal where you can find out how other people solved the problem you're trying to deal with, be it technical, business, personal, etc.

C. Make it a pre-payment system whereby you MUST share the link and/or help someone with a problem before you can post your own problem up.

2. Should the multiple choice answers be "select one or more options"?

3. Should there be a "Bump this one up" for people who are experiencing the same problem so that the "greatest pain" bubbles to the top where it's obvious that it needs the most solving.

4. Should there be a "I'd be willing to pay for a solution" for when you find a problem that you too are having, but the original poster said "I can pay you in Pizza/Karma"?

5. Should there be a better interface for browsing/searching through other people's problems? What would it look like?

6. Is there a way of making it easier to read for the people dropping in from Twitter, forums, etc?

7. Do we want a system whereby you can post up your skills so that you can offer to exchange services/skills?

Over to you.

By the way - I'm completely open to advice and suggestions with this. If you think it needs extra fields, better design, better explanation, etc. just let me know. This tool is for you.

Okay, there are some relevant questions amongst that comment, so I will address those.

The form is different because it is designed to be short and to the point - "This is what I'm doing, this is what I need help with." It is a single place where people can go to receive/offer help.

I'm not trying to steal your ideas, nor is anyone else. Everybody here already has too many ideas and not enough ability to execute on them. Which is why the form has been invented - "If you help me out, I can help you out."

If the form is not to you liking, then please don't use it.

I knew with foresight that it was the correct premise because I saw it working already in other formats. The only question remaining was "what is the best format/execution to make it work?" and that is the uncertainty of which you speak. Innovation allows us to rapidly fail and learn so as to come up with the correct solution. Tourism Australia's answer was to keep creating multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, which teaches us little and wastes millions of dollars, and takes months of retrospective analysis to learn anything. All that we've learnt from the marketing campaigns is "People aren't as interested in Australia as they were 20 years ago." With a tech startup solution we would have learnt a number of things through observation of how the target demographic interact with each other and with tourism operators, plus what they best respond to, and therefore how best to promote Australian tourism products to them.