seancoleman

I'm sure you're aware of https://www.sleepio.com (I followed their program a few years back). They use the same (similar?) CBT approach and I do think it helped but was far from a silver bullet.

Does Stellar Sleep delve into sleep hygiene? Are "edge cases" considered e.g. some people report no difference with cutting caffeine (as mentioned) but others cut caffeine and instantly their insomnia is cured and their lives change.

Feedback: I found a bug. I signed up with email/password, and then accidentally closed the tab (after creating my account). When I tried to sign in, it's asking for a code sent "to my phone" — I never provided my phone number, and therefore can't sign in.

There's a lot of good advice here around how to approach technical improvements. Just as important is how your approach managing the situation in the organization.

One tip — don't complain to management about how "awful the codebase is" or "how you need to start over" (100% agree this is usually a terrible idea). Managers have been hearing this over their entire career as a technical manager (over time they can lose empathy being out of the weeds). It becomes an overused trope and management will start to see you as being problem-oriented.

I'm not saying don't surface the issues — management absolutely should have an accurate understanding. Instead, try and balance the good with the bad (and there will always be some good). Don't catastrophize — approach is as a manageable problem with quantified risk e.g. responding to estimation with "typically this is a straightforward problem to solve, but I've explored this area of the codebase and there are some challenges we'll need to overcome — the estimate will be larger and less precise then we want to see, and we'll benefit from prototyping/research/spikes to reduce risk of introducing serious bugs and come to a more accurate estimate".

You'll build trust by consistently delivering on the expectations you set around concrete features/task (including the negative expectations) then management will reach the conclusion themselves and will trust your assessment with any new project. Plus, management will ultimately see you as an incredible asset to help bridge the gap of the technical black box and their purvey.

SEEKING WORK | Remote (Phoenix, AZ) | Fractional CTO / Full-Stack Web Dev (15+ years XP)

I have 15+ years experience leading teams (and personally as an IC) building full-stack web apps from MVP to Enterprise. I get the business side (founded multiple startups — cvtrack.com most recently), I understand good UI/UX design (5 years Director for design/development agency), and run efficient teams as a PM / technical lead or fractional CTO (5+ years as PM and fractional CTO).

My specialty is coming into existing startup (< 50 people) dev/product teams as a hands-on leader and swiftly rebuilding morale, aligning/managing priorities, managing expectations, and bridging technical/product gaps with leadership. I'm told that when I join a team, product development velocity skyrockets, sometimes by an order of magnitude. For less hands-on engagements, I consult around technical hiring, architecture (Senior Developer bandwidth where it doesn't exist), product advising, and technical strategy.

Because I'm so hands-on, as a full-stack developer I will also build web apps (solo or as part of a team) in a variety of languages and frameworks (PHP/Laravel, Ruby/Rails, Elixir/Phoenix, Python/Django) — and I merge it with good design understanding, product sense, and business value.

Previous client engagements: First Solar, Sophos, General Dynamics, among many, many amazing startups Previous positions: Tuft & Needle (head of engineering), GoDaddy (product management)

sean@seancoleman.net

I'm a fractional CTO consultant and have turned into a major shill for Linear — I always recommend it to teams of the right profile (3-4+ developer teams open to change and eager to improve efficiency). It's such a refined product, that a lot of process and communication issues tend to dissolve after switching (from say Jira) to Linear.

Tools don't solve everything with any team, but bad tools can encumber a team and hamstrung potential.

Moral of the story: no engineer worth their salt wants to work on a "codebase" like this, so as an independent contractor, you can virtually name your price if you're willing to wade through the mess and solve acute problems.

I just set up Basedash yesterday (think Airtable over real SQL databases) and plan to use it for updating a production database.

Drawbackwards | Remote-First (Phoenix, AZ) | Front-End/UI Developer (React) | Part-Time/Full-Time Contractor

Drawbackwards is a UX design & development agency in Tempe, AZ.

We're looking for a React/Typescript & UI developer to join our 5-person development team building a new large-scale, greenfield product. Our design team provides thoughtful, comprehensive and high-fidelity mockups in Figma for pixel-perfect implementation. The team follows async-first communication/development practices, is highly supportive and egoless, focusing on the work and results first.

Please feel free to email seanc@drawbackwards.com with a little background on yourself.

Drawbackwards | Remote-First (Phoenix, AZ) | Front-End/UI Developer (Angular/TypeScript) | Part-Time/Full-Time Contractor

Drawbackwards is a UX design & development agency in Tempe, AZ.

We're looking for an Angular/TypeScript & UI developer to join our 5-person development team building a new large-scale, greenfield product. Our design team provides thoughtful, comprehensive and high-fidelity mockups in Figma for pixel-perfect implementation. The team follows async-first communication/development practices, is highly supportive and egoless, focusing on the work and results first.

Please feel free to email seanc@drawbackwards.com with a little background on yourself.

10 years ago in my mid 20s, I was a product manager at a tech BigCo (not FAANG). Just after starting, I was in a casual in-person meeting with my boss, my boss's boss, and a couple other executives (closer to a meet 'n greet than formal meeting). I don't remember much of what happened in the meeting, but I distinctly remember the feedback my boss gave me shortly after the meeting: "I think it'd help you if you don't ask obvious questions because it makes you look dumb" (I remember it being delivered more compassionately, but that was the essence).

At the time, I was young, insecure, and fraught with imposter syndrome (viewing virtually everyone as smarter than me) so I took it personally. That feedback gave me a visceral "that has got to be the worst feedback ever" reaction.

Fast forward 10 years, I've reached the point where I don't think twice about asking questions in any setting. I'm secure and confident in what I know, understand the vastness of what I don't know, and try to be vulnerable about this truth. I'm no longer worried about looking dumb. Maybe some people still think "well that's a dumb question, he should know that" but I'd rather have this experience, while retaining my adaptability "superpower" of being able to dig to the root of a problem, quickly learn context, and rapidly provide solutions.

I think about that feedback a lot.

I really wish they went with a logo that was a bit more different than that of a literal trash company (https://www.republicservices.com)

Drawbackwards | Remote-First (Phoenix, AZ) | Front-End/UI Developer (React) | Part-Time/Full-Time Contractor Drawbackwards is a UX design & development agency in Tempe, AZ.

We're looking for a React/Typescript & UI developer to join our 5-person development team building a new large-scale, greenfield product. Our design team provides thoughtful, comprehensive and high-fidelity mockups in Figma for pixel-perfect implementation. The team follows async-first communication/development practices, is highly supportive and egoless, focusing on the work and results first.

Please feel free to email seanc@drawbackwards.com with a little background on yourself.

Hey HN!

My name is Sean, and I'm a fractional CTO / full-stack developer. This is a project I joined up with a couple months ago. I figured the HN community would appreciate seeing our lean MVP.

We're solving that simple, pesky problem of oversized CDC vaccine cards not fitting in wallets (and getting torn to shreds in doing so). The web app allows you to scan your vaccine card, and we'll ship you a credit-card size plastic VaxCard that fits much better.

I'm happy to answer any questions (especially around technical and security details). I love sharing new products with this community (for some brutal honesty ;))!

Drawbackwards | Remote-First (Phoenix, AZ) | Front-End/UI Developer (React) | Part-Time/Full-Time Contractor

Drawbackwards is a UX design & development agency in Tempe, AZ.

We're looking for a React/Typescript & UI developer to join our 5-person development team building a new large-scale, greenfield product. Our design team provides thoughtful, comprehensive and high-fidelity mockups in Figma for pixel-perfect implementation. The team follows async-first communication/development practices, is highly supportive and egoless, focusing on the work and results first.

Please feel free to email seanc@drawbackwards.com with a little background on yourself.

FlipOS | Full-Stack Product Developer | Phoenix or Remote (US Timezones) | Full-Time | https://flipos.com FlipOS is building an end-to-end platform for Fix & Flip investors to work better and faster, from initial property search to final sale. We have ambitious goals to simplify and streamline the way homes are purchased, renovated, and sold across the US.

Web Stack: Node/TypeScript/React/GraphQL/Postgres

https://flipos.com/jobs/full-stack-developer

If you're interested, please either email me with a quick overview of your experience / things you've built (sean@flipos.com), or just apply at the link above and reference Sean Coleman.

P.S. no contrived white-boarding or tough algorithmic questions here! We’re a team of builders and craftspeople, focused on the end product.

FlipOS | Full-Stack Product Developer | Phoenix or Remote (US Timezones) | Full-Time | https://flipos.com

FlipOS is building an end-to-end platform for Fix & Flip investors to work better and faster, from initial property search to final sale. We have ambitious goals to simplify and streamline the way homes are purchased, renovated, and sold across the US.

Web Stack: Node/TypeScript/React/GraphQL/Postgres

https://flipos.com/jobs/full-stack-developer

If you're interested, please either reach out to me with a quick overview of your experience / things you've built (email: sean@flipos.com, iMessage: +14806038850), or just apply at the link above and reference Sean Coleman.

P.S. no contrived white-boarding or tough algorithmic questions here! We’re a team of builders and craftspeople, focused on the end product.

Compliance is security, or said differently, non-compliance is a security vulnerability.

In an isolated instance, it may seem obvious that bcrypt is superior to SHA-2 (it sure is to me). But managing security posture at scale, across a massive enterprise with disparate teams is tough. Rogue groups make bad security decisions all the time. Committees are formed, and policies are put into place to guard against this. Auditors are charged to enforce those policies. Changing policy itself presents risk (both organizational and personal/job-related risk). Therefore committees are conservative with adapting to evolving environments.

This is the Occam's Razor explanation for why Things Just Don't Make Sense around many corporate IT security policies.

Regarding resale tax exemptions: technically, yes! BUT the entity selling to a reseller needs to request and maintain a reseller license to prove that the sold goods went to a reseller with the intent of reselling. If you simply claim exemption from sales tax because you know you're selling to resellers, and don't manage reseller licenses, then you could be in for a world of hurt when audited (which happens much more frequently than it does with income taxes).

Several people have pointed out the redundancy, even hypocrisy, with `@apply` and compositional classes. I like to think of `@apply` and componentization as competing solutions. Just like "composition over inheritance" I believe in "componentization over @apply / composite classes".

Ideally, you don't have composite `.btn` classes. You simply have a `<btn>` component which encapsulates appropriate Tailwind CSS classes in the component (no external CSS, `@apply` required).

With this framing, `@apply` is the less preferred of 2 approaches. It's good, even necessary, in some situations, but generally you should seek ways to componentize vs. abstracting compositional classes.

Tailwind is the most counterintuitive yet obvious-in-hindsight CSS tool (or of any class - no pun intended) I've worked with.

I know the general sentiment towards Tailwind is "I spent years getting my separation of concerns with HTML/CSS down, but now you're telling me all that is backwards and CSS Zen Garden is blasphemy?" I was in the same boat. Tailwind just felt wrong, and with 15+ years of experience, I've come to trust my intuition. After watching several videos, and reading all the canonical articles on Tailwind, I still wasn't convinced this was anything more than a fad full of bad practices.

But the one thing I'll let trump my intuition is curiosity. So I used Tailwind on a medium-sized project for a couple months and was blown away by the productivity and maintainability. It took using it for a couple weeks to "get it". I had a positive ROI on this project, even considering the learning curve!

If you still think "Tailwind feels wrong, what am I missing?" I'd suggest reflecting on the following:

1) You probably haven't actually delved into Tailwind on a non-trivial project. I understand learning a new framework isn't a trivial undertaking, but it's the only thing standing in your way of discovering your "truth".

2) If you feel Tailwind is too much like inline styles, think of the difference between the infinite possibilities of strings defining a "type" vs. a discrete enum type. Tailwind classes are the enum type values.

3) If you're struggling to abstract reusable higher-level classes/components, the problem might actually be with inconsistent and non-modular design, not CSS tooling. If every page or section is a "unique work of art" then you may have poor UX/design.

You're likely missing 2 things: 1) you probably haven't delved into Tailwind on a non-trivial project and 2) the nuanced difference is between infinite possibilities (style attribute) vs. discrete, "hard-coded" options (Tailwind classes). Think of strings vs. enum values when describing "types" in an application.

"Incompatibility with IE11, so you can tell the man upstairs 'sorry boss it's out of my hands, blame Tailwind'..."

I know it's said tongue-in-cheek, but popular frameworks taking this stance is valuable when convincing clients, leaders, authority, etc. to not require IE support. I've consulted on dozens of front-end projects, and showing the stance of "industry leaders" is the most convincing argument.

5+ year full-time consultant here. I use FreshBooks ($15/mo) and push clients to accept monthly net 15 or net 30 invoices. Doing any more frequently is too much overhead and cashflow isn't a huge concern for me.

One tip: Any effort put towards "making your invoices beautiful" is overhead and likely a complete waste as most clients won't care or notice.

For sure, and FB notes amortized investments bringing this figure down. The tax code rewards corporations for R&D investments. I think it's working. The optics are terrible though.

"Our third quarter 2020 effective tax rate was 4%" [down from 17% YoY]. Numbers like this sure support the "rich corporations don't pay taxes" narrative with average Americans paying a 24% effective tax rates.

I think a different way of looking at the problem is that ActiveRecord models really shouldn’t have much, if any logic. Instead, logic should get delegated to other types of object, such as services, decorators, query objects, etc. While “fat models” is certainly better than “fat controllers”, I’m afraid it lead the Rails community astray with large-scale apps that required more nuanced architecture.

I loved the term a colleague used for this: refactorbation.

I guess it's been a long time since I've been personally responsible for the financial side of Stripe accounts. I think it was 5 years ago when I used to run a lot of test transactions and refund for net $0, but times change. Sorry to lead anyone astray.

Stripe does refund their fees with a transaction refund. I understand this may be novel for the payment processing industry though.

This reminds me of how a friend (as a teenager in the 90s) would buy expensive video cards from Best Buy and CompUSA only to swap them out with cheap cards off eBay, re-shrink wrap the box and return for a hefty profit. I thought it was a clever, profitable hack at 16 years old but now I’m ashamed I didn’t just call this what it was: theft.