I work 40hr/week yet I have plenty of time to work on my stuff. Of course it would be much better if I could fully commit to my project but hey i still need money to sustain myself and need to compromise with reality. Anyway, sometimes when I really get into it I can even work more hours than my day job. In extreme cases, I would leave work at 6pm, get home by 6:30, take a shower and start working at 7pm. Work on my project for 11 hours until 6am, and go to sleep and wake up at 9am to get to work by 10am. I take nap during lunchtime (45 minutes to 1 hour). Of course I can't keep this up forever so I only do this when I am super motivated and can probably do it for a couple of weeks to a month at a time. But even when I'm not in this crazy mode there's plenty of time to work. Just doing half of what I described will give you 5 hours * 5 days = 25 hours per week, plus if you're really committed you can work all weekend 12 hour * 2 = 24 hours (for saturday and sunday), which adds up to around 50 hour/week. "Not having time" just means you're not motivated enough. Before you say "yeah right you can do that because you're some abnormal crazy guy, no sane person can do that and it's not even healthy" I want to tell you that motivation is not something people are born with. Instead of trying to wait till motivation finds you, actually start "doing" something and you will gain momentum and next thing you know you will be super motivated and don't have to worry about these things.
Since it sounds like "Wordpress developer" is a title used to refer to people who add wordpress plugins, I wonder what you would call actual developers working on Wordpress core engine.
I think the reason why these venture-backed companies are shutting down is because they can't live up to their investor's (as well as their own) expectations, EVEN IF they're doing pretty well. It's kinda crazy thinking about it. Nowadays if you don't get hundreds of millions of users AND if it's not growing exponentially, people call you a loser. Look at companies like Dropbox and Twitter. It's not like they've failed but people compare them with the newest hot startups like Snapchat and Slack and call them "the next Unicorn that will probably die". But I don't think that's true. You should keep working on what you believe in, and whenever you see something like this, congratulate yourself for staying in the game and keep going. You never know what will happen in the future, markets change and things change, and as a result your product can become very attractive to certain groups of people, and when that happens, if you're the only one standing in the arena, you win.
I guess i should have been clear. I meant "making money" as in having a business model. Being profitable and having a business model are two different things. We can ask Amazon
"Reliable business" is a double edged sword in this case because reliable also means predictable. A lot of blue chip companies get their high valuation because the public can see the potential but not completely so. Whereas companies like Splunk or Hortonworks it's pretty much predictable how they will keep making money (at least for the next couple of years assuming that nothing surprising will happen)
Ironically, Not even this guy understands how people (other than marketers like himself) use Twitter. It's rare to see anyone favoriting a tweet to "reference" it later. Most people use favorite as a token of acknowledgement (I saw this and approve). Favorites are not endorsements either, since it doesn't get broadcasted to my followers.
As someone who enjoyed the article and got some good insights, I think it's your loss that you "lost" yourself at that point. Maybe you don't like the writing style, but there were some fresh ideas in there that people don't normally talk about when they talk about Twitter.
But do you program in Dart? My point is, when given a choice I can't see a reason why someone who would invest their precious time to learn some relatively obscure language like Dart would NOT learn javascript. Also hating something and not using it are two different things. You say you hate javascript but you probably do use javascript.
"There are still many developers who would not touch javascript with a ten foot pole but I can see them using a saner language like Dart." haha sir you need some reality check.
It's called "metaphor". A lot of social network analysis research is based on physics. Please look it up and learn, and if you still disagree feel free to criticize.
What is wrong with the statement "We won't lower the bar"? Some people criticize that that statement is racist, but they aren't thinking about the context. When people ask companies to do something about diversity, they're normally asking to carve out more quota for certain minority group, just like how universities carve out certain portion of their student quota for people who donate large amount of money to get in. I guess it works for universities, but a company like Twitter which desperately needs focused group of talented employees, why would/should they do this? It's stupid that someone saying what's right gets taken out of context and is criticized by all the idiots on the internet. Also, isn't asking for this kind of treatment racist/sexist/whatever in itself? I am appalled by this idea as much as I am appalled by the idea of universities accepting students from rich families via donation.
In my opinion if you truly have confidence, chances are you will succeed in life (assuming you're not some delusional psycho). The world revolves around people who take action and confident people tend to take more action. Doesn't matter if they're not smart enough to tackle the problem (who is, anyway?), they will figure out as long as they keep trying. Whereas people with low confidence in most cases don't even try. And even when they try they give up too early. I totally agree with you about the "optimism" junkies. I know a lot of people like that and they all tend to have read too many self help books without taking action. However, this "fake confidence" you're talking about never comes from parents praising their child. It comes from insecure people reading too much self-help porn.
I'm sure you're doing well right now, but are you sure it's a good decision to rely your entire life on a judgment made by your 9 year old self? I mean, what have we learned by when we're 9 year old? Maybe you learned some arithmetics and concluded that you've mastered the entire field of mathematics? Again, I'm not saying you made a mistake in your life, it may have worked out for you but it may not work for 99% of the population. Maybe you were lucky.
There's a big difference between calling your child "Smart" and calling "Gifted". Sounds like wordplay but it's really not. I agree with your main point that "gifted" children end up failing way more than just ordinary smart children. But I've also seen a lot of children who grew up a confident person because their parents praised them a lot. They just shouldn't call them "gifted" because it implies that the kid already "has" the gift, whereas being "smart" just means greater potential.
The type of value Uber provides is different from the value livecoding is trying to provide. People will continue to use Uber as long as it provides convenience because that's the value. As for livecoding, it's a different story.
Yeah you're right, that's what he should have done. Why would a company voluntarily put someone on a sick leave? There are even legal implications for this. Think about it for a moment. I'm sure a company like Google would have given him a (maybe paid, maybe unpaid) sick leave for reasonable amount of time if he had asked. Instead he stuck around, didn't do work, and told the manager he wants to stay because he's "satisfied with the salary". Imagine you're his coworker, working your ass off while this guy proudly doesn't do shit and still makes the same money as you.
"In private discussions I was asked why don't I leave by myself, to which I answered that I'm happy with my Google salary. "
He basically stopped working, and when asked why stay and take the huge salary from google when he's not working he said he's satisfied with the salary, and he was given plenty of opportunities. No wonder his managers didn't like him. There are tons of other more competent people who make the same salary as him working hard. It's not a matter of whether the company treats people like a "resource" or not. If I had a guy on my team who doesn't work at all and sticks around AND is proud of it for some reason I would be pissed. I'm sure not just his manager but all other colleagues probably would have been super pissed if he acted like he described in the answer.
For some reason everyone on the thread is talking like Google is in the wrong and he's being noble for sharing it non-anonymously, but I don't really get what's so noble about this. If I was that burned out, I would have asked for a hiatus. And even after that if I can't focus, I would still try hard, and when asked why I don't just leave, I would take that as a sign and leave. I would definitely not say "I'm happy with my Google salary". Normal people don't feel OK with taking someone else's money while not doing anything, and "being burned out" is not an excuse.
I'm not familiar with this space but is this the first of its kind? Or are there better ones? I actually think I may want to use it to manage my s3 assets. Would be helpful to know if there are alternatives and why this is better
"Homejoy, the dead cleaning startup that shuttered its doors in August, has apparently awoken from the grave to email its customers about a new partner" ==> I was so close!
You're being too cynical. Why does everything have to do with money? He didn't say he thinks there's money in this. You are the one who did. And there is not even a guarantee that there's money in this "space" either. Rather, this on-demand home-cleaning category is quite gloomy if you look at what's happening to all the companies that belong to it. Maybe you think all "opportunities" are related to money, but to many entrepreneurs it's just a secondary objective.
While I think this is a stupid move on the founder's end and there's no debate about that, I disagree with your understanding of what "passion" is. People seem to think most passionate people are born with some sort of pre-assigned passion, but it's something that arises out of your experience and action. Just like Thomas Edison was "passionate" about what he built (but he was super greedy and an asshole too), this guy probably became obsessed with this "space" after having worked on it for such a long time, even though 5 years ago he probably didn't care about home cleaning at all.
I'm surprised that BusinessInsider still doesn't have an article about this. Shame on you Business Insider! It's already been an hour! I expect a headline "How Homejoy came back from grave to haunt us"
You say media companies should figure out the right business model but you yourself seem to be stuck thinking inside the old business model box. In the short term it is true all the new media sites seem to be crushing it with all the eyeballs they have since the dominant revenue model for our age is advertising, but things always change. Even this online ad model was laughed at a decade ago. And it is increasingly becoming less lucrative as more and more people can publish stuff online. The only way to ensure you survive is to make sure you create a unique value. And page view is not one of them.
There is actually a job title called "Fact checker" at newspapers. That's why people tend to trust high end newspapers like NYT over some random blog that just posts whatever they hear asap to get traffic. I doubt NYT plans on opening up their particles to any randos on the web. They already have great in house employees who can do this job very well.
First of all, NYT has over million paid online subscribers. It's not like NOBODY wants to pay for NYT. Second, I think it's short sighted to say "They should build something people would want to pay for". It's like going back in time when Facebook was just getting started, or Google was getting started, and telling them "You should build a product that users will pay for". Here's what I think: "enhanced tools for journalists", "summarization and synthesis", "adaptive content", all of them will contribute to create value. When there's more value, there will be many ways to translate that into revenue. The reason newspapers are in danger is NOT because they are not monetizing enough. It's because they are not providing as significant value as they used to in their good old days.