17 ms·

Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?

• debt 8y ago
  Business decisions are financial decisions but the narrative you will be fed will be personal. Open office plans, culture fits, promotions, etc. are disguised financial terms made by someone in business. Open office means they're trying to save money, culture fit means "how often will you listen to me" and promotion means "up or out" The quickest way to shut someone up or shut someone down, is to provide them with numbers and facts corroborate by 2+ other people.
• Dowwie 8y ago
  The only useful policy is the one that is followed
• k4ch0w 8y ago
  The people you spend the most time with affect how you think and what you do.
  • madeuptempacct 8y ago
    I originally posted this separately, but then saw your post and am adding it here. What you said and the below were some of the most profound realizations for me, even though it seems so obvious, but the extremely high degree to which this is true isn't that obvious. --- People are incredibly hard to change. Spent half a year teaching someone programming. They told me they wanted to learn, etc. Ended up doing most of the bootcamp work for them so I could explain it to them, etc. This person had 5 day breaks where they didn't study a single thing. This also goes with "look at what people do, not what they say, or how they present themselves." That also comes down to "don't waste time on shitty people." I used to spend time with everyone because of naivety, then I realized just how precious that time is and a lot of people just waste it.
    • RickS 8y ago
      Absolutely agree. One phrasing I heard that changed my mind a lot was "It's hard work keeping your own life afloat. Be careful who you tie yourself to. They are as likely to pull you down as you are to lift them up". In one interpretation, that's a scary thought encouraging selfishness. In my view, it's a pragmatic description of reality, encouraging judiciousness. I still find great joy in helping others, sometimes at some expense to myself, but I now feel a lot less bad about making value judgements before deciding if such a thing is worthwhile, rather than feeling obligated to help everyone that might want it.
  • throwaway713 8y ago
    I agree, but not in the way that this statement is usually intended. It often goes along with “you become the average of the five people you surround yourself with”. Unfortunately, sometimes I find myself surrounded by people who have vastly differing life philosophies than my own (relatives, friends, spouse). In that case, the disagreement in a way pushes me harder to achieve what I want to out of sheer stubbornness than if I actually was surrounded by people who thought the same way as me.
  • Bjartr 8y ago
    I would add to this the following. You are the person you spend the most time around. You have power to affect your own outlook in small ways on a day to day basis. Added up over a long period of time can result in real change in outlook. I'm talking really tiny things like instead of saying "I'm bad at X" say "I haven't done X well before". Sort of brainwashing yourself into a growth mindset.
• officialchicken 8y ago
  HR is there to protect the company, not you.
  • pmiller2 8y ago
    I’m interested in hearing more about this if you’re inclined to share.
    • gspetr 8y ago
      This should clarify: https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/95w128/ysk_that_hr_department_are_there_to_work_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/95w128/ysk_t...
  • SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I've heard things like "if you have a problem and are unhappy, just go to HR". Nope, I'm not going to rant to them, and I'm certainly not going to talk to our in office mental health professional.
  • dopamean 8y ago
    I learned this one as well. One week after going to HR with a concern I was fired.
  • Humdeee 8y ago
    My SO is a HR Manager. I hear the constant drama first hand over dinner. My take: HR are angels after hiring and during onboarding. After that, any correspondence will be kept to an absolute minimum.
    • officialchicken 8y ago
      Who benefits the most from the work your SO does... employees or the corporation? As others point out, they are to be avoided at all costs! And usually play a really bad gate-keeping role when it comes to IT hiring. It's a hard thing to learn early in your career.
• swagtricker 8y ago
  Sadly, after more than 20 years building software, _NEVER_ trust a business person. My faith in humanity had to have me bitten by this the hard way more than once.
  • hnal943 8y ago
    You are also a business person, aren't you?
  • z3 8y ago
    +1 every time I say exactly the same. I have an axiom about that. 1. Do not trust “business” guys! 2. If they give you some “sweet” offer, look at the rule No.1
  • throwaway713 8y ago
    Could you elaborate a bit more? I’m not sure what to take away from this.
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18133748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18133748 upthread for a story about trusting business people.
      • lightbulbish 8y ago
        That's just a bad person, nothing to do with a business vs. a tech person.
    • munchbunny 8y ago
      Here's a more charitable way of thinking about this, based on my own experiences. When you're making a deal anyone (agreeing to do work, buy/sell, partner, etc.) there are two sets of motives you have to consider: what they tell you up front, and what they actually want. In your day to day, even at work, those two things are the same. But in many contexts where you would be talking to a "business person," those two things can be very different. Lumping it all into "business person" isn't very useful because there are a lot of business people. So maybe a few specific examples can help. Account managers and salespeople: while their stated job is to help you with customer issues, they're actually paid to sell/upsell you, and even if they're not, they're evaluated on selling/upselling you. This means they're likely to stretch the truth about the product they're selling in order to close the deal. So when you're interacting with salespeople, you can never 100% trust what they tell you, because they're not actually trying to help you. Business development: the company they work for has an agenda. That agenda won't be obvious to you. Maybe they're asking you to come in to do a demo because they want to consider partnering with/acquiring your startup. Actually, they're spinning up a team to just build it themselves, but they want ideas. The problem is you have no way of knowing which is which. HR: you know the common wisdom, they're there to protect the company, not you, and often that makes a huge difference. Someone hiring you for contract work: they do want the work done, but they're trying their hardest to avoid paying. That means every ambiguity in the agreement becomes something they might try to leverage against you. In other words, don't trust someone until you understand their hidden motive. "Business people" just tend to have more of them than your average person.
• cannabisceo 8y ago
  Either I'm your customer or you're my customer. All transactions with another business should be buy/sell.
  • berbec 8y ago
    This one is great; easier to understand than the often quoted one. I shall steal!
• MrEfficiency 8y ago
  Make things pretty. No amount of hard work and usefulness can amount to a beautiful product. I have strong feelings about Lean Startup who told me to create a MVP, which made me look like an amateur. So, listen to the marketing people and wait to release a beautiful finished product.
  • vmarshall23 8y ago
    Amen. I've shown the exact same application on a dingy thinkpad and a shiny new retina iPad, and had diametrically opposite reactions.
  • mindcrime 8y ago
    ... MVP, which made me look like an amateur. If you're in a domain where aesthetics and "beauty" matter, then your MVP is missing the "V" unless you have, indeed, made the thing beautiful. The Lean Startup approach doesn't tell you not to make things beautiful... it just tells you to make only what you need to validate your hypothesis. If that means making something beautiful, then you make it beautiful.
    • MrEfficiency 8y ago
      The website has a wikipedia feel, free and useful information. There are lots of fans currently, but at the time(and to this date), I get people questioning legitimacy due to a having a white shadow in my CSS.
  • artificial 8y ago
    "...which made me look like an amateur." This made me chuckle since I can only imagine the frustration.
  • birdman3131 8y ago
    As a user I beg of you not to sacrifice usefulness and features for Pretty. Seen way too may times where stuff was rewritten to look better but usability suffered. Case in point: Walmart recently redid their self checkouts. The new system looks a lot better and I like it if it did not take 3 times as long to pay. It even took forever compared to the old one to register cash being inserted. And there were several complete lockups. Recently it seems better so I believe they have been working on the back end but for a while I would not even touch them
• tryauuum 8y ago
  That mysqldump adds "DROP TABLE IF EXISTS" by default. So if you want to backup and restore several rows, you are in trouble. Not really the hard way because DROP TABLE isn't instantaneous on big tables. So I managed to kill the query before the table was gone.
• bairrd 8y ago
  Get everything in writing. EVERYTHING.
  • brightball 8y ago
    And along those lines, enforcing what you have in writing costs a lot of money.
  • johnwheeler 8y ago
    Ha, I’ve learned the hard way that: By the time you invoke a contract, the relationship is already in trouble.
    • wwweston 8y ago
      This is usually true. There's two saving graces, though: 1) Just having the contract sometimes gives people pause about what boundaries they're willing to cross. 2) A contract can help you salvage things that are not the relationship once the relationship has gone south if you choose too.
      • pmiller2 8y ago
        Keep in mind that #1 works, even if what’s in the contract is unenforceable. Companies use this to their advantage a lot.
  • decasia 8y ago
    I would add though: A written agreement is only as good as the people who sign it.
• brightball 8y ago
  How not to run a contract development business during a recession. :)
• bunderbunder 8y ago
  Worse is better Or, to put it a bit more optimistically - usable now is better than perfect later. I've found that, if I disappear behind a curtain and spend a long time trying to make something really well-polished and feature rich, that just gives the user a lot of time to build up their expectations, and also to get frustrated by the delay. By the time you ship, they'll be actively looking for ways to find fault. When I YAGNI my way into a 80% or 90% solution and turn it around quickly, though, more often than not, they'll initially just be impressed at how quickly I was able to help them. Requests for changes will come, but they're generally small, so it's usually relatively easy to turn those around quickly as well.
  • JDWolf 8y ago
    Thank you, I think there’s generally some perfectionism on the technical side and things that are easier to address later that don’t require delays
  • bitfhacker 8y ago
    > Or, to put it a bit more optimistically - usable now is better than perfect later. This is the same principle of Minimum Viable Product. In MVP you launch the first version of your product with sufficient features, but not all, to early adopters so that you can get feedback from them. MVP and the "Build Measure Learn" feedback loop, gives you important tools to leverage your product.
    • bunderbunder 8y ago
      Yes, absolutely. The language around MVPs tends to be couched in terms that pretty directly implies designing a product for external customers, though, so it tends to be harder to internalize for people who are doing in-house work, and even people who are somewhat removed from the product design process, such as many junior developers. What I've seen in is that it's common for people who are eager to impress their clients or teammates to want to say "yes" to everything. So, even if they like the idea of building MVPs in principle, in practice, their MVPs end up being pretty maximal. Which is why I think there's value in framing the principle in terms of human-human relationships, and not just in terms of stuff like finding product-market fit. It's a more personal, relatable way of thinking about it. The magic insight for me was when I finally realized that I could give people less than what they asked for, and they'd actually be happier than if I tried to give them everything they wanted.
• csours 8y ago
  There are (at least) 3 sides to exercise: Strength, Cardio, and Stretching. They are each at least as important as the others. Go to the dentist. Even if you have great teeth.
  • AuthorizedCust 8y ago
    Stretching is probably mostly hype. E.g., https://www.painscience.com/articles/stretching.php https://www.painscience.com/articles/stretching.php
    • madeuptempacct 8y ago
      Tell that to gymnasts and martial artists. I have seen the "science" of this over the years, but I have also seen the practical fact that it's absolutely unavoidable.
      • yorwba 8y ago
        That article seems to aim at the hype that stretching will help with anything other than stretching. It's pretty obvious to anyone who ever tried that practice helps you stretch farther, but some people also stretch because they believe it will prevent injury or make their muscles more efficient or something like that.
        • EADGBE 8y ago
          I stretch because it feels good. I don’t expect a cure from cancer for it, though.
      • tralarpa 8y ago
        Gymnasts, martial artists, ballet dancers and some athlets (e.g. javelin throwers) stretch to increase their range of motion because the latter is beneficial for their activities. The effect is temporary (+) unless you start at a young age and ruin your joints (-> China). If you don't belong to those groups, stretching doesn't do much for you, as has been repeatedly pointed out in various publications. The other benefits attributed to stretching, e.g. a lower risk for injuries, are actually caused by the warming-up effect of the stretching movements and can be also achieved, in a much safer way!, by some simple exercises. (Side note: When talking about the benefits of stretching, some people also mention Yoga, but that's a different story and 99.999% of Yoga teachers and practitioner don't have the slightest idea what they are doing.) (+) That's the reason why you have the impression that you are stiff when you skip stretching for one or two days.
• humbleMouse 8y ago
  Being in a leadership position in a software org usually involves going to meetings all day and telling people bad news.
• vfinn 8y ago
  That all my conventional-sounding musical ideas are easily captured by basic music theory. Even though banging your head against the wall has been useful in developing the ear, avoiding music theory doesn't make any sense since you keep repeating those well-known patterns, and in the end you have to start developing that pattern against pattern type of thinking instead of composing note against note & note after note. Edit: "in favor of" -> "instead of"
  • jmmcd 8y ago
    > in the end you have to start developing that pattern against pattern type of thinking in favor of composing note against note & note after note. I think there is a typo, or this is ambiguous. Are you saying you should use "pattern against pattern type of thinking" (and what is that?) or that you shouldn't? You should use "note against note & note after note" or you shouldn't?
    • vfinn 8y ago
      Sorry, meant to say "instead of" not "in favor of". I'll edit. What I meant to say that if you haven't learned the proper classification system that we now have in general music theory (dominant & tonic chords, sus chords, and let's say basic modulation principles), you might walk a long time in the dark looking for "that feeling" or "that continuation".
• schen57 8y ago
  Documentation is like sex. If it is good, it is good. If it is bad it is good
  • nextlevelwizard 8y ago
    Except when the documentation is out dated and has very little to do with the actual code. At that point you are better off without bad documentation than with it. I've wasted a lot of time solving strange bugs because the API had stayed the same as when the documentation was written, but the implications were totally different.
  • humbleMouse 8y ago
    This is hilarious and 100 percent correct.
  • SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    But if the client wants me to pretend I care enough to do it well, they gotta pay.
  • fhood 8y ago
    "Our code is self-documenting. If you need documentation then the code isn't written well enough" -Assholes who don't know what it is like to work with mature code bases.
    • itsreallyme 8y ago
      "Our code is self-documenting. If you need documentation then the code isn't written well enough" -Assholes who don't know what it is like to work with mature code bases. - People who don't know how to write clean code
      • swagtricker 8y ago
        Sorry, parent poster: Gotta agree w/ above comment here. With the minor warning that the unit tests are included in this. In a good environment, I should be able to go to the tests to understand not only WHAT the code is doing but WHY it's doing it. No matter how 'mature' the code base is.
• bootlooped 8y ago
  You can never get back the time you waste. I'm talking on the years scale. The fact that it's never too late to make positive change in your life doesn't mitigate that.
  • GoToRO 8y ago
    Time is the ultimate luxury.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• artificial 8y ago
  Always make backups. The little bit of time it takes will be a life saver if anything transpires unexpected. Oh and don't deploy on Fridays.
  • peckrob 8y ago
    On this same note, test your backups occasionally. Untested backups are worse than no backups.
    • artificial 8y ago
      You're spot on! Specifically I was referring to SQL data. Been bitten more times than I'd like to admit making a hasty change. Edit: refined.
    • ci5er 8y ago
      Disaster recovery is hard. For startups, I finally learned to do this drill: Restore the entire business to fully operational status on clean computers from offsite backups in under 24 hours. You always hope you won't need it, but...
  • dver 8y ago
    Added corollary, Always test restore your backup, it's the best example of schrodinger's cat.
    • jackthetab 8y ago
      I never liked the "be sure to make backups" and have "and be sure to test" as an afterthought (or "added corollary" in this case :-). Most ppl ignore the afterthought. I taught my students "You don't need a backup system. You need a _restore_ system." It changes the mindset from "Yes, we make backups every night" to "Yes, we can restore the database in x hours". I've seen way too many companies take the "we're good; we make backups" only to fail when trying to restore.
• walrus01 8y ago
  Quantity has a quality all of its own.
• oneshoe 8y ago
  How to successfully roll out a product/site. Released "Version 2" which was an entire newly built system that we worked on for an entire year (we also thought we were "agile" btw). This completely crashed and around 10K users were unable to use the product for almost 2 weeks. We did plenty of things right but we also failed. Biggest Lessons learned: 1. Release features and changes in manageable incremental chunks 2. Load test, load test, load test - just do it! Yeah, sure, your app worked with your one user when there is 1kb of data in your datastore - what about 5000 users accessing it with 10GB in your data store? 3. Get and use an APM - when it feels like everything is on fire you'll need to know where the fire is coming from 4. One way changes that can't be rolled back are the devil. Take the time needed to make sure you can roll back - manageable incremental changes help with that.
  • drharby 8y ago
    My project management muscles arr being trained to be risk averse, and my 'move fast and ship ' muscles are kicking in to make releases multipart and piece meal. It werks
  • jackthetab 8y ago
    What is an APM in this context? Google just tells me about Alternative Payment Methods.
    • cosmie 8y ago
      Application Performance Management/Monitoring. New Relic, AppDynamics, and DynaTrace are a few vendors in this area.
• JeanMarcS 8y ago
  Start a company with a friend will bite you back one day (for me 20 years after the company starts !)
  • meiraleal 8y ago
    A 20 years partner is a great partner.
    • makapuf 8y ago
      25 years after, definitely. 20 years after it might be brutal and personal.
  • anfilt 8y ago
    20 Years? That sounds good from a business stand point? However, I guess how much of your friendship suffer during how much of that?
    • JeanMarcS 8y ago
      The story is a bit more complicated than that but long story short it came out of nowhere and left me emotionally crushed for more than a year. Now I struggle to get the company back on track (as he « sold » me his shares without leaving me another option), and it’s a bit complicated but on the way.
• rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
  Math. Multivariable calculus and differential equations weren’t a part of my undergraduate CS curriculum. Now that I’m doing an MEng in AI, I have to learn the hard math I skirted by before. I don’t have the time or money to take the proper math classes so I’m learning everything myself. I have to figure out my own structure and timeline. Without the math, I wouldn’t be much more than a technician when it comes to AI. It’s worth the work.
• dsnuh 8y ago
  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned (with legal representation).
• jtthe13 8y ago
  "You are not that special." Can be a shock to the ego when you leave a top school, but if you take it the right way, it takes some pressure off.
• johnwheeler 8y ago
  Don’t fish without a license
  • RickS 8y ago
    I'm really curious about this story.
    • poulsbohemian 8y ago
      I don't know johnwheeler's story, but I got talking to an Oregon game warden a couple weeks back. His story was that the state is handing out jail time and big fines in certain circumstances. What he described was work parties (large families, for example) coming from as far away as Seattle to pick up clams on the Columbia river. This particular type of clam is in vast numbers, but it is an invasive species. So you would think the state would be thankful to have them gone, right? What he described though is that the state is concerned about the spread to other bodies of water - so they want them left right there, rather than transported and potentially dumped somewhere else to spread. Given that these groups are collecting them for restaurant sales, I suspect that is an unlikely scenario, but there you have it. He said the biggest ticket he'd written was on the order of tens-of-thousands of dollars. So apparently this can be a hard lesson to learn.
• czep 8y ago
  Always roll up your window when driving past the archery range.
  • tastyfreeze 8y ago
    I really need to know the story behind this.
• kccqzy 8y ago
  I learned programming the hard way—by starting with imperative programming. (Of course this doesn't apply to everyone, as I'm already a pretty mathematical person, and functional programming just immediately clicked and made sense. YMMV. In contrast, the first time I learned quicksort I spent an entire afternoon before I made sense of all the swapping and increment/decrement of array indices. In a way, I really hoped I hoped I would be introduced to programming with a better textbook, say SICP, which doesn't talk about assignment until one third into the book. It just suits my style so much more.)
• 40acres 8y ago
  Personal finance. I never took a budgeting class in high school and college, my parents lived paycheck to paycheck (still do), when I earned my first internship I was making over $1000 per pay period, that was a lot of money for someone who had only worked part time jobs for $10/hr before hand. By the time I got my second internship I earned more than my mother, who was the breadwinner. Once I was converted to full time I had more money than I knew what to do with. It took a few months to stop making stupid purchases, learn how to budget, save, and invest. Painful lesson.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Any particular advice on managing your finances that you're willing to share?
    • wafflesraccoon 8y ago
      If you want to buy something and it will require you to run monthly balance on your credit card, you can't afford it. On the flip side, credit cards are a very powerful tool that should not be ignored.
    • 40acres 8y ago
      For me, the most important thing was to budget. I used the YNAB app and made a line item for all of my spending. It took a few months to adhere to the budget but once I did I got the ball rolling. I also did not know how to invest, so I did some reading on IRAs, mutual funds, 401ks, etc. to better understand this. I also started paying more attention to my credit.
  • parliament32 8y ago
    Congrats on it taking just a few months. Some of us spend years in the "lifestyle" hole before waking up and getting a grip on finances.
    • the_clarence 8y ago
      I eat at restaurants everyday. I know I shouldn’t but it’s hard to change lifestyle...
• whitfin 8y ago
  tl;dr always make production setup the same as staging. We once had a production-only crash inside our Elasticsearch setup (we had written plugins). On preproduction it was fine, development fine, etc. But on production it would crash with NoSuchMethodError coming from the Jackson library (I think it was floatValue()). After several hours and rolling back/forward, I took a shot that there was something clashing with the class in the JVM (which I didn't know was possible at the time as I was a fresh dev). After backtracing for a while, it turned out that our production ES environment had some AWS autodiscovery plugin installed. This plugin depended on the AWS SDK, which depended an AWS common library, which depended on a Jackson version just old enough to not have floatValue(). It appears that this was being loaded first, causing our plugin to crash because we were calling a method which didn't exist in their version. Turns out that I actually filed a ticket for the SDK to update (https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/issues/411 https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/issues/411) but I think we ended up just migrating away from floatValue() altogether. As a younger developer, this definitely opened my eyes to the need to ensure parity across test environments (I remember this happened whilst I was on a tz that had me trying to debug this at 4am).
• dougmwne 8y ago
  Your reach should exceed your grasp. Bigger dreams, bigger goals, bigger risks, bigger wins.
• Tistel 8y ago
  Don't read the marketing department's descriptions of the product. "Its an AI driven, machines learning tuned, blockchain, smart contract jamboree!" (ok, I added the jamboree part). News to me. Also, don't go on the the business trip sales pitches. They literally just make up promises without asking the devs the difficulty/time line.
• polpenn 8y ago
  Life, by default, is suffering. The surprise is not the fact that there is suffering around the world, but how we managed to achieve the level of prolonged peaceful co-existence that we have today. We should act in such a way that suffering or chaos is reduced---however small such reduction may be. Suppose you had a choice between watching T.V. and washing the dishes. Watching T.V. means, perhaps, that your spouse will need to do the dishes. You can reduce overall suffering by choosing to do the dishes instead of watching T.V. Given that the default path of most processes is chaos, we should always act in a way that prevents this.
  • RickS 8y ago
    That's a cool example. I totally agree with your underlying premise. It's about playing the long game, and working to build a life enriching enough that it's worthwhile in the face of suffering, rather than playing short games that attempt to weasel away from the places suffering might be. One of the most interesting things to me in the past few years is that this core idea seems to exist in hundreds of different places and forms, and every culture and person has a slightly different set of abstractions for it. But there's an awesome universality to it. A lot of times the people I know who live by the bible and the people I know who live by stoic principles are building roads to the same place, each thinking they're on a journey that only their path can provide.
  • rodrigods 8y ago
    I act quite in the opposite way. Too much thinking hurts the pleasure of living in the present. If I wash the dishes and not my spouse is because in the present makes more sense for me to wash it, that's all.
    • jawood 8y ago
      Completely agree, life isn't suffering unless your perspective is that because I or someone else must wash dishes, one of us must suffer.
  • jonesdow 8y ago
    Speaking of dishwashing and life lessons. When I was in college (20 years ago) and sharing an apartment with 3 colleagues, the guys were leaving their dishes unwashed in the kitchen sink. Initially I washed my own dishes after finising a meal, only to find out the colleagues happily used my clean dishes then let them dirty in the sink. I realized I'm washing them twice: once when picking them dirty from the sink, washing them so I can eat and secondly after I finished eating. So I optimized: only washed them once like all folks do: before eating. Lesson: when in Rome, do like the Romans. And P.S: no, you can't argue with the Romans and make 'em wash their dishes after eating.
• aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  It isn’t the most capable person who gets promoted. It’s the person who can make their superiors believe they’re the most capable.
  • RickS 8y ago
    I've got a slightly different take, though I think they have some overlap: Capability for a job is more than raw competence, which is why most people reject the Brilliant Asshole, even when that person is genuinely brilliant. I've seen some inarguably mediocre workers get some great roles – and I've worked alongside of some of them. And I loved every minute. If you're cranking out 65% of the work and make the team 400% more enjoyable to be on, that's a worthy form of force-multiplication. The best teambuilders wield this principle smartly instead of meritocratically rejecting its existence. This is a great thing to know in job interviews, and lots of otherwise irrational-looking hiring behavior becomes sane when viewed through this lens.
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      You're both right. A person can be a force multiplier for the team even if their direct output is low. But I've also seen people simply bullshitting their way into better projects and positions.
• gdiggity 8y ago
  Make sure you put a tax distribution requirement in our LLC's operating agreement if you have a partner. I'm on the hook for a huge amount of revenue with no money from the company to pay the IRS.
• jackconnor 8y ago
  Accept all negative criticism advice as well as you possibly can. If it's just someone being an asshole it's very easy to know that and just ignore, but if it's real it's the most valuable feedback you can get.
  • java-man 8y ago
    This is not going to go well in the US or the British culture...
    • jackconnor 8y ago
      Haha, maybe not, but it still is good for you. I'm American and I concur, this does not always come naturally to us.
    • Bjartr 8y ago
      I'm an American and consider myself good at accepting criticism and using it to better myself. I'm not sure what you're trying to say, could you explain?
    • bachbach 8y ago
      Think this is one of the universals. It's not that we're good at it - it's that there exist other cultures worse still.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• raesene9 8y ago
  Never write something in e-mail that you wouldn't be happy seeing forwarded to the person you're talking about. Always keep records of what you've said and agreed, people will have a different recollection of events down the line, and a written record is very handy at that point.
  • vl 8y ago
    I have a good one: Give negative feedback in private email, then it gets forwarded to multiple layers of management behind your back, then a single quote from this email out of context is cut-n-pasted into your perf review few months later by management. (Happened in big advertising company that also runs search engine).
    • vl 8y ago
      The lesson of course is not to lie in emails, but not to work with asshole managers.
• eranation 8y ago
  1. Unit test everything, document everything, it is ALWAYS worth the cost (at least for a minimal test + mini design/spec/javadocs and the likes) 2. Don't do premature optimizations / Measure before optimizing 3. Keep your cool when asked for estimates for something with unknown requirements / unknown team. Losing your mind or temper is never worth it. 4. Beware of the silver bullet new framework, right tool for the right job, avoid they hype on one hand and learn to move on when a technology dies out. (Hi Flash/VB/Cobol/Mainframe developers, I know you still have job security for a few years... but not forever...)
• ThomaszKrueger 8y ago
  Start each day with the thought: "if I got fired today do I have what it takes to bridge it through to the next opportunity, and would there be companies out there in need and willing to hire me". If you can't honestly answer that with "yes" you are either accommodated, or running risks higher than you realize.
  • meghana_h 8y ago
    I agree 100% with this. Especially if one is the software industry, it is a top priority to keep up with the new tech.
• b_t_s 8y ago
  If the ship is sinking, don't bail harder, get your butt onto a ship that _isn't_ sinking ASAP. It's much better for your mental health, and it's the logical free market thing to do....reallocating resources to more effective companies.
  • RickS 8y ago
    It's shocking how tightly scoped one's mindset gets in these situations. The hull of the boat so easily becomes the bounds of the world. Every time I jump ship, I'm shocked by how quickly and painlessly the things I once thought were life-or-death fall away.
  • mnky9800n 8y ago
    Doing this saved my life. I went from a complete dead end to a very successful year overnight. Well over the year since I bailed and jumped on a good ship.
• elorant 8y ago
  Sales. You know, as probably every programmer out there you finish your product and you think that clients will start flocking in because you've build such a fucking great service. And then reality hits you in the face and you realize that the hard work just started. You have to go and talk face to face, listen to their needs, adjust your service accordingly, pamper them because they can't understand half of what you're saying, publish and then repeat. The good thing is that once you get the grip of it you feel invincible. All the fear and the doubt you used to have while building a product disappear because now you know how to approach clients, and if you're smart enough you won't even start building a product without first having some feedback from potential clients.
• jackconnor 8y ago
  When coding, learn to type fast and not use autofill. Your code will be better and you will retain the code in your mind it much, much longer.
• winkywooster 8y ago
  How to run.. After I first started running and losing some weight, I became enthusiastic about it. Then with the notions of 'more is better' and 'no pain, no gain', I cranked up the mileage and pushed through the pain. But I learned a hard lesson when I tore a calf muscle. Since then I've learned that form and technique, consistent and gradually harder practice, and getting expert help are necessary to really learn something. Ten years later, and over 18k miles logged, I can say I know how to run.
  • stuxnet79 8y ago
    I have to say the same. Especially when it comes to weight training and running. I've developed some issues with my hip and I suspect it's due to running (badly). Bad weight training pretty much wrecked my upper body. How long did it take you to recover from your torn calf muscle? That sounds intense.
    • madeuptempacct 8y ago
      Tight IT band + weak glutes = culprit for a lot of hip injuries.
      • winkywooster 8y ago
        Tight IT band is an indication of bad form.
        • brianwawok 8y ago
          Not necessarily. It also tends to go along with tight hamstring which everyone who sits 10h a day is going to have without a lot of work.
          • winkywooster 8y ago
            True, tight hamstrings are a contributing factor, but not the sole reason for IT band issues. If rolling out your IT band is a painful experience, it's an indication that you're improperly loading your legs when running—it's a form issue.
• jakobegger 8y ago
  When you tutor someone, don't tell them what to do step by step. When they ask you how to solve a problem, don't solve it for them. It's tempting to explain in minute detail something you are good at, but if you always tell people how to do their job, they will become dependent on you. Let them figure it out on their own. When there's a bug in their code, point it out, but don't tell them how to fix it. If you alwaystell people how to do stuff, they will never learn to think for themselves.
  • magtux 8y ago
    In my experience, most people who ask you to teach them don't want to learn as much as move on from this. It is frustrating, I no longer teach people. I take it seriously and it takes a lot of effort for me to teach well.
  • laughingpine 8y ago
    > When there's a bug in their code, point it out, but don't tell them how to fix it. This is how people develop their own problem solving skills. When I was a junior developer, that was one of the skills my team leads / senior developers really focused on. Super important to be able to think / problem solve for yourself.
  • colanderman 8y ago
    > When there's a bug in their code, point it out, but don't tell them how to fix it. It's funny, I've learned the opposite lesson the hard way. I used to just point out bugs, like I was a tutor hoping they'd realize the problem on their own and fix it correctly. Unless it was an obvious brain-o (i.e. the developer knew what they were doing and just flubbed), this resulted unerringly in a "fix" that (a) didn't solve the problem, and (b) created another. I would end up coming off as a nitpicking asshole trying to guide the developer into writing correct code. So now I just reply, in detail, with exactly what fix to apply, often including code verbatim. Call me jaded, but it works, and I've realized it's not my job to get people to learn to think for themselves. Those that want to already know how. Related: never post example code you wouldn't want to see copy+pasted verbatim into the codebase. I can't count the number of times I've said "fix it using code like this" only to get a complaint a week later that the fix doesn't work, and seeing my pseudocode complete with foos, bars, and made up meta syntax copy+pasted verbatim.
• peckrob 8y ago
  The importance of having a plan and smart [0] goals. This has manifested itself over and over in my life. Take more time to plan up front, save yourself a lot of time and effort wasted if you don't. [0] https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm
• ryandrake 8y ago
  The need for exponential back off when retrying a connection to a server. Learned after deploying to millions of client devices :)
  • grstearns 8y ago
    Exponential back-off is one of my favorite simple algorithms. Just remember to set a sane upper limit, you don't need them to wait hours between tries. I will sometimes use a "pseudo exponential" like 1,3,5,10,25,50,100 and hold there. Of course, if you're trying to avoid collisions on a shared resource, the classic algorithm is pretty good.
• client4 8y ago
  Know when it's time to quit, and when to accept failure. Putting hours, effort, and emotion into a person/project won't save it from inevitable collapse if that's the direction it's headed in. Set a timeline, create metrics, and if you aren't on a positive trending track, quit, otherwise you'll just keep chasing something that will lead at best to mediocrity.
• RickS 8y ago
  The danger of overly ambitious goals is their brittleness, and when they break, they break all the way. Much like "the best camera is the one you have", the best diet is the one you keep, and the best course is the one you'll attend. It's better to set yourself up for modest success than spectacular failure. ------- Community matters. Relationships with other people matter. When I thought strong work would scratch my every itch, it's because I'd yet to discover the contours of other ways of life one might have. I was fine being an antisocial workaholic at 20. As I approached 30, my face went white as some unspoken emotional thing in me began to realize what I'd missed. But you can come back from that, and it's very worth it. If you're willing to suss out the rules of engagement and play it straight, the world is happy to have you. ------- Western religion and American conservatism (archetypically, not the current implementations) have interesting and important insights about society and conduct, and they're things that off-the-shelf liberal culture suppresses or misunderstands, not from raw malice, but from calcified disinterest. Revisiting the bible and last-generation conservative ideology with the idea that it might be an imperfect set of abstractions with something to teach rather than a guidebook for cruelty to be read literally led to a lot of personal growth, since the stories are archetypes about different types of conduct and their potential consequences. These stories aren't always right, and aren't always useful, but they were a second voice that, living in a coastal/liberal/progressive filter bubble, I had never heard. Seeing and understanding the "best" of what the right thinks, instead of the most "otherizing", led me to a worldview that feels more balanced, more centrist, and less polarized. It makes me assume positive intent in more people, and pick sides and fight less often. I credit Jordan Peterson's lecture courses for packing these in a way that my progressive athiest self didn't immediately reject. ------- https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ Everything @Patio11 says about salary is true. I missed out on gigantic sums of money, but later got them back on the table. The mental models in the article have, on a 5 year timeline, resulted in serious earning growth with absolutely no negative consequences.
  • kup0 8y ago
    I think the calcified disinterest in some of us comes from being raised in (and eventually leaving) a Western religious and conservative environment.
• kposehn 8y ago
  1. Delegate 2. You can’t help everyone 3. When you fail, let it go and move on
  • kposehn 8y ago
    4. Don’t be afraid
• enf 8y ago
  Never move from a neighborhood you like to one you don't like, because you'll never be able to get back in.
• xkcd-sucks 8y ago
  Corporate politics is just as much a thing in startups as it is in large companies, and owners are just as likely to screw over their employees (or more likely, when it comes to equity). Kind of like politics and petty concerns are a big thing in academia too.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• kichik 8y ago
  A company is a company, not a family. It's about making money, not about relationships. For better or worse, it's never really personal.
  • EADGBE 8y ago
    Too many people spend their whole careers somewhere (lost wages, lost skills and atrophy) because they still feel like the company actually cares for them. They don’t.
  • balladeer 8y ago
    My late realisation (and at a cost) may be related to yours - your coworker is not your friend, better keep it that way.
    • Insanity 8y ago
      Another related one: having friends become colleagues can be challenging.
  • emit_time 8y ago
    In a recent interview I had, president of the company said "we're a team, not a family"
• wildleaf 8y ago
  Why are there so many duplicate responses in this thread?
  • RickS 8y ago
    Because we all want to reject a lot of the same inconvenient truths of the world, and when we finally stop, it makes such an impact that we're excited to share. If 100 people instead of 2 tell me the same thing is important, I think that's more exciting than redundant.
    • wildleaf 8y ago
      I understand that but I meant there are a lot of the same accounts making multiple of the same/slightly altered comment.
• Stronico 8y ago
  1. Never combine invoices - accounting bugs are difficult to spot and even harder to agree on. 2. Eye contact and thanking people mean more than you might think 3. Be wary of sales/persuasion people with good peripheral vision
  • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Could you explain #3?
    • Stronico 8y ago
      It's just something I've noticed over the years. Personal charisma as it relates to sales/persuasion/compliance correlates with peripheral vision. I went through a period in 2012 where I did more negotiating (car buying and lots of contract negotiations) than I've ever done before and noticed that the more personally charismatic they were the greater the ability to focus on me while being visually aware of what was going on around them. I don't know of any greater meaning behind it but I've noticed a correlation then and since.
      • Stronico 8y ago
        And to clarify the "wary" part - the higher the charisma the less skeptical you will be of the person you're negotiating with.
• theandrewbailey 8y ago
  Agreed. Some advice from Mr. Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLvd_ZbX1w0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLvd_ZbX1w0
  • dang 8y ago
    We detached this flamewar from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18133003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18133003.
  • madeuptempacct 8y ago
    The fact that you are calling him "Mr" Peterson says a lot of depressing things about you.
    • cercatrova 8y ago
      What is the context of this comment? I don't know who Jordan Peterson is or what he's done.
      • madeuptempacct 8y ago
        In short, Jordan Peterson is a Canadian (iirc) professor who picked the easiest position possible: "SJWs are overly dramatic emos" and got fired for it, so he became a kind of pseudo-intellectual martyr on youtube. Then it gets crazier - he tries to mix religion with atheism, etc. His (usually rabid) fanboys are obsessed with him.
        • enraged_camel 8y ago
          I think this is a pretty accurate summary, as probably evidenced by the downvotes you are getting (and I no doubt will get). :)
          • Dirlewanger 8y ago
            If that's your takeaway of someone who has decades-long career and has hours upon hours of free lectures available (of which none I'm sure you've watched), then yeah, you're an idiot and you're part of the problem of overreacting to ideas that don't safely reside in your bubble.
• slimshady94 8y ago
  There's a limit to grinding it out alone. To grow as fast as possible, you need to learn from those who have already walked your path - you need mentors and good guidance. In both academics and business, social skills and gymming - to go fast, go alone, and to go far, go together.
• Humdeee 8y ago
  When asked for a time estimate, give 2-3x longer, possibly more if you can.
• magtux 8y ago
  Grokking is not enough, go through the details. Spent weeks debugging a silent memory corruption on an 8-bit processor due to the incorrect usage of strtok in an SCPI parser.
  • hinkley 8y ago
    ? Have you read Stranger in a Strange Land? I suspect someone else has taught you that word and they did it badly. To grok is to understand something at a profound, visceral level.
• jordic 8y ago
  zope, the zca and plone. But so happy to jad discovered these awesome tools :)
• saltcod 8y ago
  That working in a big government setting just isn't for me. Doing data/reporting stuff in healthcare, to be more precise. After 4 long, long years drifting around in my job, crumbled self-esteem, some mild-ish depression, I finally found another job and got out. After a few months I realized that I was just 100% incompatible for the job I was in — not that I was unqualified or any of those other words that could also be true. I was simply incompatible. I've learned to look at things a little better/clearer since then — evaluating things through the lens of my core values and how I feel rather than through the lens of imposter syndrome. Maybe this is useful, maybe not :^)
  • SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Could you elucidate the differences in the dynamics? I'm currently working with a company that works for the government, and I'm experiencing a lot of the same symptoms, so I'm wondering what the differences are that you see.
• nextlevelwizard 8y ago
  Keeping high quality in a code base either requires dedicated person/team.
  • makapuf 8y ago
    And management. Look for quality management.
    • ju-st 8y ago
      The best direct manager is of little use when all the levels above him/her are garbage.
      • makapuf 8y ago
        N levels or garbage and 1 good level is not quality management.
  • hinkley 8y ago
    There are different dimensions of quality, and some of them have a much bigger payoff in the middle to long run than others. There’s a profound difference between ugly code and tech debt. Many people don’t really understand the difference until they’ve struggled with it for a long time. They will alternately declare Tech Debt or YAGNI in wholly inappropriate situations.
• bobosha 8y ago
  No matter what you do, you will end up p*ssing off someone. No matter what.
  • ModernMech 8y ago
    Corollary: stop caring what other people think. The sooner you manage that, the better off you'll be.
• monstachess 8y ago
  1. Not to naively trust others so very easily. Which leads to... drastic change in your personality and that leads to.. 2. Being very assertive, dominant, outgoing, life of the party, charisma, worldy wise etc. I wish I was the same idealistic person I once was. I am definitely enjoying life way better than ever before but I no longer am naive.
  • wallflower 8y ago
    Can you please expand on your transition? Was it something that felt like acting at first? Did you give up “neediness”?
• jfc 8y ago
  A few things: 1) People's words are like deep water. Pay careful attention to what people say--it's profoundly revealing (more than they realize). By listening, I've been able to identify people who intended to trouble me in some way. It's incredible, they just can't keep it inside even when pretending to be nice. 2) Actions speak louder than words (given #1, this is really saying something). Don't look for people to be who you want them to be; wait long enough for them to show themselves. And they will. ETA: You may occasionally encounter someone who is able to fool you for extended periods of time, like years. But even then they often leave useful clues as to their agenda. 3) If the product is free, the product is me!
  • sufiyan 8y ago
    Could you expound on (1). I have been toyed around by my former Co founder who sweet talked me into believing him. I still think I suck at understanding human behaviour and nature. Are there any telling signs that help you?
    • ItsMe000001 8y ago
      I'm not sure direct advise such as what you find in books, articles or some courses actually helps all that much - not by itself. I think such advise targets the wrong parts of the brain, the ones for conscious thinking. However, I think by far the most of "people understanding" happens in the not consciously accessible parts. So I think that the best way simply is... experience and time. What really helps is if you actually want to understand other people, if you are curious. If it's like "work", like studying for an exam, something you were told is necessary but deep inside you'd rather do something else, your (unconscious) brain won't cooperate. There's a lot of circuitry taking input from the visual and also from the auditory areas of the brain that do a lot of subconscious processing, and they "train themselves". Book knowledge is of little help, it can aid indirectly at most. The good news is, pretty much every one of us already has quite high abilities in this area, the main problem may actually be that you suppress what your deeper brain is trying to tell you. You probably already have those magical people-understanding abilities in a pretty advanced form! Deep inside I knew perfectly well I was being screwed over during my first trip to the US in one of those New York electronics stores - but I suppressed it and spent a huge amount (for a poor Ex-East German student) on electronics I didn't need and that were 500% overpriced :) Just make sure that your losses are small, like mine (I think I gained a lot more during that simple encounter than I lost), don't try to avoid it or fret over it when you make such kinds of mistakes due to not understanding other people (or suppressing it without realizing it). Imagine that you just paid tuition for the best university there is to understand other humans. Another issue related to and responsible for suppressing those instincts is that actually acting on them often is more work (at the immediate point in time) than just going with the flow (and suffering later). Example in your case, but same with any relationship: You actually know it's over, and much later, in retrospect, you will know that you already knew, but actually taking the step and ending it right now is really hard. But here again no external advice to your conscious self can be of much help. Especially since only you have all the information about the specific information, so asking others who don't have all that context for advise seems to me to be a form of procrastination - you did something (ask others) so that feels good, but it should be you yourself who makes that decision since only you know what's going on and the people involved.
• chrisacky 8y ago
  My "life lesson" happened when I was about 18. I was running a game server hosting company, everything was organic and I took it from 1 physical 1U server which I owned and co-located to about 10 servers, before I made a catastrophic mistake. Anyway, I reached a point where my colocation fees were about 1.2k per month, I had been with my supplier from the very beginning, so from 1 server... At the peak I was grossing about 4-5k per month but generally monthly lows were about 2k, and everything had been organic, so I had no debts, and was just pumping everything back into the business. What happened was my provider offered to sell me his business for about 12k. You gotta keep in mind I was 18 at this time. I took out a loan (my Dad was guarantor) and purchased his business. The aim was to, acquire his contracts for colocation with the datacenter and I was expecting to inherit an operating business which was turning in about 2-3k per month in normal "web hosting" businesses. All the sites were spread across about 30 servers, all of them really really old. So, things went sour literally from day one. It turns out that he either fudged all of the sites on the billing software or they decided to just exodus on day one of me taking over. I ended up going from having healthy profit each month to operating at a deficit. Long story short it destroyed my business and nearly caused me to lose my degree at Uni from the stress of hacking away trying to save a failing business and continue with my degree. Anyway, what did I learn? Due diligence. Don't rush things. Don't trust people. You can really summarise this as a life lesson where I essentially ended up gifting someone 12k for "my patronage". It quickly became apparent I was his only customer and my success kept him just about ticking over, so I ended up "buying myself". I was pretty bitter about it for a long time, but I think I was just angry at myself for being so childishly naive to think someone I trusted wouldn't screw me over cause it suited him.
  • gammateam 8y ago
    > So, things went sour literally from day one. It turns out that he either fudged all of the sites on the billing software or they decided to just exodus on day one of me taking over. I don't really understand the issue. Didn't you buy a bunch of prepaid servers and server administration software for just 12k?
    • chrisacky 8y ago
• AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  When one of your children's behavior abruptly goes from more-or-less normal to almost completely out of control, do your best to find out why, rather than just trying to manage the situation.
• markdoubleyou 8y ago
  If you're a dev, don't work for a company where software development is viewed as a cost center--you want your work to be viewed as something that brings in revenue. (Learned the hard way when I worked at a large bank.)
  • kokx 8y ago
    I think that these days, the best large banks do not view software development as a cost center anymore. I'm hearing more and more from people in banking that banks these days are basically IT companies with added security constraints.
    • markdoubleyou 8y ago
      Fair point. My particular experience was at Washington Mutual, about 13 years ago, which was not one of the "best large banks" by any objective measure. I left about a year before the collapse while they were still raking in money from shady loans... everyone there thought I was nuts for leaving.
    • bitfhacker 8y ago
      True and false in my oppinion. Mandatory developments, impositions of central banks, national vat's, auditings and bussiness as usual is seen as a cost. You must do this developments. These are fixed costs and banks tend to minimize them. New products that inovate/diferentiate one bank from another are seen as strategic and costs are seen diferently. What banks optimize in the fixed costs, banks spend in the proof of concepts.
  • CoolGuySteve 8y ago
    I learned this from finance: Don't join a team that's mediocre and/or where you're the only one with your skills. When it comes time to evaluate your performance or assess how long something should take, your manager and your team will be clueless. Useless people survive by playing politics. And when you quit they'll play games you can't win.
    • 8y ago
• superasn 8y ago
  You don't have to be nice to everyone all the time. It's better to be grumpy, opinionated and even a nay sayer sometimes than to fake smile through everything. Because doing the later can give you physical symptoms like real back pain and migraines (collectively known as TMS) and millions of people suffer from it, get surgeries, medicine yet don't know that their persona is the cause of their physical pains. This is what I learned the hard way after suffering from such aches and pains daily for nearly two decades and geting better quickly by just understanding the most basic thing about how our mind and body works.
  • tempotemporary 8y ago
    Could you elaborate how being nice can cause a physical pain?
    • superasn 8y ago
      It's all there in the amazing book by Dr. John Sarno called the divided mind which I wrote about here (1). It's the clash between id and the super-ego that causes it and there are thousand (if not more) people who got better from this pain. If you search google for "TMS pain personality" you will find thousands of articles but this seems like a good start as any (2). Unfortunately it's not for everyone because you really need to have an open mind (it's okay if you're a skeptical though) to unlearn your pain. (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17980964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17980964 (2) http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/TMS_Personality_Traits http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/TMS_Personality_Traits
• tyingq 8y ago
  The closer you get to death: - you care less about work and money - you care more about family and relationships
  • your-nanny 8y ago
    I've injured myself before, so that I was relatively helpless, and found that to be true. Maybe because I accepted that I had nowhere to go nothing to do except to let my kids sit on my back watching perp and the big wide world.
• ModernMech 8y ago
  I learned the hard way that sociopaths and psychopaths are real, they're not all monstrous murderers, and some of them you may even call friend or family.
  • nickthemagicman 8y ago
    Amen to that. And some of them are super good at appearing normal even charming.
    • ModernMech 8y ago
      Most of them! That is their deadliest trait. They've a lifetime of experience trying to disguise themselves among normal people. Their ability to cloak themselves is how they prey on you.
• fastbeef 8y ago
  Most of us will be extremely handsomely rewarded to carefully build something that will be torn down within a few years and replaced with something new. Usually because someone made a PowerPoint where a made up number was smaller than a different, slightly less, made up number.
• munchbunny 8y ago
  I learned the value of patience and moving slowly through many mistakes where I moved too quickly. In the startup world, the default is to move as fast as you can, and it's often easy to mistake a maxim for product development as a maxim for life. The problem is that it's not good advice for many things in life. Examples: 1. Shopping. Especially big ticket items like cars and places to live. Urgency favors the seller because you don't do diligence well and you don't shop around for better deals when you're in a rush. 2. In a similar vein, negotiating. I got screwed on deals because I felt too much in a hurry to bring up issues I had. The important point here is that I could afford to wait, but I didn't want to, and that worked against me. 3. Job searching. Taking the time to line up offers will pay returns on your salary and happiness, even if in the moment you really just want the job search over with. 4. Managing people. I've had people who work for me ask "how am I doing", and in my urge to avoid the awkwardness of the conversation, I would answer some variation of "fine" even if in my mind I knew there were problems. The problem is that answers like those are very hard to take back once you give them (and especially hard to take back during performance reviews). So instead of trying to get rid of the problem fast, I eventually learned to step back and say "let me think about this, and let's talk about it tomorrow." 5. Relationships. If your goal is to find a life partner, you have a lot of diligence to do. Enjoy the honeymoon period, but don't mistake that for deeper compatibility. That comes from spending time together and requires getting through rough patches together as well. 6. Professional relationships too: on the one hand, you can't be passive in developing your professional relationships, but you can't rush them either. Respect is earned over time, so you have to play the long game. When it comes to building products, then yeah, moving fast is an asset, but many things in life and career are marathons, not sprints, and you're just hurting your future self if you outrun your own pace.
  • dacohenii 8y ago
    1. Shopping. Especially big ticket items like cars and places to live. Urgency favors the buyer because you don't do diligence well and you don't shop around for better deals when you're in a rush. I assume you mean urgency favors the seller (unless you're urgently trying to sell, of course). Or, in general: (s)he who has the greater time constraint has the disadvantage.
• makapuf 8y ago
  Management can be nice. As a dedicated coder, in depth, work hard and lean code better, going into management can give you the levers to bring others what you wanted to have and just be meta. But don't stop coding just do it meta. You can be a hacker and just manage people to do what's needed. Not all managers are assholes. Be prepared to talk more and understand more.
• rrival 8y ago
  Make sure sales compensation is very closely tied to performance, i.e. don't put salespeople on a vesting schedule tied only to time passing.
• doctorRetro 8y ago
  If you're going to hop a fence to take a shortcut to your friend's house to play Mario Party after your last winter exam, check how deep the snow on the other side is first.
• ggregoire 8y ago
  I learned the hard way than using a Macbook Air 11" for 10 hours a day during 1 year was a bad idea. I now have a small myopia and have to wear glasses.
• php_is_okay 8y ago
  Respect that stress is a real thing. Don't stress yourself too much. It will fuck you up in the long run
• incadenza 8y ago
  That I typically only learn the hard way.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• catwind7 8y ago
  That end to end tests for critical business functions will save your ass the moment you, your team, or your test suite fails to spot a bug. I once added a line of code that did not execute in test environments because it involved a request to hosts that were only available on staging and production. So the tests were obviously fine but shit went south in production.
• _bereanboarder 8y ago
  Before you get into a business partnership, while everyone is smiling and optimistic, put in writing how the two of you will end this partnership should the time ever come. Things happen. They aren't who you think they are. Or maybe they suddenly decide they don't want to lift a finger, but they still get 1/2 the profits. And since it is a 50/50 partnership you can't even insist they let you buy them out. Or maybe they are a great partner but they die in a car wreck and their spouse is a nightmare who just wants the business sold, now. Even if it wrecks your life. Be very wary of 50/50 partnerships without clear escape clauses.
• sp527 8y ago
  Unless you're a founder or you personally know and trust the capability of the founder(s) recruiting you, max out cash and ignore options. Also, unless you've been especially good at proving your value to people (either through credentialing or having worked with someone directly or with someone they trust), no one is going to come to you with an offer to hop aboard a rocketship. Assume by default that any offer made to you is unfair and skewed to favor the person making it. Negotiate accordingly.
• theshrike79 8y ago
  Burnout is a real thing. One round of SSRIs later I now know how to handle my stress levels and say no.
• devhead 8y ago
  1. question everything. 2. trust no one, not even yourself. 3. hard work, is money in the bank. 4. with two paths in the road... take the scarier one. 5. pay off your debts faster than expected. 6. give more than you get. 7. listen more than you speak. 8. always be prepared, to find another job. 9. love unconditionally. 10. try not to think in absolute terms. 11. everyone has a story edit: format
• niccl 8y ago
  Fix the problem you can see then deal with what's left I was working for a company that made lighting equipment for touring bands. One band had decided they wanted the biggest lighting desk in the world (this was in the early 80's). We cobbled together two of the company's latest digital desks as master-slave, and it nearly worked. Two problems remained as we got really close to the band's tour starting: a weird flickering in some of the indicator LEDs in the slave, and the output level (controlling the lights on stage) would sometimes wander around unpredictably. We had a quick look and decided that the output level thing was a major issue which had to be dealt with first. The LED flickering problem was a) minor, and b) caused by a simple clocking problem which we could deal with later. We spent 48 hours or more with no sleep, trying to fix the output level thing. Got it just about useable, but not perfect. The tour was due to start the next day so we decided to give up on the output level problem and fix the LED flickering, so that there was only one issue, albeit a bad one. Spent an hour fixing the clocking issue so that the LED's were OK, and lo, the output problem was sorted. If only we'd dealt with the simple problem first, then we'd have managed to get some sleep! And before you say that was a one off and bad luck or bad triaging or something, I've used the same heuristic more than once and it's always paid
• pixelmonkey 8y ago
  C.
• ponyous 8y ago
  I was 14, just released my first text based game (think simple travian) to the world via national aggregation site (reddit of my nation at the time) got few thousands sign ups and few active players. I hosted the project on some PHP hosting who's owner was a guy I met while playing online games. I edited and worked on the game live through some editor that offered FTP connections. Because I was 14 I didn't have a card and I had to go to the post office to make a payment I missed it once and the dude shut my site off immediately & deleted everything. No backups. Since I was editing remotely I didn't have recent backup I had some old copy of the codebase. I never manually backed up the database, I didn't even know what backup was probably... So a game died 2 months after it was launched :( related memory: I didn't know how to configure a cron job so I asked the dude if he can host me 1 machine open Opera on some url, right click and set "Refresh every 60 seconds" (Versions before 12.00 had that)
  • the_clarence 8y ago
    On the story of backups, I bought a webcam when I was young and started doing sketchs with my friends. We recorded so many videos, created our own tv shows acted like hosts and so on. later, my computer was not working well with some games, so I asked the place where I bought it to take a look. I came back a few days ago and they told me they had formatted the hard drive. I was like what? All my stuff was on there. I cried so much. Childhood trauma right here. Now I have multiple backups of everything.
• poulsbohemian 8y ago
  It doesn't matter if they have money. It doesn't matter if they espouse religion or any other outward signs of honesty. It doesn't matter what they say. If you have any reason to believe they can't be trusted, even if it is a silly gut feeling, then they can't be trusted. Nor can you give them any possible wiggle room, like payment terms.
  • taysic 8y ago
    Indeed, always follow my gut comes up again and again for me.
  • your-nanny 8y ago
    except that some people have great difficulty ever trusting again, particularly after trauma. What then?
    • poulsbohemian 8y ago
      You put a big moat around things. IE: stronger, more painful contractural terms. Cash up front payment terms. Process and procedure that make sure you never get screwed again.
• thisone 8y ago
  Anything dealing with date/time will take 4 times longer than you expect and involve 10 times as many discussions as anything else.
• smarri 8y ago
  Great question! 1. As a younger man I done a business deal on a handshake and then got ripped off after putting in a year of work - always get it in writing! 2. Companies are not loyal to people, people may be loyal to people, but never think an organisation will be 3. I ran up some debt as a student until I figured out personal finances, which boils down to; increase income, reduce expenditure, save and invest the rest, avoid liabilities as far as possible (e.g. do you really need a car on finance) 4. Avoid getting drunk! Get tipsy, not drunk 5. You'll always get over a breakup, no matter how difficult it seems at the time 6. Sometimes you have to leave a group of friends, a partner, or even family behind, to grow into who you want to be 7. Don't wait for other people to help you in your career or life, any help you get it a bonus and be grateful, but you're the captain of the ship - push yourself forward 8. Be yourself 9. You're better and more capable than you think 10. Tell those you care about you how you feel, you never know when you might lose that chance We live and learn!
  • csomar 8y ago
    > 3. I ran up some debt as a student until I figured out personal finances, which boils down to; increase income, reduce expenditure, save and invest the rest, avoid liabilities as far as possible I agree with but I'll be careful. When you are young (20-30), you are better off investing the money in yourself. So I say do spend reasonably but on things that might grow you. I learned the hard way that renting an expensive duplex with a garden did wonders to my mood and productivity. You might spend more but you get in returns. Also don't be a cheap jerk with yourself. Nowadays, I value experiences more than gadgets (like I'd go on a trip to a close city than put 12 hundreds on an iphone) but do these things. When you are old, you can still do them but being young was different. Even when in budget. So I say be careful but don't be greedy and while interest can pile up on money you save, that trip you have done or that money you spent to go to a conference might pay up x1000.
    • smarri 8y ago
      Fully agree, great point
  • nuclearghost 8y ago
• crb002 8y ago
  Chesapeake Bay is not in a costal county list of hurricane zones because it isn't in a county.
• Silixon 8y ago
  You are the only person who will recognize and value your own overachievements. Prevailingly, others will view your efforts and either think nothing of them or wonder why anyone would go to such lengths. If you're going to go above and beyond, you should seriously question why you are doing so. When in doubt, do it for yourself.
• madeuptempacct 8y ago
  Someone told me something along the lines of "Every event in your life can change your life entirely - you get into Harvard or you don't, you get the job or you don't, you win the tournament and go on to become a champion, or you give up on the sport when you lose. Every little decision can be a fork in your life, though most aren't." Sure, it's oversimplified, sure some "bad-seeming" things are good in the long run, etc. But I find the fork part interesting to thing about - the fact that one little thing can spiral your life of in a completely different direction.
  • kluck 8y ago
    I see this more clearly in hindsight. By pure accident I ended up in software development: My mother found this university, I did not have anything else on my mind at the time, just started studying, graduated and here I am 10+ years later professional sw dev. In school I was much more into arts and crafts so I never really anticipated that I would end up. All because of a small decision back then... ridiculous really ;) Some people really think they are in control of their lives ...
  • hinkley 8y ago
    Don’t wind yourself up about it though. One of my favorite definitions of adulthood is “learning to integrate all of your life experiences”. All your detours and diversions add up to You, including the stuff you were afraid would never matter.
• yc-kraln 8y ago
  How to be a good husband. It took pushing my marriage to nearly the point of breaking to realize that my obsession with work, lack of participation in the house, and aggressive/demanding interpersonal communications was only leading to a dead end.
• throwaway180118 8y ago
  PHP. I'm refactoring something I wrote a 13 years ago and it's hell.
• settings11 8y ago
  C Programming. Did it on the CLI while there were IDEs.
• kluck 8y ago
  Do not get blinded by enthusiasm. Think on your own. I had a startup, co-founder persistet on bad tech, never stood up to him. Startup failed - and all for the wrong reason. I basicly had two choices: speak up or leave and I did neither, dragging along. I will never do that again!
• methusala8 8y ago
  Always have a exit plan before you begin. This sounds like commonsense for most people. But I learnt this the hard way while drifting through my 20's in a mediocre career. Still rebuilding after going back to college.
• h1d 8y ago
  Trading and to an extent, savings. Bought Bitcoin worth about $30k over time which turned into $120k after a bull run after a awhile and I put my foot into leverage trading without knowing what I was doing. Kept losing and got margin called until I emptied myself. If I had kept it without a single trading, it would've been around $300k today. That gave me a pretty bad blow when my company went into not so good state and my income took a hit, I no longer had any spare money and I've learned to trade after I know what I'm doing and split your savings instead of going all on your single favorite financial vehicle.
• jscholes 8y ago
  Python.
• tmaly 8y ago
  Always read the fine print before you sign. This has bitten me so many times. The last I could recall was a car lease where the salesman has told me the overage cost on miles was 10 cents a mile. Turned out it was 20 cents a mile.
• hyperbolejoe 8y ago
  Playing with stocks. I decided to try to win big in the market. Took my IRA money out of index funds, and started trying to play some stocks. Lost big on one, panicked, and got out. My timing was awful. That stock eventually recovered to my purchase point after six months, but I put my money into another sure thing based on my research. Lost more. At least this time I did not panic. Now I'm trying to make up for it by playing the long term on a stock that should bounce back, but I'm content if it doesn't. Maybe it'll take a year or two, but I should at least be back to where I was. Then I'll be moving back into index funds.
• feydaykyn 8y ago
  That sometimes, there's nothing to learn, only the obligation to make either bad choice 1 or bad choice 2. Both will bring regrets and negative consequences of their own for a long time, if you're lucky, longer if you're not.
• alexashka 8y ago
  Everything worth learning.
• Caillebotte 8y ago
  Don't build rocket fuel in your house.
• Delmania 8y ago
  Choosing a spouse or life partner is a major decision. Don’t rush into it. If you did, have the strength to end it.