7 ms·

Ask HN: What was your biggest failure in 2019?

44 points by topicseed 7y ago

Let's stop listing our incredible achievements from the year that has passed. Instead, let's discuss our biggest failures, what we didn't do, what we launched that flopped, and so on.

Havoc 7y ago
Lack of movement forward. Looks good on paper (got a promotion) but I can feel I just drifted with the current.
hola_mundo 7y ago
My biggest failure in 2019 was getting utterly trapped in analysis paralysis. Throughout the year, I explored many different side project ideas but I rarely took any action on most of them. I didn't ask people for feedback on the ideas. I didn't cold email potential customers to see what they thought. I didn't build much. Instead, I got stuck in a "research" mindset and consumed endless information on new industries or business models, often eventually talking myself out of most of my ideas -- without having any direct data on whether or not something would have worked out. I think a more productive approach to 2020 will be defining specific actions or experiments I can run on new ideas, rather than remaining purely in the theoretical realm. It's moderately depressing to look back at how little I really learned. Few of my theories ever made contact with reality.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  Been there. I realized doing something was better than planning most of the time in the initial stage. Most ideas or things you will come across have already been done, so trying to find something original isn't a solid strategy. If it's entirely new/original, then it will come to you naturally. You will discover it because you are the consumer facing the problem. Otherwise, focusing on getting feedback and people to talk to you, get them to send their email (even though I personally hate the practice of collecting private info without any product and sending 'spam') is important to maintain their investment along with a simple sketchy prototype to show off. It's easier to give feedback on something that you can see or interact with than written details. Showing vision is better than explaining it even if it is completely basic. Your users will flesh out the product for you, they will tell you what features you can add, how it should work and how you can actually do it. All of that wouldn't happen without a basic structure. Without seeing a shitty painting, I wouldn't comment on it. I wonder how depressed marketers and other similar people feel for manipulating others and hogging their personal life with irrelevant things.....such as getting someone's dad addicted to a gambling or social platform and that resulting in negligence.
6700417 7y ago
I would suggest that rather than just listing things that didn’t work out, people also discuss what they learned from the experience and how they would act differently if they had a chance to do it all over.
batt4good 7y ago
Getting let go from FAANG basically because I didn't ignore huge red flags while getting hired (thought bc it was a FAANG there wouldn't be atrocious mgmt policies etc). The requirements for the position as the recruiter described was Go / Elixir experience, did my code screen / take home in elixir and nailed it, principle engineer reviewed my code and green-lit my application mostly bc he was also a devout elixir fan. My manager had a language barrier and seemed pushy when I did my on-site and told her I wanted to use the normal allotment of time for the take-home (they fast tracked my app which would've only given me two days for a take-home that is usually give 5 days). Learned the team wasn't doing any Go / Elixir (was "maybe going to transition at some point" and never did) and was basically just servicing a shitty monolith built in Ruby. Lots of $$$ so I just decided to take the offer, since my prior situation was a startup that was trying to avoid paying me my full salary and boss didn't "believe" in benefits. Team at FAANG was also socially inept enough to always send my comments up to my boss instead of team member meant to onboard me - first task was also horribly scoped and made me look like an idiot for double checking my work (small fix with HUGE implications and side-effects if done wrong, with flaky tests galore). Boss berated me for being the only person who would tell her I wasn't going to be done at the end of the day, but never caused a critical problem in prod. Basically got fucked when I admitted a mistake that I promptly fixed and re-deployed, proving their BS "nobody gets blamed for fuckups" policy was definitely bullshit. I got paid $20k to leave as my team was let go for unrelated reasons (you can guess which FAANG) and did some work with a friend on a startup for a few months. The transition out / lack of luck searching for new jobs really kicked me in the stomach and confidence - and on top of that I'm still looking for work. But hey, hopefully 2020 goes better.
- hyeomans 7y ago
  That sucks, I truly hope you’re in a better place now
  - batt4good 7y ago
    Thank you kind stranger :) Unfortunately, I'm still unemployed but luckily my BS detector has had a nice upgrade, I've at least sort of improved my algo skills and had some time to think about what I really value in life.
deanmoriarty 7y ago
Not being able to overcome the fact that a lot of people are technically better than me, after 10 years in the field. You know how bad people feel after they go on Facebook and look at how beautiful their friends' lifestyle is, without realizing it's all fake? Well, that's how I routinely feel when I browse HN, except that the work on HN is not fake, is way too real. I see people posting brilliant work, work that is very much related to my field and that I should be able to come up with myself, and instead I barely comprehend. It then gets worse: I navigate to their personal blog, and find hundreds of incredibly well-crafted articles about a wide range of topics. For example, just today from a front HN link I jumped to a personal blog of an engineer who was writing impressively deep thoughts about unit testing, dependency injection, Go, Java, hardware, architecture, backend, frontend, performance, ... Very, very thoughtful posts. I would not be able to reflect so deeply on those topics, even if I am relatively familiar with them. I have no other choice than believing I am stupid, at least in comparison to such person. It then gets worse one more time: I look them up on LinkedIn, infer their age and see that they are younger than me, and that they were holding a demanding full time job all along, while writing those incredible articles and producing that amazing work on the side. And it's not even that I could work harder. I literally cut 90% of my recreational activities: I don't have a TV, I don't watch Netflix, Youtube, games, I completely ignore news, I don't read novels, I don't have kids to take care of, ... Every day after work I read technical books/articles until I go to bed. The only things I do non-related to my professional development are going to the gym regularly, and spending quality time with my girlfriend a few hours on weekends. But, I would say that on a given week I routinely put 70-80 hours on my professional development (including my full time job), so I couldn't do more than this without it affecting my mental and physical health.
- bubba1236 7y ago
  is this satire? or are you serious because you should get some help
- natalyarostova 7y ago
  Is it imposter syndrome? Or just being unwilling to come to terms with the fact that other people will inevitably be better than you?
sevilo 7y ago
Ignoring my personal relationships because I put too much time and focus on reaching the goals for my side business. I did reach the goals I set out to do in the beginning of 2019, it gave me hope to move forward with this project and potentially work on it full time. But I often canceled weekend plans with my boyfriend, ignored things he wanted to do, because frankly the idea of being able to build my own brand is an idea I'm so excited for and I just can't wait to prove that I can reach my goal. I learn that relationships, just like businesses or work, the more commitment you put in, the more result will show. Also, it's important to balance work and life and make expectations clear.
Can_Not 7y ago
Rewrote a non-trivial app from Vue to svelte/sapper. It was a success until we discovered that it turns out Svelte handles errors by freezing instead of letting you show an error page and/or report it to Sentry.
ahi 7y ago
Took over responsibility for some shell scripting glue. Task: migrate to new servers. "How hard can it be?" 2 months later I am still completely lost. I have random input/output files going everywhere, complete flustercuck of perl dependencies, and ftp processes I can't test lest I bork prod. Edit: and even if I "succeed" I'm pretty sure it needs a total rewrite. I think I'm performing a cross-org table join using ftp and text files with undocumented time dependencies.
psychox2c 7y ago
My biggest failure for 2019 is not starting. Overanalyzing ideas to the point that I forget about them and then doing that same process again on another idea. So my new year resolution is going to be 12 startup mvp's in 12 months!
- topicseed 7y ago
  Oh yes, that's a tough one. Procrastination is a lethal mind weapon.
dr_j_ 7y ago
I have difficulty in letting go of engineering problems. My mind is always racing for a fix.. I have been in danger of burnout several times because of this. 2020 I need to learn to chill a bit more.
WinonaRyder 7y ago
Like another comenter, I'd say mine was "not starting". More specifically writing. I often get ideas about articles I'd like to write but I just end up talking myself out of it. This past Sunday morning - like countless others - I woke up with an idea comparing JavaScript ES5/ES6 to vanilla ice of various quality and decided to just post it in all its shitty glory on Twitter. It didn't go viral and I didn't gain any fame from it... but I wasn't the only one that found it funny (my biggest fear crushed) so it's a start, I guess.
petsoundz 7y ago
Flunked out of a really good sales job I wasn't qualified for, and proceeded to get fired from an Amazon warehouse because my sleep problem still eludes medicine/psychiatry/homeopathy/jungian therapy. Still unemployed, won't be able to make 15/hr again. Still dwelling on past relationship, failing at current. Still stuck at home. 2020 is the year, though. "This time" I'll get around to the language learning and applications.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Swtrz 7y ago
Accepting a job without doing more research on the company and the actual job but of impatience. 11 months down the drain.

44 points by topicseed 7y ago

Let's stop listing our incredible achievements from the year that has passed. Instead, let's discuss our biggest failures, what we didn't do, what we launched that flopped, and so on.

Havoc 7y ago

Lack of movement forward. Looks good on paper (got a promotion) but I can feel I just drifted with the current.

hola_mundo 7y ago

My biggest failure in 2019 was getting utterly trapped in analysis paralysis. Throughout the year, I explored many different side project ideas but I rarely took any action on most of them. I didn't ask people for feedback on the ideas. I didn't cold email potential customers to see what they thought. I didn't build much. Instead, I got stuck in a "research" mindset and consumed endless information on new industries or business models, often eventually talking myself out of most of my ideas -- without having any direct data on whether or not something would have worked out. I think a more productive approach to 2020 will be defining specific actions or experiments I can run on new ideas, rather than remaining purely in the theoretical realm. It's moderately depressing to look back at how little I really learned. Few of my theories ever made contact with reality.

thrwaway69 7y ago
Been there. I realized doing something was better than planning most of the time in the initial stage. Most ideas or things you will come across have already been done, so trying to find something original isn't a solid strategy. If it's entirely new/original, then it will come to you naturally. You will discover it because you are the consumer facing the problem. Otherwise, focusing on getting feedback and people to talk to you, get them to send their email (even though I personally hate the practice of collecting private info without any product and sending 'spam') is important to maintain their investment along with a simple sketchy prototype to show off. It's easier to give feedback on something that you can see or interact with than written details. Showing vision is better than explaining it even if it is completely basic. Your users will flesh out the product for you, they will tell you what features you can add, how it should work and how you can actually do it. All of that wouldn't happen without a basic structure. Without seeing a shitty painting, I wouldn't comment on it. I wonder how depressed marketers and other similar people feel for manipulating others and hogging their personal life with irrelevant things.....such as getting someone's dad addicted to a gambling or social platform and that resulting in negligence.

6700417 7y ago

I would suggest that rather than just listing things that didn’t work out, people also discuss what they learned from the experience and how they would act differently if they had a chance to do it all over.

batt4good 7y ago

Getting let go from FAANG basically because I didn't ignore huge red flags while getting hired (thought bc it was a FAANG there wouldn't be atrocious mgmt policies etc). The requirements for the position as the recruiter described was Go / Elixir experience, did my code screen / take home in elixir and nailed it, principle engineer reviewed my code and green-lit my application mostly bc he was also a devout elixir fan. My manager had a language barrier and seemed pushy when I did my on-site and told her I wanted to use the normal allotment of time for the take-home (they fast tracked my app which would've only given me two days for a take-home that is usually give 5 days). Learned the team wasn't doing any Go / Elixir (was "maybe going to transition at some point" and never did) and was basically just servicing a shitty monolith built in Ruby. Lots of $$$ so I just decided to take the offer, since my prior situation was a startup that was trying to avoid paying me my full salary and boss didn't "believe" in benefits. Team at FAANG was also socially inept enough to always send my comments up to my boss instead of team member meant to onboard me - first task was also horribly scoped and made me look like an idiot for double checking my work (small fix with HUGE implications and side-effects if done wrong, with flaky tests galore). Boss berated me for being the only person who would tell her I wasn't going to be done at the end of the day, but never caused a critical problem in prod. Basically got fucked when I admitted a mistake that I promptly fixed and re-deployed, proving their BS "nobody gets blamed for fuckups" policy was definitely bullshit. I got paid $20k to leave as my team was let go for unrelated reasons (you can guess which FAANG) and did some work with a friend on a startup for a few months. The transition out / lack of luck searching for new jobs really kicked me in the stomach and confidence - and on top of that I'm still looking for work. But hey, hopefully 2020 goes better.

hyeomans 7y ago
That sucks, I truly hope you’re in a better place now
- batt4good 7y ago
  Thank you kind stranger :) Unfortunately, I'm still unemployed but luckily my BS detector has had a nice upgrade, I've at least sort of improved my algo skills and had some time to think about what I really value in life.

deanmoriarty 7y ago

Not being able to overcome the fact that a lot of people are technically better than me, after 10 years in the field. You know how bad people feel after they go on Facebook and look at how beautiful their friends' lifestyle is, without realizing it's all fake? Well, that's how I routinely feel when I browse HN, except that the work on HN is not fake, is way too real. I see people posting brilliant work, work that is very much related to my field and that I should be able to come up with myself, and instead I barely comprehend. It then gets worse: I navigate to their personal blog, and find hundreds of incredibly well-crafted articles about a wide range of topics. For example, just today from a front HN link I jumped to a personal blog of an engineer who was writing impressively deep thoughts about unit testing, dependency injection, Go, Java, hardware, architecture, backend, frontend, performance, ... Very, very thoughtful posts. I would not be able to reflect so deeply on those topics, even if I am relatively familiar with them. I have no other choice than believing I am stupid, at least in comparison to such person. It then gets worse one more time: I look them up on LinkedIn, infer their age and see that they are younger than me, and that they were holding a demanding full time job all along, while writing those incredible articles and producing that amazing work on the side. And it's not even that I could work harder. I literally cut 90% of my recreational activities: I don't have a TV, I don't watch Netflix, Youtube, games, I completely ignore news, I don't read novels, I don't have kids to take care of, ... Every day after work I read technical books/articles until I go to bed. The only things I do non-related to my professional development are going to the gym regularly, and spending quality time with my girlfriend a few hours on weekends. But, I would say that on a given week I routinely put 70-80 hours on my professional development (including my full time job), so I couldn't do more than this without it affecting my mental and physical health.

bubba1236 7y ago
is this satire? or are you serious because you should get some help
natalyarostova 7y ago
Is it imposter syndrome? Or just being unwilling to come to terms with the fact that other people will inevitably be better than you?

sevilo 7y ago

Ignoring my personal relationships because I put too much time and focus on reaching the goals for my side business. I did reach the goals I set out to do in the beginning of 2019, it gave me hope to move forward with this project and potentially work on it full time. But I often canceled weekend plans with my boyfriend, ignored things he wanted to do, because frankly the idea of being able to build my own brand is an idea I'm so excited for and I just can't wait to prove that I can reach my goal. I learn that relationships, just like businesses or work, the more commitment you put in, the more result will show. Also, it's important to balance work and life and make expectations clear.

Can_Not 7y ago

Rewrote a non-trivial app from Vue to svelte/sapper. It was a success until we discovered that it turns out Svelte handles errors by freezing instead of letting you show an error page and/or report it to Sentry.

ahi 7y ago

Took over responsibility for some shell scripting glue. Task: migrate to new servers. "How hard can it be?" 2 months later I am still completely lost. I have random input/output files going everywhere, complete flustercuck of perl dependencies, and ftp processes I can't test lest I bork prod. Edit: and even if I "succeed" I'm pretty sure it needs a total rewrite. I think I'm performing a cross-org table join using ftp and text files with undocumented time dependencies.

psychox2c 7y ago

My biggest failure for 2019 is not starting. Overanalyzing ideas to the point that I forget about them and then doing that same process again on another idea. So my new year resolution is going to be 12 startup mvp's in 12 months!

topicseed 7y ago
Oh yes, that's a tough one. Procrastination is a lethal mind weapon.

dr_j_ 7y ago

I have difficulty in letting go of engineering problems. My mind is always racing for a fix.. I have been in danger of burnout several times because of this. 2020 I need to learn to chill a bit more.

WinonaRyder 7y ago

Like another comenter, I'd say mine was "not starting". More specifically writing. I often get ideas about articles I'd like to write but I just end up talking myself out of it. This past Sunday morning - like countless others - I woke up with an idea comparing JavaScript ES5/ES6 to vanilla ice of various quality and decided to just post it in all its shitty glory on Twitter. It didn't go viral and I didn't gain any fame from it... but I wasn't the only one that found it funny (my biggest fear crushed) so it's a start, I guess.

petsoundz 7y ago

Flunked out of a really good sales job I wasn't qualified for, and proceeded to get fired from an Amazon warehouse because my sleep problem still eludes medicine/psychiatry/homeopathy/jungian therapy. Still unemployed, won't be able to make 15/hr again. Still dwelling on past relationship, failing at current. Still stuck at home. 2020 is the year, though. "This time" I'll get around to the language learning and applications.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Swtrz 7y ago

Accepting a job without doing more research on the company and the actual job but of impatience. 11 months down the drain.