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Ask HN: Anyone doing some absurd stuff after getting laid off?

135 points by x86hacker1010 4y ago

Life is pretty absurd and wonder more and more why we put so much stake into a job when the employer effectively doesn't care about you. Anyone taking some time to do cool stuff?

IAmGraydon 4y ago
I don’t need my employer to care about me. I have a family and friends for that. At work, it’s a business transaction. I provide them with value and I’m compensated with money. I increase the value I provide and I can demand more.
- majkinetor 4y ago
  One doesn't need that, but one certainly wants that. Value is not just what you create directly but also indrectly (such as rising moral in the company, attracting people etc.).
revskill 4y ago
Yes. I'm making a YAML to SQL converter here: https://yaml2sql.netlify.app https://yaml2sql.netlify.app. It's mostly for fun, useless for most of use cases.
- levkk 4y ago
  I like. I had to do something similar a while back as part of an ETL pipeline.
- frompdx 4y ago
  Have a look at schema hero for inspiration. https://schemahero.io/ https://schemahero.io/
  - revskill 4y ago
    Thanks. I also love to extend the project to support ALL kinds of SQL.
f6v 4y ago
Your employer doesn’t care about you the same way your parents would. Good employers care about enabling you to do your job effectively and efficiently. But it’s all transactional. Doesn’t mean that you can’t find an arrangement that’s good for both you and employer. But don’t ever think it’s like a family. Saves you a lot of frustration. See it for what it is.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  This can happen, but Paul "Kinko" Orfalea's book "Copy This!" goes into a lot of detail about how it makes sense to care about employees as people and doing so actually contributes greatly to the bottom line. His company "Kinko's Copies" is not the greatest tech leader ever, but it provided basic services to ordinary people using low paid labor and managed to have employee morale and retention far above other companies in this class, fast food companies being perhaps notable for bad employee morale and turnover so extreme that at times it threatens operations.
  - r0p3 4y ago
    This example illustrates the first comment's point: it is fundamentally a transactional relationship. "Caring contributes greatly to the bottom line" means the goal of "caring" is increased productivity.
    - m0llusk 4y ago
      Not to belabor the point, but if I understand the book correctly Paul did things this way because he believed it was the right thing to do and it was the best fit for him and his personality. Relating this way to employees allowed him to live with himself and humanized the business. So the increased productivity was a happy coincidence of his insistence on positive human interaction being a foundational element of business operations. He never really expected to be successful or anything like the great success which unfolded. The entire business was basically winging it in order to make money because he had trouble following more common paths.
- don-code 4y ago
jeniwren 4y ago
Love this question! My husband was laid off recently and it feels like his free time instead has been accosted by our young children and house renovation:/ Related note, I came across this newsletter which goes into more detail about our “work” identity and how your employer doesn’t (to your point!) “care about you” (https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/work-life-balance-is-a-capitalist https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/work-life-balance-is-a-...)
- yafbum 4y ago
  Why the :/ ? Spending time with young children and renovating a house sounds like a smart choice. The time with children you will never be able to make up for later. Renovating a house is full of interesting challenges and rewards that are all to yourself.
  - dismantlethesun 4y ago
    Chores, house projects and childcare are all productive work. As seen here, no outsiders will ever gainsay you for doing them. Pretty much the only person to criticise that approach will be a spouse. Romantic partners usually wish for more time to spend together, deepening the relationship or just hanging out. This isn't productive per se, but it's natural that your life partner would like to actually live a life with you and not see you checking off tasks at home.
- ExxKA 4y ago
  I would recommend that we rents a desk in a coworking space. Get out of the house every day, cause there's always more to do at home.
- jl2718 4y ago
  “Instead” of what? Is his true calling house renovations and childcare? If not, then it’s probably a choice that is being made for him. Personally, I love my babies and I consider it worth my time for basic care and teaching them things, but only as much as it benefits them. For the house renovations and all other labor that goes into partner-driven life, I would be much happier living in a mud hut with a candle and a math book, but I’ll never whisper a word about it. Its easy to become someone’s unlimited source of free labor, and they’ll always think they’re doing you a favor.
anthropodie 4y ago
I am happy with my current employer but I always liked Paul Graham's idea of not having a boss[0]. I had read it quite a while back but here's the gist of it: Paul mentions that we work best when we work in a group of 8-20 people in a flat structure like our hunter gatherer ancestors use to do. Each member have their own roles and responsibilities and each individual contributes the well being and future security of the group. Such a group is optimal communication wise and it also offers greater incentive for it's members to work harder as you are directly participating in your own growth unlike our current structure where people are helping other people get rich. This is very extreme take but imagine if companies are capped at 20-50 employees. Will it work? I think it might. What do you guys think? 0: You were not meant to have boss - http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html Edit: rewording.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  in a cooperative framework instead of competitive framework, i think this would be the ideal structure.
- tester756 4y ago
  >This is very extreme take but imagine if companies are capped at 20-50 employees. Will it work? I think it will. What do you guys think? I don't think. I cannot imagine companies doing GPU, CPUs, Windows, etc. with just 20-50ppl.
  - frereubu 4y ago
    Presumably you would, only what are different departments within a single company now would be separate companies. Probably similar kinds of blessings and curses as microservices.
    - sdiacom 4y ago
      The once CEO of Sears tried splitting the corporation into thirty to forty companies: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ayn-rand-destroyed-sears https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ay... (I recall reading a more entertaining and detailed write-up, but this is what I could find on a quick Google Search) In short, turns out aligning thirty to forty competing profit motives is hard.
tprophet 4y ago
The amount of personal investment I have in an organization is directly tied to my personal upside. If it's my own company (I have run two startups) then I live and breathe it. If it's a Fortune 500 company or the government or whatever, then I give full effort, but I won't grind up my health or personal life. That's possibly justified with an 8 or 9 figure potential exit, but it's definitely not justified for 5 figures worth of stock.
thewopr 4y ago
I'm going to finally try to start my own company. Will it be a "startup"? I don't know. But it will be technical and it will go from 0-1 (or from 0-0). After years of lurking here, watching on the sidelines, working for larger companies, having kids, buying a house, I'm finally going to take the dive. I'm excited, nervous, lost, all at the same time. But I have enough savings and an accommodating spouse, so I don't have to work for a while. I'm a long-time academic, turned ML-practitioner. I have no major online presence. I don't have a brand. But if anyone is interested in talking, DM me, I have lots of time and am still in the divergent phase of entrepreneurship. Edit: Added email address to profile. Excuse the confusion, I have been a lurker too long.
- ExxKA 4y ago
  DM you how? What's your twitter handle?
  - majkinetor 4y ago
    Meh guys, it took 5 minutes just out of curiosity: https://github.com/thewopr https://github.com/thewopr
    - thewopr 4y ago
      Actually, that's not my profile. My username doesn't align on github. My github profile is github.com/lawinslow
      - majkinetor 4y ago
        I judged by the timeline and mention of AI project among the stars... :)
  - thewopr 4y ago
    As I mentioned, long-time lurker. Added my email address in my profile.
- dfraser992 4y ago
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_jcrossley 4y ago
I’m taking some time to study classical guitar with a private teacher at ~conservatory level. Feels like my form of “quitting tech to work on a farm”. I’ll also work on my own personal projects and see if any of them can gain enough momentum as a lifestyle business to avoid returning to soul-sucking BigTech.
noahth 4y ago
I worked for several years as an independent contractor; when my last big project ended several months ago, I decided to take a sabbatical for the climate. So far that has meant spending more time with my kids, learning to compost, building some new raised garden beds, mending some clothes that I previously would've replaced, reading more books, and various other little things. I plan to start volunteering soon with the local tool library, and there are tons of other things we'd like to do to reduce our budget and carbon footprint, when we can get to them. I know not everyone can afford to "just take time off" but among those laid off from a tech company and browsing HN, surely some fraction of you could afford to do the same. You will still have a career to come back to if you spend a year turning your attention and energy to the climate crisis. BUT if you're under 40 or so (I'm 37), you may find that there is not a recognizable planet to come back to if you continue to focus on your career until the retirement age we were brought up to expect.
- uxcolumbo 4y ago
  Sounds sublime... connecting with nature, your family and your local community. We don't really need much to have a good life. Just wonder whether we'll be able to escape our current destructive economic and value system and move towards a more circular economic system[0] on time to keep global warming increase under 2C. But for that our value system needs to change first... getting away from the 'more more more' value system and focusing more on what you wrote about. Would be great for example if we had a richer reuse and repair economy. [0] Waste equals food https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/waste-food/ https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/waste-food/
- bosch_mind 4y ago
  On a more personal note, how much money did you save to feel comfortable doing this?
  - noahth 4y ago
    When my wife and i decided to try this, we figured we had runway to live without dramatic changes to our standard of living for 3-4 years. The initial period we agreed on for the sabbatical was 6 months and we've extended that to 1 year. Of course, we are intentionally changing our budget and standard of living along the way. Most likely I will not go four years without working, but I may spend some time exploring other work options before I hang my shingle out for software projects again.
mortenjorck 4y ago
I’m getting back into my synesthesia art project: https://testfixture.presteign.com/ https://testfixture.presteign.com/ (Running on Grav with Turbolinks; visuals made in Affinity Designer; audio made in Reason)
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SeanAnderson 4y ago
I'm proud to say I am taking some time to work on cool stuff! It's definitely in the "I should start coding and stop brainstorming" phase, but I've been enjoying all the theorycrafting. I'm creating a web-first colony simulation game. I'm inspired by SimAnt, RimWorld, idleRPG, and Tamagotchi. My goal is to establish a strong, daily, mental health hygiene routine which promotes box breathing, gratitude journaling, and improved awareness of my health, fatigue, and motivation. The game unfolds on an alien world covered in a thick sea of fog and asteroid impact craters. Huge fog waves roam the planet, splash against the crater walls, and continually intrude with frigid moisture. A damaged terraforming satellite orbits the planet and directs its limited energy towards one crater which keeps that crater habitable. There are three entities in the story: an AI powering the terraforming satellite, the consciousness of a biologist uploaded into the satellite's computer, and a fledgling ant colony within the barely habitable crater. The player fills the role of the protagonist, the biologist, and the hostile weather plays the role of the antagonist. The goal is to terraform the planet without throwing it out of balance. The ant colony simulation runs on ~autopilot similar to idleRPG but with slowly unfolding visuals like 1x speed RimWorld. It's a real-time simulation which "runs" even when the tab is closed, but is only able to be controlled when the satellite orbits overhead and has line-of-sight with the crater. The queen hatches workers, workers expand the nest, navigate the fog, and search for food. The ants lay pheromone trails to food, but every night the fog rolls in and wipes clean the pheromones. Each day the ants begin searching for food once more. The colony grows optimally given available information, but is not omniscient or even opinionated. The colony will never push itself out of the local maximum of a single crater and struggles with attention due to the fog. Surprisingly, during initial nest expansion, the ants discover a rectifying crystal which allows them to sense electromagnetic waves emitted by the satellite. They develop a ritual around attempting to interpret these electrical impulses which provides a very rough form of of one-way communication from the satellite to the ants. The biologist leverages this communicational channel to assist the colony by providing high-level environmental awareness and opinionated responses. Each day, the player is asked to show up and check-in at a consistent time. The player wants to be able to nurture their colony, but they need to unlock the ability to do so. They begin by engaging with a guided, box-breathing routine while "awakening" the consciousness of the biologist. It's effortful for the biologist to take autonomy from the terraforming AI in the same way waking up is effortful and so the player is guided through that process. Then, the player is greeted with a technophilic UI which provides in-depth stats and charts of their colony and the planet. Based on current and projected resources, the user makes a decision to encourage the colony to push harder or to ease up. This influences whether the colony will push out of a local maximum, but comes at the cost of damaging the health of the ants. The player needs to balance pushing the colony to expand into additional land with tapering their exertion to avoid long-term negative effects. Finally, the player is given an opportunity to self-reflect and journal on the goals and progress of the ants. Gratitude journaling provides a means of keeping attention on high-value food resources such that the ants don't lose track entirely due to the fog. Non-gratitude journaling (i.e. venting, daily reflections) provide a source of entropy for the weather system of the world. Outside of check-in time, the player is only able to watch their high-level decisions slowly play out over the course of the day. The interface is calming and provides an opportunity for brief respite similar to taking a moment to observe an aquarium. Overall, I am building software to help me be more consistent and diligent in my personal growth and mental health hygiene. Sometimes when I get depressed I stop caring for myself, but I'm always good about showing up for others. I want to leverage that to promote self-care. Conversely, when I'm firing on all-cylinders, I tend to think my motivation and determination are limitless. I take on significant personal growth goals only to eventually reach a mental breaking point because I never identify a good time to push less hard until forced. So, I would benefit from a visual indication of where I am at on a motivation/determination boom/bust cycle so that I don't find myself surprised by burnout. I've never really responded well to software that implies I have problems which need fixing. Instead, I do much better when someone tells me a story, I contrast that story to my own, and I succeed in identifying personal growth areas through the reflection. Instead of creating "yet another mental health / journaling app" I am interested in telling a compelling, sci-fi story where the protagonist struggles to succeed in their goals due to a failure to acknowledge their humanity. I believe telling this story, while providing tools to participate and a pet to stay attached, is likely to instill long-term changes in those who engage.
tukantje 4y ago
Constantly battling with issues of self worth and suicidal thoughts since I've got laid off so that's about it. Being a migrant, who is laid off, who is/was a sole bread winner does the trick I guess.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  I feel for you. I've battled self worth feelings through out my career as a lot of my identity was tied up in my work and the fear of failure. I've since found a new perspective that's helped me transform my identity and self-esteem through therapy and journaling about my experience/thoughts. I still have negative thoughts, but I see them as independent things to observe and not part of my core self. This is your story to write and other people's opinions are just that their opinions which is "none of your business". The layoff is not a reflection of you. You are worth it and things will get better.
  - tukantje 4y ago
    Thank you. You are right - it is just a relatively darker time, so to speak. Going to therapy for a while now - to solve for a ton of trauma, as I don't want to pass it on to my potential future kids so to speak, so it helps.
- drewrv 4y ago
  Please don't hesitate to reach out to people and organizations who can help with these thoughts.
  - tukantje 4y ago
    Thank you - I am already in touch with a therapist so no need to worry. Just being open about the struggle, is all.
yawnxyz 4y ago
Got laid off in 2017 and never got a real job again. (I have a UX background) 1. I immediately went to Spain to do the Camino de Santiago. Was learning building web apps (Meteor) and launchd a full landing page / swing dance registration site while on the Camino. 2. Learned React and a few other tools after that, tried to be a consultant for a year. Then tried to launch a bunch of projects ("startups" if you wanted to be generous with that term) 3. Met my partner (and now cofounder) at a swing dance, who showed me microbiology and "the potential of phage therapy" because doctors weren't getting access to it 4. I created a random side project connecting docs with phage labs with her (now six years ago). We started connecting docs and labs, and have since taken on 40+ cases, and successfully treated two. Last year we moved to Sydney to essentially run a translational microbiology lab / phage therapy clinical trial — she's the microbiologist and I'm the research software engineer. We're just treating our 4th patient now. I'm building data collection tools for our bioinformaticians, doctors/nurses and microbiology lab, and trying to scale this project up using automation tools and robots. We're creating reports for the TGA to make sure our preps are safe. There's lots of work in areas I've never deal with (data science, stats, building full stack web apps, dealing with OpenTrons, REDCap, and a billion other tools). It doesn't pay nearly as much as tech, but it's the most absurd thing I could ever do as a "UX designer"
- domlebo70 4y ago
  Are you guys doing the TGA stuff yourselves?
- blahblah1234567 4y ago
  What a coincidence! I've been thinking about taking a sabbatical and walking the the Camino de Santiago. During that time I will likely study for some IT certs to demonstrate new skills in cloud servers & security. How did you feel about balancing studying skills with socializing & enjoying the journey of the Camino?
  - thorin 4y ago
    Depends what you're hoping to get out of it. If you want to socialise on route or look at is as some kind of spiritual pilgrimage I'd focus 100% on the walk while you're doing it. Seems like a good opportunity to forget about computing / work for a while! People asking why the Camino, I haven't done it but I have done a number of treks / meditation retreats etc. It sounds fantastic but I think there are many physical journeys like this that could represent a lot of "inner travel".
pictur 4y ago
We need to get rid of the bullshit about companies trying to connect with employees. As the company grows, it does not benefit the employee at all, but the bosses still wait for more effort. The biggest problem of modern man is being pushed into such stupid sentiments.
- throwawayeng999 4y ago
  Growing companies have short memories! You can build teams, processes and culture, and as the company multiplies it's staffing levels, new bosses take hold, and all the rest of it, the loudest salesmen come out of the woodwork to push their personal brands. It doesn't help if they come to the table with workaholism as a trait they're branding themselves with.
busboy 4y ago
Coming from someone whom loves their career(engineering not tech) - I am learning web dev for fun on the side. Got some cool ideas for websites and low effort income streams.
- itisit 4y ago
  Without revealing details of your ideas, how did you go about getting the ideas in the first place? Were you bumping into problems and encouraged to solve them in a more structured way? Did you have conversations or read some stuff that inspired you to create something? Did you work on a project purely for fun that led to being a potential business? Seriously asking as someone who is grateful to have a wealth of resources at their disposal, but suffers from a complete lack of imagination in the idea department—that is any idea that would motivate me to the point of starting up a startup.
roombarampage 4y ago
I’m working on math videos :) https://youtube.com/@logicaltoroid https://youtube.com/@logicaltoroid
ArcMex 4y ago
Not laid off but I quit my job 7 months ago to start my own company. Just the admin of setting up and running the day-to-day has taught me a lot. But the biggest lesson I learned is that I have the capacity to research and implement technologies new to me in relatively short amounts of time to make meaningful impact. In addition, my confidence has improved and I am more likely to accept challenging work within my domain than ever before. What I am doing running a small business is not cool in the context of the OP and the discussion, but it's cool to me in the sense that I did something I once feared and stuck with it. Thanks for sharing, everyone. Really cool projects. Take care.
- BuckyBeaver 4y ago
  I think that's worth a lot. Sometimes I worry that I'm just not fast enough at some of this stuff, but then I pull off something well under pressure and feel better. Temporarily!
AxEy 4y ago
Not laid off but on an extended sabbatical. I'm working on a Rust library for SAT solving and other things informed by John Harrison's text on Automated Theorem Proving. https://github.com/aetilley/harrison-rust https://github.com/aetilley/harrison-rust This is largely for me to to learn Rust, but I think it may have the potential to turn into something cool. Next on the todo list is optimizations to DPLL as the existing implementation is currently in its most basic form (I skipped optimizations there for the time being in order to move on to predicate calculus).
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  Interesting.. What do you think about Survey Propagation?
  - AxEy 4y ago
    I'm afraid I was not familiar, although I'm looking at a few related papers on the arxiv now. What brought that approach to mind?
    - theGnuMe 4y ago
      Survey Propagation is one of the best algorithms for solving very hard SAT instances. Here's a good review paper that captures it. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~sabhar/publications/surveyPropUAI07b.pdf http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~sabhar/publications/surveyPropUAI...
      - AxEy 4y ago
        Thanks
      - YorkshireSeason 4y ago
        Survey propagation works primarily with random SAT instances, but isn't competitive with SAT instances that arise in industrial verification, where CDCL shines. Some gossip: survey propagation was proposed by Mezard, Parisi, and Zecchina [1], and G. Parisi won the physics Nobel price in 2021 [2]. [1] M. Mezard, G. Parisi, R. Zecchina, Analytic and Algorithmic Solution of Random Satisfiability Problems. https://aiichironakano.github.io/cs653/Mezard-RSAT-Science02.pdf https://aiichironakano.github.io/cs653/Mezard-RSAT-Science02... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Parisi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Parisi
malux85 4y ago
I learnt unity and then added a websocket server to the game, build a virtual lab, and then wrote a simple JSON api so I could create geometry, materials and lighting to the scene. Then I modified my quantum chemistry simulation platform (https://atomictessellator.com https://atomictessellator.com) so that it would use this Python/websocket interface to a running 3D engine to visualise the molecular simulations Why? It’s fun and I wanted to see if it would work.
quechimba 4y ago
I've been working on a web framework in Ruby. It's inspired by all the JS frameworks, but uses Haml instead of JSX and all code is executed on the server, and patches are streamed to the browser. I'm about to run out of money so I'm planning to move to the Amazon rainforest where money will last longer...
- lathiat 4y ago
  Sounds like Rails in 2008. Long live server side rendering. You can tell I haven’t done a lot of web dev since 2014 or so. :)
  - quechimba 4y ago
    Yeah, well, although it's a server side VDOM, so it's more like React/Preact, but 100% server side. It's quite different from Rails. There are no models, no views, no controllers. There are components and there is a directory called app/pages where all components named page.haml will get their own route (kinda like the path based routing in Next.js). Ruby+Haml removes a lot of unnecessary syntax so components become much shorter than their JS equivalents. It feels really nice to use actually. Since the server knows which components are in use on a page, it will only include CSS for those components, which makes loading pretty fast. Then whenever a user clicks on a link they will receive the styles for the components that appear there. There is no need to write JavaScript, nor is it possible. It would be interesting to support custom elements (web components) but I haven't found a use case yet. I suppose it will come up some day, for things that need to be aware of browser state like scroll position in very long lists. It's really easy to make interactive components, just like React. I'm running the website on Fly.io and I barely notice the latency (I got about 60-120ms and my nearest edge node is in a different continent). I feel like I'm up to something good, though I'm gonna need to attract some users and contributors to make it usable. There are a few bugs and lots of improvements to be made... But it works!
- xkcd1963 4y ago
  Uh, where? Manaos?
MrLeap 4y ago
I'm ahead of the curve of this wave, but I've been making a first person Lovecraftian text editor rpg where you type into a mechanical typewriter as a tentacle monster. Exports .txt files, has printer "support". https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1552977798452609024 https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1552977798452609024 I started the autumn after covid reached America.
compton93 4y ago
Haven’t been laid off but I see it coming in the next few months. I do DBA/performance tuning on MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server (and recently Cockroach). Being remote in Australia makes it hard to get another job so I’m thinking to learn a trade and exit tech as a career. Recently I got into using mono.Cecil to rewrite c# assemblies (specifically assemblies created by IKVM). I haven’t had a personal project in years but this has definitely reignited a spark, so I’m going to try for a remote software engineering job first.
BuckyBeaver 4y ago
I'm thinking of building a plane. Also a couple of applications. And finally learning to play an instrument. Meanwhile I'm looking forward to my $440 a week in unemployment!
bradlys 4y ago
Absurd, most definitely. I got divorced about a year and a half ago. I’m 32 - for what it’s worth. In June, I left my job and SF. Put all my stuff in storage and went to the east coast for a month then went to Europe for 3 months. After all that, I committed to getting a six month lease on an apartment in Manhattan. Been here since November. I haven’t worked at all. Maybe done a total of 20 leetcode problems but I spend way more time reading about layoffs and hiring freezes than interview prep. Mostly have spent my time at the gym, Broadway shows, meeting new people, and watching a lot of content online. I go out social dancing 5x/week and to the gym about the same amount. I’m trying to get better at yoga and getting a v-taper at the weights. I’d go out more but it’s hard to find the dances on some nights. (Sunday’s and Monday’s are particularly slow in nyc) The absurd part is that I’ve done all of this in hopes of meeting a fantastic woman and seducing her to come to SFBA where I can start a family, build a house in the Santa Cruz mountains, and enjoy the region. It is quite absurd - mainly cause it has no chance in hell of working but it wasn’t going to work in SF either. We’ll see where I end up moving next - too ugly and too much melanin for Manhattan.
- throwawayeng999 4y ago
  New York, and Manhattan specifically, is uniquely difficult as a place to find a woman to settle down with! I'm sure you can do it, but don't be shocked if you find a lot of women are picky or career-focused and uninterested in serious relationships, or just averse to commitment!
  - bradlys 4y ago
    Honestly: The biggest issue I find is finding any women who are single to begin with. I do find women here and they do show up (especially compared to SF) but it’s still shit odds cause they’re always in relationships! It doesn’t help that I’m the Dalit of the professional world. (Working in tech) Here, finance reigns king. Doctors and law are fine. Tech though? (Even if rich) May as well be a janitor. Status obsessed in this region. They don’t even think about the money. Tbh - the real issue though is that I’m just an ugly fuck with a hard to place racial makeup. I’m going to get some more cosmetic surgery in May/June because I need to do something to improve my odds if this isn’t working.
i_have_an_idea 4y ago
I have not been laid off, but, as a contractor, I am well-aware that, at any point, I could have no income. I like golf and I've noticed there aren't many good sites on the internet, so I'm trying to build a golf portal. So far, I've implemented a very basic golf odds aggregation service -- https://www.golfodds.io/ https://www.golfodds.io/ if anyone wants to check it out. I plan to work on it in my spare time and build it up. Also open to any cool ideas, if you want to share -- feel free to email me from the site.
- costco 4y ago
  I love simple bootstrap sites. If you want to monetize it make all of the sportsbook names into affiliate links. Some books are offering really good terms (20-30% revshare + fixed amount per signup). See https://www.bestfightodds.com/ https://www.bestfightodds.com/ if you want a site that does this for MMA rather nicely - they were acquired by a subsidiary of Catena Media last year, they have an extensive portfolio of sites like this. If you eventually add historical data people will scrape your site and try to clone it so that may be a problem. Another idea: I don't really know anything about golf but scraping sites like https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.46970.jon-rahm.html https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.46970.jon-rahm.html and making player pages or tooltips that show up when you hover over a player name that might be useful. If you can make a site that bettors regularly go to you can make a lot of money.
  - i_have_an_idea 4y ago
    > I love simple bootstrap sites. Thanks! I picked the simplest thing that I know that could work. That's really great insight, actually. I definitely thought about adding the affiliate links, however I am somewhat unsure about the legality of promoting sportsbooks within the US. I think there are certain licensing requirements. I may look into it in more detail in the future, if the site picks up in traffic and search rankings. > See https://www.bestfightodds.com/ https://www.bestfightodds.com/ if you want a site that does this for MMA rather nicely This is super on-point. BFO was my inspiration for doing this and I know Catena and other affiliates typically have an interest in successful sports sites, so that thought, as a potential eventual exit strategy, crossed my mind. > If you eventually add historical data people will scrape your site and try to clone it so that may be a problem. I do have historical data in the backend, but I haven't done anything with it yet. Great point about the scrapers. I don't have a solution for that yet, although I am aware CloudFlare offers certain tools. Player pages are a great idea, although I need to think what data will be useful and, preferably, won't require a lot of manual upkeep.
ChristopherDrum 4y ago
My last day is scheduled for around March 31 (I have vacation I can use between then and now). I'm currently thinking about what I want to do with my time off. I will have the luxury of being able to do NOTHING, if I so choose, for a while. I live in Japan, so I will first have paperwork to do (switch visa status, get health insurance squared away, etc) For the cool stuff, I'm thinking of picking a project/skill each week and devoting a full week to that, to see if I enjoy it and can get any mental traction. Becoming more proficient with pure C has been a lot of fun, so I'll definitely push forward on that. I have a couple of Pico-8 projects to work on. There's any number of opaque or classical technologies that I'd like to understand more deeply. I'll enter a game-jam, just to keep myself on a proper schedule with a proper deadline. There are a lot of books I want to read. At some point though I'll need to collect my thoughts and start looking for the next thing. I have recruiters already knocking on my door, and the company will pay for 6 months of job agency assistance. But to tell the truth, I just can't see myself jumping back into software engineering as a full-time career so I don't yet know how best to utilize these resources. Sorting myself out is a critical goal for the coming months. "What do I want to be when I grow up?" is almost as difficult to answer at 51 as it was at 18.
GalahiSimtam 4y ago
Kinda. I started a gap year, thinking I'll finalize my Skyrim mod while traveling round the world. Coworkers bade me farewell and wished good luck on my next adventure. Two weeks in, Elon Musk took over Twitter So now I'm also settling thoughts on my next lifestyle business kind of project, something I kept in mind, though with those AI improvements these days it might get a new flavor
emh68 4y ago
I haven't been laid off, but due to the economy I've been trying to come up with something I can do to become self-reliant. I've built a forum platform, and I've been buying up ___forum.com domains and pointing them at it. So far it has been costing me lots of money, and no users are showing up, but it's my vision and I'm not going to give up so easily.
- pornel 4y ago
  The hard lesson with forums is they're not about the software, or a domain, but the people who can be reached there. Communities will endure the worst software, and also collapse as soon as key people leave.
  - emh68 4y ago
    I think that's very true. However many forums die due to the owner not being able to pay the bills or stop spam. Xenforo + anti-spam addons ain't cheap, google ads won't take just anyone and the payout is very low. Or they just get bored with running a final fantasy fansite. This is where reddit becomes more appealing because if someone deletes a subreddit you don't have to find an entirely new site to join, someone will just recreate it. Of course Reddit is busy trying to make it's VC owners back all of their billions, so its vision has become heavily compromised.
throwawayeng999 4y ago
Has anyone tried consulting as a DevOps or SRE? The grind and the firefighting is forever and endless, and the new services you have to learn, the dev and product demands that are poorly planned, make one want to quit, and consult on specific projects. CI CD pipelines, and general purpose SRE project consulting. I'm thinking about quitting in a high cost of living place and living off of savings will I search for gigs and build a network. Is that absurd?
sacnoradhq 4y ago
Never depend on an employer for balance-sheet or income-sheet security. It can only be had through ownership. Ownership is harder and riskier. Worker-owned co-ops are the way to go, not megacorps. Startups are special kinds of fast growth businesses that are rare and rarely successful. They exist, but there aren't many. There is a lot of money thrown at startups because the upside is potentially very lucrative, e.g., IRR positive.

135 points by x86hacker1010 4y ago

Life is pretty absurd and wonder more and more why we put so much stake into a job when the employer effectively doesn't care about you. Anyone taking some time to do cool stuff?

IAmGraydon 4y ago

I don’t need my employer to care about me. I have a family and friends for that. At work, it’s a business transaction. I provide them with value and I’m compensated with money. I increase the value I provide and I can demand more.

majkinetor 4y ago
One doesn't need that, but one certainly wants that. Value is not just what you create directly but also indrectly (such as rising moral in the company, attracting people etc.).

revskill 4y ago

Yes. I'm making a YAML to SQL converter here: https://yaml2sql.netlify.app https://yaml2sql.netlify.app. It's mostly for fun, useless for most of use cases.

levkk 4y ago
I like. I had to do something similar a while back as part of an ETL pipeline.
frompdx 4y ago
Have a look at schema hero for inspiration. https://schemahero.io/ https://schemahero.io/
- revskill 4y ago
  Thanks. I also love to extend the project to support ALL kinds of SQL.

f6v 4y ago

Your employer doesn’t care about you the same way your parents would. Good employers care about enabling you to do your job effectively and efficiently. But it’s all transactional. Doesn’t mean that you can’t find an arrangement that’s good for both you and employer. But don’t ever think it’s like a family. Saves you a lot of frustration. See it for what it is.

m0llusk 4y ago
This can happen, but Paul "Kinko" Orfalea's book "Copy This!" goes into a lot of detail about how it makes sense to care about employees as people and doing so actually contributes greatly to the bottom line. His company "Kinko's Copies" is not the greatest tech leader ever, but it provided basic services to ordinary people using low paid labor and managed to have employee morale and retention far above other companies in this class, fast food companies being perhaps notable for bad employee morale and turnover so extreme that at times it threatens operations.
- r0p3 4y ago
  This example illustrates the first comment's point: it is fundamentally a transactional relationship. "Caring contributes greatly to the bottom line" means the goal of "caring" is increased productivity.
  - m0llusk 4y ago
    Not to belabor the point, but if I understand the book correctly Paul did things this way because he believed it was the right thing to do and it was the best fit for him and his personality. Relating this way to employees allowed him to live with himself and humanized the business. So the increased productivity was a happy coincidence of his insistence on positive human interaction being a foundational element of business operations. He never really expected to be successful or anything like the great success which unfolded. The entire business was basically winging it in order to make money because he had trouble following more common paths.
don-code 4y ago

jeniwren 4y ago

Love this question! My husband was laid off recently and it feels like his free time instead has been accosted by our young children and house renovation:/ Related note, I came across this newsletter which goes into more detail about our “work” identity and how your employer doesn’t (to your point!) “care about you” (https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/work-life-balance-is-a-capitalist https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/work-life-balance-is-a-...)

yafbum 4y ago
Why the :/ ? Spending time with young children and renovating a house sounds like a smart choice. The time with children you will never be able to make up for later. Renovating a house is full of interesting challenges and rewards that are all to yourself.
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  Chores, house projects and childcare are all productive work. As seen here, no outsiders will ever gainsay you for doing them. Pretty much the only person to criticise that approach will be a spouse. Romantic partners usually wish for more time to spend together, deepening the relationship or just hanging out. This isn't productive per se, but it's natural that your life partner would like to actually live a life with you and not see you checking off tasks at home.
ExxKA 4y ago
I would recommend that we rents a desk in a coworking space. Get out of the house every day, cause there's always more to do at home.
jl2718 4y ago
“Instead” of what? Is his true calling house renovations and childcare? If not, then it’s probably a choice that is being made for him. Personally, I love my babies and I consider it worth my time for basic care and teaching them things, but only as much as it benefits them. For the house renovations and all other labor that goes into partner-driven life, I would be much happier living in a mud hut with a candle and a math book, but I’ll never whisper a word about it. Its easy to become someone’s unlimited source of free labor, and they’ll always think they’re doing you a favor.

anthropodie 4y ago

I am happy with my current employer but I always liked Paul Graham's idea of not having a boss[0]. I had read it quite a while back but here's the gist of it: Paul mentions that we work best when we work in a group of 8-20 people in a flat structure like our hunter gatherer ancestors use to do. Each member have their own roles and responsibilities and each individual contributes the well being and future security of the group. Such a group is optimal communication wise and it also offers greater incentive for it's members to work harder as you are directly participating in your own growth unlike our current structure where people are helping other people get rich. This is very extreme take but imagine if companies are capped at 20-50 employees. Will it work? I think it might. What do you guys think? 0: You were not meant to have boss - http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html Edit: rewording.

LesZedCB 4y ago
in a cooperative framework instead of competitive framework, i think this would be the ideal structure.
tester756 4y ago
>This is very extreme take but imagine if companies are capped at 20-50 employees. Will it work? I think it will. What do you guys think? I don't think. I cannot imagine companies doing GPU, CPUs, Windows, etc. with just 20-50ppl.
- frereubu 4y ago
  Presumably you would, only what are different departments within a single company now would be separate companies. Probably similar kinds of blessings and curses as microservices.
  - sdiacom 4y ago
    The once CEO of Sears tried splitting the corporation into thirty to forty companies: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ayn-rand-destroyed-sears https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ay... (I recall reading a more entertaining and detailed write-up, but this is what I could find on a quick Google Search) In short, turns out aligning thirty to forty competing profit motives is hard.

tprophet 4y ago

The amount of personal investment I have in an organization is directly tied to my personal upside. If it's my own company (I have run two startups) then I live and breathe it. If it's a Fortune 500 company or the government or whatever, then I give full effort, but I won't grind up my health or personal life. That's possibly justified with an 8 or 9 figure potential exit, but it's definitely not justified for 5 figures worth of stock.

thewopr 4y ago

I'm going to finally try to start my own company. Will it be a "startup"? I don't know. But it will be technical and it will go from 0-1 (or from 0-0). After years of lurking here, watching on the sidelines, working for larger companies, having kids, buying a house, I'm finally going to take the dive. I'm excited, nervous, lost, all at the same time. But I have enough savings and an accommodating spouse, so I don't have to work for a while. I'm a long-time academic, turned ML-practitioner. I have no major online presence. I don't have a brand. But if anyone is interested in talking, DM me, I have lots of time and am still in the divergent phase of entrepreneurship. Edit: Added email address to profile. Excuse the confusion, I have been a lurker too long.

ExxKA 4y ago
DM you how? What's your twitter handle?
- majkinetor 4y ago
  Meh guys, it took 5 minutes just out of curiosity: https://github.com/thewopr https://github.com/thewopr
  - thewopr 4y ago
    Actually, that's not my profile. My username doesn't align on github. My github profile is github.com/lawinslow
    - majkinetor 4y ago
      I judged by the timeline and mention of AI project among the stars... :)
- thewopr 4y ago
  As I mentioned, long-time lurker. Added my email address in my profile.
dfraser992 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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_jcrossley 4y ago

I’m taking some time to study classical guitar with a private teacher at ~conservatory level. Feels like my form of “quitting tech to work on a farm”. I’ll also work on my own personal projects and see if any of them can gain enough momentum as a lifestyle business to avoid returning to soul-sucking BigTech.

noahth 4y ago

I worked for several years as an independent contractor; when my last big project ended several months ago, I decided to take a sabbatical for the climate. So far that has meant spending more time with my kids, learning to compost, building some new raised garden beds, mending some clothes that I previously would've replaced, reading more books, and various other little things. I plan to start volunteering soon with the local tool library, and there are tons of other things we'd like to do to reduce our budget and carbon footprint, when we can get to them. I know not everyone can afford to "just take time off" but among those laid off from a tech company and browsing HN, surely some fraction of you could afford to do the same. You will still have a career to come back to if you spend a year turning your attention and energy to the climate crisis. BUT if you're under 40 or so (I'm 37), you may find that there is not a recognizable planet to come back to if you continue to focus on your career until the retirement age we were brought up to expect.

uxcolumbo 4y ago
Sounds sublime... connecting with nature, your family and your local community. We don't really need much to have a good life. Just wonder whether we'll be able to escape our current destructive economic and value system and move towards a more circular economic system[0] on time to keep global warming increase under 2C. But for that our value system needs to change first... getting away from the 'more more more' value system and focusing more on what you wrote about. Would be great for example if we had a richer reuse and repair economy. [0] Waste equals food https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/waste-food/ https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/waste-food/
bosch_mind 4y ago
On a more personal note, how much money did you save to feel comfortable doing this?
- noahth 4y ago
  When my wife and i decided to try this, we figured we had runway to live without dramatic changes to our standard of living for 3-4 years. The initial period we agreed on for the sabbatical was 6 months and we've extended that to 1 year. Of course, we are intentionally changing our budget and standard of living along the way. Most likely I will not go four years without working, but I may spend some time exploring other work options before I hang my shingle out for software projects again.

mortenjorck 4y ago

I’m getting back into my synesthesia art project: https://testfixture.presteign.com/ https://testfixture.presteign.com/ (Running on Grav with Turbolinks; visuals made in Affinity Designer; audio made in Reason)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

SeanAnderson 4y ago

I'm proud to say I am taking some time to work on cool stuff! It's definitely in the "I should start coding and stop brainstorming" phase, but I've been enjoying all the theorycrafting. I'm creating a web-first colony simulation game. I'm inspired by SimAnt, RimWorld, idleRPG, and Tamagotchi. My goal is to establish a strong, daily, mental health hygiene routine which promotes box breathing, gratitude journaling, and improved awareness of my health, fatigue, and motivation. The game unfolds on an alien world covered in a thick sea of fog and asteroid impact craters. Huge fog waves roam the planet, splash against the crater walls, and continually intrude with frigid moisture. A damaged terraforming satellite orbits the planet and directs its limited energy towards one crater which keeps that crater habitable. There are three entities in the story: an AI powering the terraforming satellite, the consciousness of a biologist uploaded into the satellite's computer, and a fledgling ant colony within the barely habitable crater. The player fills the role of the protagonist, the biologist, and the hostile weather plays the role of the antagonist. The goal is to terraform the planet without throwing it out of balance. The ant colony simulation runs on ~autopilot similar to idleRPG but with slowly unfolding visuals like 1x speed RimWorld. It's a real-time simulation which "runs" even when the tab is closed, but is only able to be controlled when the satellite orbits overhead and has line-of-sight with the crater. The queen hatches workers, workers expand the nest, navigate the fog, and search for food. The ants lay pheromone trails to food, but every night the fog rolls in and wipes clean the pheromones. Each day the ants begin searching for food once more. The colony grows optimally given available information, but is not omniscient or even opinionated. The colony will never push itself out of the local maximum of a single crater and struggles with attention due to the fog. Surprisingly, during initial nest expansion, the ants discover a rectifying crystal which allows them to sense electromagnetic waves emitted by the satellite. They develop a ritual around attempting to interpret these electrical impulses which provides a very rough form of of one-way communication from the satellite to the ants. The biologist leverages this communicational channel to assist the colony by providing high-level environmental awareness and opinionated responses. Each day, the player is asked to show up and check-in at a consistent time. The player wants to be able to nurture their colony, but they need to unlock the ability to do so. They begin by engaging with a guided, box-breathing routine while "awakening" the consciousness of the biologist. It's effortful for the biologist to take autonomy from the terraforming AI in the same way waking up is effortful and so the player is guided through that process. Then, the player is greeted with a technophilic UI which provides in-depth stats and charts of their colony and the planet. Based on current and projected resources, the user makes a decision to encourage the colony to push harder or to ease up. This influences whether the colony will push out of a local maximum, but comes at the cost of damaging the health of the ants. The player needs to balance pushing the colony to expand into additional land with tapering their exertion to avoid long-term negative effects. Finally, the player is given an opportunity to self-reflect and journal on the goals and progress of the ants. Gratitude journaling provides a means of keeping attention on high-value food resources such that the ants don't lose track entirely due to the fog. Non-gratitude journaling (i.e. venting, daily reflections) provide a source of entropy for the weather system of the world. Outside of check-in time, the player is only able to watch their high-level decisions slowly play out over the course of the day. The interface is calming and provides an opportunity for brief respite similar to taking a moment to observe an aquarium. Overall, I am building software to help me be more consistent and diligent in my personal growth and mental health hygiene. Sometimes when I get depressed I stop caring for myself, but I'm always good about showing up for others. I want to leverage that to promote self-care. Conversely, when I'm firing on all-cylinders, I tend to think my motivation and determination are limitless. I take on significant personal growth goals only to eventually reach a mental breaking point because I never identify a good time to push less hard until forced. So, I would benefit from a visual indication of where I am at on a motivation/determination boom/bust cycle so that I don't find myself surprised by burnout. I've never really responded well to software that implies I have problems which need fixing. Instead, I do much better when someone tells me a story, I contrast that story to my own, and I succeed in identifying personal growth areas through the reflection. Instead of creating "yet another mental health / journaling app" I am interested in telling a compelling, sci-fi story where the protagonist struggles to succeed in their goals due to a failure to acknowledge their humanity. I believe telling this story, while providing tools to participate and a pet to stay attached, is likely to instill long-term changes in those who engage.

tukantje 4y ago

Constantly battling with issues of self worth and suicidal thoughts since I've got laid off so that's about it. Being a migrant, who is laid off, who is/was a sole bread winner does the trick I guess.

theGnuMe 4y ago
I feel for you. I've battled self worth feelings through out my career as a lot of my identity was tied up in my work and the fear of failure. I've since found a new perspective that's helped me transform my identity and self-esteem through therapy and journaling about my experience/thoughts. I still have negative thoughts, but I see them as independent things to observe and not part of my core self. This is your story to write and other people's opinions are just that their opinions which is "none of your business". The layoff is not a reflection of you. You are worth it and things will get better.
- tukantje 4y ago
  Thank you. You are right - it is just a relatively darker time, so to speak. Going to therapy for a while now - to solve for a ton of trauma, as I don't want to pass it on to my potential future kids so to speak, so it helps.
drewrv 4y ago
Please don't hesitate to reach out to people and organizations who can help with these thoughts.
- tukantje 4y ago
  Thank you - I am already in touch with a therapist so no need to worry. Just being open about the struggle, is all.

yawnxyz 4y ago

Got laid off in 2017 and never got a real job again. (I have a UX background) 1. I immediately went to Spain to do the Camino de Santiago. Was learning building web apps (Meteor) and launchd a full landing page / swing dance registration site while on the Camino. 2. Learned React and a few other tools after that, tried to be a consultant for a year. Then tried to launch a bunch of projects ("startups" if you wanted to be generous with that term) 3. Met my partner (and now cofounder) at a swing dance, who showed me microbiology and "the potential of phage therapy" because doctors weren't getting access to it 4. I created a random side project connecting docs with phage labs with her (now six years ago). We started connecting docs and labs, and have since taken on 40+ cases, and successfully treated two. Last year we moved to Sydney to essentially run a translational microbiology lab / phage therapy clinical trial — she's the microbiologist and I'm the research software engineer. We're just treating our 4th patient now. I'm building data collection tools for our bioinformaticians, doctors/nurses and microbiology lab, and trying to scale this project up using automation tools and robots. We're creating reports for the TGA to make sure our preps are safe. There's lots of work in areas I've never deal with (data science, stats, building full stack web apps, dealing with OpenTrons, REDCap, and a billion other tools). It doesn't pay nearly as much as tech, but it's the most absurd thing I could ever do as a "UX designer"

domlebo70 4y ago
Are you guys doing the TGA stuff yourselves?
blahblah1234567 4y ago
What a coincidence! I've been thinking about taking a sabbatical and walking the the Camino de Santiago. During that time I will likely study for some IT certs to demonstrate new skills in cloud servers & security. How did you feel about balancing studying skills with socializing & enjoying the journey of the Camino?
- thorin 4y ago
  Depends what you're hoping to get out of it. If you want to socialise on route or look at is as some kind of spiritual pilgrimage I'd focus 100% on the walk while you're doing it. Seems like a good opportunity to forget about computing / work for a while! People asking why the Camino, I haven't done it but I have done a number of treks / meditation retreats etc. It sounds fantastic but I think there are many physical journeys like this that could represent a lot of "inner travel".

pictur 4y ago

We need to get rid of the bullshit about companies trying to connect with employees. As the company grows, it does not benefit the employee at all, but the bosses still wait for more effort. The biggest problem of modern man is being pushed into such stupid sentiments.

throwawayeng999 4y ago
Growing companies have short memories! You can build teams, processes and culture, and as the company multiplies it's staffing levels, new bosses take hold, and all the rest of it, the loudest salesmen come out of the woodwork to push their personal brands. It doesn't help if they come to the table with workaholism as a trait they're branding themselves with.

busboy 4y ago

Coming from someone whom loves their career(engineering not tech) - I am learning web dev for fun on the side. Got some cool ideas for websites and low effort income streams.

itisit 4y ago
Without revealing details of your ideas, how did you go about getting the ideas in the first place? Were you bumping into problems and encouraged to solve them in a more structured way? Did you have conversations or read some stuff that inspired you to create something? Did you work on a project purely for fun that led to being a potential business? Seriously asking as someone who is grateful to have a wealth of resources at their disposal, but suffers from a complete lack of imagination in the idea department—that is any idea that would motivate me to the point of starting up a startup.

roombarampage 4y ago

I’m working on math videos :) https://youtube.com/@logicaltoroid https://youtube.com/@logicaltoroid

ArcMex 4y ago

Not laid off but I quit my job 7 months ago to start my own company. Just the admin of setting up and running the day-to-day has taught me a lot. But the biggest lesson I learned is that I have the capacity to research and implement technologies new to me in relatively short amounts of time to make meaningful impact. In addition, my confidence has improved and I am more likely to accept challenging work within my domain than ever before. What I am doing running a small business is not cool in the context of the OP and the discussion, but it's cool to me in the sense that I did something I once feared and stuck with it. Thanks for sharing, everyone. Really cool projects. Take care.

BuckyBeaver 4y ago
I think that's worth a lot. Sometimes I worry that I'm just not fast enough at some of this stuff, but then I pull off something well under pressure and feel better. Temporarily!

AxEy 4y ago

Not laid off but on an extended sabbatical. I'm working on a Rust library for SAT solving and other things informed by John Harrison's text on Automated Theorem Proving. https://github.com/aetilley/harrison-rust https://github.com/aetilley/harrison-rust This is largely for me to to learn Rust, but I think it may have the potential to turn into something cool. Next on the todo list is optimizations to DPLL as the existing implementation is currently in its most basic form (I skipped optimizations there for the time being in order to move on to predicate calculus).

theGnuMe 4y ago
Interesting.. What do you think about Survey Propagation?
- AxEy 4y ago
  I'm afraid I was not familiar, although I'm looking at a few related papers on the arxiv now. What brought that approach to mind?
  - theGnuMe 4y ago
    Survey Propagation is one of the best algorithms for solving very hard SAT instances. Here's a good review paper that captures it. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~sabhar/publications/surveyPropUAI07b.pdf http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~sabhar/publications/surveyPropUAI...
    - AxEy 4y ago
      Thanks
    - YorkshireSeason 4y ago
      Survey propagation works primarily with random SAT instances, but isn't competitive with SAT instances that arise in industrial verification, where CDCL shines. Some gossip: survey propagation was proposed by Mezard, Parisi, and Zecchina [1], and G. Parisi won the physics Nobel price in 2021 [2]. [1] M. Mezard, G. Parisi, R. Zecchina, Analytic and Algorithmic Solution of Random Satisfiability Problems. https://aiichironakano.github.io/cs653/Mezard-RSAT-Science02.pdf https://aiichironakano.github.io/cs653/Mezard-RSAT-Science02... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Parisi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Parisi

malux85 4y ago

I learnt unity and then added a websocket server to the game, build a virtual lab, and then wrote a simple JSON api so I could create geometry, materials and lighting to the scene. Then I modified my quantum chemistry simulation platform (https://atomictessellator.com https://atomictessellator.com) so that it would use this Python/websocket interface to a running 3D engine to visualise the molecular simulations Why? It’s fun and I wanted to see if it would work.

quechimba 4y ago

I've been working on a web framework in Ruby. It's inspired by all the JS frameworks, but uses Haml instead of JSX and all code is executed on the server, and patches are streamed to the browser. I'm about to run out of money so I'm planning to move to the Amazon rainforest where money will last longer...

lathiat 4y ago
Sounds like Rails in 2008. Long live server side rendering. You can tell I haven’t done a lot of web dev since 2014 or so. :)
- quechimba 4y ago
  Yeah, well, although it's a server side VDOM, so it's more like React/Preact, but 100% server side. It's quite different from Rails. There are no models, no views, no controllers. There are components and there is a directory called app/pages where all components named page.haml will get their own route (kinda like the path based routing in Next.js). Ruby+Haml removes a lot of unnecessary syntax so components become much shorter than their JS equivalents. It feels really nice to use actually. Since the server knows which components are in use on a page, it will only include CSS for those components, which makes loading pretty fast. Then whenever a user clicks on a link they will receive the styles for the components that appear there. There is no need to write JavaScript, nor is it possible. It would be interesting to support custom elements (web components) but I haven't found a use case yet. I suppose it will come up some day, for things that need to be aware of browser state like scroll position in very long lists. It's really easy to make interactive components, just like React. I'm running the website on Fly.io and I barely notice the latency (I got about 60-120ms and my nearest edge node is in a different continent). I feel like I'm up to something good, though I'm gonna need to attract some users and contributors to make it usable. There are a few bugs and lots of improvements to be made... But it works!
xkcd1963 4y ago
Uh, where? Manaos?

MrLeap 4y ago

I'm ahead of the curve of this wave, but I've been making a first person Lovecraftian text editor rpg where you type into a mechanical typewriter as a tentacle monster. Exports .txt files, has printer "support". https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1552977798452609024 https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1552977798452609024 I started the autumn after covid reached America.

compton93 4y ago

Haven’t been laid off but I see it coming in the next few months. I do DBA/performance tuning on MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server (and recently Cockroach). Being remote in Australia makes it hard to get another job so I’m thinking to learn a trade and exit tech as a career. Recently I got into using mono.Cecil to rewrite c# assemblies (specifically assemblies created by IKVM). I haven’t had a personal project in years but this has definitely reignited a spark, so I’m going to try for a remote software engineering job first.

BuckyBeaver 4y ago

I'm thinking of building a plane. Also a couple of applications. And finally learning to play an instrument. Meanwhile I'm looking forward to my $440 a week in unemployment!

bradlys 4y ago

Absurd, most definitely. I got divorced about a year and a half ago. I’m 32 - for what it’s worth. In June, I left my job and SF. Put all my stuff in storage and went to the east coast for a month then went to Europe for 3 months. After all that, I committed to getting a six month lease on an apartment in Manhattan. Been here since November. I haven’t worked at all. Maybe done a total of 20 leetcode problems but I spend way more time reading about layoffs and hiring freezes than interview prep. Mostly have spent my time at the gym, Broadway shows, meeting new people, and watching a lot of content online. I go out social dancing 5x/week and to the gym about the same amount. I’m trying to get better at yoga and getting a v-taper at the weights. I’d go out more but it’s hard to find the dances on some nights. (Sunday’s and Monday’s are particularly slow in nyc) The absurd part is that I’ve done all of this in hopes of meeting a fantastic woman and seducing her to come to SFBA where I can start a family, build a house in the Santa Cruz mountains, and enjoy the region. It is quite absurd - mainly cause it has no chance in hell of working but it wasn’t going to work in SF either. We’ll see where I end up moving next - too ugly and too much melanin for Manhattan.

throwawayeng999 4y ago
New York, and Manhattan specifically, is uniquely difficult as a place to find a woman to settle down with! I'm sure you can do it, but don't be shocked if you find a lot of women are picky or career-focused and uninterested in serious relationships, or just averse to commitment!
- bradlys 4y ago
  Honestly: The biggest issue I find is finding any women who are single to begin with. I do find women here and they do show up (especially compared to SF) but it’s still shit odds cause they’re always in relationships! It doesn’t help that I’m the Dalit of the professional world. (Working in tech) Here, finance reigns king. Doctors and law are fine. Tech though? (Even if rich) May as well be a janitor. Status obsessed in this region. They don’t even think about the money. Tbh - the real issue though is that I’m just an ugly fuck with a hard to place racial makeup. I’m going to get some more cosmetic surgery in May/June because I need to do something to improve my odds if this isn’t working.

i_have_an_idea 4y ago

I have not been laid off, but, as a contractor, I am well-aware that, at any point, I could have no income. I like golf and I've noticed there aren't many good sites on the internet, so I'm trying to build a golf portal. So far, I've implemented a very basic golf odds aggregation service -- https://www.golfodds.io/ https://www.golfodds.io/ if anyone wants to check it out. I plan to work on it in my spare time and build it up. Also open to any cool ideas, if you want to share -- feel free to email me from the site.

costco 4y ago
I love simple bootstrap sites. If you want to monetize it make all of the sportsbook names into affiliate links. Some books are offering really good terms (20-30% revshare + fixed amount per signup). See https://www.bestfightodds.com/ https://www.bestfightodds.com/ if you want a site that does this for MMA rather nicely - they were acquired by a subsidiary of Catena Media last year, they have an extensive portfolio of sites like this. If you eventually add historical data people will scrape your site and try to clone it so that may be a problem. Another idea: I don't really know anything about golf but scraping sites like https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.46970.jon-rahm.html https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.46970.jon-rahm.html and making player pages or tooltips that show up when you hover over a player name that might be useful. If you can make a site that bettors regularly go to you can make a lot of money.
- i_have_an_idea 4y ago
  > I love simple bootstrap sites. Thanks! I picked the simplest thing that I know that could work. That's really great insight, actually. I definitely thought about adding the affiliate links, however I am somewhat unsure about the legality of promoting sportsbooks within the US. I think there are certain licensing requirements. I may look into it in more detail in the future, if the site picks up in traffic and search rankings. > See https://www.bestfightodds.com/ https://www.bestfightodds.com/ if you want a site that does this for MMA rather nicely This is super on-point. BFO was my inspiration for doing this and I know Catena and other affiliates typically have an interest in successful sports sites, so that thought, as a potential eventual exit strategy, crossed my mind. > If you eventually add historical data people will scrape your site and try to clone it so that may be a problem. I do have historical data in the backend, but I haven't done anything with it yet. Great point about the scrapers. I don't have a solution for that yet, although I am aware CloudFlare offers certain tools. Player pages are a great idea, although I need to think what data will be useful and, preferably, won't require a lot of manual upkeep.

ChristopherDrum 4y ago

My last day is scheduled for around March 31 (I have vacation I can use between then and now). I'm currently thinking about what I want to do with my time off. I will have the luxury of being able to do NOTHING, if I so choose, for a while. I live in Japan, so I will first have paperwork to do (switch visa status, get health insurance squared away, etc) For the cool stuff, I'm thinking of picking a project/skill each week and devoting a full week to that, to see if I enjoy it and can get any mental traction. Becoming more proficient with pure C has been a lot of fun, so I'll definitely push forward on that. I have a couple of Pico-8 projects to work on. There's any number of opaque or classical technologies that I'd like to understand more deeply. I'll enter a game-jam, just to keep myself on a proper schedule with a proper deadline. There are a lot of books I want to read. At some point though I'll need to collect my thoughts and start looking for the next thing. I have recruiters already knocking on my door, and the company will pay for 6 months of job agency assistance. But to tell the truth, I just can't see myself jumping back into software engineering as a full-time career so I don't yet know how best to utilize these resources. Sorting myself out is a critical goal for the coming months. "What do I want to be when I grow up?" is almost as difficult to answer at 51 as it was at 18.

GalahiSimtam 4y ago

Kinda. I started a gap year, thinking I'll finalize my Skyrim mod while traveling round the world. Coworkers bade me farewell and wished good luck on my next adventure. Two weeks in, Elon Musk took over Twitter So now I'm also settling thoughts on my next lifestyle business kind of project, something I kept in mind, though with those AI improvements these days it might get a new flavor

emh68 4y ago

I haven't been laid off, but due to the economy I've been trying to come up with something I can do to become self-reliant. I've built a forum platform, and I've been buying up ___forum.com domains and pointing them at it. So far it has been costing me lots of money, and no users are showing up, but it's my vision and I'm not going to give up so easily.

pornel 4y ago
The hard lesson with forums is they're not about the software, or a domain, but the people who can be reached there. Communities will endure the worst software, and also collapse as soon as key people leave.
- emh68 4y ago
  I think that's very true. However many forums die due to the owner not being able to pay the bills or stop spam. Xenforo + anti-spam addons ain't cheap, google ads won't take just anyone and the payout is very low. Or they just get bored with running a final fantasy fansite. This is where reddit becomes more appealing because if someone deletes a subreddit you don't have to find an entirely new site to join, someone will just recreate it. Of course Reddit is busy trying to make it's VC owners back all of their billions, so its vision has become heavily compromised.

throwawayeng999 4y ago

Has anyone tried consulting as a DevOps or SRE? The grind and the firefighting is forever and endless, and the new services you have to learn, the dev and product demands that are poorly planned, make one want to quit, and consult on specific projects. CI CD pipelines, and general purpose SRE project consulting. I'm thinking about quitting in a high cost of living place and living off of savings will I search for gigs and build a network. Is that absurd?

sacnoradhq 4y ago

Never depend on an employer for balance-sheet or income-sheet security. It can only be had through ownership. Ownership is harder and riskier. Worker-owned co-ops are the way to go, not megacorps. Startups are special kinds of fast growth businesses that are rare and rarely successful. They exist, but there aren't many. There is a lot of money thrown at startups because the upside is potentially very lucrative, e.g., IRR positive.