mswen

35 ms·

1. 271.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   Ask them about their journey from pain-point and idea to where they are today. Listen carefully and somewhat skeptically to this story. Ask yourself, where do you get the sense that they are exaggerating or glossing over something. Ask ab
2. 272.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   What do you want to do at the small disruptive B2C software company? Are you wanting a technical development position? Product Management? Operations management? Partnership development? It occurs to me that being "incredibly well com
3. 273.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   I was an early employee in a start-up that had this policy. It felt very ambiguous. There is what people say and what they do. Even though it sounds great, in terms of flexibility and lack of HR stuff to deal with. In practice people tended
4. 274.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   Couple of strategies to consider: If the CEO is suggesting vesting for this equity position ask for highly accelerated vesting schedule Negotiate for protection against dilution if additional rounds of investment are needed. In the end, 8%
5. 275.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   I have read and enjoyed many of the classics that others have mentioned. I would give a shout-out to Wasteland of Flint by Thomas Harlan. I enjoyed it for how it incorporated alternate history in our relatively recent past - imagine a worl
6. 276.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   The article seemed really weak on details. I have done some work on text analysis from a couple of different major camps so I can read between the lines a bit, but for the HN audience it would be nice to point to a more technical write-up,
7. 277.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   Everything that you have mentioned is good. I would really focus on understanding a wide range of traditional statistics, ranging from various descriptive and exploratory techniques, to dimension reduction and latent factor discovery as we
8. 278.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   I am 52. I bill out consulting doing data science (stats, data wrangling, algorithms for weighted fusion of data into a single source of truth). On my own projects I combine my customer and market research background with web development (s
9. 279.▲
   by mswen 12y ago

   Go talk to a professor in applied math department. Explore the following - how many additional credits would it take to add applied math as a minor? Or, as a second major? Also inquire about whether you could get admitted into a grad progr
10. 280.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    The first thing to strike me is the double-edged sword which is the current massively profitable status of the business. Any sane executive will be very careful about doing anything to harm a massively profitable business. If they are not
11. 281.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    These guys do a variety of live action and animated videos. I have worked indirectly with them for a couple of clients. Not sure of pricing structure. I get the impression that clients are happy with the work they have done. http:/&#x
12. 282.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    The offer is clearly more like a founder in that you are agreeing to a significantly below market salary in exchange for a pretty sizable chunk of equity. So whether the "title" of co-founder is given or not, they are treating it
13. 283.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    My contrary opinion is that programming skills are one of the surest employment bets that a person your age can make. This is particularly true if you above average intelligence and enjoy the kind of abstract, puzzle solving work that is ce
14. 284.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    Thanks for the description of your workflow and the reflective thinking about your journey to get there. I was just looking at both R and Julia for similarity distances earlier today and thinking about which might work better in an automat
15. 285.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I would engage but not assume it will last very long. In fact I would do a three pronged approach early on. 1) I would identify a particularly nasty corner of the code base that could be sectioned off and improved in such a way that everyt
16. 286.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I recently was showing an acquaintance of mine a demo of something I was playing around with and a potential business model. He responded with "I wouldn't be that interested but if you could use those same capabilities to deliver
17. 287.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    thanks - is this a demo project or are you thinking of doing this as a business service available across other locations?
18. 288.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    Hi, looks interesting. How well organized were the city/county records? Did you have to do a lot of parsing and extractions from documents? Or, was the data well organized in databases or csv files?
19. 289.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    you could try the job board at http://www.datasciencecentral.com I haven't used it but most of the people visiting this site combine statistical knowledge and programming skills.
20. 290.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I have worked primarily remotely over the past 15 years as consultant, industry analyst, developer, statistician and writer. The settings have ranged from me being in about a 5% minority of a corporate workforce, to a small start-up that wa
21. 291.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    Thanks for the advice.
22. 292.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    Haskell or Julia? I have a highly varied background that includes: SPSS and R for statistical analysis, NLP scripting/programming on a very niche platform, some web app development using PHP, MySql, Javascript, LeafletJS and HighCharts
23. 293.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I have been learning about mapping. Using leafletjs to incorporate mapping elements in web applications. Building check-in operations based on current location, placing markers/icons and modifying the icon color to represent data value
24. 294.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    When I recently needed to add a mapping function to reporting web app I started looking around at what was available. I found the Leaflet libraries very accessible and well documented. A real relief for a self-taught developer. I looked at
25. 295.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I suspect that you are right about appropriate analysis of simple activity level and location as containing significant useful information. I looked into the telehealth market back in 2005 when I was an industry analyst. So much more seems
26. 296.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I think this looks very interesting. An interesting case where commodity technology (mobile phones) keeps getting more and more capable and reasonable price points and may gradually replace bespoke systems like the ones Eric Dishman talks
27. 297.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I would buy a mix of stocks that have regularly paid decent dividends. Every time the dividend cash built up to $20K I would make a growth oriented stock investment. I would also keep my eyes open for angel investing opportunities and som
28. 298.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    If you have the full-stack development skills to develop this on your own you may be able to beat them to market. If it is a consumer product where viral adoption can happen you might get a big enough start just by being first to market. It
29. 299.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    I have looked at a number of web scraping products and my largest client uses one of the established products pretty extensively. Your front page is very focused on using site searches as the starting point. Are there more full blown feat
30. 300.▲
    by mswen 12y ago

    Whether it is a consulting agency or freelancer, companies will often do a proposal process, sometimes with multiple providers at the same time, that enable them to harvest ideas and gain clarity in their own thinking about a project. They