Don’t fish without a license
I'm really curious about this story.
Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
111–120 of 322 posts
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#112Keeping high quality in a code base either requires dedicated person/team.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#113Start a company with a friend will bite you back one day (for me 20 years after the company starts !)
20 Years? That sounds good from a business stand point?
However, I guess how much of your friendship suffer during how much of that?
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#114That working in a big government setting just isn't for me. Doing data/reporting stuff in healthcare, to be more precise. After 4 long, long years drifting around in my job, crumbled self-esteem, some mild-ish depression, I finally found another job and got out. After a few months I realized that I was just 100% incompatible for the job I was in — not that I was unqualified or any of those other words that could also…
Could you elucidate the differences in the dynamics? I'm currently working with a company that works for the government, and I'm experiencing a lot of the same symptoms, so I'm wondering what the differences are that you see.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#115Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#1161. Not to naively trust others so very easily.
Which leads to... drastic change in your personality and that leads to..
2. Being very assertive, dominant, outgoing, life of the party, charisma, worldy wise etc.
I wish I was the same idealistic person I once was. I am definitely enjoying life way better than ever before but I no longer am naive.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#117Sadly, after more than 20 years building software, _NEVER_ trust a business person. My faith in humanity had to have me bitten by this the hard way more than once.
Yeah, I'm surprised that they trust each other at all. What keeps them from bashing each other with sticks? When I see business people smile at each other and shaking hands, I cannot make sense of this in my mind. What's the point of smiling when both people couldn't care less if the other person dropped dead on the spot.
They care whether they can get some use out of the other before either drops dead
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#118A few things:
1) People's words are like deep water. Pay careful attention to what people say--it's profoundly revealing (more than they realize). By listening, I've been able to identify people who intended to trouble me in some way. It's incredible, they just can't keep it inside even when pretending to be nice.
2) Actions speak louder than words (given #1, this is really saying something). Don't look for people to be who you want them to be; wait long enough for them to show themselves. And they will. ETA: You may occasionally encounter someone who is able to fool you for extended periods of time, like years. But even then they often leave useful clues as to their agenda.
3) If the product is free, the product is me!
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#119My "life lesson" happened when I was about 18. I was running a game server hosting company, everything was organic and I took it from 1 physical 1U server which I owned and co-located to about 10 servers, before I made a catastrophic mistake.
Anyway, I reached a point where my colocation fees were about 1.2k per month, I had been with my supplier from the very beginning, so from 1 server... At the peak I was grossing about 4-5k per month but generally monthly lows were about 2k, and everything had been organic, so I had no debts, and was just pumping everything back into the business. What happened was my provider offered to sell me his business for about 12k. You gotta keep in mind I was 18 at this time.
I took out a loan (my Dad was guarantor) and purchased his business. The aim was to, acquire his contracts for colocation with the datacenter and I was expecting to inherit an operating business which was turning in about 2-3k per month in normal "web hosting" businesses. All the sites were spread across about 30 servers, all of them really really old.
So, things went sour literally from day one. It turns out that he either fudged all of the sites on the billing software or they decided to just exodus on day one of me taking over. I ended up going from having healthy profit each month to operating at a deficit. Long story short it destroyed my business and nearly caused me to lose my degree at Uni from the stress of hacking away trying to save a failing business and continue with my degree.
Anyway, what did I learn?
Due diligence. Don't rush things. Don't trust people. You can really summarise this as a life lesson where I essentially ended up gifting someone 12k for "my patronage". It quickly became apparent I was his only customer and my success kept him just about ticking over, so I ended up "buying myself". I was pretty bitter about it for a long time, but I think I was just angry at myself for being so childishly naive to think someone I trusted wouldn't screw me over cause it suited him.
Re: Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way?
#120A company is a company, not a family. It's about making money, not about relationships. For better or worse, it's never really personal.
Too many people spend their whole careers somewhere (lost wages, lost skills and atrophy) because they still feel like the company actually cares for them.
They don’t.