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Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#111

Post by Slimbo »

woutr_be wrote: post #109
Slimbo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to stay positive, looks like you have a good idea what the issues are which means you can plan to make it better. Ideally you should do your best to find someone who can help by simply talking these issues though, ideally face to face. It looks to me that it's food that's the problem rather than your weight, so why not look at that first. With a longer term view; try to reverse that trend of weight slowly going o…

Thanks, my weight is the aftermath of the unhealthy food, and I do consider it my biggest problem. I constantly feel embarrassed when doing things, I feel shy when meeting new people, constantly wondering whether they're judging me on my weight or not. I've been trying for years to eat healthier, tried intermittent fasting as well. Usually it works for a few days, and then I screw it up over the weekend. I think that…

I do IF weekdays only, as I know I'll screw it up weekends. It's not as effective as if I did it every day obviously, but it's still better than not doing it at all!

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#112

Post by ryanmercer »

tomcam wrote: post #110
ryanmercer wrote: post #62

My life mostly. I'm 34, have a GED, have a bankruptcy, do not have a degree, do not have some sort of skill where I might be able to get around not having a degree like some sort of CS skills, I basically make a little less each year due to inflation and increase in insurance costs not being higher than the tiny merit based increase my employer gives, I've never had a relationship as an adult, I'm repeatedly denied j…

Hey, Ryan, thanks for sharing. It's hard. I have some thoughts--you didn't ask for feedback, so feel free to ignore. Also feel free to contact me via my profile address. No, I won't be selling your anything or trying to make money off you. But man, do I understand hard times. I anticipated being in your position when I was younger and my technique has worked repeatedly. I'm about twice your age and was never denied a…

>Have you considered contacting a few recruiters to see what they're looking for, then taking the time to acquire and/or sharpen your skills? These days I'm guessing it's something like C#, Python, maybe Go, but I'm spitballing. Point is, you still have plenty of time to get super strong at something. It may take a year, but it'd be better to earn $75K in 2 years at a job in Minnesota than languish at a dead end gig now.

I've no interest whatsoever in programming. I tinkered enough back in the day on MUDs and in a programming vocational class in high school that I know it is absolutely not for me. Even hammering out some really simple QBASIC games from scratch was incredibly frustrating for me.

As far as recruiters in general, I tried to use one a few years ago. They got my an interview, at a company with 4 employees in the US where I was told during the interview "IF we hire you, we do not provide insurance, my wife works at Eli Lilly so I am covered under her insurance" and it was a significant pay cut to do the same thing I do now and when I told them in the interview I would not be open to an offer I never heard from the recruiter again.

From my impression recruiters mostly want programmers or people with MBAs for placing in lower-level corporate positions, at least these are the sorts I've found in Google queries but perhaps I just don't know what I should be searching for.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#113

Post by ryanmercer »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #92
ryanmercer wrote: post #62

My life mostly. I'm 34, have a GED, have a bankruptcy, do not have a degree, do not have some sort of skill where I might be able to get around not having a degree like some sort of CS skills, I basically make a little less each year due to inflation and increase in insurance costs not being higher than the tiny merit based increase my employer gives, I've never had a relationship as an adult, I'm repeatedly denied j…

Do you have time to do things outside of work? For example running with a club of people or something. I just wonder if you are able to do things on the side that are real and difficult goals but that you can achieve on your own (though possibly after a lot of work). This obviously wouldn’t make your career life any better but you might have other things going on that would lead you not to describe life as a failure.

> This obviously wouldn’t make your career life any better but you might have other things going on that would lead you not to describe life as a failure.

I have my religious pursuits and what not but by failure I mostly mean I have no meaningful connections. All of my friends are married and/or married with children, I don't have much family left alive, I've got my mother living with me until she dies which could be tomorrow or might be another 20 years which puts a bit of a damper on pursuing romantic interests and at my age most women are divorced with multiple children and don't have much free time and aren't really open to the idea of pursuing something where someone's retired mother would be moving in with them.

Yes I've got a comfortable place to sleep and food to eat and what not but my job is something OCR & 'dumb' AI will eventually largely automate, I have no intimate (in a non sexual sense) connections like I did in school because everyone is busy with their families now, I've just got a house plant which has entirely overtaken the kitchen bar and is now spilling over onto the floor and my stuffed animal Bun from my first Easter that I tell good night every night as he sits on a book shelf in his dotage.

My legacy, as it stands, is a blog that will disappear 1-12 months after I die and a frail old man of a purple anthropomorphic rabbit.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#114

Post by CogitoCogito »

ryanmercer wrote: post #113
CogitoCogito wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have time to do things outside of work? For example running with a club of people or something. I just wonder if you are able to do things on the side that are real and difficult goals but that you can achieve on your own (though possibly after a lot of work). This obviously wouldn’t make your career life any better but you might have other things going on that would lead you not to describe life as a failure.

> This obviously wouldn’t make your career life any better but you might have other things going on that would lead you not to describe life as a failure. I have my religious pursuits and what not but by failure I mostly mean I have no meaningful connections. All of my friends are married and/or married with children, I don't have much family left alive, I've got my mother living with me until she dies which could be…

I would still recommend something similar to my original post. Try to find pursuits that are your own but do them within the context of a group where you can build friendships. I think that sports clubs are great for and especially running since there's really no bar to entry (hell many of the clubs are jokingly called drinking groups with running problems), but it could really be something else. No matter what if you want that social side of things you're going to have to go out there and build it up yourself. It's not actually some crazy impossible task; there are in fact huge numbers of people exactly like you whose friends have left/gotten busy. But you do need to go out there and take the first steps.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#115

Post by tomcam »

ryanmercer wrote: post #112
tomcam wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, Ryan, thanks for sharing. It's hard. I have some thoughts--you didn't ask for feedback, so feel free to ignore. Also feel free to contact me via my profile address. No, I won't be selling your anything or trying to make money off you. But man, do I understand hard times. I anticipated being in your position when I was younger and my technique has worked repeatedly. I'm about twice your age and was never denied a…

>Have you considered contacting a few recruiters to see what they're looking for, then taking the time to acquire and/or sharpen your skills? These days I'm guessing it's something like C#, Python, maybe Go, but I'm spitballing. Point is, you still have plenty of time to get super strong at something. It may take a year, but it'd be better to earn $75K in 2 years at a job in Minnesota than languish at a dead end gig…

It's not a programming thing in particular. Based on the odds I mentioned programming but my point is, you've got what you need to move ahead. My strategy is to figure out a saleable skill you can tolerate, then work your tail off until you're better than most people at it.

There are a zillion recruiters out there, but I'd respectfully suggest that your best bet would be to listen to what they need, not worry how one got you a particularly lousy offer. Most people are bad at what they do.

I'll not bother you again but I wanted to know you're heard, and not completely alone.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#116

Post by aguzzi94 »

max_effort wrote: post #106
aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

It's great to hear that you quit drinking. I quit for my own reasons and I'm approaching 2 years now. Keep going, it gets easier! :-)

thanks for the support, I really appreciate it :)

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#117

Post by aguzzi94 »

bathtub365 wrote: post #105
aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

Wellbutrin helped me hugely with the craving aspect of relapsing: it's also used as a stop smoking aid and I was lucky enough to have a doctor who decided to try it. I found that once the craving was taken away it took about 6 months for the other pieces to fall into place for me to start to feel comfortable out in social situations while sober, but the amount of personal growth I made over that period of time was hu…

Try reading Allen Carr's books. They are the best. I quit smoking 11 months ago and drinking 2 weeks ago with his books. They eliminate the desire for the drugs because they nail into your head that those poisons have no upsides whatsoever.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#118

Post by mister_hn »

sbierwagen wrote: post #89
mister_hn wrote: post #68

Most recent: trying to convince my superior to throw away our old Java monoliths (still running on Java5/6) and start from scratch with other technology than Java, in a cloud-native manner. Still, my superior is a super Java-fan and has summoned fears about changing everything, because people who worked on those monoliths are long gone from company.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

yes, I know, but from scratch in the sense of porting the portions of code in another environment and at same time using unit tests and code coverage tool to isolate the parts and adapt to a better architecture.
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