21–30 of 42 posts
My thought is you need to do something totally different for 6 to 12 months. It really does not matter what you do, but jobs that involves hard physical labor help separate what is important from what is not.
The most important thing you can do is relax. Sure, life is pretty grim in the sense that you can't do whatever you want unless you're rich. On the other hand, your life as a coder is far, far higher quality than e.g. a construction worker's or (regrettably) a teacher's. One thing you could do is try to grow a source of passive income. See patio11 for insights on achieving this. Also, three failures isn't anything to…
Stated like that, that sounds like an example of a Monte Carlo fallacy. Sometimes "just keep trying" is not sound advice but wishful thinking.
This might sound like a focus issue? Three startups in six years? Are you able to focus on only one thing and for more than 5 years? Almost nothing extraordinary can happen before 5 years. Even if you sell before. Example: I am 99% sure I can make millions of dollars if I go on my yard and start making a hole in the floor. Although, here are the constraints: - working 18 hours a day. - every day and 7 days a week. No…
"passion never fails"... you are being incredibly optimistic and have heard way too many success stories i think. There's a massive amount of passionate people working incredibly hard for many years straight who haven't achieved even medium amount of success.
I just googled "startup persistence" and look what comes out in point 5 and 6: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html
> I'm starting to panic that I'm running out of time to "get my shit together." There is no time limit on getting your shit together. Seriously. Please don't buy into the valley hype of everybody-is-a-success-in-their-twenties. It's bullshit. > So, I'm interested to see the discussion about what those of us who are life long hackers (with a ton of varied experiences) can do besides keep writing code or moving into pe…
The most important thing you can do is relax. Sure, life is pretty grim in the sense that you can't do whatever you want unless you're rich. On the other hand, your life as a coder is far, far higher quality than e.g. a construction worker's or (regrettably) a teacher's. One thing you could do is try to grow a source of passive income. See patio11 for insights on achieving this. Also, three failures isn't anything to…
> because it's far less likely you'll fail ten times in a row. So, keep trying Stated like that, that sounds like an example of a Monte Carlo fallacy. Sometimes "just keep trying" is not sound advice but wishful thinking.
If the goal was to flip tails in a coin toss, and I said "Keep flipping! You're bound to get tails within ten flips," then there's only a 1 out of 1024 chance that I'd be mistaken.
Success isn't as simple as a coin toss, but sometimes the best strategy is to try all possibilities as quickly as possible. This was how Carmack succeeded, for example.
There is no alternative but to try; best get used to the idea of trying many times before succeeding.
The most important thing you can do is relax. Sure, life is pretty grim in the sense that you can't do whatever you want unless you're rich. On the other hand, your life as a coder is far, far higher quality than e.g. a construction worker's or (regrettably) a teacher's. One thing you could do is try to grow a source of passive income. See patio11 for insights on achieving this. Also, three failures isn't anything to…
> because it's far less likely you'll fail ten times in a row. So, keep trying Stated like that, that sounds like an example of a Monte Carlo fallacy. Sometimes "just keep trying" is not sound advice but wishful thinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"passion never fails"... you are being incredibly optimistic and have heard way too many success stories i think. There's a massive amount of passionate people working incredibly hard for many years straight who haven't achieved even medium amount of success.
Do you know anyone who followed the 3 constraints and failed? I don't know any. I just googled "startup persistence" and look what comes out in point 5 and 6: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html
After working as a developer for a few years, I got a bit disillusioned with "building and fixing things all day" as you say. I now work as a User Experience architect and am still involved with building and fixing things, but in a very different way. I still write code, but mostly to prototype ideas and collaborate with developers.
A broad understanding of various technologies and lack of specialisation/investment in particular frameworks is a plus, as you can understand what's required, without getting bogged down in details. You can take a leading role, without having to be anyone's boss.
Not sure if this sounds attractive to you, but it works for me :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because it's far less likely you'll fail ten times in a row. So, keep trying Stated like that, that sounds like an example of a Monte Carlo fallacy. Sometimes "just keep trying" is not sound advice but wishful thinking.
The Monte Carlo fallacy is believing that if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, then it will happen less frequently in the future. This isn't an instance of that. If the goal was to flip tails in a coin toss, and I said "Keep flipping! You're bound to get tails within ten flips," then there's only a 1 out of 1024 chance that I'd be mistaken. Success isn't as simple as a coin toss, but s…
Other advice would be to put your failures up here and accept some (pretty painful) critques. Then OP could learn faster ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know anyone who followed the 3 constraints and failed? I don't know any. I just googled "startup persistence" and look what comes out in point 5 and 6: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html
This kind of hyperbole only serves to reinforce the OCD some people in tech have about "working" long hours. What you described in your OP is lunacy, which will cause mental illness in many people. It is also fallacious, since it will be nearly impossible to find a statistically significant sample of people who have actually done this.
As an engineer, my observation and pattern matching skills are pretty good, so I am only describing what I observed by analysing "successful" entrepreneurs. I'm probably different, because I arrived to the Bay Area only five years ago. It may not be clear to you if you always lived and worked here.
In any case, depends how you define success? The author of the thread is also an engineer that codes, so I am guessing his definition of "come to fruition" would be an exit where he can cash-in more than $10mm.
What's the aggregate number of engineers who made a satisfactory exit? Is it "statistically significant" to you?
I did that formula for the past year and was very lucky that it worked before 5 years. Although, I was planning to "exit" in 10 years.