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Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

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Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#531

Post by achileas »

I'm a bit late, but me and some friends I met over Reddit built a meme stock exchange in 2017. This was a game that would price meme stocks based on how much engagement some meme (or variants) were getting on social media in realtime. I built the analysis engine (including fuzzy reverse image matching, the social listening workers, and the pricing algorithm) and took the role of "CEO" pitching the technology to investors (there was a b2b marketing play there), organizing ourselves, etc.

It got me my first 6-figure job at a startup the next year, as we weren't able to raise funding or afford to continue running it. We also got a cease and desist from Nasdaq for our awesome name (Nasdanq). It also played a role in getting my current job, as it was a more refined version of the b2b play we were shooting for and the CEO loved the project.

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#532

Post by pokepim »

thighbaugh wrote: post #515
oaiey wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not common. Most Germans consider would never use the phrase "pursue a better life" when talking about the US. Quality of Life is in most European countries better including Germany. There are however some who want "freedom". Not that they lack freedom in Germany but the spiritual cowboy style, rocky mountain lifestyle freedom. Another reason for migration are obviously job offers in some industries.

As an American who values the quality of my life, there is little I wouldn't give for a working permit in any EU country, especially Germany. The grass is always greener I suppose, or maybe something of an ancestral longing (my paternal ancestor wasn't a willing emigrant, just a captured mercenary with no capo to negotiate with the British for the fare back to his Hessian homeland). Maybe a rarer inclination at prese…

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Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#533

Post by pokepim »

oaiey wrote: post #480
Seanambers wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually lived in both the US and Germany? I haven't but from what I have gathered the U.S is in many ways more preferable than Europe.

I actually did, and visited the US many times after. I saw the good and the bad. In both countries. There is no hard feeling, except that I want to express that the US while being a nice country to life is not the "pursue a better life" destination. It is all very relative.

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Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#534

Post by Sophistifunk »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #482
Sophistifunk wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing I'd love to work on that sort of thing. The point wasn't that the kind of job is bad, but that even if you're working on stuff that shouldn't be secret, you still have to jump through all those hoops. And imagine how many middle-managers they have who think a) they're the next Steve Jobs, and b) that what drove his success was being a dick to his workmates.

amen. the worst thing about STEM, IMO, is STEM people. yeah I mean you

yawn I guess you're in the wrong place, innit?

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#535

Post by al_be_back »

modeless wrote: post #376
al_be_back wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Google was so paranoid about "user data" you said you were ex-google, how come the privacy policy surprised you? privacy around user-data is big concern, especially for tech giants. Some companies are forced to leave entire Markets, to adhere to privacy/use-data policies.

I first joined Google in 2010. Back then user data concerns were about good security and engineering. There wasn't a big bureaucracy around regulatory compliance. GDPR didn't even come into effect until 2018. Our data wasn't actually "user data" in the sense Google usually deals with. It wasn't data collected incidentally after click-through consent from billions of random people on the internet as they use their com…

by the time a major jurisdiction like the EU brought GDPR, regulatory compliance was already long-overdue (as usual, Govs plays catch-up with the business world), hence what followed was a rapid rise in "bureaucracy" (i guess). For example, if a company falls short in compliance (say Cambridge Analytica) issue bubbles-up to the Network (say FB or ByteDance), if FB fails it bubbles up to the Marketplace (say Apple), if Apple fails at this level, it's so high up Govs get involved to the point that it could trigger inter-continental trade wars.

Hence we're seeing Apple, Bytedance, Amazon (no doubt Google) etc make regulatory compliance a bigger part of their core business than ever before - prevention in favor of treatment.

Your team's case seems unfortunate, given the narrow scope in the trials. My initial guess is that anything involving eye-scanning could trigger Biometric ID (iris recognition) compliance worries. I get your concern about future tech developments, I also think businesses (startups) have to find new ways to account (adapt) for these changes/requirements - "bureaucracy" will naturally increase.

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#536

Post by loco5niner »

skip_region wrote: post #400
brantonb wrote: post #52

20 years ago, I was a college kid who built a running log website as an alternative to keeping paper records. My college cross-country team lived all over the country, so this let us keep each other accountable during summer training. It was fairly early in the Internet, before GPS watches and not many runners had heart rate straps. It got featured in Women's Health and Runners' World (UK edition) magazines. When I i…

If you don't mind me asking, what is the site? My issue with "much better options" is that they tend to include an overwhelming amount of distracting data (Avg HR, Max HR, Cadence, Pace, ect). Sometimes, less is more :) I use a Google excel doc for mine and have not looked back!

A bit late, but I suspect it's this site?

The about page indicates it was built by a Brandon B. (also did a bit of LinkedIn sleuthing that seems to match up)

http://www.running-log.com/about

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#537

Post by jantypas2 »

jessehorne wrote: post #42
jantypas2 wrote: post #20

Well, a very long time ago, in a company funded far far away (and since defeated by the empire), I had the "joy" of working with Sendmail. For you youngsters, back then, back when we had dial telephones (tell us more Grandpa!), there were multiple "mail networks", not just this fancy Internet you kids have. Sendmail was a mail processor that could not only arrange to send and receive mail, but it could translate addr…

Not directly related, but I'm working on some short stories inspired by some of the hacker/cyberpunk literature from the 80's and since I grew up and learned programming in the late 90's early 2000's, I feel completely inadequate at writing cheesy hacker stories. Keep them old timer stories a' comin'.

No one's more old-timer than I am! I am the ultimate legacy system. Just ask my grandkids!

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#538

Post by jantypas2 »

jantypas2 wrote: post #537
jessehorne wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directly related, but I'm working on some short stories inspired by some of the hacker/cyberpunk literature from the 80's and since I grew up and learned programming in the late 90's early 2000's, I feel completely inadequate at writing cheesy hacker stories. Keep them old timer stories a' comin'.

No one's more old-timer than I am! I am the ultimate legacy system. Just ask my grandkids!

Another candidate for the old-time stories would be Internet before the public Internet. Back then, as noted, we have several "nets" connected by everything from fixed circuits, to dial-up telephones (I still know where my Telebit trailblazer is), and radio. And you had to know how to traverse it all. (I had the wall maps that were about as complex as colossal cave -- albeit no vending machine or Dr. Pepper bottles). Back then, kiddies, people actually communicated, they did more than just consume -- in fact, I'm told, I am responsible for the Anishinaabe word for Internet. (I helped bring their place on line years ago.) It supposedly means "The place where people talk who have never met"
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