Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#251

Post by andersthue » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 8:38 AM UTC

wasd wrote: post #76

andersthue wrote: post #11

Turning my consultancy (with 3 employees) from being on a slow ramp to bankruptcy to making a nice profit in the last months of the year. I the process I embraced the fact that I am much better at sales than at programming, I even learned to love to do cold canvas calling!

Do you have any suggestions for resources for someone also looking to do cold canvas calling?

What I did was (not intended) becoming friends with a extremely proficient meeting booker, and through a lot of talks and some coaching he learned me his brilliant techniques.

That is half of it, the rest is understanding (yourself and) people, psychology and being a balanced person.

Feel free to mail me for tips and tricks :)

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#252

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 8:38 AM UTC

wasd wrote: post #76

andersthue wrote: post #11

Turning my consultancy (with 3 employees) from being on a slow ramp to bankruptcy to making a nice profit in the last months of the year. I the process I embraced the fact that I am much better at sales than at programming, I even learned to love to do cold canvas calling!

Do you have any suggestions for resources for someone also looking to do cold canvas calling?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#253

Post by alexbilbie » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 8:51 AM UTC

Christmas Day 2015 I decided to go freelance, 4th January I handed in my notice, 25th March I set up my own company.

Haven't looked back since; I'm happier, less stressed, earning more and I've had more holidays this past year than I ever have done in a single year.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#254

Post by Treyno » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 8:55 AM UTC

alexbilbie wrote: post #253

Christmas Day 2015 I decided to go freelance, 4th January I handed in my notice, 25th March I set up my own company. Haven't looked back since; I'm happier, less stressed, earning more and I've had more holidays this past year than I ever have done in a single year.

Can I ask - freelance what? And what does your company offer?

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#255

Post by richard___ » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 8:57 AM UTC

maneesh wrote: post #3

After years of R&D, heartache, and rough decisions --- I finally turned my hardware company ( http://pavlok.com ) profitable! We make technology to break bad habits, wake up earlier, and reduce cravings. I decided to try to build a hardware company without raising VC --- which is probably one of the hardest decisions you can make. And required about 30 people to make a reality. But now that we have finally got our ma…

How exactly does it sense something like eating unhealthy food? Or, not eating enough calories in a day?

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#256

Post by Treyno » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 9:00 AM UTC

madmadjo wrote: post #86

wrigby wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to hear more of this story. Would you care to share more details, or maybe write a blog/medium post on it?

+1. Eager to hear the story :)

+1 Spill the beans!

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#257

Post by kapv89 » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 9:28 AM UTC

- Built and released an ORM https://github.com/fractaltech/tabel

- Became an expert at node.js, postgres, react, and react-native

- One of my open source libs hit 1500+ monthly downloads on npm

- Built a product http://flowapp.fractaltech.in/

- Managed to score 2 customers for the product

- Developed basic understanding of machine-learning

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#258

Post by afarrell » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 9:37 AM UTC

atsaloli wrote: post #177

afarrell wrote: post #56

I wrote a step-by-step tutorial on SaltStack. In the process, I worked through my psychological hang-ups with writing. For as long as I can remember, writing has always made me feel just this terrible anxiety. It made me want to dig my nails into my skin. Throughout high school and university, had come to view writing as this mysterious process. From literary essays to hypothetical military campaign net assessments t…

Where is the tutorial? I have a client in the Bay Area looking for SaltStack training. Do you like to train?

I'd taken it down because I was hosting it on a DO box and wanted to save some money. I should get it set up somewhere cheaper like github.io

I would like to get into software training, but I haven't actually configured SaltStack in a real production environment. I've only used it on the prototyping side of a project. My tutorial was focused on giving a basic intro through setting up Django+Postgres+Nginx. I also haven't touched SaltStack since finishing the tutorial because I got a job in London doing ruby and have been focused on that.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#259

Post by afarrell » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 9:41 AM UTC

jhanschoo wrote: post #79

afarrell wrote: post #56

I wrote a step-by-step tutorial on SaltStack. In the process, I worked through my psychological hang-ups with writing. For as long as I can remember, writing has always made me feel just this terrible anxiety. It made me want to dig my nails into my skin. Throughout high school and university, had come to view writing as this mysterious process. From literary essays to hypothetical military campaign net assessments t…

I used to have similar hang-ups about writing as well. I'm pretty sure that that stemmed from inadequate instruction about genres of writing and the purpose of writing in my education. Where education teaches writing to pass a language exam, the purpose often seems to be about showing that "i am very smart" by using obscure words to communicate a pseudo-argument. What I didn't learn was that writing was about conveyi…

Yea, I think part of my hangup came from not being able to pursuade folks to answer me when I asked "why are we doing this? What is our goal?". It turns out in real life, people appreciate that question a lot more because it keeps FTE time from being ill-spent.

Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?

#260

Post by LaSombra » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 9:44 AM UTC

wrigby wrote: post #35

LaSombra wrote: post #30

I landed my dream job 20 years after I decided what and where I wanted. It took me a lot of time. Battling low self-esteem, giving it up for a while, following the wrong path, surviving after being fired for the first and only time. I learned perseverance. Once I set my mind on it and worked around distractions, people and my own mind, I got what I truly wanted and I'm loving and learning every single day.

I would love to hear more of this story. Would you care to share more details, or maybe write a blog/medium post on it?

Yes. I just posted an e-mail I sent to someone in order to try and help me make it into a presentation.

Here it is, https://hoffmann.cx/post/after-20-years/.