You know javascript and live in London, I wouldn't worry about it - you can get a new job easily.
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Ask HN: I was made redundant yesterday, and I want some coding ideas
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Ask HN: I was made redundant yesterday, and I want some coding ideas
#22Somewhat off topic, though perhaps something for consideration... Whichever job I had, I always considered it my prime objective to make my own position obsolete. In other words, I measured my personal success to whether or not I had made myself redundant. At first glance, one might think it contradictory that - save one exception - I was never laid off, found it easy to navigate to (more) interesting projects, etc.
Same rule here! My prime objective is to be able to go on vacation without any call of emergency, but the point is I showed that I was not necessary when I was ill and not at work for a month. Two weeks after my return, the up management shows me the door... Nevertheless, I think it is my best move to make my own position useless. I need peace of mind in vacation, I need autonomous coworkers, I need challenging probl…
Most valuable is the fact that one can only make oneself redundant when the role and expectation is completely understood.
Best part is; when interviewing for your next position you can explain how you improved the operations and saved (at least) one full time employee.
EDIT: Just wanted to add that openly discussing the above opened the door to job opportunities which traditionally weren't listed in my day (>20 years ago, in Belgium). Roles, which for political (sometimes even legal) reasons required direct employment (as opposed to being externally contracted), though without the possibility of this employment to indefinite.
edit2: Some clarification... I might be remembering things incorrectly, perhaps someone can enlighten me. I was very young and perhaps only had the impression I was offered special roles. I recall - perhaps incorrectly - that employment contracts were usually of indefinite duration. Any employment contract with limited duration put an employee in a completely different class, a class which could not be made accountable for business decisions. Anyway, not having worked in Belgium for over a decade, it feels very odd to think that truly was the case...
So - take the 'edits' with a sizable grain of salt ;-)
Re: Ask HN: I was made redundant yesterday, and I want some coding ideas
#23Somewhat off topic, though perhaps something for consideration... Whichever job I had, I always considered it my prime objective to make my own position obsolete. In other words, I measured my personal success to whether or not I had made myself redundant. At first glance, one might think it contradictory that - save one exception - I was never laid off, found it easy to navigate to (more) interesting projects, etc.
I also live by this rule. And as a manager even more so. The more I put my coworkers in a situation where they can work and I become useless the better I am being as a manager. Forgive the super generalization, but The manager role is to facilitate and not to strictly give orders. At least it shouldn’t be in the knowledge work space. Organize and facilitate. Become useless.
Exactly!
some thoughts
As a manager, becoming completely redundant can only be truly achieved by coaching a replacement. I would advocate in stead of using phrases such as 'useless' or 'corporate fat', to adopt 'retained managerial expertise.'
Finding people who can both manage teams effectively and train new managers are extremely valuable. In larger organizations they would be promoted to 'managers of managers.' Smaller organizations might have no immediate need for such talent, though, those people are crucial if they want to scale. In other words - you should either become a management consultant for small businesses, or help a small business grow.
Re: Ask HN: I was made redundant yesterday, and I want some coding ideas
#24Somewhat off topic, though perhaps something for consideration... Whichever job I had, I always considered it my prime objective to make my own position obsolete. In other words, I measured my personal success to whether or not I had made myself redundant. At first glance, one might think it contradictory that - save one exception - I was never laid off, found it easy to navigate to (more) interesting projects, etc.
Not sure how that works for a developer, as there is usually more work to do, a big backlog etc. I could only make myself redundant by stopping progress in software.
Very good point. When I was a developer myself, I implemented that philosophy by making sure that whatever knowledge or expertise I had, which distinguished me from the other developers in my team was shared and distributed to my colleagues.
So - in stead of making myself redundant, I endeavored made myself replaceable.
Note: Though, the only time I worked as a developer, I was more experienced and knowledgeable than my team members (very junior team); I was never a great or experienced developer. In retrospect, I probably wasn't even a good developer.
Re: Ask HN: I was made redundant yesterday, and I want some coding ideas
#25Make a program that converts Prolog queries into CSS selectors. Then add a nice syntax so it can be used as a preprocessor.
I jest, but that almost sounds like an idea made with one of those online generators :)
Re: Ask HN: I was made redundant yesterday, and I want some coding ideas
#26there is a failed kickstarter from five years ago[1] which imagined an alternative to the traditional spreadsheet software. I imagine it would be fun to work on building such a thing, and I already know it would be more usable than Excel etc for many situations.
e.g. the company I work for give me a credit card to use to buy fuel for my car, with a soft limit (i.e. nothing technical to stop me spending more, but they may revoke this privilege if I abuse it), and there is an additional discount which is not displayed at the pump or on the receipt. I track how many litres I purchase, along with the pump price at the time, and currently use Excel for this. But it's not really designed to show me how many litres I can still spend before the end of the month, based on recent fuel prices etc. I believe such a solution could help with this, but the dev that had this idea only wrote a UWP app, nothing cross platform or super fleshed out...
[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/395431036/threads-a-mod...
Re: Ask HN: I was made redundant yesterday, and I want some coding ideas
#27there is a failed kickstarter from five years ago[1] which imagined an alternative to the traditional spreadsheet software. I imagine it would be fun to work on building such a thing, and I already know it would be more usable than Excel etc for many situations. e.g. the company I work for give me a credit card to use to buy fuel for my car, with a soft limit (i.e. nothing technical to stop me spending more, but they…
I'm actually thinking of building an airtable clone, on the back of a graphdb like arrango possibly, where you can actually embed other sheets in a field in a table, or link to other sheets, or just pull data from other sheets or 'bases', so that ALL data across multiple spreadsheets is accessible across all spreadsheets in one way or another.
On top of that more data types including : binaries, images, passwords/crypto-hashed fields, pdfs, markdown -- with popup markdown editor.
I'd also like to have some cool integrations ready to go like - being able to convert a spreadsheet of product listings into a complete shopify-like store. Add a product to spreadsheet, it shows up in store. (Similar concept but for Blogs). I'd also like to build in a very versatile 'event' system and api that basically makes everything zapier-ified, when data changes other things can happen.
On top of that I'd like to add some app builder that can take data 'bases' and turn them into ios/android apps, similar to Bubble.us.