Having a Work Journal. There are times that I wished I started one earlier. When I go back at my work journal, I'm amazed how much I have accomplished, even when its something insignificant.
Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
201–210 of 253 posts
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#202Thinking strategically from a career and life perspective. Managing your investments Eating right and exercise Risk Taking - take big risks early in your life, ones which have the biggest upside. The terror of the unknown and leaping into it and coming out at the other end multiple times makes you fearless. The journey is all that matters, the destination is not in your hand. But the journey teaches a lot. Some of th…
I wish I'd learnt about investing before I was in my late 30s - and same about value of a good pension. Still - it is never too late.
There is a lot of learning, that happens in school which has no bearing in later life. Why not have a course which combines economics+investing+accounting?
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#203If you're interested in seeing financial returns for your time/work, don't work as a startup employee, ever.
How about, don't work as an undercompensated startup employee who is relying on shares to become valuable. You can have incredibly rewarding jobs both personally and financially working for a startup.
I would love to hear more about your experience. In my experience, no startup comes close to the pay of a big and healthy tech company.
Specifically, even if you get the startup to match the base salary of the big company (which is almost always not true and comes at a 20-30% discount, but I'm willing to assume that it can be done), the equity that the startup will give you is effectively $0, whereas the public RSU the big company will give you are basically cash-equivalent (if you are really conservative you can adjust them by 20-30%?).
This last point is the major one for me: at least in the Bay Area, senior software engineers are offered equity grants that are effectively the same size of their salary every year, so by going to a startup you are immediately being paid at least half.
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#204Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any B2B idea should run 300/mo easily. Finding those businesses to sell to is the challenge. But perhaps it's easier selling 300/mo to X businesses than selling to 5/mo to 60X consumers? You decide.
They also require very different strengths & skillsets in founders. B2B products are usually sold, not bought. Sales skills in the founder are paramount, as well as a personality that can take rejection well and find win-wins and value-adds for the customer. B2C products live and die by viral growth and word-of-mouth, because margins are not usually enough to support a consultative sales process or any sort of intens…
Interesting analysis, but why isn't b2c viable anymore?
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any recommendations? I’ve read a ton of Arthur C. Clarke in my teens, I’d love to branch out.
Ian Banks - The Use of Weapons The "culture" series of books was the first coherent portrayal of a non-dystopian advanced society with AIs that I encountered. It’s a reasonable “good” future.
Iain Banks is his mainstream work, Iain M Banks is the science fiction. It's fantastic, but far away from hard sci fi.
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#207#1 How to run. I hated and avoided running for 30 years, then I got to the point where I hated going to a club and I hated having a machine in my home (and not getting any aerobic exercise at all was of course intolerable) so I decided to give running a try. At first it sucked, but then I figured out I'd been doing it wrong so I fixed my stride etc. It sucked less. I still don't enjoy the activity itself, but I'm sur…
> I still don't enjoy the activity itself, but I'm sure glad for the results. I don't think that's a sustainable or worthwhile approach. Exercise and training can be found in many forms and countless different activities - pick those you actually enjoy.
Meh. I've run a marathon and several half-marathons while simultaneously not loving the act of running itself. A lot of the benefits come after a run, or from achieving a goal.
Through training I repeatedly tell myself (and believe), 'it is the hard that makes it good.' Not everything worthwhile is going to feel like sunshine and rainbows all the time.
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#208Learning How To Learn ( https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn ) and Barbara Oakley's book A Mind For Numbers . Completely changed my approach to studying and learning, and my academic efforts after taking it were tremendously better than before. Also related: highly recommend Anki. It feels like magic when the spaced repetition works!
What would you say are your biggest take-aways from that course?
I’d recommend asking Tim Ferris.
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#209Nice job on Internal family systems OP! I'm not there quite yet but getting close - TypeScript : Absolute game changer for JS. I can't imagine programming regular ES. Sort of hoping TypeScript becomes the next ES. - Desktops : Desktop processors and video cards are insanely powerful compared to laptops. If you're doing any sort of compilation (even if it's webpack / frontend) this stuff helps a ton. A project that ta…
Do you mind sharing briefly what you got out of attachment theory and schema therapy? Or why are they worth a look?
To some, they're therapy frameworks, to other's they're analytical tools. I bring it up here is because they cut to the chase and get to what people want. We're not good at saying it, it makes us too vulnerable to. Some of us could save a lot of time and misery if we broke this taboo.
Are you to open to viewing things in a different perspective? First you'd get a gist of the theory/framework/model/whatever. Then you'd need to understand what thing/person/system it's being used on. Without that, it'd be making too many assumptions to explain to others without context. The perspective is subjective to the one applying it, a blend of art and science.
I grew up in a family / circle where as an adolescent, nobody gave me advice or cared about my emotions. Worse, my parents dumped their emotions on me. Despite being a child and having my own stuff on my plate, I was recipient to persistent, intense emotional outpourings of neediness, anxiety and anger. Day in and out, for years. I looked up papers as a survival tool. Various other stuff that messed up me having needs met.
What do people need anyway? Does everybody have them? Do people need to be loved, how is it defined? Does society ignore, shame, or belittle our basic needs?
Sometimes, I think so. This means people are suffering and they can't even articulate why.
What if more people could simply be cognizant of these needs? Could/would we be happier? I don't know. I'm still digging into it.
Re: Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?
#210Thinking strategically from a career and life perspective. Managing your investments Eating right and exercise Risk Taking - take big risks early in your life, ones which have the biggest upside. The terror of the unknown and leaping into it and coming out at the other end multiple times makes you fearless. The journey is all that matters, the destination is not in your hand. But the journey teaches a lot. Some of th…
I wish I'd learnt about investing before I was in my late 30s - and same about value of a good pension. Still - it is never too late.
What exactly do you mean by “investing”. The notion of “investing” in a few index funds or shoveling money to a financial advisor?