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Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#101

Post by keerthiko »

I once was changing the pricing for the primary subscription product for all 8000+ users registered in our CMS, and accidentally resumed the subscription and charged 300+ customers $75 who had cancelled the plan months or even years ago.

The payment platform's API's `updatePlan` function had an optional flag for `reactivateSubscriptionAndBillImmediately` with default value of `true`, as it turns out.

I had to stay up till 6AM writing a script to detect all of them, refund their money, send an apology email with some free credit, and cancel their subscriptions, and also write a note to my cofounders outlining the situation so they could crisis manage while I was out cold.

After which I wrote an angry email to the billing platform (probably harsher than they deserved given I didn't test their API appropriately on our dev instance). To their credit, they promptly changed the default. They were a young company and apparently not that many clients had used that API endpoint before.

It resulted in some very angry customers threatening to cite us to various business practice enforcement bodies around the world, but all in all some floor-sweeping profuse apologies and prompt action laid concerns to rest and no harm was done.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#102

Post by haolez »

I had the opportunity to receive relevant angel investment to my newly born startup if I could find a cofounder (the investor asked me to not be a solo founder).

The person that I chose was a close friend that I’ve worked with before, but deep down I knew he wasn’t really entrepreneurial material.

In the end, he accepted, just to turn around and say “no” when we got the term sheet to sign (“it’s just too much work for me”). The investor aborted the offer.

I’ve made a bad choice because he was my friend and I valued that above the business parameters. It was a terrible mistake.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#103

Post by aguzzi94 »

samuraiseoul wrote: post #82
aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

I'm coming up on three years sober this Sunday. For me the thing that helped the most was the /r/stopdrinking sub on reddit. Reading people's experiences and techniques from all sorts of groups and books, and reading about the triggers and follies of their relapses helped me a lot. Also a place where I could talk about problems related to the sobriety was nice. If you live in a bigger city or another you may want to…

Thank you very much for the tips and insights. If I need help I will reach out or take a look at r/stopdrinking, but rn I feel very confident about this. I finally understood that alcohol literally has 0 upsides, therefore my desire for it is just gone. Again thank you for your time and cheers! Raises a cup of orange juice in the air

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#104

Post by aguzzi94 »

ykevinator wrote: post #51
aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

Man, you are so self aware. That is such a huge asset. You may have a genetic predisposition to addiction. Try not to be a "dry drunk" which is a real thing and good luck. Thanks for sharing your situation.

Thank you for the kind words. I personally don't buy at all into the line of thought that says alcohol addiction is genetic. If that was true, one could be an alcoholic without drinking even one beer in his/her life, and die without knowing it. It would mean that, if alcohol was never invented/found, there would still be people with a genetic predisposition to alcohol. Can you tell if a 2 year old is an alcoholic? You see were I'm going. The more you think about this theory (that was never proven and backed by reals studies) , the less it makes sense. The AA are doing a great job at supporting people in need of help, providing them with a group of people to relieve their burden with. But I truly believe that they're based on the wrong assumptions. Again thank you and wish you the best!

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#105

Post by bathtub365 »

aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

Wellbutrin helped me hugely with the craving aspect of relapsing: it's also used as a stop smoking aid and I was lucky enough to have a doctor who decided to try it. I found that once the craving was taken away it took about 6 months for the other pieces to fall into place for me to start to feel comfortable out in social situations while sober, but the amount of personal growth I made over that period of time was huge. I feel like I've finally waken up and started living my life. I was an opponent of pharmaceuticals for a long time but that one worked for me without the side effects you usually hear about with antidepressants. I thought I had tried just about everything to stop drinking and I was close to resigning myself to the kind of life I was living, but this has given me hope. I don't know if it's for everyone but it's working for me.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#106

Post by max_effort »

aguzzi94 wrote: post #8

Oh sweet sweet failures! I'll start. I recently started trying to quit drinking for good, since it slowly turned from a thing that made me all charismatic and happy and jumping around, to a bitter angry man. This change started when I got together with my current girlfriend, since every time we would go out and have a (probably more than one) drink, I would get jealous (I'm very jealous and insecure, working on it) f…

It's great to hear that you quit drinking. I quit for my own reasons and I'm approaching 2 years now. Keep going, it gets easier! :-)

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#107

Post by cuchoi »

marmaduke wrote: post #3

I spent 3 years building a complex statistical model in Stan, only to double its performance with a trivial linear regression. The growth is realizing that sometimes variance in the data means that really cool model/code you want to write isn't useful, and there's always a trade-off between elegance and utility (if the two aren't in fact opposites)

What do you think was the cause of the underperformance of your Stan model?

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#108

Post by woutr_be »

ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #88
woutr_be wrote: post #71

I've been really struggling with my weight for the past few years. It has gotten to a point where it's affecting my social life and my mental health. I've always been fairly introverted and shy, but nowadays I find myself sitting at home wishing I was out with friends, or wishing someone would text me. I'm a fairly active gym-goer, but I have incredibly bad eating habits, so instead of losing, or just maintaining wei…

How old are you? Check for Low T

I'm nearing 30 soon.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#109

Post by woutr_be »

Slimbo wrote: post #83
woutr_be wrote: post #71

I've been really struggling with my weight for the past few years. It has gotten to a point where it's affecting my social life and my mental health. I've always been fairly introverted and shy, but nowadays I find myself sitting at home wishing I was out with friends, or wishing someone would text me. I'm a fairly active gym-goer, but I have incredibly bad eating habits, so instead of losing, or just maintaining wei…

Try to stay positive, looks like you have a good idea what the issues are which means you can plan to make it better. Ideally you should do your best to find someone who can help by simply talking these issues though, ideally face to face. It looks to me that it's food that's the problem rather than your weight, so why not look at that first. With a longer term view; try to reverse that trend of weight slowly going o…

Thanks, my weight is the aftermath of the unhealthy food, and I do consider it my biggest problem. I constantly feel embarrassed when doing things, I feel shy when meeting new people, constantly wondering whether they're judging me on my weight or not. I've been trying for years to eat healthier, tried intermittent fasting as well. Usually it works for a few days, and then I screw it up over the weekend. I think that constant failure is having a negative impact on everything else too.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?

#110

Post by tomcam »

ryanmercer wrote: post #62

My life mostly. I'm 34, have a GED, have a bankruptcy, do not have a degree, do not have some sort of skill where I might be able to get around not having a degree like some sort of CS skills, I basically make a little less each year due to inflation and increase in insurance costs not being higher than the tiny merit based increase my employer gives, I've never had a relationship as an adult, I'm repeatedly denied j…

Hey, Ryan, thanks for sharing. It's hard. I have some thoughts--you didn't ask for feedback, so feel free to ignore. Also feel free to contact me via my profile address. No, I won't be selling your anything or trying to make money off you. But man, do I understand hard times.

I anticipated being in your position when I was younger and my technique has worked repeatedly. I'm about twice your age and was never denied a job due to lack of a degree. That includes a stint as a full time employee at the original Really Big Tech Company.

My path has always been the same: get really good (top 80%, not top 1%) at something most people aren't good at. That way I can get a job regardless of my requirements. Back in my day that was assembly, systems programming in C, and the Windows API. Obviously not where you want to be today.

As I see it, you have some great resources. You're willing to be a little humble, you have a place to stay, you've got brains.

Have you considered contacting a few recruiters to see what they're looking for, then taking the time to acquire and/or sharpen your skills? These days I'm guessing it's something like C#, Python, maybe Go, but I'm spitballing. Point is, you still have plenty of time to get super strong at something. It may take a year, but it'd be better to earn $75K in 2 years at a job in Minnesota than languish at a dead end gig now.

Another reason to get excellent at something is it imparts a confidence that makes you more attractive. I'm fat and ugly but I pay attention to people. Being a good programmer and a rewarding listener meant I never, ever had trouble meeting awesome women

My very best to you. That can't have been fun to share.

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