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How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

campfirelabs.co

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Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#151

Post by sah2ed »

vonseel wrote: post #149
sah2ed wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but they now go by the name UpWork. That the article uses the old name of oDesk from 4 years ago points to the need to add “(2015)” to the thread title. https://www.upwork.com

actually, the article was posted yesterday. He’s writing about his experience in 2015...

That the article was published recently may be true but the article’s contents doesn’t really contain new info. Please see this comment up-thread [0] which surfaced older incarnations of the same content.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18880312

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#152

Post by Godel_unicode »

adrianN wrote: post #142
zorga wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you envision other means of distributing the planet's vast resources Whether you pay for yourself, or others pay for you, is a binary choice. There are no other options that don't fall into those two categories. > is predicated on the belief that the current structure is the result of some static law of nature Nope, just on the nature of boolean logic.

The universe is rarely best described by boolean logic. There are other options that are currently not feasible, but not forbidden by any laws of nature. For example robots could provide everybody's needs. Or we could genetically engineer people so that everybody finds their particular job meaningful and fulfilling.

... and then everyone needs those robots.

The horror of society deciding who gets "genetically engineered" (ugh) to like shitty jobs is actively making my skin crawl.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#153

Post by fyfy18 »

Skunkleton wrote: post #29
zanny wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a modern problem too. No matter what anyone feels about it having to farm crops to eat was definitely meaningful work a hundred years ago. Even if you were being exploited in a factory suicide was common but mostly from abuse and injury rather than the vacuousness of the job. Its wholly contemporary to invent bullshit jobs and imagine complexity to keep people at desks en masse, leaving them with such a…

Truth. My job is "important", but at the same time I don't think anyone's life would be measurably worse if I didn't do it (besides mine lol). IMO it is kind of a problem with software in general. It is getting me down honestly; I could use some advice.

I feel the same. I've been doing this for nearly 10 years now, and although software and programming still interests me, all the jobs I've had in this industry do not. It just feels like I spend all my day working hard to make someone else even more money. I can't imagine myself continuing doing this for the next 30+ years...

My plan is to save as much as my income as possible and retire early, possibly getting a part time job in a coffee shop to supplement my savings and maintain some interaction with people. Take a look into /r/FIRE if that sounds appealing to you.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#154

Post by jasonkester »

burtonator wrote: post #34

I actually did this too... I create Datastreamer ( http://www.datastreamer.io/ ) which (when I created it) was an RSS syndication platform as a service. You gave us RSS feeds and then we would index them and send you the output without having to deal with the insanity of RSS feeds. This was a decade ago though. I've been running it since and now it's more of a massive search engine of content - nearly a petabyte at t…

That doesn't seem like something to regret. In my mind, building a business is about giving you the freedom to do whatever you want. If keeping it small helps you do that, that's what you should do.

Take a minute to skim through the history of a bunch of "successful" companies on that rocket trajectory. Does it sound like it made the founders happier? Or do they seem like they were actually doing better at some sweet spot earlier on in the story?

That's what it always seems like to me. So when I built my business, I set out with the goal of finding that sweet spot of good profits, minimum workload, no staffing or investor headaches, and most importantly, maximum Jason freedom.

Reading your comment, it sounds like you did the same. Don't worry for a second about what might have happened. What did happen sounds pretty cool.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#155

Post by mbrock »

strken wrote: post #133
kokokokoko wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he should be paying human beings a living wage no matter where they are. Pretending that living costs in a developing nation is somehow magically non existent is immoral. Pay people a reasonable wage to live their lives and provide for their families. Just because someone lives in another country does not give a person the moral authority to pay them an amount that does not allow them to properly feed and car…

This point of view compares a marginal improvement with a massive improvement and concludes that bringing about a marginal improvement when you could cause a massive improvement is wrong. This is a false comparison because there's a third option, which is doing nothing. Doing nothing is worse than causing any size of improvement, and almost all of us are doing nothing. If we are to accept that paying Filipino workers…

That’s not the only possible ethical judgment. You’re assuming a kind of utilitarian perspective, but I think most people have at least an implicit virtue ethical perspective, which might come into play when evaluating the morality of a person who lives a life of leisure and freedom funded by maximizing the arbitrage from a third world labor force employed for repetitive and alienated tasks. Especially when the thesis that minimal wages now inexorably increase later seems on the surface like a neoliberal just-so story.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#156

Post by mbrock »

JDiculous wrote: post #97
Skunkleton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth. My job is "important", but at the same time I don't think anyone's life would be measurably worse if I didn't do it (besides mine lol). IMO it is kind of a problem with software in general. It is getting me down honestly; I could use some advice.

I feel the same way. Pay is good, work can be interesting, work-life balance and job security are relatively good, but being a developer never gave me any sense of real fulfillment. I'm not making any serious difference in anyone's life, and my six figure salary could be replaced with a team of eastern Europeans who could probably get more done at a fraction of the cost. If I were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't really…

Doctors and journalists use a lot of software. Everyone uses computers all the time. Making software better can be a very high leverage activity. Sometimes fixing one bug can save hours of work for a whole bunch of people. Right? So it basically just depends on what you’re working on. And there are also doctors, journalists, and perhaps especially politicians whose daily work doesn’t contribute very meaningfully to a better world.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#157

Post by close04 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #141
kbenson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of this is realizing where the path might have lead you. Were I in your position, I suspect my regret might be tinged with relief. Zynga might be an extremely profitable company, but they also epitomize some of what I view as the most egregious offenses in manipulation human nature for monetary gain. So, were I presented with your prior circumstances and had I capitalized on them, would my convictions h…

considering known statements at the time I think probably Zuckerberg would think it sounded ideal.

Everything I have read about Zuckerberg's history makes him look like a despicable and abject human being both on the surface and deep down. Of course I have a superficial view based on movies, articles, word of mouth, etc. But it feels backed by his actions.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#158

Post by iddqd »

csa wrote: post #56

Only a tangent to the OP, but... I find it hilarious that he calls Abercrombie & Fitch the “high end clothing brand for middle schoolers”. A&F used to target “elite outdoorsmen” (not a joke — think a high end LL Bean), and they made some really good stuff. Some of that quality lasted until the 90s and early 00s after changing hands and shifting towards targeting youth casual wear, but their clothing line is almost al…

Not a fan of how they portray their brand, but in my experience A&F makes really solid fits for althetic type build (think big thighs). This in my experience is really hard to find on clothes of a somewhat modern cut.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#159

Post by a_imho »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #102
JDiculous wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. Pay is good, work can be interesting, work-life balance and job security are relatively good, but being a developer never gave me any sense of real fulfillment. I'm not making any serious difference in anyone's life, and my six figure salary could be replaced with a team of eastern Europeans who could probably get more done at a fraction of the cost. If I were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't really…

The thing that amazes me is that so many people feel the same way, yet this "way of life" is still the norm. That is, why is there no way to innovate a new structure, given the degree of intrinsic support that would seem to exist? And, software engineers in particular would seem well-suited to this task. If software is eating the world and we write software, then...

It is usually some form of entities with the means are not interested/enjoying the current status quo.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#160

Post by Aeolun »

archlight wrote: post #150
JDiculous wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. Pay is good, work can be interesting, work-life balance and job security are relatively good, but being a developer never gave me any sense of real fulfillment. I'm not making any serious difference in anyone's life, and my six figure salary could be replaced with a team of eastern Europeans who could probably get more done at a fraction of the cost. If I were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't really…

well put. I recently had this thought that dev is no difference from production line worker. There are only small fraction of dev sitting on top of pyramid designing blueprint and managing production line.

Except that once a dev builts a product once, it can be duplicated for free an infinite amount of times.
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