161–170 of 278 posts
I would love to see Patrick address the fact that he now works as an eng manager at Stripe, in the context of a lot of his previous writing like this piece. For all he has written about side projects and building sustainable lifestyle businesses, I bet he makes more in a single year now than he ever did from any of those projects. Not that that negates his previous advice at all, it’s great that people can figure out…
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Please don't start another podcast. Or if you absolutely must, please provide a text version of the content. Podcasts aren't searchable, they aren't skimmable and their content isn't indexed in search engines. Text is.
Sorry you're getting downvoted on this post. I found your data point useful. Even though I disagree that there are enough podcasts serving the senior developer / corporate programmer niche, being made aware of the existence of "podcast exhaustion" is valuable, and the discussion convinced me that a transcription service is worth it. I'd hate for negative attention to result in a chilling effect on your decision to vo…
Deciding to start on such a project is really cool IMO, and I think if I ever attempted to do something like that I'd really find it very demotivating if the feedback I got was "no wait, not like that". But that's just me.
I would love to see Patrick address the fact that he now works as an eng manager at Stripe, in the context of a lot of his previous writing like this piece. For all he has written about side projects and building sustainable lifestyle businesses, I bet he makes more in a single year now than he ever did from any of those projects. Not that that negates his previous advice at all, it’s great that people can figure out…
All those lifestyle side projects are why he's an ebg manager at Stripe now.
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Your original example is very specific, but your follow up clarifies that the reality is that it is vague guesswork. I think you could claim contribution, but very hard to define that line x of code written last Friday resulted directly in y% of profits. To me it signals you're probably exaggerating. You better be able to back up your reasoning behind your claim. Bold claims require bold explanations.
It’s not vague guesswork at all. If you can’t measure the success of your project, why are you doing it? It’s okay, even expected, if the answer is probabilistic. What’s not okay is doing stuff for no reason. Bonus points if you’re able to tell a story like: We did X to achieve Y, but it didn’t work because Z. So we tried ...
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How do you even know the actual impact you had on revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.
it’s _very_ easy to calculate your impact, or the one of your team, when you work on meaningful projects. if that’s not the case, you are probably working on non-essential things.
There are definitely people who are impactful enough and deserve to make bold "I" statements but they are in the vast minority.
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In the book titled "The 48 Laws of Power."
I recommend this book. It is literally Woo ("winning over others") but in the best way. It's advice for the softest, least-scientific domain I can think of, namely navigating the social dynamics of life, including the poetics of other people's egos. Each "law" is illustrated vividly with examples from history and given caveats/inversions, so that it could be called "48 dynamics that you should think about if you want…
It got a little boring after like 20 or something, so I just stopped reading it.
I would love to see Patrick address the fact that he now works as an eng manager at Stripe, in the context of a lot of his previous writing like this piece. For all he has written about side projects and building sustainable lifestyle businesses, I bet he makes more in a single year now than he ever did from any of those projects. Not that that negates his previous advice at all, it’s great that people can figure out…
The first path has only one road to success. If you keep trying but don't pass the bar, you may be depressed because the challenge here is a purely external one — you need to constantly meet rigid expectations set by faceless others.
The second path has many hidden roads to success, and the challenge is an internal one — you need to discover something about yourself that could eventually unlock value to others too.
I took the latter path and still ended up at a FAANG in my late thirties without a CS degree. It's been a more rewarding life than if I had postponed all my dreams by twenty years.
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I recommend this book. It is literally Woo ("winning over others") but in the best way. It's advice for the softest, least-scientific domain I can think of, namely navigating the social dynamics of life, including the poetics of other people's egos. Each "law" is illustrated vividly with examples from history and given caveats/inversions, so that it could be called "48 dynamics that you should think about if you want…
Frankly, this looks like the playbook of sociopaths. I would use this book to figure out what bad actors would use to manipulate me. If you want a book that teaches you how to get what you want while also not being a shit person I would recommend "How to win friends and influence people". The thrust of that book is that people helping each other results in mutual benefit that is greater than the sum of its parts.
For example, here are a few excerpts from the "Law 6 - Court Attention at all Costs" section:
"Barnum understood the fundamental truth about attracting attention: Once people’s eyes are on you, you have a special legitimacy. For Barnum, creating interest meant creating a crowd; as he later wrote, “Every crowd has a silver lining.” And crowds tend to act in conjunction. If one person stops to see your beggarman laying bricks in the street, more will do the same. They will gather like dust bunnies"
"Society craves larger-than-life figures, people who stand above the general mediocrity. Never be afraid, then, of the qualities that set you apart and draw attention to you. Court controversy, even scandal. It is better to be attacked, even slandered, than ignored. All professions are ruled by this law, and all professionals must have a bit of the showman about them"
"The great scientist Thomas Edison knew that to raise money he had to remain in the public eye at any cost. Almost as important as the inventions themselves was how he presented them to the public and courted attention ... He did everything he could to make sure that he received more attention than his great rival Nikola Tesla, who may actually have been more brilliant than he was but whose name was far less known"
Here's the a link to the book if you're curious: http://free.epubebooks.net/ebooks/books/48-laws-of-power.pdf
Law 6 starts on page 72, and it's quite an interesting read.
I would love to see Patrick address the fact that he now works as an eng manager at Stripe, in the context of a lot of his previous writing like this piece. For all he has written about side projects and building sustainable lifestyle businesses, I bet he makes more in a single year now than he ever did from any of those projects. Not that that negates his previous advice at all, it’s great that people can figure out…
All those lifestyle side projects are why he's an ebg manager at Stripe now.
Patrick is smart, gets things done, writes very well, and attracted an audience -- and that is why he was a natural hire for his role at Stripe.
And for what it's worth, Paul Graham is all of those things, and that is why he was able to start YC.
"Smart and gets things done" are table stakes. The key differentiators are "writes well and attracts an audience" so that your influence exceeds your personal energies.
...if that's the kind of life you want of course. There's lots of SQL optimization work that needs doing too, and some people find that much more satisfying.
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Please don't start another podcast. Or if you absolutely must, please provide a text version of the content. Podcasts aren't searchable, they aren't skimmable and their content isn't indexed in search engines. Text is.
On the other hand, podcasts can be listened to in the background, while text must be actively read. There are pros and cons to each format as a consumer, not to mention differences in production workflow.