Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

threadreaderapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 506 posts

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#341

Post by super-serial »

rayalez wrote: post #330
super-serial wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through my entire 20s thinking this, and I have strong opinions about it so sorry for this long post... Back when I quit my 9-5 job in 2006 my favorite quote was by the creator of Winamp... "For me, coding is a form of self-expression. The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have. This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leave." No company deserved me because I w…

There's nothing wrong with making people rich in exchange for money they give you. That's how jobs work. Making someone else rich is something to be proud of and aspire to. Not as cool as making yourself rich, but still good.

I don't mind if my boss or the CEO of the company gets rich, I think they're good guys. I'm just worried they would sell out instead of keeping the company private.

Take Tumblr for example - they sold to Yahoo. Verizon bought Yahoo. If I was an engineer at Tumblr I'd be pissed that an evil monopoly like Verizon that's fighting against net neutrality is suddenly using my code.

I'm more humble now than I was in my 20s, and I don't think my code is anything special, but I still fear that the private company I work for will sell everything I built to someone I consider evil. If I have no control and no equity I'm going to act like a mercenary... I'll do the job efficiently and according to specifications, but they don't get anything extra. If they have an idea and have me build something that gets them rich that's great - but I'm not going to be like the guy who built GMail on the side at Google... I just do the job they tell me.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#342

Post by mitchdoogle »

darioush wrote: post #322
dwaltrip wrote: post #47

This should be titled "Condensed snippets of accumulated wisdom, focusing mostly on software and business, that I am fairly confident of and feel compelled to share with you". Many of these nuggets are not "obvious", for any conventional understanding of that word. That said, I enjoyed the post, and liked the concise format.

The format is really good. Tired of paying ~$5 for a 300 page self-help book, when a 2 page summary like this can do just as well.

you should consider buying The Great American Bathroom Book. Despite the kitschy title, it consists of rather good and concise summaries of novels as well as nonfiction books, including some popular self-help books. None are more than two pages.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#343

Post by quadrangle »

stirner wrote: post #90

I expected this to be an article about general life tips. Perhaps the title could use the suffix “About Startups”?

I think it's about software / programming world and economics, not just startups. Still very niche, not stuff about life relevant to any non-tech person

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#344

Post by inimino »

eropple wrote: post #332
rhaps0dy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track . I need to…

Try consulting or entrepreneurship.

When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need.

When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#345

Post by mitchdoogle »

justonepost wrote: post #329

"Your idea is not valuable" ... no, maybe not some top level idea like "Social media, but more private." But, execution is just a bunch of smaller ideas.

It's not just about ideas. Coming up with ideas is easy. Turning an idea into a viable product involves a lot of work.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#346

Post by chubot »

msla wrote: post #204
chubot wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think this sentence oversimplifies things. The conclusions should be divided between: 1) Most open source software written and released today 2) Most open source software you use The code in category #2 is much older on average. Most people here use bash every day, but as far as I can tell, there's about one person behind it, who doesn't get paid for it (Chet Ramey). And you're right that a lot of projects sta…

> And you're right that a lot of projects start free, and then get commercial contribution once they are valuable. Linux, git, hg, and Python all fit that profile. I think you used the wrong word here, or at least a misleading one: Linux, for example, is still free and Free for most reasonable definitions people have of those terms. (Anti-copyleft trolling is not reasonable.) Its development is funded , yes, but that…

Yes, there are a lot of dimensions, hence Linux falling in multiple categories. It was started by an individual, but many of the current contributions are by people who are paid to work on it.

The story isn't simple for any big/successful project I can think of:

1) Started by a company for profit, vs. an individual for fun, or maybe profit.

2) Where the current commits come from, regardless of how the project started (contributor is paid or not paid)

I didn't mean to suggest that "free" and "commercial contribution" are mutually exclusive. The distinction I meant is whether the contributor is part of an organization that makes money from the software.

3) Whether the project was forked. WebKit was forked, LLVM was shepherded by Apple into a huge project, but Apple didn't start it. CyanogenMod was forked the other way (from a company to a commercial effort), and then turned back into a different company.

Additionally, some people might start a company to make open source software. And some employees might be paid more making proprietary software, but choose to work somewhere where they can work on open source.

So yes it's very complicated. This quote:

It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes.

isn't useful, except for the very small number of people who think that "open source == free == no profit".

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#347

Post by iliketosleep »

super-serial wrote: post #341
rayalez wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with making people rich in exchange for money they give you. That's how jobs work. Making someone else rich is something to be proud of and aspire to. Not as cool as making yourself rich, but still good.

I don't mind if my boss or the CEO of the company gets rich, I think they're good guys. I'm just worried they would sell out instead of keeping the company private. Take Tumblr for example - they sold to Yahoo. Verizon bought Yahoo. If I was an engineer at Tumblr I'd be pissed that an evil monopoly like Verizon that's fighting against net neutrality is suddenly using my code. I'm more humble now than I was in my 20s,…

You're afraid the code you write for an employer might be used by an evil company. We could apply the same argument to taxes. The taxes you pay may help fund actions that you believe are morally reprehensible. To a large extent, these things are beyond your control, and by overanalyzing you're simply limiting yourself.

So what I am saying is at this point, do not worry about all these things. Keep up the side-projects, and if you do that over the long-term, you may one day find yourself in a situation where you have the freedom to dedicate your efforts to what you find meaningful.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#348

Post by [deleted] »

inimino wrote: post #344
eropple wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track . I need to…

Try consulting or entrepreneurship. When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need. When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.

[deleted]

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#349

Post by eropple »

inimino wrote: post #344
eropple wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track . I need to…

Try consulting or entrepreneurship. When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need. When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.

You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do.

I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#350

Post by dharness »

kat wrote: post #261
AYBABTME wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has ‘software engineering’ degrees which are essentially vocational CS degrees.

To add to this, Canadian Universities also have co-op programs. You don't have to have an engineering degree to get a co-op job. The student gets paid well over minimum wage (and learns on the job) and the employers get financial incentives from the gov't to hire students. Its win-win for both the student and the employer.

Software Engineering at Canadian universities does not contain a dramatically different level of vocational training (with the exception of Waterloo).

Co-op programs are optional, and take place in the summer or in a gap year. The affiliation of companies hosting co-ops is loose, and the schools charge large fees for participating in these programs (with the exception of Waterloo).

Speaking from personal experience, results may vary.

Post reply on HN