mrchess's comments

mrchess | 5 years ago | on: Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump

When I saw the cryptic 1 sentence tweet that he wasn't going to be there, the first thing that came to mind was that he was telling his supporters indirectly that they could do whatever they wanted since he wouldn't be in harms way.

So perhaps it is a huge stretch to some, but we need to remember it is also not a stretch at all to many, especially given the recent events. Therein lies the danger.

mrchess | 5 years ago | on: Stripe Will Pay Workers $20k to Leave New York and San Francisco

Agreed on this one. I was with a company, since the beginning, that ended up blowing up.

In the middle of its growth, I had to move, and ended up becoming a remote engineer.

Since the acquisition, all my colleagues (who all started at the same "level" as me) have greatly surpassed me in terms of title, responsibility, and salary because "they were there".

I'm not upset or anything, and in fact happy we all won in our own ways, but just echoing the idea that being nearby matters for career advancement!

mrchess | 6 years ago | on: WeWork Files for IPO

For me it ended up not being worth it because I don't go in every day. In my case, the point of me WFH is so that I could get my commute time back, not just spend it going to a "different" office. With that said, I found myself only going in about 2x a week, which made it not worth it for me.

mrchess | 6 years ago | on: WeWork Files for IPO

You summed up perfectly my experience with WeWork and co-working spaces in general. You have to pay for the month, but I was only using it 2-3x a week -- I mean part of a WFH job is to get back your commute time! Those few visits felt pretty empty. I also made no friends from the events, as it seemed people had friends already.

At the end I just opt'd to save my $400 monthly payment and go back to coffee shops, and have some extra cash.

mrchess | 6 years ago | on: WeWork Files for IPO

Why do people like WeWork? Here in Singapore, a hot-desk at WeWork is $400+ USD a mont. Am I crazy, or is $400 a month a lot of money for a hot-desk with decent internet?

Or is it one of those things where all their money is in the big rentals, and the hot-desks are just for show?

mrchess | 8 years ago | on: Does Life End at 35? (2013)

fwiw that translation is wrong. 大器晚成 means "The bigger the cauldron/pot, the longer it will take to cast/make [the cauldron]."

mrchess | 10 years ago | on: Show HN: Painless1099 – automated self-employment taxes

Fwiw I use and am actually quite impressed with Quickbooks Self-Employed version, and I've never had a problem with 1099 management. They keep tax estimates for you in the upper-right corner so you always know around how much you will need to pay, and you can pay the quarterly taxes online through them via. eftps. While they don't auto-save for you, I'd argue you should be responsible enough to do this yourself. They were a bit buggy when they first released, but their support was pretty good to me and they have fixed all issues I've reported.

That being said, I'm not sure what this product can do for me over what I'm using now.

Actually, I just looked at their FAQ and they don't track expenses or anything... things you can do with Quickbooks.

Now I'm not trying to down this company, but just am pointing out to others that a mature version of this product already exists (minus the auto-save) and that I can't identify "why" I should switch over to Painless.

mrchess | 10 years ago | on: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?

One of the most interesting things I noticed when living is Singapore last year was that a lot of engineers, especially computer programmers, fall under the IT category.

There was no sense "software engineer" or "systems administrator" or "solutions engineer", etc. not in the way how it is in the US.

They all just looked at me and said, "Oh, so you work in IT?"

Then we talked about banking.

mrchess | 10 years ago | on: YC Fellowship

The "Save Draft" feature does not work on Submittable. FYI

mrchess | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is it normal for founders of startups to not sleep?

To me it's normal. When I obsess over things I get very little sleep. But to brag about it, to me, is immature. It reminds me of college kids who would brag about waiting last minute to study and pulling all nighters for their tests the day before and being proud of it. Well... if you were more responsible with your time maybe you wouldn't have to cram like that?

To answer your question, yeah it's normal to send things at odd hours, but immature to constantly talk about it as if you deserve some sort of special treatment for it.

mrchess | 11 years ago | on: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

My feedback:

1. No idea what this does, even after logging in and clicking around.

2. It wouldn't load for me at the start/seems VERY slow. Saw some comments about a 5MB file... maybe that is it?

3. "Slack meets github issues" means nothing to me! Who is your target audience? Those both seem like dev tools, but it looks like you're hitting consumers?

Good luck!

mrchess | 11 years ago | on: YC for Hardware

You are correct. I though Bolt == Lockitron Bolt. I did not realize they are two different companies. I will delete the original comment since it is inaccurate.

mrchess | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?

Eerily close to an experience I've had in my career. Nobody is looking out for your career except yoursel and as the company grew, they left you behind, that's that. I'd attribute this to poor management, as you typically want to keep the core members, but sometimes this does indeed happen.

I suggest you leave and take this experience with you and be more aware during your next professional engagement. At this point, being in the company is holding you back.

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