throwaway9191a's comments

I worked with a CEO who shared this sentiment about history. After two months with no paychecks, half truths about our funding, and the dev team quitting, he wanted me to start building up a crew of contractors.

After asking what he would change, he told me he had no time to look at the past and could only look ahead.

I learned if you have enough money and lawyers, the past doesn't matter because you can enforce trust through litigation. But if you have to take people on their word, then their history becomes important. I didn't rebuild the team.

I'm sure there is some deeper lesson here between "smarmy business folks" and more principle driven individuals.

I've got 3 in the bag that match your #2 experience. I would love to know how common this outcome is.

My overwhelming experience is that companies rarely "fail". A good idea just chugs along with an owner making well into the 6 figures. Somebody else (like me) built the infrastructure that allows the owner to outsource the maintenance development work.

This became my reason for doing CTO as a service type solutions. A lot of people were doing this 5 years ago or so, which makes me think your #2 is fairly common.

I had a similar experience early in my career working in a call center. We received a lot of calls about 1 problem with customer modems. I wrote a script that detected snmptraps and automatically issued bounce commands to the remote modems.

Our call volume dropped noticeably. I told my manager why. He was pissed, and asked how we were going to justify headcount if our call volume was dropping.

Lesson learned. [edit: the ambiguous lesson is intentional. I stopped trying, but he kept everyone employed. So... lesson learned :)]

Virginia(US) has a law regarding this as well.

"B. ... if the driver or rider (i) comes to a full and complete stop at the intersection for two complete cycles of the traffic light or for two minutes, whichever is shorter, ..."

https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter8/secti...

Which makes a lot of sense. I've been in this situation in my car as well. The light just doesn't change.

I totally understand the frustration here, however this is what the (admittedly ridiculous) "survey" is talking about. Cars cut me off very often so they don't have to wait... what, 5 extra seconds through a turn?

Many times these cars cut me, then have to stop anyway for a pedestrian.

I often run lights if they are right before a hill. This is specifically to keep the cars behind me from getting mad and doing unsafe things. I'd rather just get out of the way.

While yours is a better title, your comment also helps me rationalize my behavior on a bike. Many people have irrational hate towards bikes, and those people operate much heavier equipment. They do so while staring at their cell phones. This is certainly a problem where all sides need to pay more attention, and not hate on each other.

And just because; my "tour de france cosplay" gives me a butt-pad for comfort, nice pockets on the back of my shirt to carry things, and dries really quick in the rain. I suppose if I spent $20,000 on a rolling sofa that would be better?

> People who want a car-alternative for necessity either buy a wal-mart bike, a cheap electric/gas moped, maybe a motorcycle, or walk.

This isn't true across the board. There are absolutely folks who have a $12k INEOS Pinarello because of status, but there is real value in more expensive bikes (more expensive than walmart).

Going from steel to aluminum is a very recognizable weight difference. Your commute just became more manageable.

A 105 groupset is way more reliable (ime) than lower grades. Your gears will shift better, not click, not skip, and not drop your chain during your commute.

A bike shop (which sells more expensive bikes than walmart) is going to fit you properly. You may get lucky with the walmart bike, but a proper fit removes knee pain, lower back pain, shoulder pain and neck pain.

If you are commuting, shopping, using your bike for real world things, the extra money is well worth it.

Note: I'm talking about a $500 -> ~$2k. Not a $5k bike for a commute. By ditching your car, you more than make up for the $1500 difference in insurance payments, car payments, gas payments, it really adds up quick.

In our local group rides there is a guy who rides in the fast group on a mountain bike. That is always my reminder that money is best spent on something like trainer road rather than upgrading your components to save grams.

That is really good to hear. Hopefully I'm wrong about beer being a large portion of sales for my local shops. For me, the whole cycling thing is about community. I just hope they are still around next summer.

> their competitiveness isn't just about their cycling stats, but buying from the cheapest source.

Well, yea. Competitive cyclists want to buy that $1000 power meter, or those $2500 ENVE wheels as cheap as possible. How many add-on products can you sell somebody who just needs a bike for commuting? Of course service is the biggest business there.

Isn't it cheaper to work with existing customers than to find new customers? All the shops near me cater to their existing customers by selling beer. All the group rides end at the bike shop and 50 people buy a pint before going home (granted this was in the past.... I have no idea how these places are still in business this year).

> I pump his tyre for him and ask if he'd like a replacement inner tube. "Not at your shop prices," he says.

That guy sucks and it must be so frustrating to deal with. I always walk out with several GUs or drink mixes when I stop by a shop. I'm sure that doesn't keep the lights on, but I try.

> You're going to have to learn that, as a laborer at a firm, the quality of work you do is, at best, loosely correlated to your monetary compensation. Sometimes you can do good work, sometimes you can do bad work, but how much you're paid is going to depend greatly on a number of surrounding factors.

This is really good advice. Your organization is given tens of millions of dollars to meet a set of goals. Those goals take X SDEs to accomplish. SDEs get paid roughly the same amount, regardless of their day to day.

At some point you will be in crunch mode on a highly visible project. Other times you will be updating wikis or doing things that don't need an SDE (I spend a lot of time getting paid as an SDE to work on tech documentation). The later are great times to do something you find interesting (maybe even loosely correlated with your org).

If you are an enjoyable person who can get things done, you are well worth the money. (except at amazon where the first part is frustratingly optional :)

This is a huge problem at AWS.

IMHO the largest contributor to over engineering in this company is people suggesting flaws in other's designs simply to have something to contribute during a meeting. I can't remember anyone, ever, telling me to remove something from a design doc (3.5 years).

I have added unnecessary complexity to my own designs as a response to comments. Not customer driven, not data driven, but somebody at a meeting got focused on something and it ended up getting added to the design.

Probably too late to respond, but just in case.

We were measuring the number of similar support requests that came to the team. Our library would allow customers to resolve these problems on their own. We had a good estimate of reduced requests, but not a good estimate increased time to maintain the open source library.

I'd like to echo this, along with the "relax" sentiment from other comments.

I worked incredibly hard to open source a project at a faang. I was even given a customer obsession award for it. No promo.. and no promo level projects for the next year or so... and now this open source project is "too old" for promo consideration.

I've learned to relax and give just enough to not be marked LE. I now have a lot of time to dedicate to other pursuits.

High school was a total disaster. I talked my way into the co-op program, and got an internship at a security company. I was only taking 4 classes my senior year. I did go to college for almost 12 weeks, but it wasn't working out.

I am honestly jealous of the people who say they valued their university experience. I really wish I could have enjoyed formal education that much.

My life was funded by the ability to walk into software development jobs. If I were born 5 years later, I would be a different (probably non-functioning) person.

> You don't need to go to university. We will always need garbage collectors and street sweepers, and remember, anyone can write bad software. Vendors continue to try to make it easier to do so.

This is why so many Americans view university as an elitist institution :) I agree about high school. High school is why I decided the education system was not for me (right or wrong, it was just a horrible experience).

I learned #1 while cold calling businesses to sell phone systems. You have to talk to people, make friends, and genuinely understand why companies operate the way they do. You can learn how large the world is without sitting in a classroom.

I learned #2... well in every job I've had.

What I feel I missed by not finishing university was the time to deeply understand a single subject. But then again, I was taking classes all over the spectrum. Maybe I was never meant for a deep understanding of a single subject.

OTOH, as far as recommending non-traditional paths, I wouldn't for my kids. I am extremely self driven. I never realized that most people are not this way.