863 karma · joined March 29, 2009
I can say: "I want to work in Haskel, making games for the Wii U, from home, for 3 hours a day only". No matter what my experience, I won't be hired anytime soon.
I get a lot of recruiter spam from UK recruiters, but truth be told, don't think I've ever got an email where the minimum offered was lower than £45k for London while for anywhere else the maximum range was £45-50k
I work from home so I can move anywhere, and a more rural/calm place, earning less and having more time does appeal to me, but all the good schools here are in the city and I'm not brave enough to risk my kids future on my dreams of today.
a) I hate having people in my personal space I don't know well. It may seem I'm being an asshole, but I'm very very very very sensitive to smells to the point that I can't concentrate. Your cologne or just body smell will probably be my number one focus throughout that hour.
b) while I don't have OCD/am a germaphobe, again I HATE HATE HATE using a keyboard that isn't new or mine. The stickiness of the keys, the dirt around them... makes me go crazy.
I always carry my laptop to interviews with me nowadays to at least avoid B.
So, for me, a whiteboard is great (for some reason, I don't care much about a dirty board/pens) and I do amazingly well on them. I also do very well in public speaking situations so maybe I'm just comfortable at that kind of interaction/distance.
I think the best is to truly ask the person what they prefer. If they want a laptop, great, if a whiteboard, cool as well, I've done both both as an interviewer and interviewee, and noticed that as well, some people prefer a whiteboard, others a laptop. Give them what they are more comfortable with.
I don't think you should stop posting photos from your trips just because you are 'afraid' you will be pissing off your friends. They can always unfollow you (or whatever FB allows you to do, I'm not big on social networks) if they find it 'offensive'. I just think it is a balancing act between sharing parts of your life, and sharing absolute numbers or boasting.
Anyone that knows me for more than 5 minutes, knows I'm doing well (I live in a nice place, in a very expensive area for example and I don't hide this), but at the same time, I avoid letting (outside of very close friends) people know how well exactly. I never talk about money or salaries or what not. That doesn't mean I won't invite them over for dinner/a swim in the pool just in case I 'piss them off'.
Don't want to attack the contributors, but honestly, the higher levels of reputation just either show me that he either has too much free time outside of work (valid, but doubtful) or they spend work time answering questions, which for me goes against the 10x productivity programmer mantra.
a) be honest, but when they ask (and they will) why you are leaving the current company, say you know they are paying their employees way below market rate. This allows you to tell the truth, but points out to the recruiter you will not take you current salary + 5%
b) redirect the question to "While I make X, I'm discussing the move with other companies and have offers for X+Y". This accomplishes two things, puts a premium on you (other companies are already interested you) and lets the recruiter know how much they will have to offer you to accept their offer.
Of course, you need to be ready for the conversation to fall through at this point, but you should always be ready for that anyway ;)
I have a lot of non-tech folks ask me about money (when they ask me what I do and if it pays well) and I always try to avoid giving numbers and go with a more generic 'I can't complain, things are ok/good'. I earn a lot (and I mean a lot) compared to non-tech folks where I live: 20x difference in some cases. I had a friend recently in a conversation mentioning that buying X (one of those cheap android tablets for kids) as a birthday present was 3 days worth of her work. In my case, it is less than 1.5 hours of my work.
I'm very happy for earning these values, and I try to give back when I can, pick up the bill here and there (enough to help, but not enough for people to resent it) but I know we developers are quite lucky with the luck of the draw we got in this little slice of time and IMO, we should be more considerate of others in these cases.
I think the main issue with Portugal, startup wise, is the people. We (as a nation) are very risk adverse and scared. There are many logical reasons for that that I won't get into the details here, but on the technical level, our graduates are quite good and salaries/cost of living are low. A typical YC investment on a Portuguese company would probably give them about one year of runway without any further investment.
If you are thinking of starting something and need investment, London is hard to beat, with Berlin coming up second.
I do agree with GP a bit on the solo founder. Here is the thing, I have enough contacts in the industry that if I wanted, I could form a very good team if I had the money to pay them (thus, the idea of getting investment money as a solo founder), but none of those people would agree to be co-founders as they know the chance of striking it big are very very small and they can clear very very good salaries as employees. Sure, if you are 22 and have a few friends just graduating at the same age, you will find co-founders, but if you are 35+, have 15 or more years under your belt, and most of your network as well, they won't leave very high paid jobs to be co-founders, and honestly, after working with them and knowing what they are capable, I wouldn't want a 22 fresh graduate as a co-founder either (unless he was truly exceptional)
Most folks need that paycheck and don't live in the magical Bay Area where they find jobs laying in the street when they go for a stroll.
I personally would think about moving to a different company if that was the case, but I wouldn't make a fuss about it as I wouldn't know what the future lies ahead of me and who I'll meet in future companies (burning bridges and all that)
BMI is not really accurate on the individual level. Most athletes will score on the 'overweight' range for example while athletes that play in weight division sports will be in the 'underweight' category a lot of the time (I was for example, but I doubt anyone would consider me underweight at the time).
I remember a scene about a mother going to the store, and buying 'light' oreos/chips/other stuff, and giving that to their kids instead of the regular ones to their kids and then complaining he didn't lose weight and taking as a conclusion that 'dieting' and 'exercise' doesn't really work. Never considered that maybe a carrot stick or an apple would be better, she would just buy diet soda/cookies/chips.
One of the main problems people have with counting calories is accurately being able to do so. While I don't think counting calories is for everyone, if you do try again, try to weight everything you eat. Don't forget the teaspoon of olive oil in the salad and those kinds of small things that add up. Research has shown that comparing food logs of people that say they have a slow metabolism and that they count calories, when subjected to something I think is called, reverse isotope water (or similar), shows that they are not accounting for a lot of the things they eat.
Also, a month isn't a long time to notice changes even on the scale. It isn't uncommon to not drop weight due to water retention during a few weeks (depending where you start) when starting a diet.
Just the 'lifting 3 times a week' will take out a lot of the working population out of the picture. Why? If include commute to gym, working out time and shower/etc, we are looking at least 6 hours per week. Add the gym costs/going to the gym costs and you have maybe 100 bucks a month as a cost. We are fortunate we can spend that time/money on ourselves, but seriously, a lot of people can't. Heck, if you take 80% of the comments here in HN how they work 60+ hours a week in their startups, I doubt even us techies will have the time to do so.
In my country (and I think the USA as well) obesity is highly correlated with low income.
Then you have the psychological aspects to it. Stress is a major contribution to over eating. If everyday you are worried if you have enough at the end of the month for rent, you wont stop, go online, get a recipe, go to the grocery store to get fresh vegetables, come on, cook for an hour to have a nice healthy meal... You most likely will pick up a microwavable lasagna and be done with it.
I don't disagree with you that losing weight is easy, it is, basically "eat less than what you need", but being able to do that, based on many many factors isn't as easy.
(congrats on the weight loss)
[1] https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL seems to be a clone of it and has commits from 4 years ago
For me, it is everything Finder should have been
Not sure what is best to be honest since lack of sleep brings a lot of problems by itself.
I've been working from home for more than a year (with some half year stints before) and I can't imagine going back to an office. I have my kid to play with and my wife to talk with if I need to. I also chat with co-workers online but if I really want to talk to people, I can always pick my laptop and go to a cafe, gym, mall even. I wake up at around the same time everyday (well, kid is my alarm clock), do the normal morning chores with the family, then start working. I can (and do) stop every so often and do some exercise or sometimes just stop and read a bit of a book if the weather is nice outside. I'm always on time for dinner since I'm the one that cooks it, and I put my kid to bed everyday. The fact I work from home could have been an excuse to not care about schedules, slack of on the personal hygiene/appearance, but I didn't and as I said, I would probably take a large payout over going to an office again.
I think, and to be fully honest, whenever I worked in an office, I would say I actually enjoyed the company of 2-3 people and the rest were a bother (to me) and I couldn't really go: "John, no you can't come for coffee because people don't like talking to you" so having my family, some friends (have a few that also work from home living nearby) and ability to talk to random strangers gives me all the socialising I need.