antonkm

I often think three times before I decide to automate anything. As a dev, and co-founding with another dev, the direct response is always that it should be automated. On second thought, our billable hours are almost always better spent doing client work. This is a very relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1319/

My main work (non-dev) tools are Asana and Gmail. Asana is standalone for us (looking into adding it's Timeline which seem solid). Gmail have a couple of filters.

We use a finance setup where I just forward or email my receipts and have an accountant go through it and correct all the numbers, so this is automated for our part already (we pay about $200/mo for a personal accountant to go through it).

The one thing I think we spend too much time on is support issues. Customers will mail me personally, or my colleague, and it's hard to keep track of everything. We have a small team of students doing work on this and will soon have a custom web app solution built.

Yes, thank you. I see that my comment might be interpreted as sceptical. It looks great.

I've spent the last month (yes - month) writing a custom CLI to run on CSV for a customer which have data scattered in a bunch of Excel files. This seem a bit too good to be true.

I'd guess that instead of going for the Big Co career path you choose to start a business instead. And a startup might not carry the same status in Japan as in the West?

I found the title weird when I read the article. Startups is nothing but status in my book. People work almost for free as long as they can tag themselves as startup people. Must be a cultural difference.

This is how transparent an organization should be when breached. Kudos to Under Armour.

As a dev, I implemented something similar. And I can't speak for TaskEasy but mine wasn't on purpose. Really complex process made simple:

1. Start out with an email transaction that follows up purchases done in the MVP to registered users. All that receive the emails have accounts since the MVP required it. It's not hard to setup automatic emails through code... It's hard to think of edge cases though.

2. Change in spec: more people buy if we change the UX and cut the registration.

3. Send an email to the customer. Oops - no account to unregister.

4. (This is the step that was missing) Change the code that handles emails so everyone can unsubscribe.

Sometimes it's important to get something out quick and things aren't always dark UI / UX on purpose. Users are often blaming us devs for our dark evil powers when all we did was shake out some code on a too tight deadline.

I think a big problem with this whole debacle is that we're discussing cameras and lighting, before discussing the actual matter: a person died and someone is responsible.

It doesn't matter if I were to run someone over when it's dark. I would still be accountable.

The discussion about footage removes focus from the actual issue which should be a legal issue, not a technical debugging session.

Edit: Sorry, am not native English speaker. What I meant when I wrote accountable was that I would have to own up to what happened. Not that I would get a sentence if it was an accident.

It's more often 5-6 weeks. As a Swede I always feel alien to the hours Americans seem to put in.

I'm a consultant and work roughly 35h/w in Sweden. I often find this a bit too much, given that the work I do is disconnected from anything "real". Sure, my clients are always happy and I do fun things, but my family and friends is what's real.

I truly believe we should automate everything and let humans decide by themselves if they feel like working. If not, something like UBI should exist.

I find the concept of short selling a bit confusing, even though I've Googled. Can someone explain this in an easy to understand way?

I am only a stranger on the internet, but if I were you I'd leave the toxic environment you're in.

You're 28 years old, burned out and have 6-8 months saved up. I'm 30+ now and live a happy life, but I was severely burnt out between the years 23-26.

It took me those years to get back to my normal self after crashing. I feel like those years are lost for me. I felt numb and didn't care about anything. All because of bad management and me being a constant overachiever. Life is not about working until there's nothing left of you - get out and try not to worry too much. The change will probably be scary but you'll find a new path.

I don't know if I agree. I work directly with clients together with another dev and I do most sales. It's not 24/7/365. I sell, network and meet new contacts maybe about 35-50% of my week during intense sale periods. I work 35 hour weeks. All year through I have about 4h per week in sales activities.

The "trick" is being socially skilled and interested in others, to get them to trust you with jobs that are large enough so you don't have to be constant lookout for new assignments. (I do not mean to imply that you lack social skills). I have a small client pond (50-75 contacts on first name basis) where I'm becoming the big dev fish and people have started sending referrals my way nowadays.

Your point about going it alone is valid - I chose to partner up because of the crazy amounts of context switching solo operations require.

This piqued my interest in Elm which lead me to start reading the Elm introduction[0] and it's great! I don't know if I'll ever use it in production but these well-written docs sparked the programming interest in me once again. Will definitely write some side project in Elm.

0: https://guide.elm-lang.org

Hey OP! Here's a paid SaaS solution to implement and expand on.

As a consultant I'd love to have an easy customized theme, where I can pick a font, colors and upload logo. Would probably pay one time fee to get started and maybe a small fee to update an existing with new info? Or a fee per sent resume? The time this would save would be so worth it.

PS. Love the design. DS.

No, I replied to a comment which might have been removed or downvoted from visibility.

You think the claim that "they", here referring to immigrants (not defining skin color), isn't racist? It's a generalization on a group of people. And it's a negative one.

That's an opinion piece and not a piece of actual investigate journalism. I'd say the point still stands: the term political correctness was popularized by the racist Sweden Democrats, and is used as I expressed. It's still mainly the right wing extremists that use it, even though it's more common to see populist far righters use it also.

No, this isn't correct. Please provide some kind of evidence to provide your racist claim. I really despise these kind of claims, especially when connected to political correctness. Sweden does not have a problem with political correctness - only the right wing extremists think so. I rather be politically correct (which actually means polite and respectful) than be able to spew hate against minorities without anyone telling me I'm wrong. The term only acts as a way to distract the opponent arguing against racism, sexism or other despicable ideologies. It's effective and Sweden's version of Trumping it.

I agree about the laws being too rigid in regards to working professionals.

I second this. My favorite part is the icons. They're great in both form and color scheme.

> I’ll eventually ask, “Which platform do you like to build on to start with?”

> One client answer was: “All — Android, iOS and web. And I want the mobile apps in native to make sure the responsiveness of the app is good.”

Maybe I'm misreading, but the client wanted a Yelpish kind of app. The right play, in my book, would be convincing the client that a React Native app would do. This is a really easy sell since that is actually what the client need. Maybe the author's team aren't yet familiar with RN.

React Native is super snappy and is a great choice for MVPs. It's easy to develop, the reusability is really high between platforms and the price tag is usually quite low in comparison.

I think you're a bit off with the time frame. The system sends push notifications to citizens in a specific area, or am I mistaken? Are these texts?

If a developer were in a position to actually change this, the options should be in separate lists, or even separate pages. If only CSS and HTML is available, they should be in two columns.

The screenshots are so bad, not even the juniors I work with would consider deploying this. It's mind boggling.

I changed my name when I married (am male). I haven't had any problems or repercussions changing names, professionally or personally.

Some reasons why I changed name:

1. My kids and I now share all surnames.

2. I had no relation to any parts of the family that shared my previous last name.

3. It felt a teeny weeny bit progressive being the male who changed.

Not everything is black and white and needs to focus on business needs... :) Accounts were easily renamed (except Skype, bluh) and no one has asked me for any of my papers or research. Just add them to your profile as you would before you changed name.

Please do not be so insensitive on HN, or in other forums. This is an actual person that took his life and you never know who ends up reading your comment.

I take it you're replying to me? My little software empire also keep local copies, that kind of defeats the purpose of using git for teamwork or package management to keep dependencies in check.

These are building blocks in a normal dev environment, and it would take me massive amounts of time to manage everything on my own.

The local copies are fragile and not as easily shared.

Thanks for this, will look into it.

Gah. Moments like these always gives me a bit of panic, since I realize that so much of my software relies on external sources.

Relying on npm, Atlassian/GitHub etc really hurts when stuff like this happens. Issues always gets resolved, but cases such as the GitLab incident should be enough to always keep some local copies around.

I agree - have yet to see the benefit of using a framework that aren't at least 2 years. Never do client work using newly released frameworks (if that isn't specified as a must by the client). The result will come back to bite you sooner or later.

I like the idea of universal code, maybe Sapper will be the solution that comes out winning. I'll let the community be the judges and hop on the train a year later if that's the case.

How much is your/the "Bay Area Rate"? Thinking about internationalization of my consultancy and have no real insight into hourly rates for devs in the US. Don't want to leave too much money on the table because I haven't done my research.

I consider myself to be more than one person, since I have a network of dev friends. So these contacts help and I'd not be able to do those numbers without people acting as my reference.

Agree about interviews and brokers. I however have no interest on using brokers or being employed. Have gotten some really nice offers since I started consulting, Sweden is great for such opportunities.

Starting Q1 2018 I have a 90% chance landing a ~500k SEK job from an informal Facebook posting. I have no experience with dealing with clients outside of Sweden. Maybe my advice isn't applicable to the US?

Hej!

1. ~2.4m SEK (out of this I also paid other consultants to do parts of the work plus marketing, so I got about 1m)

2. I'm in several. Some are groups based out of Chamber of Commerce. Others are based out of "Science Parks". I'm joining new networks in Stockholm this year since there's probably more work to be found there which would motivate my travel (~1½h). Haven't done the research fully on which.

3. I do the work myself and take in consultants when needed. I'm on a mix of hourly and value based, will try to change from 50/50 to 10/90 in favor of value based next year.