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bkovacev

605 karma · joined November 6, 2014

borkopolo [at] gmail.com
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bkovacev··on A Founder Salary Calculator
Exactly this.

I get chills reading that some founders were eating ramen for a year. Imagine how much extra work could have a fed brain complete.

Some may say I am not understanding the startup life, however without founder's health and sanity startups rarely succeed, because just like you said they're distracted with things they should not be worrying about like living frugally.

On the other hand I would never jeopardize my health, family and property for a startup. Maybe that will cost me 10 million in startup funds from a "get rich die trying" mentality loving VC, but at the end of the day, too many startups have failed because they scaled too soon and because someone made a decision when they lacked glucose. I'd much rather have my physical and mental health and future success, than a short term money to spend and an uncertain life ahead. Now, I am not saying that I would not work extra, but there has to be a balance otherwise you'll burn out.

bkovacev··on How I made 10% of my side project’s incomes with a bot written in 4 hours
Website slow to load/HN hug of traffic.

cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eP3WTm...

bkovacev··on Secret Service Agent Sentenced In Scheme Related To Silk Road Investigation
Excuse my ignorance, couldn't have he moved the bitcoins to offline storage, or is that the thing of the past? I am so out of the loop with bitcoin.
bkovacev··on Ask HN: What is your favorite place to find work?
As chrisked mentioned - definitely my previous clients and friends.

The best long-term contracts I received was through a former colleague, classmate or a friend. Recently, linkedin provided a steady source of leads (not talking about recruiters) via niche groups, 2nd/3rd connections etc.

One great site is https://whoishiring.io - an amazing job aggregator that parses (in my opinion) the best sites for work. This eliminates my need to go hunt for jobs on job boards.

Avoid freelance marketplaces like upwork, freelancer and others.

bkovacev··on Connecting to Google Sheets with Python
Am I the only one that finds the Google Sheets API not fully baked or has had issues with it?

Search functionality is not there, retrieve row, find and replace is not adequate, row index not sent when retrieve values etc. Updating particular row gets hard etc. We ended up adding row counter as a column as well.

We used Sheets in between two major iterations of our internal tools and we found it inadequate for any advanced usage.

Also sheets api would tend to 503/504 (not sure which one) if there was more than 10k rows with 4-5 columns.

bkovacev··on Do you need a VPN?
I am debating whether I should go with them or not, as well. They do seem solid, but I have not heard any people mentioning them.

I have a paid account with Netflix/Hulu/HBO and I'd like to watch it when I'm travelling or when I'm working remotely from third world countries. That would be my sole use case. Can they stream without huge latency?

bkovacev··on Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens
No need to be sorry, my downvoted comment was overly defensive in the first place, so I take the blame for that :) I have misread it and that goes on me!
bkovacev··on Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens
I have read it, obviously, since I have made a comment. I could have misinterpret it due to wording, commas and ideas inwrought in the other part of the comment, which has actually happened.
bkovacev··on Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens
You are correct sir, my bad. That makes more sense now, thanks for clarifying. Sorry!
bkovacev··on Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens
Got it, sorry. I misinterpreted it. My apologies.
bkovacev··on Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens
The original comment suggested countries only from Western and Northern Europe, thus my comment. I find it disturbing that this subtle discrimination is supported. I do not oppose the idea of all countries being involved.
bkovacev··on Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens
I, personally, do not think that European countries that already harass other European countries should have even more power by creating a new supranational investigative body which they will consist of, that will only further assert their power over other member states.
bkovacev··on Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs
Well put. In my eyes this is simple math,they're investing now and are eliminating fees and adjustments for inflation in the future. The pool of workers will be bigger and all of the workers will be of somewhat same skill level which will eliminate the need for higher salaries + larger equity shares in order to get a high skilled worker. Their shares in the future will certainly be more valuable then 1B now, and this incentive will allow them to dictate the market.
bkovacev··on Equifax website hacked again, this time to redirect to fake Flash update
Could you please give me a link to that? Are users in danger of a possible hack?
bkovacev··on Things learned while running your own self-funded startup
As funny as it sounds the "we get your first born child" clauses in the NDAs are not a rare occurrence. One NDA I was required to sign explicitly stated that every idea or functionality I developed on other projects for up to twelve months after delivery of their project was subject to review by the issuer of the NDA (not even a 3rd party) and that if anything even remotely similar to functionality I will be creating within the new project they're rightful owners of it or that they are able to sue me.
bkovacev··on Someone stole my identity on Upwork (2016)
The only other thing I could imagine was the problem was that I was interviewed via skype and that the client had asked for my skype account (at the time there was no voice/video through upwork). However, payment was still done through Upwork which is what they care about. Not a single dispute, nothing.

I went back and forth about the money, threatening to take them to court, write blog posts etc. But, they were still sending me generic replies. At the time, I really could not have been bothered enough to hire a lawyer and go through with this. The project from which they stole my money from involved a RaspberryPi and some other sensors and modules which was at its infancy, so I have learned quite a bit, so I've let go, but a lesson learned was that I should never work through a mediator (if that's the right word), but rather directly and have a lawyer review my contract. Clients have also loved the fact they're not paying 20% extra.

It definitely has happened just read the comments, one guy with 1440$, others with smaller amounts - https://collegetimes.co/upwork-sucks/ plus other things people are annoyed by with Upwork.

bkovacev··on Someone stole my identity on Upwork (2016)
I probably could have - but at the end of the day, it was money well invested.

I moved my business elsewhere (not toptal or any other platform, but a devshop) and told the same thing to 4-5 other devs that are my close friends who were charging about the same rate. At the end of the day, they might have gotten $1500, but they lost 5x that in matter of seconds.

I still feel a bit bitter about it though, but I need to let go.

bkovacev··on Bill Gates switches to Android phone
Why is this on HN? Articles like these should be on TMZ or some other non-relevant websites.
bkovacev··on Someone stole my identity on Upwork (2016)
The best part about Upwork is that they have invited me to be a premium freelancer and closed my account all in the same day. Hilariously I was told I'm not "good enough for the platform". I have had 5 positive job reviews, all pretty much 5 stars. That day I applied for 10-15 jobs as I wanted to bridge the downtime gap between two major gigs. I had 1500$ usd on that account, that I have not withdrawn yet. I was not working for peanut rate, but rather north of 50$/h.

Support was unhelpful and I couldn't get a chance to talk to human. Stole my money literally. They deactivated my account, and only after 10th email to their support have they've actually deleted the account.

Boycott Upwork.

bkovacev··on Ask HN: How to choose the right university subjects for a career in IT
The most important thing I was told while in college - you get out of college what you put into it. You'll still be a junior developer once you're out of it, and you'll re-learn 90% of what you know.

Classes won't matter much because you won't learn any real world usage of the technology, but you will learn all you need about algorithms, data structures and big o notation (if you want to pass the interviews). Pick classes that force you to think and use what you know to pick a solution. Don't pick classes that shows you the language, but rather how to approach problems, how to think in terms of solving them and how to put it all together in an architectured solution.

And as someone else said - internships. You'll learn 10x more in 3 month program, than you'll learn in your entire college career - guaranteed.

bkovacev··on Give away your code, but never your time
I think a great architect knows when to use a battle-tested tool and when to roll-out his own. There is no shame in using something that has a great track record of not failing you. Building a blueprint is not about writing a new formula for a brick, but rather using the best brick on the market and focusing on making the building as usable and efficient as possible.

Honestly, I disagree with your statement. The tsunami of FOSS is sometimes an advantage as well, because people can easily migrate off of legacy architecture that they were hired to fix in the first place and pick one to our liking. Since I do not know your niche or how much experience you have, it's hard for me to guess whether you have worked as a contractor somewhere, but...

I had a guy re-inventing his own Celery with a single worker in the same thread as main process. Of course it failed spectacularly :) I then also had an example of someone deliberately not using already battle-tested auth libraries for social auth but creating his own and of course he managed to expose things that were not needed to the client app and the company got hacked. He spent a month building it, instead of just plugging in an already built library that is used in production by millions of people.

Another developer yet built his own framework which was never stable and costed the company tens of thousands of dollars for the three months it was in production (plus three for development).

These are not some small start-ups or dev-shops, but rather serious companies that had devs that were alumni of Big 4. I think I am not the only one with this experience.

For me that is heresy - similar to not using a great standard library in a any language, but rather building your own libs/wrappers. Now, I have nothing against modifying a library or optimizing it for your use case, however starting things from scratch is in my opinion a huge cost, unless your company has time and money to throw.

bkovacev··on Give away your code, but never your time
I dislike the key suggestion. What's the point of open-source - if not to give back? It's a developer's codex/morale to answer.

It seems the author is salty about the fact he doesn't make money from open source, but is investing a lot of time. Well my dear colleague, offer support to the bigger companies that use your software in production or use that software to sell another. Simple.

Open source was never meant to be for-profit, at least from my understanding. Something you give back to the community, because you have taken a lot from it in the first place. You dislike new issues by non-payees? Well, write better docs. Someone is also giving YOU time by submitting that issue or by finding a bug - so should you pay them money for testing? Be grateful.

Should we all pay for the open source tools/frameworks we use? I can guarantee this would cause riots. If you don't want to contribute to OSS don't, but please do not whine about it.

bkovacev··on Ask HN: What software do you use for your company knowledge base?
We just installed openKB, modified it to our needs and deployed it to Heroku in a click - great stuff.
bkovacev··on Why I'm not a React Native developer
Could be a bit off-topic here and I hope that my tone is not extremely negative, but why is there a constant "Why we/i/should are/am/should insert possible negation insert a random action and why should you" trend in the professional blogs (not saying this author does the why should you part)? Titles are getting hideous and repetitive. I sincerely hope that this tone could be changed to something more meaningful/technical/constructive rather than listing things why you are or you are not doing something (while this author definitely goes into detail).

I definitely endorse freedom of speech and thought, but unless one is a vetted expert in the matter, one should avoid making these blog posts. I'm not the best chef in the world and I do things a certain way, but I do not go around the world telling people that they should do it my way.

bkovacev··on Peanut allergy cured in majority of children in immunotherapy trial
Gotcha. Ayran is something I will definitely try if I visit! Yes, I'm familiar with Kefir and it's sort of the same as our version of yogurt, but Kefir has a bit stronger/more "recognizable" taste!
bkovacev··on Peanut allergy cured in majority of children in immunotherapy trial
People look at me weird sometimes when I tell them we usually drink our yogurt.

In Serbia we have different types of yogurt some more thick (the westernized with flavor), yet some runny/less thick. But sour milk (kiselo mleko for us) is always of same texture and we eat it with a spoon. So, my question is - do Bulgarians drink their yogurt or do they eat it with a spoon?

bkovacev··on How to confirm a Google user’s specific email address
Off-topic, but shout out to Tom (author of the article) and Duncan @Distilled for being great guys. I interviewed with them for a developer position few years back, and while I usually forget the interviewers these two were extremely nice. I didn't get the job, but they left a great impression. If they're hiring in the RD department at Distilled make sure to apply!
bkovacev··on Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions
That was a bit too graphical for my lunch to handle, thanks :D
bkovacev··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2017)
Location: Digital Nomad, but mainly Eastern Europe

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: For a couple of weeks or a short gig absolutely!

Technologies: Python, Django, Django Rest Framework, HTML/CSS/Jinja2, js/jquery, react, redux, postgres, redis, celery, heroku, GAE (webapp2 as well), aws (which I'm not liking as of lately)

Résumé/CV: https://linkedin.com/in/borkopolo https://github.com/bkovacev

Email: borkopolo+hn[at]gmail.com

Availability: 10-20h

Rate: 90$/h

bkovacev··on Data Structures for Coding Interviews
> Array of problems a startup may face.

Not every company is a startup.

I'd much rather say a company like Google might have problems that require deep knowledge both inside and outside of someone's domain, but startups - no. They need to ship and optimize on the go, rinse and repeat.

> With strong math and CS knowledge, you can reason through almost any problem.

Until you can't. Math and CS, while certainly giving new perspectives, don't add much to the actual solution. What makes developers great is experience and not some text book knowledge of a topic. Hands on experience is a game changer.

Majority of the developers don't work and will most likely never work on something life-changing that they need to know every algorithm and data structure out there. Their time is better spent elsewhere.

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