robdimarco

I read 57 books this year, a mix between fiction and non-fiction

Top 5 fiction

- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

- Trust by Hernan Diaz

- City of Thieves by David Benioff

- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

- Widow Basquiat by by Jennifer Clement

Top 5 non-fiction

- Boom Town by Sam Anderson

- The Second Founding by Eric Foner

- The Club by Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson

- The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel by Douglas Brunt

- The Spy and the Traitor by Ben McIntyre

I came across https://github.com/systempromptio/systemprompt-mcp-server which has an OAuth 2.1 demo

The complaint is amazing!

I love how they found out!

> On February 18, 2025, an investigative reporter at The Information contacted Rippling about a forthcoming article concerning Deel’s Russia-related sanctions activity, noting he had “been working on a story on Deel for the past few weeks” that “started as an exercise to look into the veracity of that lawsuit I previously reported on.” This reporter was referring to his January 9, 2025, article entitled “Deel Accused of Money Laundering, Sanctions Failures in Lawsuit,” which reported on Damian v. Deel Inc., No. 25-cv-20017 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 3, 2025). 84. > > > The reporter’s email listed eleven assertions regarding supposed issues at Rippling relating to payments into Russia and other sanctioned jurisdictions. Each individual assertion was followed by internal Rippling Slack messages—thirteen messages in total

Dad with 3 kids here.

With my first one, I tried and encouraged and bribed and nothing worked. I drove myself crazy. And then one day he said to me. "Dad, I don't want diapers." And that was it. Done!

What I learned from this... all kids figure it out. Quite frankly, using the toilet is just way more user-friendly than using diapers! At some point, they'll realize it. They just go at their own pace.

So you can drive yourself crazy trying to get them to realize it... or you can just gently suggest, be patient and have confidence that they will figure things out!

Note! Letting kids do things at their own pace (and not yours) is very helpful for many things besides potty training!

I saw one in GGP when I was running there a few months ago. Scared the hell out of this East Coaster!

So far (been about 9 months), I like being an IC a lot. I still get to be a leader and mentor, but have a lot less paperwork to fill out come review time! I always enjoyed the coding part of the startup CTO job more than the manager part anyhow. I feel that if I ever want to get back in to management, either at my current employer or somewhere else, I'll be able to make that transition pretty easily.

But if I go full-time manager, I don't know how easy it would be to flip back to dev / IC.

I have very similar experience. I'm 42, spent most of my career in startups / small companies in CTO-level positions, but last year took an engineering position in big tech (at one of the companies you mention).

My suggestion for someone with a lot of experience is to focus more on networking your way in to the company than on skills brush up. Find contacts at the company(s) you are interested in and try to set up direct meetings (in person, video conference) to find out more about positions, responsibilities, etc. at that particular company. Each company has their own unique philosophies and growth paths for individual contributors vs. eng. managers, so I don't know that there would be one generic piece of advice to follow.

Feel free to reach out to me at <username> @ gmail if you would like to talk more specifics.

eLocal USA | Full Stack Engineer | Conshohocken, PA (suburban Philadelphia) | Full-time | Onsite

eLocal is a profitable, 10 year old company whose mission is to connect consumers with local businesses, with a particular specialization in the home services and legal verticals. eLocal has been at the forefront of a changing advertising industry, being one of the only media companies in the country offering local businesses a performance-based pricing model. We use our software to route people to the appropriate service providers based on their needs.

* Tech stack includes Rails / AWS / React / Twilio * Casual, professional environment with respect for work/life balance and significant autonomy

You will be responsible for collaborating with our product, sales, and operations team on feature definition and project planning, and then turning ideas into reality during development and deployment.

We are looking for people who have a proven ability to ship great software, regardless of the technology. We want someone who will take ownership of their project and transform ideas into reality.

Mostly, we work with Ruby and Rails, but there are many other tools in our toolbox, including PostgreSQL, ReactJS, Chef, Redis, AWS, and Twilio.

We give a great deal of autonomy to our developers in deciding on the appropriate technologies and development approach and expect them to take pride in getting great software released for our users.

To learn more check out our full job description at

http://assets.elocal.com/jobs/FullStackDeveloper-March2017.p...

My county recently changed to using a passive investment strategy for pensions and there is a push for the whole state of PA to change to a similar model.

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20150301_Follo...

whoa, I used to work with Jay about 10 years ago. Small world.

eLocal (http://www.elocal.com) - Conshohocken, PA (Philly burbs)

Ostensibly, the job title is Ruby Developer, but really your job involves bringing to life the software that is used by our consumers, customers and internal users. You will be responsible, in concert with our product and operations teams, for feature definition, project planning and estimation, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Often, we work with Ruby and Rails, but there are many other tools in our toolbox, including PostgreSQL, Solr, Chef, Redis, AWS, PhoneGap, and more. Our developers are given the freedom to find the best solution, but must take on the responsibility for a successful implementation. We are looking for an individual who has a proven ability to ship great software regardless of the technology.

Must Haves:

- Eligible for work in the US - At least 2‐5 years of relevant web development experience - Experience with scripting languages such as PHP, Python, or Ruby, (Hardcore would be a +!) as well as the ability to quickly learn and apply new technologies (we are willing to take someone without Ruby experience assuming you have lots of web development experience and are willing to learn) - Experience owning, delivering and maintaining production code or services - Exposure developing on Linux/Unix. You don't need to be an admin, but you need to be comfortable with a terminal shell - Self motivated with a strong work ethic Nice to Haves: - Devops: Linux Administration / Nginx / Amazon Web Services / Chef - Data: PostgreSQL / Redis / Solr - Javascript: CoffeeScript / JQuery - Mobile: Phone Gap / iOS development

Sounds a lot like what Venmo is doing (https://venmo.com/). I don't think they have an API yet.

My greatest success has come from sponsoring local user groups in the technology that I am looking to hire in. Great way to make introductions. Most recruiters are a waste of $$, unless you are looking for a very specific, hard to find skillset.

This is in Pennsylvania not NJ.

Can you tell us a little more about your experience? Hard to judge salary expectations without knowing more about you.

Interested in this too.

I agree with you that the wage tax makes the city less attractive to live in than the neighboring burbs. I chose to live in Conshohocken rather than Chestnut Hill/Mount Airy mainly because of the wage tax.

That being said, I do think that the Nutter administration realizes this issue. The problem is that if you cut the wage tax, you have to increase revenue generation from something else. The city is already has revenue issues, so a radical change in tax structure seems unlikely.

This article ignores the role of stocks issuing dividends and how that contributes to the game.

Simple guide for getting started...http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html

This will lead you to many other great on line guides.

In general, I am running MRI Ruby 1.8.7, Rails 2.3.5, MySQL 5.1

Good question. One easy answer to get you started solving them.

TALK TO A LAWYER. They will guide you through these questions. Do not cheap out on the lawyer now, you are asking important questions that will fundamentally affect the ability of your business to succeed. These are common questions and a lawyer will work it out.

Here were some of my thoughts on it from a couple years ago...

http://www.innovationontherun.com/considering-working-for-a-...

These are the civil charges, it will be interesting to see if there are criminal charges. A civil verdict against GS just costs money. A felony conviction would destroy the bank, like it did to Arthur Andersen.

# There is only one way to get people to do something. You have to make them want to do it.

# People love to hear their name. When someone tells you their name, remember it and call them by it

# When someone asks you what you do, or what's new, have a good upbeat answer. No one wants to hear about your problems.

High Tech Startup is a fantastic book that takes you from the kitchen table to IPO.

http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Start-Revised-Updated/dp/068...

If the founders care about not being forced to "maximize shareholder value", simply don't give out any controlling equity to non-founders. Consider how the NY Times or Washington Post, and WSJ operated for a long time. The controlling interest was held by a single family and not by all of the common shareholders.

If you want to take outside investment, part of the deal is that the company no longer just belongs to the founder. You no have other parties. If you don't like it, don't take the money.

Are you looking for JavaCC? https://javacc.dev.java.net/

Depends on your point of view. Certainly it was profitable for the investors. So is the question has YouTube ever been cash flow positive?

I do not believe that Google breaks out earnings specifically for YouTube, and I am not sure that they differentiate search earnings earned through YouTube as AdSense revenue or for YouTube. But YouTube certainly does generate significant revenue for Google.

First one off the top of my head would be YouTube

When I interviewed for a startup about a year ago, I wrote down some questions that I needed to have answered before I would take a position

http://www.innovationontherun.com/considering-working-for-a-...

Hope it helps.

1) Said before...Image upload into drawings would be nice 2) Adding clickable URLs in the text would also be nice 3) Different download option types, especially SVG, would be helpful so that it can be sent to people with Visio 4) Did not recognize a diamond shape, I use that all the time for flowcharts 5) Easier way to create lines that connect shapes. Again, i do this all the time when creating flow charts and it is sort of a pain to have to click the arrow icon. Maybe if I was using the right mouse button???

Overall very nice, I will probably use again.