OrionSeven

My cofounder and I are about to launch https://hicira.com an AI voice receptionist for small businesses.

We're focused on solo owners and other busy local service based companies.

We're using OpenAI's newest real time voice API, which has been surprisingly responsive.

I'm doing research to sort through all antidotal or hyperbolic statements about how AI is actually impacting day-to-day code writing.

The link is to the survey driving research. It's just 4 questions and does not ask for your email.

Personally, I've been finding I'm 2-3x more efficient as I lean into the tooling. But I've seen many say it's not impactful at all and have seen some say it's >10x!

I've seen some hardware blocks for phones. I've been tempted to buy one.

But routinely deleting them from my phone has worked best for me.

So does the CSV have multiple languages within it? Why a CSV verse various documents in a directory (like Google Drive?).

Just curious, I'm working on AskJack.io and the multiple users, find anything, no matter the context, is exactly what we're doing. But we haven't tried to tackle languages yet.

I've started interviewing SaaS founders (from bootstrapped to VC-backed) about lessons learned building and operating SaaS companies. The is the first one, Ash did a fantastic job, dropping some true gems.

Do you have a source that shows BMR does not reduce with TRE?

Feedback turns into insights, which turn into ideas, which turn into shipped product. Interweave helps collection of feedback (interviews, surveys, bug reports, and idea boards), helps you synthesis that, helps you prioritize work, and connects back to users when you ship something they're linked to.

I’m building https://Interweaveapp.com a customer product feedback loop application to help startups and product managers manage the full lifecycle of feedback.

That sums it up nearly perfectly for me.

I could see something like a Surface Pro or iPad Pro being useful for white boarding.

Currently we're in an open space and the moment I can convince the CEO we'll do away with it. Collaboration that matters for my team happens in two places: our morning meetings and in HipChat. Otherwise lots of distractions, sure it can be fun at times, but at what cost?

Personally no, but I don't plan many events. Have you seen anyone ask for this type of stuff before? Like on a wedding forum has anyone said they've had this pain?

In other words, not just your pain. I say this because building a product doesn't mean people will come.

One other thing I really like about Trello is it's extremely flexible so you can tweak how you use it over time as you use it more.

I used to have a yellow legal pad that I'd make lists on. Cross items off as they were finished (always very satisfying) and add new things to the bottom. When the page was full, too ratty, or whatever I'd rewrite the page. Towards the end (I use Trello.com now) I had two columns to sort things.

I use Trello.com (and have for about 4 years) for tracking all of my work tasks (from coding tasks, to making sure I reply to someone, misc things, and more). If you're not familiar with Trello, think of an online kan-ban board. They have a great web app, but also iOS and Android apps.

I have Trello organized with the following boards (from left to right on the screen):

"Thing to Do" - This is really my inbox. While I tend to make the cards in the list they need to go, if I just don't know I place it here. About once a month I go through it to make sure nothing has fallen off my radar that shouldn't or more importantly see if I can just delete it because it doesn't matter.

"Priority Tasks" - These are bigger tasks that I know are things that need to get done as workflow permits.

"Doing" - What I'm currently working on. Usually 5-10 items depending on dependencies.

"Dated Boards" - At the start of each week I create a new board with the title of being just the date. All tasks that I complete that week go onto that board. For really long tasks I may copy a card and keep it in "Doing" but put a copy in that weeks board.

Trello also has card labels, think colored flags to identify things quickly. I always have the following labels:

Red - Critical, e.g. an emergency task that takes priority over all things. Orange - Urgent, can wait, but not long. Yellow - Time sensitive, I don't always use the date feature on Trello cards, so I use the yellow label for things that need to be done by a set date Blue - Big tasks or Big wins. I want to be able to find in past week when I had a big win. Green - Interdepartmental dependency, either someone else needs this from me or I need something from someone else.

At my current job I can see back nearly three years what I did week to week. I can quickly search to see when something was done, or browse it. But more importantly it's easy to make a Trello card and once it's in Trello I can easily organize my time and tasks.

I tend to agree with olalonde. What you've described is a well accepted method to handle authorization (sounds like you've implemented role-based access control). But for things like, can't delete yourself, etc., those in my mind are business rules and not authorization rules. In fact that's a validation rule and not authorization rule.

Your programmers != engineer issue brings up a larger issue I'm always wondering about when people/companies/etc say we have a software engineer shortage.

Just what type of developer are they talking about? There are many types of engineers/developers: front end, back end, write algorithms, do data integration, automate systems, write database queries, real time, graphics, embedded systems, and on and on and on.

So which ones are we talking about? What types of background do they need? The discussion on "the shortage" is always lacking in details.

~ Bryan

PS: I think this issue is also why some say developers != engineers.

A few favorites we've done:

1) Placing an an Annoy-a-Tron (small devices randomly emits a sound) right above someone's computer under their desk. Employee goes nuts trying to figure out how a virus got on their system and tech support tears the system down trying to figure it out.

2) Hooking up a small air horn to an office chair, so that when someone sits down (and depresses slightly the pneumatic seat height leg) the airhorn goes off scaring the crap out of the seatee. This one happened to me, holy crap...

3) A classic, there's always a hunt-and-packer typist in the office. Switch a few keys on their keyboard.

4) Or a modern take of the key-switch, cover their keyboard with hello kitty stickers.

5) Place not one but three annoy-a-trons around a desk.

6) If someone has a combo wireless keyboard and mouse, but doesn't use one of the two, get out the piece they're not using and randomly press buttons or move the mouse about for some 'phantom wireless problems'.

7) If someone leaves their station unlocked, send a quick group mail offering to buy coffee for the team (or beer, or pizza, etc).

For our use case (fairly standard windows setup, sql server, about 8 VM's in total) Azure was less expensive, more so after we setup and saw true costs. We run our dev and test environments there and were able to get faster hardware & more storage for less as well (about 10% less for about 20% more). But again, that's a pure windows setup, comparing other components gets tricky because of different pricing models.

Well DUNS isn't exactly a scam, it does help identify the uniqueness and the validity of a business. But...

1) It's painful to use (horrible navigation) and they constantly try to up-sell you (thus the horrible navigation).

2) If you need to correct information on your DUNS account it takes forever.

This is what happened to me while getting my Apple Developer Account. There are multiple departments at D&B , ones that can only verify domains, or others that look up your business information. They coordinate very poorly. For whatever reason they already had my business, but old information and the incorrect domain. It ended up taking 3 tries and six weeks for D&B to update my information.