_kulte

Startups offer pretty good compensation for folks who lack the ability to pass a FAANG interview. Folks lacking traditional CS backgrounds but with an actually high level of skill for writing software, specifically web software, tend to be over-represented in this group.

A lot of the downsides of startups people mentioned here are 100% true. If you didn't study CS in college though, consider the hours of reading Cracking the Coding Interview you'd have to do and divide those hours by your FAANG comp, and you might come out with an equal or slightly higher hourly rate going the startup route. And your interview process might be a lot less stressful.

I don't understand, so Bieber made $596,000 (assuming he owned the other 80%) from this song? No way, it would seem like?

I probably don't understand fully the concept of taxonomies in general, but it seems strange to me that the a custom taxonomy would inherit from Tag? What is the relationship between a taxonomy and a tag? In prose I mean, not in code. What is the result of applying the tag taxonomy as well as a custom one in terms of end-user experience on a hypothetical front-end of what this CMS would power, that is, what would the simplest example of the playlists taxonomy allow one to display?

It's interesting, because my first impression is that stoicism is more of a virtue for someone like Derek than someone who has yet to, for lack of a better phrasing, make as tangible, substantive dent or mark or whatever in the universe, i.e. myself. However, reading Sam Soffes' blog post last night where he states his deep dissatisfaction with his accomplishments to date (Cheddar, SSToolkit, Seesaw, elusive internet fame), it makes me think that I'll never be happy even after achieving larger goals.

From my current point of view, which will no doubt change, stoicism kind of seems pointless insofar as people, for at least the past couple hundred years, have had an intrinsic desire/need to feel important. It's what motivates us to do ANYTHING, not just start a universe-changing company, or achieve lofty goals in open source, or to become rich, but it motivates our everyday interactions with people we encounter for any reason. Dale Carnegie has a nice discussion of this phenomenon in 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'.

Sorry for the late reply. I've been through Techstars. If interested, I'd be happy to elaborate, but the OP hits on things that I can firsthand attest to be true.

Uptime is bullshit... just kidding, I'm excited to read it eventually because I tend to agree.

I'd use this if I could use it with [Amazon SES](http://aws.amazon.com/ses/).

This title is intentionally misleading, but I'm glad for it because it was a good read. But essentially what it is doing is redefining the term 'technical debt' in terms of its original, intended definition, as opposed to the definition by which it has been re-appropriated, i.e. 'bad software'.

If you define 'technical debt' in the re-appropriated sense, it is surprising to see an article title which translates to 'Bad Software is Not a Bad Thing', which is why I immediately read the article. But the original definition makes so much more sense, and actually provides the motivation for thinking of 'technical debt' as having a real place in the philosophical conversation of building software.

Might want to shoot Salvatore Sanfilippo an email as well.

You're growing like crazy, you could be a billion dollar company, you have fierce traction... IMHO you're either misjudging the situation or your co-founder is crazy.

Also, if you really are growing like crazy, why are you having trouble raising money?

I disagree with this. It's not that someone has to pay the developers of what you refer to as Type 0 open source projects for the incentive to exist for them to maintain it; it's just that the developers have to have a reasonable expectation that some value will come to them as a result of of maintaining the project. Everyone values different things, but if money is the goal, I think developing popular software in the open is as good a way as any to attract a healthy financial offer from potential employers.