djchung23

Do you want to get out of software engineering? I think it all depends on what you want in the future.

Just amazing. Imagine working on this project (or any project) 20 years ago and seeing the payoff now. Wow.

Headline should be: Habits, good and bad, amplify under stress

Some good tactics here. I wonder if some people are innately better/worse with directions. I'm horrible at directions and I have tried to ditch Google maps while driving and being mindful of my surroundings while walking downtown for dinner, but I always get turned around. My wife on the other hand, she always seems to know where she's at.

I also found this quote ironic: "Stop and enjoy the scenery. Set your phone to vibrate every 15 minutes to remind you to note where you are, Richard S. Citrin, an organizational psychologist from Pittsburgh, said in an email."

As someone who has worked at a tech company in support, this is article is misguided. It assumes that all companies are being thoughtless and asking any employee to answer customer support tickets without any training or guidance. We had engineers and product manager answer a few tickets with customer support agents providing guidance. These folks had training and they volunteered to answer tickets for 1 hour/week for a few weeks (with supervision). The engineers and product managers who participated enjoyed the experience because they could see first had the user problems and the language they used. It helped them understand our product not just from the business/product perspective, but from the user perspective. In addition, it allowed them to gain insight into what customer service agents have to deal with on a day to day basis. This led to products being built and launched with customer service in mind. This was a cultural shift and still exists today. Customer service is looped in as product is being built to get help articles and CS agents familiar with how to support new features.

I have a lot of respect for the Amish, I think they are true hackers. It's pretty amazing the things they build with the resources they have.

Of course I love technology, the internet, etc and couldn't imagine my life without all that, but yes I am addicted to my phone and being able to look up anything whenever I want. This is extremely powerful, but this quote gives me something to think about as I type this at my desk job:

“If you can just look it up on the internet, you’re not thinking,” said Levi, another woodworker. “The more people rely on technology, the more we want to sit behind a desk. But you can’t build a house sitting behind a desk.”

Key point: "The better those relationships are, the better your own work will be, which is why it’s so important to treat others with empathy and respect."

I want to highlight empathy, especially when interacting with colleagues who are not technical. There are a lot of things developers know that are second nature, but to many others, it's not. Meet them halfway, help them understand, don't dismiss someone because they don't know how something works.

I wonder if Spotify will eventually become a music label as it starts to own the distribution channel for music.

Empathize with them. Really try to put yourself in their shoes. Does your product actually solve a problem for your customer? Is it a problem they're willing to pay for?

Once you build a product that solves a problem customers are willing to pay for, figure out where they are and go there. At the risk of sounding trite, like pg's advice, do things that don't scale: http://paulgraham.com/ds.htm. Literally go to potential customers in person and talk to them.

When I was a contract iOS engineer, I've had the following payment situations:

- Paid 1x/week at a design agency with regular hours - Paid 1x/2weeks at a company with regular hours - 50% of contract value down with next 25% paid at project milestone and remaining 25% paid at completion.

As a contractor, getting paid on a regular, expected time schedules relieves so much stress. If you can commit to regular payment schedules, I guarantee your contractors will be happier, at least related to receiving payment.

Yikes. Culture starts from the person at the top and flows down.

Curious to see how and if the cultural narrative within Silicon Valley companies will change one year from now after all that's happened. Will there actually be meaningful change? I don't know, but I'm hoping so.