samzhao

Yeah, that must be the case: a smart employer and demonstrably productive employee.

Great response, thanks!

How did you get your employer to agree to 4-hour work days?

The first half and one of your comment replies spoke to me deeply - especifically the part about having the feeling of never having done enough, haunts me everyday, but also pushes me.

So thanks so much for writing this! Just wish you could speak more about how you were able to negotiate your current work schedule.

Not OP, but I think it's because devs are slightly harder to sell to compared to non-devs. Also, the commission for a product less than $20 will be too low for anyone to put in any effort to promoting it.

5% of $20 is $1, meaning you won't be able to cover operation costs even if you sell 100 of it every month. If the product/course/service is $2997, and your commission is 5%, you are looking at $10k+ net profit every month if you sell 100 of that.

In addition, because the author/creator/founder of the $20 doesn't have a high profit margin to begin with, the commission rate will be very low compared to premium products/services. E.g., 5% for $20 product vs. 20-30% for $2997 product.

I've had very similar experience with Angular 1.x where a lot of problems can be avoided by having a sensible styleguide/standard across the entire team. I've since moved to using React and couldn't be happier :)

I'm interested as well! Please add my email as well. Thanks!

I think what your question implies is this: "I learned how to write Javascript in a black box where I'm not solving real world problems, and instead just learned how to print static text."

Programming, like anything, is a tool - you learn the features which might not sound like solutions to problems, and with practice you start crossing your programming mind with normal day to day mind. Let me give you an example.

I got the mega Creative Market Black Friday Photos bundle yesterday. To my surprise, the photos are all separate, so instead of one zip file for me to download, or a "Download All" button, it gave me a list of 100 or so buttons to click to download INDIVIDUALLY. Conveniently (or not), they added a "Save to Dropbox" button to each item, but that doesn't help at all, there's still no "Save all to Dropbox" button.

So after clicking on 5 or 6 items... I started to give up, then suddenly my programming mind jumped in and said to me "hey dude why don't just go into the console and select all the elements and do a `trigger('click')`?" So I jumped into the console, and typed

`$(".start-sync").trigger("click")`

I didn't even bother to check if the site uses jQuery, I just typed it in and it worked!

Now, if you were to jump in and helped them add a "Sync All to Dropbox" button, don't you think that's gonna be really beneficial to a lot of the users?

You might have learned the feature in jQuery to trigger an action, but to actually do something with it to solve a problem you need to not only learn the tools, but also start thinking about problems using your programmer brain.

I can think of one guy who would definitely want this. Update your HN profile to show your email so I can try to introduce you to him; or you can email me with more details.

I believe 3 days is enough. A new marketing idea can be implemented in 3 days; a new UI mockup can be done in 3 days. To me, I'll be learning things, but to the founders they can actually benefit from my ideas or executions. It's free after all, and they can definitely take it further after the 3 days (maybe hire me something).

When I said 3 days, I meant 3 days only. I think it'll make the founders think about the most important things they need to improve on, which can also be handed to someone with little credibility, kind of similar to the idea of contributing to open source projects.

The point is not to only work on the technical aspect of the business - there's way more than just code to a startup/business.

But if I can help them with marketing, UI/UX or wireframing or anything, that'll not be a waste of time for both the companies and me

I should have asked for just one day only. It doesn't have to be technical. I think this is an easy way to get rejected (inspired by Jia's rejection therapy), rather than asking in person. I doubt people would give me access to anything important. Nonetheless, if someone decide to let me help, it would be a great experience for me, and one more reason other than my resume to hire me.

I agree. I'll do that to improve my programming and problem solving skills. But for skills to run a business, or more specifically a startup, I think helping one is the way to go. Thanks for your suggestion though :)

Thanks a lot for your suggestion! I agree with you that this will help me in a long run for my programming skills. However, what I'm actually looking for is experience at running a business/startup.

Looks cool! I'll try to contribute.

I'd say, "Welcome aboard, young man!"

Btw, I'm still a teenager, and that's what I wish startups would say to me when I apply to them :p

P.S. I build things with HTML, CSS, Javascript and Rails, so if anyone's interested please feel free to shoot me an email :D

Your site is down? http://www.isup.me/sqlzoo.net

Missed an important class/lecture/lab because you were sick or too busy taking care of some more important stuff than attending class? Introducing a not-so-innovative but pretty useful (and crowdsourced) course video/audio sharing platform! Students can upload materials such as videos and audio of a class, so people who missed the class can browse through the archive to see what he/she missed.

I myself believe this is a good idea. Even if it fails to validate itself in a certain market, I still want to build it because this is at least what I desperately need. I only have an one hour class today, but it takes me around an hour and a half to get to the campus and another hour and a half for me to get back home. It's extremely tiring.

Concerns would be: 1. What if recording a lecture is illegal in some places? Or if it's against the rules of the university?

2. I'm a student myself, so I don't have a lot of money to invest in content storage if people start uploading a lot of videos and audios. I'll be hosting the site on webfaction on the most basic plan, so the resource is fairly limited. It would be great to have a service that I can direct all the upload to their site via an API or some sort, so the users are uploading to the service from my site.

YouTube Direct is great, but there's some problems associated with it: a. User has to log in first, which is a hassle, especially when people don't necessarily trust me, yet. I would totally accept anonymous uploads.

b. I want to make it as simple as possible. Having a YouTube widget to handle this really doesn't feel right. It makes the process less intuitive.

That's it! Please give me some feedback.

I actually think it would be a nice idea. Show us a demo or something of your idea to impress us!

Can I just purchase an unlock code from some website?

Thanks a lot.

Thanks for your information. From my understanding, what you are saying is totally the case. It's just that the sales rep confused me by saying "the phone itself has some restrictions", which means there's probably some other locks/restrictions other than the sim/carrier lock. I'll probably try the unlocker app in the play store. And yes, my phone is rooted.