stove
- Go to bed very late at a time when you can barely keep your eyes open, for me it was 2am. Do normal sleep hygiene things until this time so stay away from screens and stressful stuff. Do this for the same time every night.
- Do not use bed for anything except sleep. We are rewiring our brains so that bed = sleep and that's it. No reading, no screens, nothing except sleep happens in the bed.
- Wake up after ~5 hours with an alarm. This sucks and I hated it but I stuck with it for 2-3 weeks and it shifted my entire existence. My sleep window was 2am-7am.
- The first days will be hard and you may not sleep through that entire window. The important part is to wake up at the prescribed wake up time or whenever you wake naturally (very hard) consistently for a period of several weeks
- Over time, you should be able to sleep through that window. For me, the process of being able to consistently sleep for a scheduled window was enough to prove that there was nothing "wrong" with me as I had told myself for 20+ years.
- Over a longer time, you bring the bedtime up so you get more and more sleep, generally 15-minutes each time.
After 20 years of insomnia, the past year has been the best sleep of my life. I only get ~6-7 hours or so per night but it is deep, restful sleep that is generally uninterrupted if I stick to this regiment. The beginning is not fun but over time I have adjusted to the hours and, most importantly, have outgrown the story and habits that drove my insomnia. For me, I knew how to sleep but I had decades of sleep anxiety and surrounding stress to get past. Being so tired you can do nothing except sleep helps you rewire your association with your bed away from "sleep is stressful" towards "sleep is easy".
I paid for the Sleep Reset app to walk me through everything. Because I paid money for it, I probably had a higher degree of success than if I just Googled stuff and half-assedly tried to incorporate it. For ~$200, the app certainly has high margins and made money off of me but it was the best $200 I ever spent.
Side note: I would also pay for a "Landlord as a Service". I want to treat a company like my landlord, even though I own my house. "Hi Bill, my roof is leaking" and they say "Someone will be there next week" and then send me a bill.
Also, that home page block could be more informative. It shows me a dollar value but not what asset it was actually applied to.
There is near-universal consensus that technical hiring is atrocious and yet very few people putting forth possible solutions and/or companies willing to experiment with the status quo.
My ideas are: * Real-world interview questions * Standardized testing for "soft" skills. It can be done. * Dedicated onboarding resources * Apprenticeships for entry-level engineers with dedicated training programs * Remove all names from all inbound job applications * Offer _more_ money for internal referrals. Make them on par with what you'd pay a recruiter.
I will also say that crafting real world "on the job style" interview problems is growing steam, as it should be!
The apprentice role, the way I've been pitching it at least, is different. This is a role where you join an engineering org and learn the product by QAing it, join technical discussions and help out by taking notes for the team, show off your communication skills by documenting new features and, big picture, you find ways to add value to the team in whatever ways they need. Over time, the bugs fixed get bigger and the person can bite off small features, etc.
The problem is that companies _want_ to hire new grads (even bootcamp grads) but don't feel comfortable paying SWE rates for someone who hasn't worked as a SWE (often rightfully so). The comp for this is equivalent to a QA eng but has a clear path towards being an entry-level SWE (3-6 months maximum). If after 3-6 months it's not clear if the person can add value as an engineer then it's clearly not a good fit.
Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process.
Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of the ideas that I've been putting forth for years that's slowly gaining steam is developing a "technical apprentice" role. This role would be responsible for tasks that are frequently de-prioritized like documentation, testing, QA, bug fixes, note taking, etc. and would be a foot in the door for entry-level engineers. The role is designed to focus on communication and soft-skills while also giving the person a chance to prove their "grit" on the technical side. Even a few months in an apprenticeship role is generally enough for companies to "take a chance" on someone as an entry-level engineer.
This has been a great way to shift interviews away from algorithms and more towards finding people can add immense value to technical teams even without having on-the-job programming experience.
I'm curious what the HN crowd thinks about that role as a way to bridge the hiring gap.
Either in parallel or after, depending on how the talk goes, also speak with the founders about your issues. If you're solving the big hairy problems for the business, you could suggest a role that's tailor-made to your strong suits (not working with a team lead, not needing to supervise engineers, whatever it is you want). In any case, any founder worth their weight in salt would want to hear that their star engineer is not getting along with a team lead. If it was me as the founder, I'd take your feedback and then solicit more from other people on the team and then make a call as to where the "fit" seems off.
As to burnout, if you've "solved" the big problems and are giving the company a pathway to revenue/profitability/etc. then I would strongly suggest you don't quit. You're well on the way to being indispensable and can use that as leverage in any future salary/role discussions. At the very least, tell the founders where you're at and say you want a vacation.
Conversely, I've noticed that my cell service is significantly better (call quality, coverage, etc.) abroad than it is in the SF Bay Area.
I want to move to this style of hiring; however, I fear that because it's against the grain I may miss out on good candidates. Is that unfounded?
Others have mentioned this but building more than superficial relationships with people is hard. Finding a mate who can and is willing to live the lifestyle is challenging. Staying connected with friends and family is very difficult. All of those issues can be remedied and I know many folks who do so successfully but for me it makes more sense to have a home base and travel 3 months or so of the year. Knowing where "home" is helps keep me sane.
I do, however, think that this lifestyle is probably more feasible and easily attainable now. My experience comes in 2008-2011 when working on the internet was a very different task. Nowadays I see new co-living places pop up all over the globe that cater to the people trying to make nomad life work.
1.3 Payment. The Client will pay the Designer a flat fee of $10,000 once the work is finished. Of this, the Client will pay the Designer $2,500 before work begins.
1.5 Invoices. The Designer will invoice the Client for work done monthly. The Client agrees to pay the amount owed within 15 days of receiving the invoice. Payment after that date will incur a late fee of 2% per month on the outstanding amount.Seeking freelance Rails developer for building MVP of new web app. No existing codebase. Looking for passionate, motivated & independent person with excellent communication skills.
Please send any existing Rails SaaS apps you can along with rates and resume to stevebeyatte (at) gmail
Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-09/thousand-do...
From a consumer perspective, it's quite easy: to prevent being tracked, don't walk around with wifi turned on.
From an engineering perspective, toss out any mac with the U/L bit set to 1.