[HN Gopher] Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)
Author : mooreds
Score : 507 points
Date : 2021-03-21 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (training.kalzumeus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (training.kalzumeus.com)
| jefftk wrote:
| "This could mean working on particular projects within the
| organization which like external visibility (e.g. Android) rather
| than projects which don't (e.g. AdWords plumbing -- presumably
| Google will pay you a lot of money to do that, but consider it
| compensation for not being able to talk about it)"
|
| Perhaps counterintuitively, as far as I know, people who work on
| Ads internals aren't paid any more than people who work in more
| visible/desirable parts of the business.
| ImaCake wrote:
| This maybe just an observation that life isn't fair. Some jobs
| both pay more, are more enjoyable, and look better on your
| resume. Some people are attractive and successful. It is
| definitely worth keeping this in mind when considering your
| career, a difficult job doesn't automatically accrue karma
| faster than an easy job.
| Mavvie wrote:
| In case anyone's looking for the presentation referenced at the
| end (broken link), I found it here from a previous HN thread's
| comment: https://vimeo.com/74338272
| dfilppi wrote:
| The OSS value is overstated. You can just copy someone else's and
| claim you did it.
| samatman wrote:
| You can also just put Harvard on your resume. It's cheaper and
| takes a lot less time.
|
| In either case, if you're caught, you've committed fraud, and
| you'll be lucky if the only response from the company is to
| fire you.
| gwgundersen wrote:
| I like this framing.
|
| In graduate school, I worked for 2+ years before my first paper
| was published. In that time, I passed my PhD qualifying exam,
| took classes, wrote code, read papers, learned math, and so
| forth. Yet when I applied for internships, I received no interest
| from employers. I suspect this was because I had no concrete
| signal that I knew anything in my field.
|
| While working on my second paper, I started blogging. In the
| language of this article, I started generating public
| intellectual capital for myself. I have definitely experienced
| the effects of this capital on subsequent job hunts. Now I can
| point people to my blog to demonstrate knowledge, technical
| skills, and communication skills beyond the scope of my peer-
| reviewed work. Furthermore, there is no question about who
| contributed to my blog, and when I learn something new, I can
| externalize that quickly.
| currymj wrote:
| your blog is very high quality and i've enjoyed it in the past
| (Metropolis-Hastings post especially).
|
| however there's a problem if everybody is going to do this, if
| it becomes standard that you want to have a blog in order to
| promote yourself during a job hunt.
|
| i think this is why search results are cluttered with a
| proliferation of largely useless "awesome X" GitHub
| repositories, repetitive bad Medium articles on basic ML
| topics, and so on.
|
| I hope we don't end up in the world where everyone has to do
| this... there's certainly a diminishing social utility.
| graeme wrote:
| Not necessarily. OP wrote a blog about their research paper.
| That is by definition a nov or rare topic.
|
| If people use any kind of horse sense when choosing blogging
| topics they will either choose something:
|
| 1. Unique, or
|
| 2. Where what they have to contribute beats what already
| exists
|
| To be sure, anything poorly done is clutter. But this applies
| to the work product itself too. If someone writes garbage,
| superfluous blog posts, why would you expect good research
| from them?
|
| Despite the massive amount of information that exists the
| world certainly does not have enough good, specific
| information yet.
| jefftk wrote:
| I don't think this is entirely true. Getting in the habit
| of writing, even if a lot of it is things other people have
| said better, means that when you do have something novel to
| say you will be much more practiced.
|
| My experience is that when people try to only write the
| good posts they don't end up publishing things, but if they
| write hundreds of posts dozens will be good.
| graeme wrote:
| I agree, and you're actually supporting my argument with
| additional reasons against OP haha.
|
| But in the case of a research blog about a new research
| paper I think my point above trends closer to true, as
| the novelty of the subject guarantees novelty of the
| blog.
| gitgud wrote:
| > _" i think this is why search results are cluttered with a
| proliferation of largely useless "awesome X" GitHub
| repositories, repetitive bad Medium articles on basic ML
| topics, and so on."_
|
| This is such a sad way to view blogging and Github
| contributions...
|
| There's nothing wrong with people writing bad articles. In
| fact everyone writes badly to begin with.
|
| The same goes for Github contributions, everyone starts off
| with demo repos and broken projects.
|
| The beauty of the internet is that it is infinite and you can
| build up your skills in blogging and coding over time.
|
| It's the job of search engines to reveal quality results, not
| for people to _only_ contribute quality results...
| currymj wrote:
| i see what you're saying and perhaps i shouldn't have been
| so negative in my original post.
|
| I think that people who want to write or code shouldn't be
| afraid to put imperfect work out there.
|
| But if to apply for a job you also have to produce
| "content" to build your brand, I maintain that this is not
| a good outcome.
| drorco wrote:
| Then Google will need to build a better search engine,
| otherwise people will just move to a search engine that can
| get them the better results.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Civil engineers don't have to build bridges in their back
| yards or write blog posts about I beams; their education is
| presumed sufficient for an entry level job. Why can't tech
| work like this? Do students need to form some kind of union
| and agree not to talk about extracurricular programming to
| interviewers for their first job?
| jefftk wrote:
| As someone who has interviewed hundreds of entry-level
| developers, the range of skills/talent/ability is enormous.
|
| I expect you would have a hard time getting top students to
| join your union.
|
| (On the other hand, I don't care at all about side projects
| or seeing code on GitHub. I want to see how you solve a
| realistic problem that I have seen dozens of other people
| take a crack at for comparison.)
| beisner wrote:
| We understand and can certify how bridges are constructed.
| Someone from the government can come in and check your work
| reasonably quickly and make sure it's up to code. There's a
| "trust" step and a "verify" step. And it often takes a lot
| of time to do iteration.
|
| Software engineering isn't like that. Not only are the
| tools changing every year, but 95% of the work in a project
| isn't actually design or construction, it's figuring out
| what the client wants or the product should be!
| Requirements are discovered as construction happens because
| most of the time software is solving a business problem not
| a physics problem.
|
| There's no certification because there isn't something to
| standardize. Every company has different problems,
| technical solutions are always changing. Interview
| processes are trying to look at generic problem solving +
| communication + ability to translate some easy algorithmic
| idea into code. They don't do a great job of assessing
| that, but the point is that two CS degrees can look
| identical on paper but there's so much fuzzy
| interpersonal/business/requirement-assessment work that
| basically isnt captured at all by a degree, and is really
| hard to demonstrate on a resume.
| the_only_law wrote:
| You also can't become a civil engineer through a 6 month
| boot camp or from studying and building things on your own
| time.
| dzolob wrote:
| This happened to me when I left academia. No "real
| credentials". _Math expert_ with strong computer background
| (phd, published papers, years of experience in research
| /teaching) didn't said more than "one year data science
| 'masters' abroad". It took me quite some time to translate my
| expertise into marketable skills. Before that, I got passed on
| even for entry level positions.
| sjg007 wrote:
| While a PhD can do the work, you really want the PhD to
| direct the work and explore new related things. A lot of this
| will depend on where you apply. That being said the market
| for data scientists has exploded in the past 2 years. 3-5
| years ago things were different. Part of this is due to
| maturation of the tooling and the development of data
| platforms with organizations building out their data
| pipelines etc...
| endymi0n wrote:
| Thing is, while PhDs are usually by far the biggest domain
| experts you'll get, the absolute majority of them comes
| absolutely ill-equipped to lead anything, as university
| rarely teaches any skills in project, people or resource
| management skills, business sense, opportunity cost and
| presentation.
|
| I've had disastrous outcomes going by credentials for
| leadership positions and these days only hire for
| demonstrated results on a real-world project.
|
| Just my personal anecdotal evidence points me towards
| stellar academic success having a slight negative
| correlation with on-the-job performance. People who prefer
| building things with impact over citation rubber points
| usually don't survive in academia long enough for enduring
| a PhD.
| nnmg wrote:
| I totally agree and had a very similar experience in graduate
| school. Writing about my experiences and things I had learned
| (technical and project management) had a huge impact on my
| ability to demonstrate my knowledge and is without a doubt why
| I quickly received two job offers before defending my phd
| (biology/neuroscience). I think papers are a really poor way to
| demonstrate the huge amounts of work you've done unless you
| stay in academia (and probably not even then).
| _huayra_ wrote:
| This is one thing I messed up during my grad school studies.
| Now that I have a "real job", getting the ball rolling on
| blogging about what I'm looking into / learning about is
| harder (although that is still a convenient excuse).
|
| Thank goodness I have been meticulously keeping track of what
| I've learned in Org mode for years. I've just gotta dredge
| that old database for some blog posts (starting with why
| folks who are similar to me should really consider not going
| to grad school...).
| zikzak wrote:
| I work on a well established, closed source, trade secrets
| style e-commerce site. I can never seem to think about
| anything I could write up that would not involve me
| reworking everything to be more general. I also think it
| would largely boil down to a Stack Overflow link. I am
| doing more management now, so that might make this problem
| a little easier to solve for me.
| loosetypes wrote:
| I'd be interested in hearing those considerations.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| The pithy way I tell people is that they should only do a
| PhD if they can't NOT do a PhD, i.e. they feel so
| compelled to work on a specific thing and have found an
| advisor who will advise them but ultimately let them do
| their own thing to a great degree. The only other viable
| option is to find a tenure-track junior professor who
| really has their stuff together (including their work
| ethic and emotional intelligence; often the latter can be
| lacking).
|
| One also has to consider the time cost of doing a PhD,
| and whether spending the equivalent time working would
| have gotten them further not only in career, but also
| salary. Between a) people who go from undergrad to a job
| and don't really keep pushing themselves, b) people who
| go to grad school to hopefully skip to a more interesting
| job post-PhD, and c) people who go from undergrad to a
| job but really push hard to learn new skills (e.g.
| presenting at conferences, blogging about it, etc),
| option C is generally leaps and bounds ahead of the other
| two.
|
| A PhD is worth considering if the thing you're interested
| in most is not really used widely in industry (perhaps
| some PL stuff?).
|
| Also, prospective PhD students need to consider that
| there is a very asymmetric relationship between advisor /
| advisee compared to a normal job. If my job starts
| treating me like dirt, I can tell them to shove it and
| quit ASAP because I know that my skills can get me
| another job in short order. With a PhD, it is almost
| impossible to quit a PhD and then pick it up again if you
| and your advisor have some sort of falling out; every
| future PhD position will look at the prior "failure" with
| suspicion, losing the nuance of issues besides the actual
| work that triggered the separation.
|
| Basically you need to really understand why you want a
| PhD (and whether you could do better towards your
| ultimate career goal without it), and if that's a "yes"
| you need to really make sure you can get along with your
| advisor for years. A strong advisor can "compensate" for
| a weak student (i.e. get them through the program), and a
| strong student can compensate for a weak advisor (e.g.
| students who basically do their own thing from the get
| go, and have high-ranking perpetually absentee advisors
| who do more research bureaucracy than research and advise
| by way of ominous single-word emails), but if both are
| weak it's a recipe for disaster, and only the student
| gets hurt.
|
| Getting a visa into a country via graduate studies is
| definitely a good reason (especially in the US it seems),
| but often an MS is sufficient (except if one tries to get
| in on the green-card fast-track via the O1 visa, which
| requires an exceptional PhD track record).
| loosetypes wrote:
| Really insightful, thank you
| motles wrote:
| Another way to look at it is - you can work on those SQL queries
| and deep technical problems, but you can't stop short at checking
| in the code and not telling anyone, or only mentioning it to your
| colleagues for engineering cred. Show people the performance
| impact, how much better the user experience is now. Especially
| those who are likely to trumpet it to the rest of the company
| (managers, sales people, marketing people, executives).
|
| I used to be an engineer and now I'm a product manager (since 1
| year ago). It's so funny being on the otherside and seeing how
| engineers claim "well not everything is demo-able, it's hard to
| quantify customer value" and in reality, I'd say 80% of the stuff
| they work on could be explained in a way that still has a visible
| outcome to me and to customers. But they want to write user
| stories like "As a developer, I want to refactor the controller
| manager to use new rust traits from the bind system blah blee
| bloo". But then during demo time, they show that actually now, a
| new feature that wasn't working before now works.
|
| Guys. Lead with what you are going to actually change in the
| product that you can show me, not the technical change you are
| making. I know it's hard to get out of the details/weeds - but if
| you can uplevel a bit to what is going to be different when I'm
| done with this - sell that!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| "The social expectation is that the company insulates the
| employee from all risk..."
|
| At a cost of 30-50 extra hours per week, what exactly does this
| mean and what does it get me that I don't already get at my North
| American job?
| rictic wrote:
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...
| has more background on this and other aspects of business life
| in Japan. A few excerpts:
|
| > Need to file paperwork with City Hall? Someone from HR can do
| it for you. Salarymen don't file tax returns -- the National
| Tax Agency and HR work out 100% of the paperwork on their
| behalves. Insurance? Handled. Pension? You're sorted.
| Immigration, for those very rare salarymen who are also
| foreigners? Your CEO has written a letter to the Minister of
| Justice for inclusion with the paperwork that HR has put
| together, and you won't even have to carry it into the office.
|
| > We've mentioned that your company considers it its
| responsibility to see you appropriately married. That is not
| the sole way in which the company may try to arrange
| companionship, but let's table that issue for the moment. When
| you get married, your boss will give the longest speech at your
| wedding, praising your diligence on that last project and
| bright future with the firm. Perhaps eight or so coworkers will
| show up. They'll also take up a collection for you if a parent
| should pass away, come visit if you're hospitalized, and offer
| to intercede if you should have trouble with your wife or
| children. You are, after all, one of the family.
|
| > The stability is superior to even tenured professors or civil
| servants in the United States, though. Eliminating your
| position will result in, at worst, your transfer into a
| division optimized to shame you into quitting. Incompetence at
| one's job bordering on criminal typically results in one's next
| promotion being to a division which can't impact shipping
| schedules and has few sharp objects lying around.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Japan is famous for its "lifetime employment" system, and
| the law here is very protective of employees. Many
| multinationals have tried to fire an unnecessary or problematic
| employee in Japan, only to see that employee sue for
| reinstatement and damages (and, in most cases, win)._"
|
| - one of the summaries from
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=japanese+companies+don%27t+...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Thanks. Was not aware of that side to Japanese employment.
| andrewzah wrote:
| This is related to Japanese work culture, not extra work hours.
| It just happens that Japanese work culture also has much higher
| hours worked compared to the US or Europe. In my opinion it's
| absolutely insane.
| magicroot75 wrote:
| Reminds me of one of the 48 laws of power:
|
| Law 6. Court Attention at All Costs
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > 48 laws of power
|
| Where are the others?
| jstanley wrote:
| https://www.shortform.com/blog/what-are-the-48-laws-of-
| power...
| GavinMcG wrote:
| In the book titled "The 48 Laws of Power."
| bckr wrote:
| I recommend this book. It is literally Woo ("winning over
| others") but in the best way. It's advice for the softest,
| least-scientific domain I can think of, namely navigating
| the social dynamics of life, including the poetics of other
| people's egos. Each "law" is illustrated vividly with
| examples from history and given caveats/inversions, so that
| it could be called "48 dynamics that you should think about
| if you want to engage in the social sphere more
| effectively". Of course, "laws of power" is better
| marketing. The author really sells it at the beginning, too
| -- you don't have a choice but to engage in games of power:
| abstaining from power is itself a power play, and an
| inauthentic one at that.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Frankly, this looks like the playbook of sociopaths. I
| would use this book to figure out what bad actors would
| use to manipulate me.
|
| If you want a book that teaches you how to get what you
| want while also not being a shit person I would recommend
| "How to win friends and influence people". The thrust of
| that book is that people helping each other results in
| mutual benefit that is greater than the sum of its parts.
| IHLayman wrote:
| I had forgotten how sleazy many of the 48 laws of power
| actually are. Important to know them to recognize the tells in
| others. A pertinent example is the very next "law": "7. Get
| others to do the work for you, but always take the credit."
| simonw wrote:
| In case anyone else is wondering, it looks like this piece was
| originally published in 2014 (or earlier):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140205003105/https://training....
| dang wrote:
| Year added now. Thanks!
| blinkymach12 wrote:
| Hey Patrick! Thanks for the article.
|
| "Producing Artifacts" is definitely what we called that at Fog
| Creek, and I think our cousins at Stack may have used a different
| term but followed much the same spirit. I didn't realize until
| now that that was a term from our little software microcosm, I
| had assumed it was one of the terms that was known broadly in the
| startupverse.
|
| I definitely came to my opinions around it through my
| interactions with the Business of Software conference and (later)
| Microconf, and I think in parallel Stack Overflow came to much
| the same conclusions as we did at FC. Stack also lead with
| something in its early days which pushed us to go further, which
| was that they had a "default open" policy on all their
| artifacts-- code, company writing, etc. This specifically was
| inspiring for us at FC and many of us sort of implicitly adopted
| it. We doubled-down on our artifact publishing, leading to a
| bunch of open source contributions, blog posts, conference talks,
| etc. Interestingly (and to your point!) I think that those public
| artifacts for the most part didn't impact the company very much
| (as much as we did try to harvest the artifacts for
| blogging/marketing/recruiting purposes), but they unquestionably
| strengthened the careers of the folks who created them.
|
| "Make sure your work is creating artifacts; Collect and share
| your artifacts to multiply their impact." Remains among my top
| items of career advice for software folks.
| jcrites wrote:
| FWIW it's definitely a term I've heard in the same context in
| multiple FAANG companies. You want to be able to show people
| what you've done.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In my experience, I have pointed people to a vast array of
| shipping (and formerly shipping) software, and even hardware. I
| have a StackOverflow story (check my ID) that is a mile long.
|
| There are complete, top-to-bottom, ship-ready apps, with
| localization, testing, documentation, provisioning, etc.
| Someone can, literally, clone any of my repos, and produce a
| full-feature, ready-to-ship application.
|
| I have many, many, articles and blog posts, explaining, in
| great detail, how I work, think, design, test, collaborate, and
| develop. I'm a fairly decent writer.
|
| Also, in my experience, no one has ever actually looked at any
| of this, when it comes to evaluating me. I'm not famous, I'm
| not young, and I guess I don't "present" too well, so I assume
| that my work is not compelling (I think it is, but that's just
| me).
|
| After a few of these, I realized that I am better off, not
| looking to work with someone else. Makes me sad, but accepting
| that was one of the best things I ever did for myself. As it
| turns out, I have found a team, working on a 501(c)(3) startup,
| that gave me a chance to develop an application. They seem
| happy with the work I'm doing (ecstatic, even).
|
| These days, I never go a day without working on _ship_. I have
| been shipping for decades. My GH id is pretty much solid green
| (and it 's not gamed). I just love to code, and there are few
| joys more comprehensive, than releasing product, and seeing it
| used.
|
| Even my small projects (like the one I just released) involve
| full branding, testing, and documentation. Even my test
| harnesses are full release-quality applications, with
| localization.
|
| It's just that, these days, I do it for myself; not someone
| else. I'm fortunate, in being able to do that. The scale, out
| of necessity, is much more humble, but it feels quite
| gratifying.
| akhilpotla wrote:
| Great post from patio11 as usual! Reminds of the notion of taking
| small bets that Taleb often talks about. A side project might
| only take 20 or 30 hours of your time over the course of a month
| or two, but it can give you great upside.
| rmason wrote:
| Another way to get noticed is to work on a civic project. Not
| only is it open source but if it gets used in your community more
| people know about it - and you. A way to get started is to see if
| there is a Code For America brigade in your community.
|
| If there isn't maybe you can get together with a couple of
| friends and start one. Ever wanted to try some new technology or
| learn a new language but can't do it at work? Do it for a civic
| project and you have proof you know x because it's out there on
| GitHub.
| ipnon wrote:
| Similarly, "learn in public" is the maxim in Coding Career
| Handbook by Shawn Wang.
|
| Knowledge without proof is a conjecture not a theorem!
|
| https://www.learninpublic.org/
| ilaksh wrote:
| I have been working on a little Gemini server project this week
| just to get familiar with it. I am worried no one will see it, or
| care.
|
| How do I make sure people actually see it assuming I "finish"
| tonight? Seems like GUS is not updating anymore.
| davnicwil wrote:
| As is typical of patio11 this is all great stuff. One subtlety
| I'd venture to emphasise for people just getting started with
| building things and putting stuff out there, though, is that you
| should expect the impact of and return on any one of these things
| to be far from linear.
|
| That is, the 'stacking bricks' metaphor may not apply so much.
| Yes, you should produce stuff on a regular cadence, and
| everything you produce is a learning opportunity of some form,
| but the fact is nobody will care about the majority of it, and it
| will therefore have very little concrete (pun intended) capital
| value _per se_.
|
| Don't get put off by the fact that nobody cares about the first
| few (several, dozen, hundred...) things you put out there, just
| keep going til you hit on the thing that does catch on!
| tedunangst wrote:
| Nobody cares about a brick wall one brick high, but you're not
| going to make a wall 20 bricks high without a row of bricks on
| the bottom.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Don't get put off by the fact that nobody cares about the
| first few (several, dozen, hundred...) things you put out there
|
| Your first few things will suck. Keep going. Practice takes
| time.
|
| Ira Glass, advice to beginners:
| http://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-begi...
| TechWizOfFortun wrote:
| A similar concept in business: Core Product vs. Full Package. As
| unsexy as the non-core product stuff is to developers/engineers,
| it's still important for the company to survive (marketing,
| legal, sales, accounting, etc.).
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| This was a great post and I remember reading it back when patio11
| first shared it. It was genuinely helpful.
|
| There's so much to be said for just keeping up a minimum level of
| output every single day (or week, in this case).
| dzfKgs wrote:
| Idk most of this fell flat or feels outdated.
|
| I've never had issues getting jobs without externally visible
| artifacts. During interviews they ask you to describe projects
| you've worked on. A few companies will also call references. My
| experience is in the usual Bay Area tech cos, maybe this advice
| applies better elsewhere.
|
| As far as side projects, most broad clauses are to protect the
| company. You don't even need to bring it up to your employer if
| you're not competing with them. They don't care. Even non
| competes are mostly non enforceable in some states including
| Cali.
|
| I do agree with the sentiment of being an owner rather than
| employee though.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I agree with this too. The overwhelming majority of people
| writing software today have no public code or other artifacts.
| That means most companies have to assess a potential hire's
| skills without seeing any public work and are therefore used to
| doing this.
|
| That doesn't mean pato11's advice is bad. This can be an
| effective way to have a career. It's just not the most common
| or even a particularly easy way. It just seems that way because
| operating in this open source world is more visible.
| andrewzah wrote:
| "If you cannot build things you can show at work, you should
| build things you can show outside of work."
|
| BS. This line of thinking is why our industry is so toxic.
|
| If you want to work on programming-related topics in your free
| time, great! If not, great! If an interviewer expected me to work
| on programming-related projects in my free time, I would
| immediately end that interview and probably never work at that
| company. We need to normalize people doing other things in their
| free time.
|
| You also don't need to be productive each week(end) on top of
| work. There are times when we're more productive and times when
| we're less productive- and that's perfectly fine. Some people are
| more driven, which is fine. But there is more to life than work.
|
| Japanese (and Korean) work culture is highly toxic even by
| American standards. It should not be the basis of anything for
| deciding how to live one's life. It's sad to see this rhetoric
| coming from someone who actually has a family.
| christophergs wrote:
| Great read, as usual.
|
| One point rubbed me the wrong way: "And you stand an excellent
| chance of shipping a success -- people greatly overestimate how
| difficult this is."
|
| Do you? Analysis of projects on Indie Hackers [1] casts a bit of
| doubt. Not saying it's not possible, but "excellent chance" might
| be a stretch.
|
| [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/post/holy-heck-this-is-
| hard-8eb...
| skrebbel wrote:
| I think he means eg a viral blog post or a popular NPM package,
| not a billion dollar startup.
| graeme wrote:
| I think he meant the artifact or small thing you ship may be a
| success.
|
| But, for Indiehackers, consider two things:
|
| 1. A site devoted to making business will attract lots of
| wannabees
|
| 2. Many successful businesses are too busy to bother with such
| things, especially if they get no marketing benefit from
| indiehackers or face risk from competitors knowing their
| revenue.
|
| Indiehackers also misses the vast graveyard of failed
| businesses that stopped operating and went nowhere, but it is
| _far_ from an unbiased sample.
|
| $20,000 a month for any bootstrapped business with actual
| expenses (contractors etc) is actually not that much yet it
| puts you near the top of the leaderboard.
| nsgi wrote:
| Surely it depends on how you define a success? Although I do
| agree with you, there are loads of apps in app stores with very
| few users, and so can't really be considered a success by any
| metric other than maybe the author found them personally useful
| and/or it gives them something to show employers
| sheikheddy wrote:
| https://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/ is a dead link
| draw_down wrote:
| The first piece of advice has implications. Such as: product work
| is more highly rewarded than maintenance/keeping the lights on.
| You can't show people the fire that didn't happen. Even if you
| could show them (probably with metrics or something), it doesn't
| have the same effect as "our product can do something it couldn't
| before".
| swyx wrote:
| i wrote a bit more about this recently which seemed to resonate
| with others: https://www.swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto/
|
| basically, you want to create something you control on your own.
| the minimum viable version of which is a blog or newsletter, but
| it could easily extend to youtube or teaching on egghead.io or
| lynda, up to and including a full fledged side business.
| chrisgd wrote:
| To reference back to the article about Goldman Sachs analysts
| from yesterday, I think this helps explain why investment bankers
| can always change jobs. You market yourself off of deals you have
| worked on and offer a nugget from each one to a potential
| employer. "This IPO showed that investors value growth over cash
| flow right now, I can help position your company for growth
| investors". That resonates if you are interviewing for a Corp
| dev, c-suite role or if you want to be hired as their banker.
| piokoch wrote:
| "Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to
| display a preference page on a line of business app at a company
| that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward
| path to having other people learn you are capable of doing
| meaningful work."
|
| This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really
| clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe
| nobody heard about but might be providing some not so sexy but
| useful service for half of the country.
|
| I've never heard about company that is building software that
| runs nearby power plant, but certainly this company is much more
| useful and have more positive feedback for the society than
| something "sexy" like Facebook.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Some of the most satisfying work I've done has been optimizing
| very difficult SQL queries for clients nobody has heard of.
|
| I guess I don't really care about optimizing my career in the
| way Patrick is suggesting.
| tosh wrote:
| a blog post about it might make a great complement
| nightski wrote:
| It's a false dichotomy. You can work on deep technical
| problems and provide lots of value.
| beforeolives wrote:
| I think the question here is whether this value needs to be
| publicly visible.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Those examples I was giving did provide lots of value, to
| the client. The section from the article was talking about
| optimizing for visibility. Deep technical problems with
| lots of value are not always visible, and I think it's fine
| to build a career around those types of things.
| nightski wrote:
| I wasn't disputing what you said, kind of agreeing with
| it actually. Although as a consultant for over a decade
| myself I have to make an effort to make sure my work is
| visible. I'm not sure I could lurk in the shadows with no
| one seeing the value I create and still get paid :)
| ac2u wrote:
| Still don't really understand what your objection here
| is. As the parent to your comment said: the OP never said
| don't do it, they just said don't stop once the code is
| checked in and follow up by pointing out the value to
| others incase it's not obvious.
| Swizec wrote:
| I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It's not
| the nameless company that's the problem, it's the business
| result of your work.
|
| What looks better on a resume?
|
| 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin
| interface load times by 20%
|
| 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase
| profits 20%
|
| If possible, always work on some version of option 2.
| type_enthusiast wrote:
| If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've
| worked at companies where the internal tools were more
| valuable than anything customer-facing.
|
| If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing that
| in any place you can get your hands on will make a pretty big
| impact.
|
| Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME,
| especially when references are involved.
| oblio wrote:
| > If the takeaway is, "never work on internal tools," I've
| worked at companies where the internal tools were more
| valuable than anything customer-facing.
|
| Yes, but they're exceptions.
|
| > Overall impact is more helpful than resume points, IME,
| especially when references are involved.
|
| The vast majority of the best paying jobs out there
| (FAANG), don't care at all about references.
|
| It's a big world, it depends a lot in which circles you
| move around, I guess.
| type_enthusiast wrote:
| Disclaimer: I do work at a FAANG. I'm not sure what
| circles you're talking about.
|
| "References" in the traditional sense may not be an
| important thing. But certainly being able to back your
| resume claims - whether with skills from that experience,
| or with people who will vouch for you - is important. If
| it wasn't, we could all just put "Optimized SQL and
| improved profit 20%" (or anything else) on our resumes,
| no?
|
| I participate in interviews from time to time. I don't
| ask a lot of trivia-type algorithm questions, but I do
| try to size up where a candidate has invested their
| effort so far. Have they invested it in trying (and
| learning) to solve problems? Or have they invested in in
| padding their resume? I'll take the former over the
| latter every time, even if they don't have a bunch of
| brag-points on their resume.
|
| That's just me, though _shrug_
| pessimizer wrote:
| If optimizing an internal tool can raise profits by 20%, I
| don't understand your disagreement. The comment you're
| replying to mentioned profits vs. unnoticed efficiency, not
| internal tools vs. consumer-facing software.
|
| If it makes a big impact, it makes a big impact.
|
| > If you're great at optimizing SQL, probably just doing
| that in any place you can get your hands on will make a
| pretty big impact.
|
| This seems like an argument that there are no priorities
| and no things that are more important than other things. I
| don't think you believe that.
| type_enthusiast wrote:
| > This seems like an argument that there are no
| priorities and no things that are more important than
| other things. I don't think you believe that.
|
| On the contrary, I'm arguing that making an impact
| wherever you can is better than avoiding things that
| don't meet some criteria of "things that are likely to
| help my resume." The priority I'm advocating is, making
| an impact by applying your skills (or even better,
| learning new skills) to solve problems that you can find
| (or are brought to you).
|
| This is how you'll build a breadth of experience (which
| will be valuable for employers) and identify a niche that
| you enjoy (which will be valuable for you).
| Klinky wrote:
| How do you even know the actual impact you had on
| revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed
| from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some
| companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I
| take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation
| with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly
| guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.
| Swizec wrote:
| The PM you worked with should be able to answer this
| question. If they can't, your project is likely a waste of
| time.
|
| The signal from a hiring standpoint is that you asked and
| cared about this. Engineers who will just do whatever are
| less useful/impactful than engineers who push back and care
| about the value they're delivering. Even if it's sometimes
| fuzzy to estimate.
| punnerud wrote:
| If you "improve admin interface load times by 20%" do the
| calculation on what that is in saved time and possible money
| over 5 years. Then you have both.
|
| You should of course have someone in management agree to your
| numbers and approve that you can use it on your CV.
| Swizec wrote:
| That's why I said profits not revenue. Specifically to
| capture that 1 & 2 might be the same work :)
|
| Just talking in terms of business impact puts you miles
| ahead of other candidates in many eng jobs. Especially for
| levels above junior. Very important to have engineers who
| (want to) understand _why_ they do what they do.
| stanmancan wrote:
| Unfortunately saving time/money is not as sexy as
| increasing revenue.
|
| I learned this once by creating a tool at a
| telecommunications company I was working at. It made it
| significantly faster for Technical Support to initiate a
| Remote Desktop session with a customer. We ran reports on
| how many RDP sessions we started per month; and recorded
| how much time the tool saved. At the time it was estimated
| to save about $2.1M in time savings every year, at a time
| when the Tech Support queues had long waits.
|
| Couldn't get any traction with management. Had some
| grassroots growth internally until we were asked to shut it
| down since it was an unofficial tool.
|
| Meanwhile they would chase sales campaigns or marketing
| stunts that might result in $50-100k in new sign ups.
|
| Nobody cares how much you saved in time because it doesn't
| get reported anywhere. It shows up on no important metrics.
| Sales going up by $100K is sexy. Admins handling an extra
| ticket per day because the interface is quicker isn't.
| kostarelo wrote:
| > Nobody cares how much you saved in time because it
| doesn't get reported anywhere. It shows up on no
| important metrics. Sales going up by $100K is sexy.
| Admins handling an extra ticket per day because the
| interface is quicker isn't.
|
| I don't get that. Solving an extra ticket per day should
| somehow correlate with either revenue increase(indirect)
| or cost saving(direct), right?
| stanmancan wrote:
| Revenue increase; unlikely. Cost savings? Yes. But does
| it?
|
| Managers want big teams. It makes them look good. Having
| 15 direct reports looks better than having 10. That means
| the manager needs his people to be efficient enough to
| look good on paper, but inefficient enough that he gets
| to hire more people. Having a bigger budget and higher
| headcount makes him look good.
| Tarsul wrote:
| yeah, I've read a lot about automation here where this
| was a common argument, also I noticed this in the company
| I work for as well. If you are in IT or the user yourself
| and automate something it doesn't really get recognized
| by management. I think the only time automation is
| recognized by management is when it's on the agenda of
| management itself, e.g. if it's said that 20% of the
| people have to go and for that to happen there has to
| happen automation (and outsourcing). However, in this
| case the idea comes from management so there would not be
| much recognition for the ones doing the automation (also
| with the reduction in workforce it wouldn't be
| appropriate for mere workers to ask for a bonus/raise! Of
| course that doesn't apply to management..). Automation
| really is a good example of how dysfunctional (or averse
| to change) big companies are.
| mockingbirdy wrote:
| This is the kind of inefficiency that startups can use to
| get ahead of established competitors. So don't be sad,
| this is just a reminder to be an entrepreneur.
| stanmancan wrote:
| Absolutely!
| F_J_H wrote:
| Even better: _I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to
| improve admin interface load times by 20%, which boosted
| profits by 20%_.
| alexc05 wrote:
| What's a funny coincidence is that I've been thinking about
| almost exactly this for a little while.
|
| Just in the last two weeks I decided to create a podcast where
| I interview the exact types of developers who optimize SQL
| inside business apps.
|
| In fact, literally just last night I recorded and uploaded (to
| YouTube and the various podcast platforms) episode zero. Not an
| actual interview yet, but a statement of purpose and a
| placeholder so I can _hopefully_ have a small audience on
| release day. (I 'm hoping for about 50 subs by the time I
| launch the first)
|
| I was 100% not going to promote on HN until after I had at
| least 10 episodes published... but fundamentally it was born
| out of a desire to attempt to solve for the "unsexy"
| programmer.
|
| Anyway: https://youtu.be/9mmgfxSeqPA
|
| Or you can search for "Ship It" on your favorite podcast
| platform.
|
| In terms of feedback, any and all is welcome, though I've got a
| personal preference for constructive feedback as opposed to
| just telling me that my stupid face looks really stupid.
|
| :)
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Please don't start another podcast. Or if you absolutely
| must, please provide a text version of the content.
|
| Podcasts aren't searchable, they aren't skimmable and their
| content isn't indexed in search engines. Text is.
| alexc05 wrote:
| I'll take that on board! Thanks.
|
| For Episode 0 I did post the full text of my script in the
| description, but I do think that for the actual interviews
| I won't be able to afford a transcription service for a
| while.
|
| For the last few years though, I've been getting a fairly
| significant proportion of my ongoing professional
| development via the medium.
|
| I think it scales well in terms of being able to get access
| to some of the greatest minds I know without creating an
| undue burden on my guests OR myself as a father to a 2-year
| old with a mortgage and a day job.
|
| I am 100% willing to commit to writing rich descriptions
| that address the topics discussed in advance though. As
| part of the editing process I'll need to rewatch my own
| interviews a few times anyways, so it isn't a significant
| amount of extra work to provide a perfectly reasonable
| value add that I like to see on the pods I listen to.
|
| Thanks!
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I use Descript for my podcast, PS22 a month gets me ~30
| hours of transcription. This probably sounds like an ad
| but really, it's one of the best software products I've
| used in a very long time.
|
| This is the most recent episode I've published, giant
| wall of text took a bit of editing but wouldn't have been
| possible without Descript.
| https://www.mql.fm/005-working-in-martech-dan-graap
| alexc05 wrote:
| Thank you! This is exactly the type of recommendation
| that I was hoping for.
|
| I'd have been happy with the mention even if it was an
| ad.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| If you give it a try for audio editing make sure you
| record different podcast guests on separate audio tracks,
| makes the whole thing significantly better.
|
| I wrote a few thoughts on my blog about how I went about
| starting with the podcast including tools used, might be
| useful?
| https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/starting-a-
| podcast
| ddulaney wrote:
| On the other hand, podcasts can be listened to in the
| background, while text must be actively read. There are
| pros and cons to each format as a consumer, not to mention
| differences in production workflow.
| jspash wrote:
| Naively I would think that there _must_ be a service out
| there that auto-generates transcriptions from podcasts.
| Youtube already do this for (some) videos. The output isn
| 't perfect, but it gets about 99% of the words correct.
|
| So my suggestion to OP wouldn't be "don't do the podcast".
| Instead I would say "do the podcast, but consider that it
| might not be searchable without a bit of extra effort".
| alexc05 wrote:
| 100% there are services! I believe that Azure ML/AI has a
| natural text transcription service.
|
| In theory I could try and tweet at Seth Juarez@microsoft
| to see if I can get a sweetheart deal.
|
| But the more I think about the previous poster's position
| on the text, the more I convince myself that it might be
| worth a few bucks an episode for me to pay out-of-pocket
| if it means improved accessibility for users with
| disabilities.
|
| Not really because it's good business, but more because
| I've really come to believe in the value and power of
| implementing accessibility features.
|
| I'm actually starting to get a little teary eyed thinking
| about that blindness activist's viral video where he
| broke down physically sobbing the words "thank you" when
| he saw all of the accessibility features that Naughty Dog
| added to The Last of Us 2. (I'll hunt the video for
| people who haven't seen it, but be warned that you will
| probably bawl your eyes out like a school-child).
|
| From a cost perspective, I'll be putting in hundreds of
| fake dollars worth of time. The people I interview will
| be effectively donating hundreds of dollars worth of
| their own time.
|
| The least I can do is put some serious thought into
| plunking down dozens of dollars of pocket money for a
| transcription service.
|
| I'm more sold on the idea than I was in my previous post
| (5 minutes ago)
|
| Edit: the tweet in question. https://twitter.com/stevesay
| lor/status/1271404306697158659
| watermelon0 wrote:
| Sounds interesting. However, I already found two other
| podcasts with the same name.
|
| I have searched on Spotify and Castbox, but didn't find yours
| there.
| alexc05 wrote:
| Thanks! I've been able to find it on a few platforms so
| far, but I'm distributing via anchor.fm
|
| https://anchor.fm/ship-it
|
| I'll have to find a way to differentiate my ship-it from
| others for people searching.
|
| I'll probably have to rename it, but in the short term I'm
| going to let it ride.
|
| Better to focus on quality interviews for now. (I think)
|
| Edit: I just looked over the emails that anchor sent me and
| some of them say it could take as much as a week for the
| first listing to appear.
|
| It's probably not showing up because it was like 1am last
| night when I finally hit the publish button on a non-test
| episode for the first time.
|
| I'll keep an eye on this though. Thanks.
|
| It's the exact type of hiccup that had me not wanting to
| self-promote before I had 10 episodes online.
| hibikir wrote:
| It's not that maintenance has no marketplace value, but that
| it's only really valuable when the system is on fire.
|
| I've optimized that kind of SQL statement, and it paid really
| well, but only because it was at a point where it was causing a
| whole lot of pain, so the fix provided CEO-visible relief. What
| is not a great use of your time is to preemptively fix issues
| like this, unless it's somewhere so system critical that
| engineering effort is going to be rewarded regardless.
|
| But even then, you might want to do something in a way that is
| easy to sell later in your career. You want to at least be able
| to say: Remember how <famous architect> sold his innovative
| system at <famous conference>, and HN wonder why this talk
| existed, as there's no way this solution could scale? Well,
| they were right, it didn't scale, and I was the one that
| replaced it with something good, piece by piece, without
| anything falling down.
|
| And that's the reason you don't get a lot of high quality
| maintenance work happening at most places. The vast majority of
| systems in the world are just not worth the engineering effort
| to build very well. And even in companies that can afford to do
| this kind of work, you will see a lot of effort spent shuffling
| engineers across projects, as a team that has high visibility
| tasks in a quarter might not have any the next.
| TOGoS wrote:
| > A lot of day jobs structurally inhibit capital formation. If I
| were a Marxist I'd say "And this is an intended consequence of
| Capital's desire to keep Labor subservient to it", but I honestly
| think it's true even without anybody needing to twirl their
| mustache.
|
| I feel for the author's Marxist friend. That no mustache-twirling
| is required is kind of the point. But I guess it's a hard one to
| communicate in our superhero-focused culture where everything
| happens because an individual intended it to.
|
| Anyway, aside from Patrick's misguided idea that he's a
| capitalist, the article resonated with me. I spent 10 years
| working at a place where I usually had something built by the end
| of the week that I could show off, or talk about, or put to use
| on the next project, or that at least made my and my coworkers'
| jobs easier, and that kept me going. But I'm now at a job with a
| sprawling swamp of a codebase where it's plainly clear that
| nothing I do is going to matter.
|
| Over the years I had moved away from software side-projects, but
| am finding now that having one now is kind of important for my
| sanity. It helps me feel like I've actually accomplished
| something more than just a paycheck, keeps the brain somewhat
| sharp, and might turn out to be useful as a thing to show
| off/talk about to potential employers, if not a useful tool in
| its own right.
|
| Oh for a long vacation where I can just work on my side projects.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What makes you think that Patrick is mistaken about his claim
| that he is a capitalist?
| TOGoS wrote:
| Even if Patrick is or has been a CEO of some sort (I don't
| know anything about him past what I've read today, but
| another commenter mentioned that he's working at Stripe), the
| fact that most of the article talks about how to make
| yourself more marketable to employers (by building up a
| capital of sorts, as he calls it) indicates that he has spent
| a good portion of his life selling his labor for wages.
| Something that people who own real capital (i.e. lots of
| money, infrastructure, the means of production, etc), i.e.
| capitalists, generally don't bother doing.
| ljp_206 wrote:
| I'd guess the commenter means, that from a Marxist
| perspective, most workers are not 'capitalists,' i.e., they
| don't make their living from owning capital. These 'non-
| capitalist' workers get wages primarily from capitalists.
| Perhaps the author is moderately successful and does live off
| of investments now. That could technically make him a
| 'capitalist' - again, from a certain perspective.
|
| I'll readily admit this is mostly a semantic difference, but
| to me it serves as a good reminder that, for example, calling
| even the most ardent free market supporter minimum wage
| WalMart worker a 'capitalist' is about as sick of a joke as
| pretending that the majority of jobs offers workers a chance
| of building 'capital' in the first place - as the author
| points out.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Every online dictionary SERP on the first page lists
| something of the form "(noun)-a person favoring
| capitalism", which is pretty clearly the use Patrick
| implied from context. About half of them list that first
| and half second to the usage you describe above.
| darawk wrote:
| Patrick runs his own software business afaik, so I think he
| definitely qualifies as a capitalist in terms of his
| economic role in society. However, I assume by 'capitalist'
| he meant more the suite of economic beliefs he subscribes
| to than his own personal role in the economy.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| > Patrick runs his own software business afaik
|
| He used to. Now he works at Stripe.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Agree and in fact employee ownership gets lumped in with
| socialism as do unions. An equity option at least allows
| you to be paid in virtual capital that may or may not
| materialize. Direct stock grants or RSUs at least give you
| the option to be a capitalist.
|
| Otherwise we all have our retirements in 401ks makes us de-
| facto capitalists too. We're supposed to eventually live
| off of those investments.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Don 't End The Week With Nothing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7179098 - Feb 2014 (101
| comments)
| pydry wrote:
| >A lot of day jobs structurally inhibit capital formation. If I
| were a Marxist I'd say "And this is an intended consequence of
| Capital's desire to keep Labor subservient to it", but I honestly
| think it's true even without anybody needing to twirl their
| mustache.
|
| I kind of assumed that at least some metaphorical moustache
| twirling went on in those jobs with the contract clause where you
| sign away every idea you have in the shower.
|
| There's seemingly some threshold of developer job where employers
| stop demanding it, too (I haven't been asked to do it in years;
| most of my junior friends still have it in their contracts) ,
| which suggests that it's leverage related.
| beforeolives wrote:
| I was hoping that we were moving in the opposite direction where
| people aren't expected to show off side projects, ship something
| every week or work for a famous company in order to be
| successful. If this article is good advice, that makes me a bit
| sad about the state and direction of the industry.
| andrewzah wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, working for prestigious companies will
| always be prestigious. I don't think that will ever go away,
| for any industry. I don't think it's necessary, though.
|
| Unfortunately there is still pressure to work on open source
| projects and/or blog about programming-related things in one's
| free time. I think this article has a lot of bad opinions from
| someone who works way too much, and expects other people to
| work full work weeks (or 90+ like them) and still do personal
| projects on the side.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I'd argue you don't, depending on what you consider
| "successful"
| magnetowasright wrote:
| Totally agree. To me it feels like it's talking around the
| problems in the industry. The solution to good work being
| 'unmarketable' isn't to stop doing good work. We can't all be
| fighting to do the kind of work that 'looks' good, and we
| shouldn't have to.
|
| Search Engine Optimisation has destroyed the usefulness of
| search engines. If you search for a recipe or you're looking
| for blog posts about a particular technology, you're more
| likely to end up on something useless that _looks_ good
| according to x criteria (or has paid) rather than what you're
| actually looking for. Good work gets buried because of the
| process. The problem isn't the good work.
|
| Valuable work being perceived as not valuable highlights that
| the 'market' and the processes are wrong. Something isn't right
| here if we have to dedicate al our time to SEO-big our careers.
| I don't want to bend over backwards to cater to the ever
| changing fashions dictated by a market that doesn't know or
| care to separate the wheat from the chaff. If I have to focus
| my career on work I hate and/or spend a significant amount of
| time building a portfolio of 'side projects' to ~hack my
| career~ to impress ...someone who can recommend me for a job
| (based on work I hate), I'm going to end up doing work I hate
| for a company who doesn't understand software or developers,
| and who is part of the problem. Realistically I'm not going to
| (and I have no desire to) be one of those 'rockstars', so where
| does following the 'completely lean into the capitalist crap'
| advice leave me? Nowhere I want to be.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| > [W]ork at higher profile companies/organizations --
| AmaGooFaceSoft, startups or small companies with anomalously high
| profile (locally, nationally, whatever), or in positions where by
| your nature you're exposed to lots of people.
|
| This advice is generally already followed. It's far more
| competitive when applying for roles with high visibility or
| companies with high brand recognition.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > It's far more competitive when applying for roles with high
| visibility or companies with high brand recognition.
|
| The work is also often terrible. The companies know they are
| desirable and know they can treat their people like shit and
| get away with it because they've got a queue of suckers happy
| to replace anyone who has had enough and quit.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Fantastic article. When I read patio11's content I'm almost
| always amazed at two aspects: (1) the important truths about
| capitalism/the valley/entrepreneurship/getting better and (2) his
| simple, matter of fact, and no-ego way of expressing the said
| truths.
|
| (1) in itself is not unique to him, there are many great comment
| writers on HN and elsewhere on the blogosphere. What makes him
| exceptional, I think, is (2) which sets him apart from most
| people at that level of public visibility.
|
| After reading his posts I feel like I'd love to have a beer with
| this person and have a deep discussion on a multitude of topics.
| The only other content I've gotten the same joy is pg's (earlier)
| essays.
| miguelmota wrote:
| I agree with the post for the most part. It's important to feel
| that your work is acknowledged to feel worthy.
|
| I disagree with this statement however:
|
| > I prefer being upfront with people rather than doing the "It is
| easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" route a
| lot of folks suggest.
|
| Asking your employer if you can work on a side project is like
| asking them if you can play golf on the weekend. It's your own
| time off-work hours and you're free to work on a project without
| begging for permission. If the side project directly competes
| with you're employer's product then that's a definitely a gray
| area but you'd know if you're purposely taking intellectual
| property or not. If you're not sure that your employer will screw
| you over then get something in writing.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| As somebody who has been on the receiving end of an employer
| (well it was a university system, but still...) coming after my
| IP, it is absolutely worth having total clarity, in writing
| when it comes to ownership of side projects.
|
| It seems like a lesson most developers learn. I took a job at a
| startup that decided after they'd started hiring to pass around
| an employment agreement covering personal projects. Without
| talking to each other, apparently 3 of us 4 developers there
| had all politely refused to sign due to the side project
| clause. The only dev who did sign was the one fresh out of
| college. Ultimately developers were given a different contract
| than everybody else that made clear we owned our side projects
| and everybody happily moved on, but it was good that we all
| stood our ground on the issue and had clarity.
| acapybara wrote:
| > If you're not sure that your employer will screw you over
| then get something in writing.
|
| This might be a good indicator that you should leave your
| employer. If you don't trust that they won't screw you over...
|
| Granted, I know that's easier said than done. But we should all
| aim to put up with less of this kind of shit from employers.
| andrewem wrote:
| I agree we should all aim to put up with less of this, but
| even with an employer you trust there's no guarantee they
| won't run into money trouble and sell to a larger company
| which takes a harsher view.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Even family and friends can act in unexpected ways when money
| enters the picture.
| milesvp wrote:
| Never forget that a company is a group of individuals. All it
| takes is for one of them some time in the infinite future to
| decide they own the IP you developed during the time you were
| employed at the company. Making sure that no one can easily
| make this claim is sort of basic hygiene at this point. Do
| this by making sure you have a copy of the employment
| contract, and that it either doesn't have any crazy IP
| ownership clauses, or that you have explicit exceptions to
| said crazy ownership clauses.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the context of that sentence.
|
| It's about the IP property ownership, and many employment
| contracts have specific clauses about IP ownership. And those
| clauses are sometimes draconian. For example, the preceding
| paragraph has this sentence:
|
| > Companies in our industry are gradually becoming more
| reasonable about IP assignment clauses -- there's less of the
| "we own everything you think of at any point in your
| employment" nonsense these days. Even at my very straight-laced
| Japanese megacorp, they were willing to write an exception into
| the employment contract for a) OSS work that I did outside of
| company hours and b) Bingo Card Creator.
|
| I think patio11 is saying you should be on solid legal footing
| for your IP ownership of your outside of work projects. If your
| employment contract already gives you control over your IP,
| then there is nothing you need to ask for. But if your
| employment contract may ambiguously give some control to your
| employer, then it's better to ask for an explicit point in the
| employment contract about the project.
|
| So, "forgiveness" in this context is less about getting
| permission from your employer, and it's more about ensuring you
| truly own free and clear the IP you generate.
|
| > If you're not sure that your employer will screw you over
| then get something in writing.
|
| That's exactly the point patio11 was making, I think.
| christophergs wrote:
| This. Concretely it's about negotiating the most draconian IP
| clauses out of your contract before you take the job.
| nsgi wrote:
| Obviously there's no need to ask permission just to have a side
| project, but if you have any intention of making money from it
| and there's an IP clause in your contract which might get in
| the way of that it's another matter
| jt2190 wrote:
| Unfortunately this is not correct.
|
| The IP clause is in effect regardless of your intent to make
| money. So when the contract says "everything you create while
| employed here belongs to us" that's the deal.
|
| If you want to own something you create, then you either have
| to already have a contract that allows you to retain
| ownership under certain very clear circumstances or you need
| to _ask the company in advance_ and _get it in writing._
|
| (When you negotiate employment you should consider the
| additional compensation you require in exchange for granting
| them exclusive ownership over everything you create.)
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-21 23:00 UTC)