[HN Gopher] My Failure Resume
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       My Failure Resume
        
       Author : jimhi
       Score  : 230 points
       Date   : 2023-03-16 13:47 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (dare.fail)
 (TXT) w3m dump (dare.fail)
        
       | ipaddr wrote:
       | Mixed emotions. Just thinking here.. the build piece you have
       | down pat.
       | 
       | Have you thought about investing in a community or many for a
       | year or more. Understanding their needs then build products? 90%
       | community / rep building 10% building.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | The profitable projects took 2-4 years each of my life. If
         | anything what I learned from this is to move on much much
         | faster when it isn't working but leave it up for future
         | opportunities to happen.
        
       | Joel_Mckay wrote:
       | "They ghosted me"
       | 
       | This is unfortunately modern culture, and most seem unconcerned
       | how rude they are to strangers. Very foolish policy unless you
       | already have over a Billion market cap, and can attract a steady
       | stream of junior staff more willing to take flippant abuse.
       | 
       | Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might
       | actually win.
       | 
       | This also means respecting the content medium, and knowing when
       | to bail. =)
        
       | barbarbar wrote:
       | Holy sh*t. That list is outright insane. They should be allowed
       | to retire and just drink cocktails or something. I would not be
       | able to do a tenth of that even if would live 900 years. Amazing.
        
       | pradn wrote:
       | I really have to commend this person for just being so energetic
       | with just DOING stuff, no matter the failure. I suppose you get
       | used to it, making it easy to be "biased toward action". It's
       | easier to win when you pull the slot machine so many times.
        
       | billydwilliams wrote:
       | I love this! Especially in a professional culture that
       | embellishes, misrepresents, and outright lies about failures and
       | hardships in order to try to appear more attractive, successful,
       | and employable. LinkedIn these days is just one big stream of
       | toxic positivity and Stockholm syndrome. It's great to see people
       | that are willing to be honest and humble.
       | 
       | Granted, you have to be careful to not have a victim mentality or
       | be too self-deprecating to the point that people thing you're
       | actually humble-bragging or fishing for pity/compliments, but
       | this site seems hilarious. Great work.
        
       | heldrida wrote:
       | Hey Jimhi! Thanks for sharing this, I liked it a lot :D Good luck
       | with your acting! Have you thought about creating a movie
       | yourself and directing? Since I spend so much time
       | coding/building as you do, whenever I have some free time I try
       | to do some music and been doing the music videos
       | https://punkbit.com/audio/desmentira-a-project-inspired-by-m...
       | planning to do a movie at some point!
       | 
       | Good luck mate!!
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | This is cool as heck - Yes I did which led to me realizing I
         | have no money for cameras and sound and lighting which led to
         | the interactive comics website.
        
       | danuker wrote:
       | Amazing! I think failures are just as important as successes when
       | learning what works.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, many business books just take the top X people by
       | net worth and analyze what they did, but that is not enough.
       | 
       | Stated in Bayes' theorem terms: to compute P(success | actions)
       | you also need P(actions) and P(success), not just P(actions |
       | success) which are the success stories.
       | 
       | P(actions) and P(success) require knowledge from failures as
       | well, not just successful actions.
       | 
       | Thanks for the courage of sharing your failures!
        
       | gregalbritton wrote:
       | Perhaps the next product launch is this awesome little stats
       | dashboard you have.
       | 
       | Make it a personal goal dashboard for concurrent website visitors
       | for one's own projects and follower count. Just as you have it.
       | It's kinda like Venmo, except for one's own sites/projects/goals.
       | 
       | Personally think this is awesome onto itself. Just that current
       | goal bar is a great feature. Subscribe to the goal. Once it's
       | reached, subscribers get a note. "see you can do great things,
       | Alice just completed her follower goal! Send a note and show some
       | love :)"
        
       | shantnutiwari wrote:
       | On the one hand, a bit heart breaking.
       | 
       | On the other hand, I wish more people shared their failures--
       | otherwise all we see is survivorship bias and people selling get
       | rich courses "I made a million dollars doing this ONE TRICK and
       | you can too! Only 9 payments of $999.99"
       | 
       | I only have 4-5 failures (compared to his dozens), but then I
       | only started 4-5 projects :)
        
       | cosinetau wrote:
       | Related https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/30/cv-of-
       | fail...
        
       | xigency wrote:
       | I like this. It's a bit cheeky but the point still lands. Even if
       | you have the greatest startup idea, there are myriad ways it can
       | fail, many of which are totally outside a founder's control.
       | 
       | Fail early, fail often still seems to be the best wisdom.
        
       | sanman811 wrote:
       | This feels like a good reminder of the obsessiveness (and
       | narcissism?) it takes to actually create something successful.
       | 
       | Kudos to him for putting it all out there
        
         | birdyrooster wrote:
         | It's a warning how you can waste your life when you don't
         | appreciate it and instead are constantly yearning to be in some
         | other reality. The end result is you are still mediocre and are
         | closer to death with understandings that won't help you.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | I would like at least one person to see this and think "Man, a
         | lot of those ideas are actually pretty dumb and he couldn't
         | even pass a tech interview, I could do this better and faster."
        
       | jojosbuddy wrote:
       | You started out in Boston Dynamics, destined to fail :) j/k
       | 
       | (The again, everyone I worked with from BD seems has a similar
       | pattern after leaving!)
        
       | rusticpenn wrote:
       | The best way to reduce failures is to not try at all.
        
       | tdhopper wrote:
       | I do this: https://tdhopper.com/rejected
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | That's cool I'll share that if you are cool with it
        
         | notimpotent wrote:
         | I don't understand this - have you been (unsuccessfully)
         | looking for a job since 2013?
         | 
         | If you've had jobs in between these applications, why are you
         | applying for so many new jobs every year?
        
           | cableshaft wrote:
           | In the reflections link at the bottom they have the
           | following:
           | 
           | > I've been unbelievably fortunate to be continuously
           | employed since college, but I'm not sure how to tell you to
           | repeat that.
           | 
           | So they've had jobs while they've applied elsewhere. Also
           | according to their resume (link at the top) they've had 7
           | jobs since 2014, or about one job shift every year and some
           | change.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Mizoguchi wrote:
       | This is much more helpful than reading about success stories.
       | Thanks for sharing.
        
       | todfox wrote:
       | I'm sure the Lessons so Far list really does work, but it seems
       | like mental illness to me. Trying to be entertaining to get
       | followers, tailoring your work so that it gets attention, talking
       | to the right people on social media and being sure to take their
       | side or promote them. It's sickening.
       | 
       | This is why every YouTube thumbnail has a face with bugged out
       | eyes and huge fonts. This is why all news is sensationalism now.
       | It's all about grabbing attention and getting revenue over making
       | or doing something worthwhile.
        
         | julianeon wrote:
         | I 99% agree, and I would 100% agree, if it wasn't for one
         | thing:
         | 
         | I need money to survive.
         | 
         | Every one of those things you cited, when you remove the levels
         | of indirection, is oriented towards making money.
         | 
         | So, yeah. If I didn't have to make money I also wouldn't do
         | those things. But I have to, so I do.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | I thought like you until about a year ago. Marketing is a skill
         | much like software development and people much less deserving
         | than you are making far more money than you and actively saying
         | things that making our world worse. I don't think you should
         | dismiss getting better at it.
         | 
         | That said, I don't disagree it's a mental illness.
        
           | koch wrote:
           | > actively saying things that making our world worse. I don't
           | think you should dismiss getting better at it.
           | 
           | Well now that doesn't sound quite right, either, does it? Get
           | better at saying things that make our world worse?
           | 
           | I feel like both you and @todfox here, I hate what it is but
           | I also know that it's absolutely necessary. It seems to be a
           | lesson I keep relearning. But the ickiness of attention-
           | seeking and going for the lowest common denominator really
           | makes it hard for me to keep it up.
        
             | nebulousthree wrote:
             | > But the ickiness of attention-seeking and going for the
             | lowest common denominator really makes it hard for me to
             | keep it up.
             | 
             | Attention-seeking, fine, but lowest common denominator is a
             | self-defeating assumption. If my thing was making very
             | elaborate high quality chairs, I don't have to make a bunch
             | of crappy generic chairs to bring attention to the
             | elaborate ones. The fear of failure in your niche may drive
             | this though. But by doing so you're just growing the
             | overall demographic you serve which brings in more people,
             | giving you the impression of finally succeeding..but you
             | may not get more sales of the product you actually care
             | about in the first place: the elaborate chair.
             | 
             | My point is: go for the "denominator" you feel you want to
             | address, and be enthusiastically attention-seeking there.
             | Pretending to care about other demographics, building
             | product for them and supporting all that extra
             | infrastructure is soul-crushing
        
           | todfox wrote:
           | I agree with you, but any time I've attempted it I just feel
           | sick to my stomach.
        
       | silvertaza wrote:
       | I love the spirit!
       | 
       | Practically speaking, having a backlog of vast amounts of similar
       | data to you, the true way to get out of the loop is to try
       | something different. To do the things that wouldn't fit as a data
       | point in that list format.
        
       | lazyant wrote:
       | I only see one failure here: not using ISO 8601 for dates.
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | The list of jobs is _jobs unsuccessfully applied for_ is that
       | right?
       | 
       | It can't be a list of jobs that this person did, there's too many
       | to make sense. The blog post is not clear.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | Yes, interviewed with, or put some kind of time investment in
        
       | mittermayr wrote:
       | At first I was like, yeah, another one of those "follow my life
       | as an indie dev" promos, then I scrolled down to your list of job
       | "failures", and it was incredibly interesting to see just HOW
       | MUCH some people get done in life.
       | 
       | If you tend to be somewhat critical of self-promos, I'd still
       | recommend you take a moment and at least scroll down on that page
       | and see for yourself. Very impressive. Just goes to show that you
       | can indeed turn the dial well up to 11.
        
         | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
         | Agreed. All that work and website loads up fast and is very
         | clear and concise. I did enjoy 'lessons learned' section.
         | Frankly, the entire thing is almost inspirational.
        
         | olalonde wrote:
         | I was also confused but those are jobs he applied for but
         | wasn't hired.
        
           | jimhi wrote:
           | Ones I got interviews for and didn't get
        
             | olalonde wrote:
             | Even more impressive. Inspired me to get more fails under
             | my belt.
        
             | giantg2 wrote:
             | I can't even get 10% of the number of interviews. I feel
             | like you have little justification to say "In fact, almost
             | everything I have tried to do has failed". Clearly you've
             | been very successful in general. Much more so than people
             | like me.
        
               | jimhi wrote:
               | I mean the interviews are like 1 out 400 applications.
        
               | hughdbrown wrote:
               | In 2016, you had 45 failed interviews. At a 400-1 ratio,
               | you're saying you put out 18000 job applications that
               | year? That's staggering. Even at 20-1, that would be
               | 1000-ish applications.
        
               | giantg2 wrote:
               | Still, seems like you move up. I'm over a decade in and
               | still a shitty midlevel.
        
               | circlefavshape wrote:
               | My dad never got promoted in 40 years of work. When I got
               | my first promotion (to team lead) I had been working as a
               | dev for over 15 years and I kinda felt like I had let him
               | down
        
               | madamelic wrote:
               | What are you doing to move up?
               | 
               | I don't think I am anything special nor was I a super go-
               | getter and I've moved up fine in the same time span (came
               | in as an ~associate, moved up to senior in ~2 years, got
               | principal in 1.5 years, sat around high-level senior /
               | defacto tech lead for a few years until I finally got a
               | break with an actual lead title).
               | 
               | You are either in too big of a pond (ie: you should work
               | in a smaller place to have a bigger impact) or you are
               | too focused on your own work to appear as someone worth
               | bringing up.
               | 
               | I am not a boomer but if you are a software engineer who
               | is wanting to move up past associate and especially
               | senior, you need to be looking out for others, mentoring,
               | writing documentation on why certain decisions were made;
               | something more than just nose in the code.
               | 
               | The adage of "dress for the job you want, not the job you
               | have" is kinda true. You don't even have to kill yourself
               | for it either. I did the 10+ hour days for a year as a
               | junior then I realized no one I wanted to care cared nor
               | saw it as a point of pride.
        
               | giantg2 wrote:
               | I'm not doing shit now. I gave up a few years ago. I was
               | an acting senior dev for a year and a tech lead for
               | another. I had great reviews and was performing beyond my
               | role. I was involved in stretch assignments/groups too. I
               | even had a tech lead from another team I was working with
               | send an email to my manager praising my help. Then that
               | project was outsourced and I helped bring the sourcing
               | team to speed.
               | 
               | I went to another area of the company and volunteered to
               | be a security champion (above my level at the time) which
               | turns out I was the only one for 6 teams across 2
               | departments. I had awesome reviews from the people I
               | worked with on this. I volunteered for other assignments
               | too and "won" (asshole manager would give teo people a
               | task that one person could do to see who would step up).
               | I was a regular attendee and contributor at the tech lead
               | and manager meetings (like a design/architecture/SoS for
               | the app). When I was leaving that team one of the tech
               | leads asked what role I was taking on a different team. I
               | told them it was a midlevel dev. They then asked why I
               | was taking a demotion - they thought I was a senior dev
               | the whole time. Maybe just to be polite, but a few others
               | echoed the same sentiment at hearing that.
               | 
               | The security and tech lead years were a lot more than
               | being in the code. In fact, I was focused on a lot of PM
               | related stuff during the tech lead year and feel my lack
               | of coding actually hurt me in the future because I was no
               | longer coding on a daily basis but doing stuff like
               | coordinating, troubleshooting, etc. So then I wasn't as
               | fast at actual coding.
        
               | reidjs wrote:
               | (Assuming you're a software engineer) You are being paid
               | to write code, don't forget that, it's a dream to many
               | people.
        
               | giantg2 wrote:
               | It's a nightmare to some
        
               | testmasterflex wrote:
               | It's pretty evident that Mr Steinberg is extremely
               | conscientious
        
             | andrewstuart wrote:
             | It should say that in the blog post.
             | 
             | It reads like a ridiculously long list of jobs you took and
             | failed at.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | I don't want to diminish anyone's accomplishments, as I think
         | they are impressive too. However, it is worth noting that some
         | of these projects are relatively simple and don't require a
         | significant time investment. Additionally, some of the projects
         | never launched and are counted as "fail".
        
           | jimhi wrote:
           | I appreciate you not diminishing my failures. Never launched
           | still means I tried to build and failed for various reasons.
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | You mean your accomplishments of failing? ;)
        
             | codazoda wrote:
             | Jim, I should have created this. I've failed a lot. Also,
             | your domain name makes a lot of sense for me. :P
        
               | jimhi wrote:
               | If you do end up creating - send to me
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | giantg2 wrote:
       | "In fact, almost everything I have tried to do has failed"
       | 
       | My life in a nutshell. Although I'll contend that the author
       | comparatively has no right to say it. It seems like they have
       | moved up the ladder and into higher paying roles. I have not.
        
       | michelpp wrote:
       | So much awesome fail, sir, I salute you!
       | 
       | "You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be
       | profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in
       | people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty
       | my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for
       | me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll
       | never learn."
       | 
       | -- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | Have you ever thought about opening a business to teach people
       | how to fail?
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | I would fail at that
        
           | tiborsaas wrote:
           | That would be a success, no?
        
       | francisofascii wrote:
       | The concept of failure here reminds me of the Tiger Woods quote:
       | "Second Place is just the first loser".
        
       | jrussino wrote:
       | Looking at the "Failure Resume" at the bottom; it seems massive
       | to me! But then I notice that there are as many as 13 entries for
       | a single day (e.g. 7/5/2018). What exactly is meant by "failed"
       | here? Did you interview at 13 companies on the same day
       | (unlikely), or receive 13 rejection letters on the same day, or
       | submit 13 applications in a day that received no response?
       | 
       | If I was being critical, I would say this looks like resume
       | padding. I would suggest you avoid spreading yourself too thin
       | and focus on failing harder at fewer things ;-)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | wouldbecouldbe wrote:
       | When it comes to entrepreneurship the act of creating serves
       | someone else, when you are an artist the act of creating itself
       | has value.
       | 
       | So if you consider yourself an artist this is fine. If you
       | consider yourself an entrepeneur, I will offer the following
       | advice:
       | 
       | You take way too little time to build something.
       | 
       | Spend a year per site/idea, not a month.
       | 
       | Take Lazy Reminders. It might be a challenge to be profitable
       | with this idea, but to get to a 1000 users in a few months should
       | be easy. Could be useful in many ways, but now it looks more like
       | a back of the envelope idea that's never been finished, way to
       | soon to move on. Make it something a non-developer would use, the
       | bar is a bit higher for consumers then coporates. You are
       | competing with Google, Apple & Facebook UX-wise. You can go 50%
       | less but not more. Corporates are more forgiving, they are used
       | to shitty software (SAP thank you ;)) Also. Integrate with users
       | existing workflows, at least one: slack / whatsapp etc.
       | 
       | Only after 1-2 years you get a proper understanding of your users
       | and you really start to create usefull things they actually need.
       | 
       | Anyway nothing wrong with creating, but if you are measuring
       | success based upon usage standard, you should spend more time on
       | one project.
        
         | bobleeswagger wrote:
         | I think it's a focus thing. Way too many holes to plug at
         | current rates.
        
       | qarrington0 wrote:
       | Hmm, if only you could add a bit of information.
        
       | jdelman wrote:
       | How did he know the CEO of LoyalSnap used his code in production?
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | Interview: Build this feature we want on our website that isn't
         | there.
         | 
         | After interview: Feature is suddenly on the website exactly as
         | I wrote it.
         | 
         | These guys aren't smart.
        
       | __mharrison__ wrote:
       | I love the lessons learned section. Thanks for being so open with
       | sharing!
        
       | ptzolov wrote:
       | This is so cool! I really love the lessons learned. Keep it up!
        
       | hyperpape wrote:
       | One of the items on this website contains very personal
       | information about an another person you dealt with.
       | 
       | I don't want to assume this is violation of privacy. Perhaps
       | you're on terms with them and they're public about it.
       | 
       | But are they? Because if they're not, I believe you should remove
       | it.
       | 
       | (I'm speaking vaguely, because I don't want to repeat that bit of
       | information here and make it more immortal).
        
         | anamexis wrote:
         | You're speaking vaguely enough that it's not clear what you're
         | referring to. I didn't see any very personal information.
        
         | cornholio wrote:
         | If somebody tried to screw you then backed out of it and you
         | have proof, seems fair game to post it online, complete with
         | the scammer's real name and affiliation. It might not be
         | tactically prudent since that person might sue you in
         | retaliation, by you are squarely within your rights to do it if
         | you want, no "violation of privacy" here.
        
           | hyperpape wrote:
           | I am not referring to the case where the CEO used his work.
           | That is fair game for naming and shaming.
           | 
           | The information reflects on what are normally considered
           | private details that are not limited to business
           | interactions.
        
       | RankingMember wrote:
       | I love the attitude behind this
        
       | birdyrooster wrote:
       | I like the message of this website. The individual failures
       | aren't the point. The failure is too much ambition and not enough
       | appreciation. It seems like the OP was running from something and
       | they are warning us from wasting our lives chasing mediocrity.
        
       | erikbhn wrote:
       | Are you the Opentrons guy?
       | 
       | And yes, this is the time for my favorite quote of all time:
       | 
       | Ever tried, ever failed, no matter!
       | 
       | Try again, fail again... fail better.
       | 
       | - Samuel Beckett
       | 
       | (punctuation by me, probably)
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | Not me but that guy is the smartest person I have ever met
        
         | mym1990 wrote:
         | Stan Wawrinka(tennis player) has this tattooed on his forearm!
         | Love the quote
        
       | ipaddr wrote:
       | "CTO at Loyalsnap (02/23/2017): The CEO rejected me then used the
       | code I wrote in the interview in production. When I pointed this
       | out and said an estimate of the hours I worked on that if he
       | wanted to use it, he told me I would have to sue him to get it.
       | 20 minutes later he venmo'd me the amount and said don't sue
       | him."
       | 
       | Happens more often then you think. Get 200 approaches on
       | something that team can't get right. Use one.. usually in the
       | backend. Or get inspired and use parts. Ghost person who wrote
       | the code.
        
         | titzer wrote:
         | Came here to post this. Your engineering team is a fail, your
         | problem is a joke, and your hiring process is overfitting.
         | Maybe you could post stackoverflow questions...and then wrong
         | answers...and get better results from people correcting you?
        
         | webnrrd2k wrote:
         | It's like that Silicon Valley episode where Richard explains
         | middle-out on the whiteboard and they just steal his code.
        
         | overthrow wrote:
         | I can't wrap my head around why companies do this. If you find
         | a competent programmer whose work is good enough to use,
         | wouldn't your team be better off if you hire them full-time?
         | That seems more efficient than interviewing 200 people every
         | time you need some code written.
        
           | abledon wrote:
           | they are hiring them as a contractor __for free__ , but just
           | not telling them they are writing their production code
           | prototypes for free while interviewing.
        
           | cube00 wrote:
           | If the culture is that rotten that this behavior is accepted
           | (as it requires multiple people in the hiring process to be
           | complicit) I doubt anyone would want to stay for very long if
           | they were hired.
        
           | sebastianconcpt wrote:
           | Desperate strategy to steal developer code done by people
           | that is as immoral as ignorant on how tech isn't reusable or
           | modularly scalable like they imagine and how obviously bad it
           | will all invariably end but they are "just giving it a try"?
        
           | lisasays wrote:
           | Logic has nothing to do with it. These companies shit on
           | candidates on general principle.
        
           | deely3 wrote:
           | Pessimistic point: there a lof of competent programmers out
           | there. So, why not to choose someone that you liked or
           | someone who ready to work long hours, under stress, for
           | minimum salary?
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | Endurancee wrote:
       | I'm just impressed by sheer number of things you have done,
       | failed or not. I really want to learn how do you manage your time
       | to have done all these.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | I didn't have money or income for the vast majority of this.
         | Parents couldn't help. What else do you have to do than think
         | about where your next dollar will come from?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | bowsamic wrote:
       | I really don't like the false modesty
        
         | Supermancho wrote:
         | The mentioning of school slights and "failures" seems
         | disturbingly petty. It concerns me that someone remembers this
         | kind of stuff as some sort of personal failure. He didn't
         | "fail", as much as his 18 year old self did or was just
         | unlucky. What does that matter?
        
         | spieswl wrote:
         | I felt the same. The presentation is innovative and impressive
         | (for sure a SUCCESS), but I do not feel like there's anything
         | broadly meaningful in the content and the whole thing feels
         | like a massive exercise in namedropping.
        
           | bowsamic wrote:
           | Yep. Marketing yourself as partly a failure when you have
           | managed to do so many projects in the first place feels off.
           | A true failure page would be an empty page, just of sadness.
           | Yet not only does he have many projects, but also multiple
           | big successes.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | Sorry I'll try harder next time
        
           | bowsamic wrote:
           | Just don't make such a post
        
       | kevingriffiths wrote:
       | Really great list, congrats on the success with ZipX. Great
       | examples of Nelson Mandela's quote "I never lose. I either win or
       | learn." in practice.
        
       | czue wrote:
       | Love this! What's your tech stack for all these projects? Also
       | how do you aggregate all those live viewer counts?
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | Django/Python/Jquery/Javascript/Heroku. Thanks for making
         | Saaspegasus - I used for the last 6 :)
        
       | IndigoIncognito wrote:
       | This is so refreshing
        
       | jdthedisciple wrote:
       | > I had to stop when my cofounder and roommate started to believe
       | he was Jesus and I was Judas. He got committed to an insane
       | asylum for a bit and is better now.
       | 
       | Full story on this one please.
        
       | kuczmama wrote:
       | This is a really great list. I see that you're constantly doing
       | many things at the same time, do you ever feel like you're
       | spreading yourself too thin? I wonder if you could benefit from
       | focusing on one thing as opposed to working on many things at
       | once.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | I actually just leave the other stuff in autopilot and focus on
         | the next one entirely unless I see it isn't working out.
        
       | kyoob wrote:
       | Great, now I can feel inferior comparing my work to other
       | people's failures in addition to their successes.
        
       | callistus wrote:
       | If you are in NYC - https://museumoffailure.com/ Opens tomorrow.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | I am and will totally see this thanks
        
         | yitianjian wrote:
         | Thanks for this!
        
         | kevingriffiths wrote:
         | Very cool - will check this out
        
       | pfoof wrote:
       | So much persistence, be my focusmate
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | Sure - how?
        
       | bigbillheck wrote:
       | > Product Engineer at Experiment (06/16/2018): They weren't
       | hiring but said I could dig dinosaurs if I moved to Seattle!
       | 
       | I don't have any idea what this means, but if you're going to the
       | Seattle area hoping for exposed non-marine rock from the Mesozoic
       | you're going to be pretty disappointed outside the San Juans.
        
       | mdrzn wrote:
       | Damn you've done and tried a lot of stuff!
       | 
       | What I've learned from that resume is that you can fail 100
       | times, but all you need to be "set" is one ZipX that gives you
       | the cash freedom to chase other dreams.
        
         | rdlw wrote:
         | https://xkcd.com/1827/
         | 
         | Never stop trying!
        
         | xmprt wrote:
         | It's also a lot of luck and being at the right place at the
         | right time. It seems like the company that became ZipX was
         | acquired for 50M but before that it only generated about 200k
         | in revenue. If the timing wasn't right (with the onset of
         | COVID) or no one knew about his company then he wouldn't have
         | that success.
         | 
         | It really demonstrates the importance of continuing to work
         | even after failures and pivoting often because you never know
         | when or which idea will take off.
        
         | MauranKilom wrote:
         | That item being several orders of magnitude above all the
         | others is an interesting context, for sure. Regarding the
         | "being set", it would be helpful to have a date on that item in
         | particular. The Forbes "30 under 30" is from 2021, but I
         | haven't been able to trace the age of the company on first
         | try...
        
           | jimhi wrote:
           | I co-founded Trusu in 2018. We were acquired in 2020 and that
           | revenue came within the first year of that. I ended up
           | providing over 100 million Facemasks around the world and
           | South East Asia. Technically my company was 1 full time
           | person and 1 full time contractor at the time of that revenue
           | but obviously had a ton of help from the company that
           | acquired us and spun out the company.
        
       | tristor wrote:
       | The metrics being up top made me pre-disposed to ignore this, but
       | I kept scrolling anyway. After seeing all your failures, I
       | actually think this is a great resume to show that you likely
       | understand quite a lot about finding product-market fit, which is
       | usually the most difficult piece of launching something new. I
       | think this is a great idea to share, and I am considering perhaps
       | doing something similar in the future.
        
       | notmindthegap wrote:
       | What drives you? Is it money, general problem-solving?
       | 
       | I must be wired differently because I cannot understand how
       | someone can try so many things in so many different industries
       | without being driven by a mission beyond financial wealth. I have
       | friends who are like this and I don't get it.
        
         | jimhi wrote:
         | If you couldn't tell, I literally couldn't get a job...
        
           | dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
           | That tells me more about our industry (and the low life,
           | shitty developers who interview you) than you.
           | 
           | BTW, thanks for posting and opening up.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | I wonder how many times each successful person had failed before
       | becoming successful.
        
         | prewett wrote:
         | There's lists that make the rounds. Einstein, Edison, Abraham
         | Lincoln, and JK Rowling have notable stories. Google's top pick
         | is https://www.wanderlustworker.com/48-famous-failures-who-
         | will...
        
           | jimhi wrote:
           | Specifically Lincoln was a failure well into his 40s -
           | https://mrsteinberg.com/creatives-who-made-it-when-they-
           | were...
        
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