[HN Gopher] CEO Simulator: Startup Edition
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       CEO Simulator: Startup Edition
        
       Author : atorok
       Score  : 203 points
       Date   : 2025-02-19 14:20 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ceosimulator.vercel.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ceosimulator.vercel.app)
        
       | code_martial wrote:
       | I can't watch the tutorial because YouTube insists on a sign-in.
       | -_-
        
         | thih9 wrote:
         | Same here. Opening the tutorial video directly [1] in a
         | different browser and with clear cookies worked for me.
         | 
         | I rarely see this login wall, usually it happens in combination
         | with hn posts.
         | 
         | [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dSpE4wgQGnY
        
       | thih9 wrote:
       | It's hard to read cards on mobile.
       | 
       | If I tap a card to read the full text, the card then covers other
       | cards. If I tap on another card, it now covers the rest. And if I
       | tap the original card to remember a detail from the description,
       | this now plays the card.
       | 
       | Edit: Looks like clicking anywhere else "deselects" the active
       | cards - this way it is possible to read the description of all
       | cards at any time without playing any.
        
         | MIC132 wrote:
         | You can tap off of cards to shrink them back.
        
           | 0wis wrote:
           | But then you choose it. I misselected several times
        
             | MIC132 wrote:
             | Weird, I had no problems deselecting cards by just tapping
             | off to the side. Usually bottom right.
        
               | thih9 wrote:
               | On mobile screens the cards that were previously selected
               | take a lot of space in the background; if you click that
               | background card, intending to "deselect" the foreground
               | card, then you suddenly play the background card. But
               | yes, if you click anywhere else then all cards are
               | deselected. Still, I find this very unintuitive.
        
               | atorok wrote:
               | I changed the behavior now: tap and hold magnifies it and
               | short tap select the card. At least with my fingers now I
               | was able to avoid the mentioned side effects
        
               | MIC132 wrote:
               | Yeah, the part where clicking a non-selected card can
               | play it is very unintuitive.
               | 
               | I was just remarking on the deselecting part, since I
               | didn't have much trouble with it. Might vary per specific
               | resolution/aspect ration.
        
       | ipnon wrote:
       | It's hard to believe you used to be able to get a normal job at a
       | local company in your hometown and afford a house, car and
       | children working 40 hours a week.
        
         | DANmode wrote:
         | > Q: Is working overtime mandatory if I don't have enough
         | hours?
         | 
         | > A: No, overtime is optional and comes with risks to CEO
         | Mental Health.
        
         | hnthrow90348765 wrote:
         | Like the game, it's still luck. You can luck out and get a 20
         | hr/week job writing simple code from home and coast.
        
         | jjice wrote:
         | It's fully dependent on your hometown's COL. my home town is a
         | moderately sized, but mostly forgettable city in the eastern
         | time zone. This is absolutely possible there if you're in
         | probably 80% of the suburbs, but you may struggle to be in the
         | very nice few towns.
        
         | 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
         | They say taxes were higher at the top end, might be worth a
         | shot
        
           | aprilthird2021 wrote:
           | Instead multimillionaire property owners in California pay no
           | property tax because they're old and people who just bought a
           | house with young kids pay all the tax. Most regressive tax
           | system ever devised, designed to keep us underpopulated and
           | our government services underfunded
        
             | sroussey wrote:
             | That's not the purpose. The purpose is for people to age in
             | place. Not have to move out of state at 75 because taxes on
             | your home skyrocketed. Which is what happened and the
             | population voted in a proposition to stop it. Yes, it had
             | unintended consequences like all government things.
        
               | antognini wrote:
               | Wouldn't it make more sense for people to downsize to
               | smaller homes as they age? Instead we have incentivized
               | empty nesters to stay in huge homes with 5 bedrooms while
               | young families have to cram into 1 bedroom condos.
        
               | bobthepanda wrote:
               | If we wanted to keep old people in homes we could've
               | written a tailored program for old people.
               | 
               | As it stands, Prop 13 was sold as that, but also
               | essentially used a sledgehammer on a thumbtack, because
               | it applies to any property regardless of the age of the
               | property owner, and also to commercial and industrial
               | property. Not to mention, old people who want to downsize
               | (say, into a home without stairs to fall down) can't
               | afford to because of the massive jump in property taxes
               | that would entail.
        
         | sepositus wrote:
         | Have you spent much time in non-urban areas? I live in a <10k
         | town and it's very much possible to achieve that here. I mean,
         | not working at McDonald's, but our industry zone has plenty of
         | good-paying opportunities in the mechanical, electrical,
         | engineering, and even aerospace fields (drones, mostly). I have
         | plenty of blue-collar friends working in these areas, and they
         | all have homes with families.
         | 
         | We also have a huge green energy sector due to the natural
         | geography. Our local community college even has a full program
         | you can go through and come out making $35-40/hr.
        
           | macNchz wrote:
           | My rural American hometown has surprisingly expensive homes
           | because of highly restrictive building codes, many of the
           | houses are owned by retired people or wealthy people from out
           | of town, there's little industry to speak of, and multiple
           | people from my 30-student 8th grade graduating class who
           | stayed in town and did not leave for college have now died of
           | heroin overdoses.
        
             | sepositus wrote:
             | Yeah, there will always be counter-examples to everything,
             | especially given the size of the U.S. However, that same
             | sort of town would have existed 60 years ago, anyway (minus
             | the Herion problem, likely). Perhaps they are more common
             | now, but my point is that cities like mine _do_ still
             | exist. It's not entirely lost yet.
        
               | CtrlAltmanDel wrote:
               | How common is your un-named city? <10k pop, combination
               | of economic opportunity and still affordable (after wfh
               | tech crowd moved in) for someone starting out earning
               | $40/hr to afford a house and family.
        
               | sepositus wrote:
               | Well this is the internet, so I'm not going to
               | voluntarily dox myself :) As to your question, I'm not
               | sure how common it is. There's another city about 30
               | minutes from me that has _almost_ the same scenario, it's
               | just housing is more expensive because it's closer to a
               | major city.
        
               | nobodyandproud wrote:
               | That sounds magical. Is it subject to just one or two
               | large companies or industries?
        
           | behringer wrote:
           | Don't bank on it unless you're well skilled and/or have an
           | in. Also let's hope you're OK working in factory/industrial
           | jobs. A desk job in rural areas pays half what they do in the
           | urban areas.
           | 
           | I'm guessing industrial jobs pay just as poorly compared to
           | those in the cities.
        
         | aprilthird2021 wrote:
         | I moved from Memphis, TN to Silicon Valley and it took me 10
         | years of working in software to be in the market for a home.
         | Meanwhile my friends who worked odd jobs in sandwich shops or
         | theatres or filming / taking photographs for magazines all had
         | homes a few years after we graduated.
         | 
         | It's a failure of the government that they allowed the old,
         | senile landed gentry in parts of our country, especially
         | California, to effectively be able to veto all new building
         | while paying no property tax to fund our public services.
        
         | bigfishrunning wrote:
         | I'm doing this right now, north of Pittsburgh. It's still
         | possible
        
           | nickpinkston wrote:
           | I was just back in my hometown of New Castle (~1 hr north)
           | for TG, and it's the same story there.
           | 
           | Though most professional people need to drive to Pittsburgh
           | or similar big city to get a decent job.
        
       | mlna wrote:
       | Great game. I love it so much.
        
       | binbag wrote:
       | Brilliant. This is my life.
        
         | atorok wrote:
         | Ah this is a quote I was looking for :D
        
       | saaaaaam wrote:
       | Love this. However, when I got a high score I appeared twice on
       | the leader board for some reason. Another time I appeared just as
       | "name" and my high score which would have put me at #1 at that
       | point (12090!) didn't get entered at all.
       | 
       | I also got duplicate cards a few times - which might be
       | intentional, but was a little annoying.
       | 
       | Very addictive in a silly fun way. Well done :)
        
         | atorok wrote:
         | Lova your last comment :D
         | 
         | I fixed the first issue: I got also an alert at the same time
         | that I ran out of quota on the db so had to increase it. You
         | should see your point now. The duplicate cards issue is
         | strange.. I'll have to debug that a bit more
        
         | ChosenEnd wrote:
         | SAM, I can see your score, I just dethroned you with 12280.
        
       | dijksterhuis wrote:
       | Tech Debt score of +5 at the end. Is it obvious I'm a software
       | engineer?
       | 
       | bug notes
       | 
       | - couple of times a card seemed to get magically selected for me,
       | i've got "tapping = clicking" disabled on my trackpad, so not
       | sure how those happened, hopefully was me fat fingering. usually
       | i didn't even have time to see the new card though, which makes
       | me think it might be some bug with noticing inputs? could be my
       | fat fingers tho.
       | 
       | - When I have spare meeting time left over, I was able to select
       | an objective that had moved as a result of a card at the start of
       | the day, could infinitely roll the dice with nothing happening. I
       | could at least select a different objective to make things move
       | forward tho.
        
         | atorok wrote:
         | Thanks, lol, you deserve a well-architected wink ;)
         | 
         | Thanks for these bug reports, nice and detailed so I'll be able
         | to find a fix for them
        
         | pkkm wrote:
         | > I was able to select an objective that had moved as a result
         | of a card at the start of the day, could infinitely roll the
         | dice with nothing happening.
         | 
         | Same bug here, in Firefox 128.
         | 
         | Also, while we're making suggestions, would it be possible to
         | replace the tutorial balloon boxes with something that's less
         | in the way? I like built-in hints and don't want to turn them
         | off, but sometimes they can be a bit annoying when they cover
         | up parts of the game UI. I would prefer some kind of animated
         | glow behind the parts of the game I'm supposed to click on
         | (cards, bars, or the die) plus a statically positioned
         | explanation box to the side or on the bottom. That would make
         | the hints unobtrusive enough that there would be no need to
         | provide an option to turn them off.
        
           | atorok wrote:
           | Can you refresh the browser and see if it's fixed? I also
           | made the hints slightly transparent as a quick temp fix, that
           | needs a bit more time and testing
        
             | pkkm wrote:
             | Looks fixed to me, thanks! Now the die doesn't roll when I
             | select an objective that has moved. That works, though I
             | would prefer if these objectives were simply unselectable
             | and the game had some kind of visual indication of which
             | objectives you can select. Kind of like desktop GUIs, which
             | grey out buttons you can't click rather than letting you
             | click them but making them do nothing. I think that would
             | make the game UI a bit "smoother" and more pleasant to use.
             | 
             | EDIT: This would combine very well with my suggestion from
             | the previous comment: make the cards glow in the card
             | selection stage, make the selectable objectives glow in the
             | objective selection stage, and make the die glow when it
             | should be rolled. That would let you get rid of two
             | microfrustrations at once: the hints that cover the UI and
             | the die that can be clicked but doesn't roll. If you also
             | replaced the modal tutorial popup at the start with a top
             | or side button, that would drop the UI microfrustrations to
             | zero.
             | 
             | Also, I've just noticed that the cards are a bit blurry
             | when zoomed in on hover.
             | 
             | I hope the feedback was helpful!
        
       | thomasjudge wrote:
       | "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
        
         | esafak wrote:
         | Some CEOs are clearly winning. Global thermonuclear war has not
         | broken out yet either :)
        
       | ilikehurdles wrote:
       | I played a card that said tech debt drops by 4 thinking it's a
       | good thing, but it knocked me out of the game
        
         | intelVISA wrote:
         | You thought too much, that makes investors uneasy.
        
           | atorok wrote:
           | ROFL this comment made my day
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | I didn't understand how people were scoring so high until I saw
       | in the Settings that you can increase the Working Hours to 24,
       | and your Hand size to 10.
       | 
       | The game immediately became less fun. I was able to max
       | everything out in green in just a few days.
        
         | gwerbret wrote:
         | "Note, modifying these settings means your score will not be
         | added to the leaderboard!"
        
       | KronisLV wrote:
       | If you set the amount of working hours per day to 14, the game
       | suddenly becomes easy. :')
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-23 23:01 UTC)