All three are for bootstrapped businesses. All three also have incredibly useful and non-fluffy videos of their past speakers online, well worth watching even if you can't attend the actual events.

And keep the faith -- the VC model has tremendous drawbacks for many people, especially those of us who are not willing to essentially become indentured servants. Bootstrapping is highly underrated.

I went through a similar SEP program in Toronto. I am again considering similar program in WA state for my bootstrapped business.

Following resources can help you identify appropriate programs and mentoring:

Small Business Administration http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-ma...

SCORE http://www.score.org

Small Business Development Center http://www.wsbdc.org if you are WA state, I am sure other states have similar program)

For example for some companies the VC seed funding that an accelerator provides may not be crucial, but the access to business advice, mentors and contacts could be. This generally costs equity - would this be something you'd be after? Are you after no costs, or less costs than the typical startup in an incubator? Why would an entrepreneur want to invest their time but not their money?

Unsure of if you are looking for a peer group to help you through the highs and lows or a PR plan (accelerator graduates rarely have a huge splash, it is all about habits formed and community support).

Also heard several good things from startups who were part of Microsoft Accelerator ( https://www.microsoftventures.com/ )

http://www.quora.com/Sramana-Mitra-1

Disclosure: I have no affiliation with them.

I think they shut it down eventually. Find more in old discussions - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=nreduce#!/story/forever/0/nreduce

I, would be happy, if I could join an experienced and older team and start working on an interesting problem. Doing my M.Sc. in CompSci in Germany atm. and none of my friends has any entrepreneurial ambitions or skills, which is depressing and sad. All of them just want a job in the industry. Not really expecting payment.

In fact, we already have. It was my decision that PG should out me as moderator, and that was mainly so I'll be able to answer users' questions.

I think your points are mostly correct and entirely understandable. Qua user, I feel pretty similarly, so I don't anticipate much trouble seeing eye to eye about this in the long run. I'm optimistic that we can eventually please both the bulk and the core of the communitythough that will still be far from everybody.

Also, there's no one on the team arguing for secrecy. The question is not whether to be more transparent, but how.

A few points from the moderation side.

You should know that what appears to be HN's "secrecy" has in reality mostly been extremely limited bandwidth. For most of HN's existence, PG ran it at the same time as he was building YC plus having two kids. That made for an awful lot of dropped packets. One might argue that he should have handed HN off sooner, and one would in my opinion be completely wrong about that. Without HN's "secrecy" there would have been no HN.

Second, it's been true for a long time that you can get answers by emailing info@yc. (We're going to change that to hn@yc, but that's not up yet; I'll add it to my profile when it is.) I'll be taking over the HN-related emails from Tara, who has been valiant but will soon be relieved.

I intend to be a lot more responsive in the threads, partly because we know that community concerns around transparency need addressing, so we'll make a priority of it, but also for two non-obvious reasons: (1) I've written software for navigating and moderating HN very quickly, and (2) I type faster than PG.

Beyond that, there are a lot of questions about how to get this right. Many of the factors aren't obvious. I have more to say about this, but this comment is long enough, plus I'm tired and my brain hurts, and we'll have lots of opportunities to discuss it further.

It was a great way, as a lurker, to get an understanding of the rules via watching others fail to follow them.

This is a different beast here, as no one is paying to be a member, but I wonder if there isn't something to learn from how that page operated.

This is part of what shapes its community, of course. There's probably at least some reasoning behind why it works that way, but it seems to me that the lack of memory distorts the importance of the front page.

These days, it's very different. Topic are being parsed and filtered by robotic moderator that cannot possibly let something even remotely option-based slip through. Comment that are relevant, but with subtle jokes are deleted. I remember when Joel and Jeff were actively answering questions to have the critical mass. Now that answers and questions would be closed or moderated. e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/652788/what-is-the-worst-...

Could you give some concrete examples? Articles can get dropped off the front page when many people click the flag link (i.e. it's not always driven by the moderators). Also, I believe submissions with a high comments to up vote ratio are weighted down (the rationale being that it usually signals a controversial topic prone to flame wars). There have been cases of questionable hell banning, but this can usually be resolved by contacting the mods privately AFAIK.

Every submission has a big 'flag' button on it. I don't know exactly what that does when clicked, but I assume it tends to make submissions drop further into obscurity.

Some topics that get a lot of exposure (the NSA and bitcoin come to mind) are likely to get heavily flagged when they appear, which probably doesn't look much different to moderation.

Their description of the moderation log: "All moderator actions on this site are visible to everyone and the identities of those moderators are made public. While the individual actions of a moderator may cause debate, there should be no question about who the moderator was or whether they had an ulterior motive for those actions."

[1] https://lobste.rs/moderations

It's not the staff's fault that people jump to assume An Act Of Malicious Moderation if a story drops.

I wish I had more to say than "+1," but I wanted to give more than just an upvote. "you tend to assume the worst" really resonates with me.

This comment went from +3 to (currently) -1. Interesting.

Remote vs. non-remote each have advantages. Remote gets fewer distractions (I find working in offices/near others very challenging when try to do focused work vs. home office), access to bigger pool of people, 2x "people coverage" for B2B sales/fundraising/partnership discussions, and more emphasis on results vs. ass-in-chair syndrome. Whereas local will have better and more frequent communication, less potential for misunderstanding, easier to bring the whole team to meetings, etc.

Bottom line: it can work, but you have to have the right people. I actually enjoyed it a lot.

How do you know this? More pertinently, how do I know this? How can you convince others that you are "at PhD level"?

Well, one way to do this is to do something "at PhD level". Build something which (i) is appealing to the kind of people whom you would like to have as colleagues, and (ii) shows your mastery of the full stack (as you define it). Put it up on GitHub, and let others see it. Show them the code, as the saying goes.

What would such a thing be? Knowing what the "interesting" problems are is part of "being at PhD level". So you probably already know what to solve, or it will come to you if you think about it a bit.

Good luck with your efforts!

There are plenty of abstract design theories to study, but when it comes down to actually working, there is no substitute for a mastery of the basics. Paul Rand has some practical thoughts on design in his books.

Overall, I would place an emphasis on learning to articulate the problems you need to solve through design. Design is not something you can learn in the abstractthere can be no effective design without first defining the problem(s) your project presents. I would say design is 90% problem solving and 10% aesthetics.

I've found the best way to learn design is to first understand the basics, then go out and apply them to the designs you encounter. Look at other interface/web designs and ask yourself questions based on the principles you've learned. The key here is to understand the "why" behind the "how".

As for the "how", project-based tutorials are okay, but you should be careful not to get lost in the actual project. You want to be gathering techniques, not just following steps.

ResourcesWikipedia: Elements & Principles of Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_elements_and_principles

Anything you can find by Paul Rand. Some of his books are out of print, but if you're creative you can find them on the web.

Grid Systems In Graphic Design by Josef Muller-Brockmannhttp://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestal...

If their goal is to manipulate traffic to www.youtube.com (probably to block access to certain videos), another solution would be for YouTube to require SSL for all connections coming from Turkish IPs. Of course, this wouldn't work if they got some Turkish (or other) CA to sign a bogus www.youtube.com certificate.

EDIT: As lawl points out, trying to require SSL on www.youtube.com won't work either, since they could just do an sslstrip type attack.

EDIT 2: Proof that they are in fact messing with routes to Google Public DNS anycast addresses (they're doing to same to OpenDNS): https://twitter.com/esesci/status/449902883933126659

DNSCrypt could help here... but chances are their middleware would just barf on it.

You need something more evasive.

Somehow it is comforting how abysmally bad he is at doing that though...

here: http://i.imgur.com/jfZS31C.png

BTW, I have to manoeuvre some IP addresses of the CDNs in /etc/hosts in order to get access to github.com today, and some others for stack overflow.com last week. Interference from those who have power really sucks!

CDNs nowadays are so vulnerable to political issues, and some CDNs seems to be hurt by extended non-specific attacks/blocks to some other sites sharing the same IP addresses, due to some unrelated reasons, which makes me feel nostalgic to the web before CDNs.

But a government like China interferes with even VPNs (more so outside of the greater Shanghai and Beijing metro areas, in case anyone is sitting in those areas saying "My VPN works great"... they permit it and can block or interfere with it anytime they like) so I don't think they are really a solution. In China, nothing really works if the authorities don't want it to. VPNs are degraded to the point of being unusable, SOCKs proxy over SSH is the same, TOR is unusably slow, etc. Unfortunately, I don't think there really IS a solution in the face of determined governmental interference.

2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844

Also look at the other links that user lemonade posted here.

You can do the same setup ashttp://piratebrowser.com/

http://public-dns.tk/

You might also be interested in https://dnscrypt.eu.

Except it delivered none of the "wow!" that Gmail did. It was slow, didn't really seem to have an immediate purpose (where as when Gmail came out, most people I knew had hit some sorta inbox-size limit before and knew that pain point)

and so on.

That coupled with the fact you could only communicate with other Wave users made wide-spread adoption impossible.

MMIX section is a free downloadhttp://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc1.ps.gz

More here: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/mmix.html

- Requirements gathering

- Customer interaction

- "Managing upwards" (dealing with PMs, product people, designers)

- Estimation and planning

- Becoming a team player (Most college students only do a few, short-term group projects. This does not adequately prepare graduates for tight-knit teams in a professional setting.)

Anyone with a little bit of coding background can learn rails in a few days. The hard-won assets are all "soft skills:" professionalism, teamwork, planning. As far as I know, there's no substitute for real industry experience. (It would be awful nice if there were!)

Choice quote: "I expect a senior engineer to be a mature engineer."

He elaborates at length about what that means in the post.

Don't focus on getting the title. Instead, focus on what you can control, and the titles and career advancement will take care of themselves.

There's a well-known, well-written essay on the qualities that a Senior Engineer possesses: http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engi...

Technical maturity comes from working on and finishing large projects. As with anything else, you can work for years and have lots of "experience", but if you are not critically thinking and learning during the journey, you won't get anywhere. Learn the pros and cons of high-level, architectural decisions so that you can be prepared to make those decisions someday in the face of uncertainty.

Personal maturity means working effectively on your own and especially with others. Pay attention to the highly respected engineers in your organization, and observe how they work with others.

Good luck!

Ultimately there is just a whole area of experience that you cannot short circuit. While we laud genius programmers who brought something to the world (eg: Bram Cohen of bittorrent fame), there is a lot of luck involved, and ultimately no one is an island, there is a lot of supporting work to make something truly successful and widely adopted.

Good luck in your job hunt, but my best advice is to have patience, be humble and realize that your experience is a starting point, and you have much to learn.

I've found most junior debs I've worked with over the years (and have memories of my own behavior) of being too cock sure of approaches, to keen on new techniques etc...

Over engineering is a major problem I see from younger people, often leading to fragility and bugs, blowing out support in 6-12 months. The other issue is using frameworks for everything, which I've found on questioning reveals fundamental lacks of knowledge about the domain they are experts with (being instead framework experts). Using massive library packages for access to one util class is very very common.

Sometimes I deliberately ask for nonessential 3rd party framework changes, or the utility class to return it slightly different just to make sure that juniors have to look into the framework and understand the domain they are working with. Quite entertaining at times, even if you have to throw out there code and rewrite for them :)

The qualifications for being a Junior developer are (1) familiarity with new frameworks (2) nimbleness with polyglot approaches (3) ability to code considerably more than sit in meetings (4) an approach towards getting things done, rather than spend time considering getting things done.

Not every developer has the chops to be a Junior developer, but if a Senior developer has the interest and is willing to work hard at it, they can make it.

"Dev 2":Mostly works independently, knows when to ask for help

Senior Dev:Provides more help / guidance

Granted, making out this rule in an actual workforce might be a challenge, because job titles are affected by a number of practical factors such as the lack of other options for retaining people. A business can become top-heavy with senior titles, but people will seldom be demoted to reflect disparities between their job descriptions and their work. A hot candidate will be hired into a senior level, to put them into a more favorable salary range.

It seems to me that the majority of people here have defined "seniority" with professionalism and a large repository of social skills acquired over the years.

I guess independent from that issue, the reason why I originally asked the question is when it comes to job postings. When companies advertise positions marked as senior, do they then actually mean it in the above definition?

Call me naive and unexperienced, but I'm somewhat surprised by the heavy emphasis on experience over knowledge. Is someone with more domain-knowledge but less experience more junior than someone with little to zero domain-knowledge but more experience?

After a year they should no longer be junior. They are just a plain old developer, if not then perhaps programming is not for them.

Senior developers are simple those people who have a say in planning the direction that the company will take with their software. Strategic thinking in relation to the business needs of the company.

Developers tend to have a very flat hierarchy so senior is just as likely a management position rather than a recognition of outstanding skills.

In our company at present we have no juniors as everyone has been there more than a year, but we also have no seniors. To be honest I think that senior developers only appear when the head count gets into double figures and management cannot hold meetings with everyone over every little thing. Hence senior as a management position / title.

A brand new junior employee is responsible for very little--most of what they do is going to be reviewed by more experienced engineers.

A senior engineer might be able to be tech lead a small month long project, a principal engineer might be responsible for a large subsystem, an architect would be responsible for an entire product.

Finally a distinguished engineer (essentially a VP-level position, but on the tech side of things rather than the management side) would be responsible for the technical direction of the entire company and be a strong input to the overall design of brand new products.

Some of that comes through experience, but I've met people with time put in that can't get their head around more than their niche. (I'm talking general programming here, not deep specialization)

Many places defines senior developers as having +5 years of professional experience (i.e. excluding college). But it varies a lot from company to company.

Experience. A very skilled young programmer with "raw engineering talent" won't automatically be described as a senior developer on that basis alone. Also, keep in mind, in a very ageist profession like programming, being called a senior developer can be taken as an insult.

A junior developer can effectively build a software solution to something, given some advice about the interfaces and algorithms to be used.

A senior developer just needs a high level description of the desired technical solution. They can be trusted to instrument, refactor, collaborate, rewrite, invent, and get the problem solved.

A lead developer can be given bigger problems and organize an entire team of developers to tackle it.

This line of reasoning still works if you keep going:

A product manager can be given a metric to improve or a customer to satisfy. No further direction is required. They can be relied upon to do research, come up with a plan, hire staff (technical and nontechnical) and organize it all.

All CEOs have the same problem to solve: "Grow the business."

The same person could be reasonably senior at one place, and reasonably junior at a different place.

A senior is expected to be able to handle anything that comes up during the course of a project (including when things are on fire), to be able to delegate, to be able to mentor juniors and quality-control their work.

Juniors are expected to be learning as they go (to a greater extent) and likely to make mistakes or need help now and then.

In particular, a senior will know when they have something wrong or it's not good enough. A junior is reliant on others to tell them what's expected in a given situation.

If you are a recent graduate you are, by definition, a junior. After a few years you might have the experience necessary to become a senior, if you have earned the trust of your peers, especially those in charge of that decision.

A Sr. Dev. role is the one that people go to when an issue is not resolved for a period, one example is a month long intermittent bug. They are Sr. because Jr. ask for this bug to be assigned to Sr.. Sometimes Sr. do the real training new people.(I'll show you how it should work, go to X to show you how it works).

And here is the effect: If Sr. dev. has the tile to go w/ role, has to train and fix strange bugs, they use their position to KISS. Sadly, in most orgs, Sr. dev. is a role, not a title, it's just as common that Jr. dev. has a higher org. rank.

A role test: so lets say you want to add another 3rd party library. Who'll fix the bugs? Now you know who the Sr's are.

These roles are not new, this is very old: "Fools ignore complexity; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it."

Essentially the number of battle scars.

A jr. engineer, not yet.

When I first started out, I was obsessed with only using the latest and greatest technologies, but I've come to realize over the course of my career that this is simply infeasible for many organizations.

10 years.

However, contrary to some of my previous experiences, a senior is that person that has an answer to most of your questions (and the disposition to answer them). It's that person in the office that can pull a project or a team on his own on the long term, without major fuck-ups and with a clever solution for all unexpected problems.

And if you're interested in the more superficial description: human resources would call a senior someone who's been mastering his domain for at least 3 years.

However, most "senior" developers were made by political fight.

also, to me it seems that it's more about your position in a company, than skill. i.e. being a senior does not mean being better, it means having more responsibility. being a senior is a position, not a level of skill. although, they would normally correlate.

you certainly won't be a senior as soon as you get out of college.

What this requires depends on the job, but it is a mix of technical virtuosity, social skills, and ability to navigate the corporate environment.

Sure, time helps, if you learn from your mistakes, both in engineering and life itself.

But I've seen 40 year old developers who I would consider juniors in every way that matters, and 20-somethings who I would trust to take the role of lead developer.

Ability to communicate (hopefully) without offence.

Skin thickness.

/* amusing, yet inspiring and educational comments */

I've struggled with addiction and I've made decisions that I'm ashamed of and disgusted with. There was a period of my life when I was also hopeless. I thought that I had lost everything. In a sense, it was true. (Rather, I destroyed most of what I had and subsequently lost the remaining pieces.)

Despite all of that, it does get better. It took me far too long to accept that.

The fact that you are posting here tells me that on some level you are ready to get better. Recognition of the problem begets hope.

Maintaining an attitude of "it doesn't get better" turns out to be a recursive function. Since lives are finite, the base case turns out to be total self-destruction.

At each time step, each recursive call, sustained hopelessness only begets more hopelessness.

Not only do the effects of addiction and hopelessness compound, but you get a first row seat. You watch the function expand, you see every call. You literally destroy yourself in a slow, humiliating, dangerous, and deliberate fashion.

A friend of mine liked to quote a man named Albert J. LaChance, he wrote: "Addiction is a slow form of suicide- suicide on the installment plan."

Whichever metaphor you choose, one thing is clear: changing your attitude is a necessary (but not sufficient) prerequisite for recovery.

You are obviously intelligent, so it should go without saying, there is no avoiding the fact a chemical addiction is a uniquely difficult problem to solve. Fortunately, it is a problem that a great deal of science is expended upon. And there are many ways to receive medical treatment.

Tedious self-help meetings and hollow platitudes are NO substitute for scientifically validated medical treatment. In your case, it is essential that you have medical intervention while you detox.

(Self-help is very helpful to some, and it does have a reported effectiveness of (last I heard) 10 - 50% (surely, a study carried out with utmost statistical rigor!)

Self-help meetings aren't right for me, but I will vouch for their occasional effectiveness.

Should you choose to follow the self-help branch of your recovery timeline, be aware that the self-help phase comes after the detox branch. All future recovery branches of your recovery timeline form after the medical detox node.)

You need medicine and science right now!

Alcohol withdrawal can kill late stage addicts. You wrote six months ago that you attempted a cold turkey solo-detox and experienced DTs. Those suck. They are also a sign that you need to be extra cautious in your recovery.

When you go to detox, go to a licensed recovery center where a doctor can monitor you. Usually this means a hospital equipped with mental health facilities. An ER will suffice if you are out of other options or are having seizures. You can also go to a rehabilitation center (with a competent medical staff)! The last option might start your detox and then segue into a 28 day (or longer) program.

Alcohol is perhaps the most dangerous drug to detox from. (Perhaps surprising to some, you won't die from heroin withdrawals.)

You can (and should) get medical leave from your employer for treatment. I'm fairly certain it's illegal for them to deny that. (Since you are a competent developer, I'm assuming you work at a company with benefits.)

If you do not have health insurance, please contact your local medicaid office.

Please do this. For your the mother of your child, for your kids. For the person in the future who you will come across who needs help with their addiction. But most of all, for you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This last part is my favorite aspect of hacker news. I get to tell someone that they are wrong.

I used to have your attitude. I even attempted suicide. By the grace of faulty nylon, I'm still here.

"It doesn't get better." <- That quote is factually incorrect. I'm just one instance of its disproof.

Now, to break Hacker News guidelines with extreme prejudice:

IT DOES GET BETTER. PLEASE, PLEASE SEEK MEDICAL TREATMENT. IT DOES WORK. YOU ARE WRONG. NA NA NA NA NA.

If you don't post an email in your profile in the next few hours so that I can talk to you. Via email, skype, phone, whatever. I will reply to my comment with an email address so that you can contact me when you are ready to talk and/or seek treatment.

I wish commenters here would understand that the OP's glide path is currently aimed at one of two outcomes: insanity or death.

If the OP is reading the thread (and I would guess he is not) I would implore him to ignore all of the comments except those from people who have had up-front and personal experience with the damage from alcoholism.

A flippant comment -- just so you can look clever on HN -- may condemn the OP to a dismal fate. Cut it out.

OP, seek the seemingly harder way. It will turn out to be the softer, easier way. This means a new way of living (on the one hand) or a slow painful death on the other. Let the others here on HN plait their shit. You must either change or die.

Disclaimer: Anecdotal personal experience sample size for this topic is > 1.

If, on the other hand, you are like me an you simply drink too much, I can share how I got the situation under control.

First, I threw out a lot of the liquor in the house (I kept the good whiskey that I was already saving for a special occasion). Then, I stopped going out to bars as often and, to a certain extent, avoided people I typically drank with or found ways to socialize without being around alcohol. I also took up yoga in the mornings. I like yoga, but if I drink the night before, I won't feel like waking up for it. So, I remind myself before I go out to a pub or meet friends that if I drink, I'm screwing up my routine.

That combination has helped, and it's gotten me to a place where I can go out on a Saturday night, get a nice buzz going with three or four beers over several hours, without reaching that 'fuck it' moment where I start doing shots and smoking cigarettes till dawn.

My pain comes form severe bullying; I got beaten up literally every day as a child for three years. After that, I finally got transferred to another school, but the damage was done.

I used video games, porn and promiscuity to deaden the pain. That distracted me from starting a career, and I ended up living on the street for six months.

I tried pretty much everything to heal myself.

* What did not work *

- Religion; God did absolutely nothing to my pain away. Religious counselors were very judgmental and made me feel worse, and their advice just caused new problems.- Cults; They had interesting teachings that were partially very entertaining, but Ashtar Sharan had nothing but a Galactic shrug to offer my very real suffering (I would have been prepared to actually believe in Ashty had he actually helped me, but it was clear that he did not)- Meditation; It helped, but only temporarily. When I missed my meditation session the pain came right back, and I grew distant from the world.- Yoga; Like meditation, it did help, but it took such great lifestyle changes I just didn't feel like me any more. I'm a child of the West, and Yoga is radically different.- Sex; obviously, sleeping around is a great distraction and can be genuinely fun, but when it's addictive it hurts in the end and you draw other people into your drama.- Counseling; Wallowing in my pain with a guy who think everything is a fascinating freak show made things much worse.

* What worked partially

- Cannabis; Smoking weed actually worked better than meditation to give me temporary relief. It also made me confused when used heavily.- New Age; There is a lot of partial truth floating around, if you avoid the obvious marketing ploys. "Think And Grow Rich" is pretty good, and so is "The Science of getting Rich". Basically, the idea is to sit down and think about stuff you want in detail. It has a similar calming effect to meditation, and can lead to actual creative problem solving. It did not, however, significantly heal my hardest pain points. But the idea of "you can reach your goals" kept my trying.- Pressure point tapping; EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is pretty good, it can stimulate and permanently remove some trauma. It has its limits though, and I felt like an neurotic idiot tapping my wrists all the time.

* What really worked

- Philosophy; Getting a genuine core philosophy and actively deciding my values gave me a lot of strength.- Openness; being extremely honest about my shortcomings with deserving people lead to a form of intimacy that makes the trauma not seem so bad any more.- "Taking the pain"; This is not the same as sucking it up. It is feeling like crap, and accepting that I am feeling like crap right now, without suppressing it. Practicing this takes the "fear of the fear" away. This is probably the real benefit of meditation when done properly, but I didn't need to sit on a cushion to do that.- Self-acceptance; This one is the kicker. I no longer slapped my wrist for slacking on the job, or being not as nice as I could be. Paradoxically, this lead to me not slacking on the job, and being nicer. It also helped find my niche, where my shortcomings don't matter.- Dimethyltryptamine (DMT); An illegal psychedelic drug, it has been used as indigenous medicine for centuries. This is the only way I have been able to permanently release my worst and oldest pain points. I stopped smoking spontaneously after a couple of trips, and have noticed a sharp raise in my productivity and overall wellbeing.

Obviously, this is just my story, but I hope that some points might help you, or someone else.

After I did a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, I put together https://www.programmingspiritually.com to try to help other developers that face some of the same issues. Email me if you're interested and I'll sign you up for the course for free.

The odd thing is that I can't pinpoint why I'm this way. It wasn't always like this. I guess reason doesn't matter at this point.

Anyway, I don't think my post adds anything useful to this discussion, but good luck.

You are not the first human to become addicted, nor will be the only one. There are people out there that have been in a worse situation than you and that have gone out of addictions.

You should find those people, meet them and get out of drinking. Over years you made a path that you have to undo. This will take years, like it took you to create it.

Your wife and kids did the right thing: to stop supporting your addiction. It is time for you to take steps.

I have studied a lot of psychology but I can't help you because it would be like trying to explain quantum physics before learning basic math. But there is people out there that really know what steps you could take for getting out and doing great things with your life.

The only people who can understand are those who've been through it and found a way to put the brakes on. It's worth testing out.. my test found the world a whole lot better with the brakes fully engaged at a complete stop, so that's where I've been for a while now.

There are people out there -- young and old, men and women, wealthy and poor, god freaks and atheists alike who've done it. Find them, listen with an open mind and among them there will surely be someone you can relate to who can help you learn about what worked for them.

Many people with ADD/ADHD end up in the IT business. Drinking and drug problems, nicotine and caffeine addiction, high-risk behaviours and family issues are very common among ADD/ADHD people.

The reason behind this: low dopamine and norepinefrine levels in the ADD/ADHD brain. Those low levels create a very high reward threshold, so people with ADD/ADHD tend to unconsciously seek for strong or risky stimulus.

HTH

Also, FWIW, my wife is a behavioral therapist and already treated a number of addicted people. She says you learn this kind of "bad" behaviors if, given a problem, they are the "only" or "most successful" behaviors you know and you repeat them for a long time.

Treatment then is to identify

- why you think it's the only behavior you know or the most appropriate

- what your definition of a "successful behavior" is

- what are other appropriate behaviors

- how to deal with situations in which your "bad behavior" usually occurs and how to substitute the bad by one of the good ones.

Disclaimer: I have no psychological background whatsoever, this is just my view on the things.

It's really good, and there might be something in it for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZVWIELHQQY

I was a "high functioning" alcoholic; 35 years in the software business, and I've worked for companies I know you've heard of, and you've almost certainly used my products. 15 years ago I was drinking 750ml of liquor a day. Lost a few jobs, was living in filth, and was about to be homeless.

Long story made short, I got into detox and then AA, changed pretty much everything in my life that wasn't working and haven't had a drink since. First couple years were intense, and I still go to AA meetings every week. It's a maintenance thing. I know I can't drink again.

It can get better, but you can't do it yourself. If you're a heavy drinker, get medical help in the first few days because withdrawal can kill you. I think you'll find your employer amazingly helpful and supportive.

[I'm extremely skeptical of solutions that involve other substances. I guess if it works, it works, but I'm not going to get much out of talking to you about it.]

I've tried stopping my various vices, but without treating the stimulus loop, it's nigh on impossible. When I step off the grid and go travelling for a month... I suddenly no longer feel the need for any of them. This is a huge relief to me, as it means I realise that this behaviour isn't something endemic to myself, rather a habituation as a result of the feedback loop I allowed to grow.

Step out. Do something totally different. My promise to myself that I will do this, and soon, is the only thing keeping me remotely sane. At the very least, hit the road for a month and see somewhere new, meet someone new, and see if you're the same person. You might be surprised.

I have nicotine issues but I stopped smoking in favor of e-cigs. Nicotine is not that bad, the cigs are killing you not nicotine itself.

I also find doing sport to change my mentality a lot. You start looking different, you value yourself more when your body changes and you won't want to go back. Give it a try. Good luck to you!

Since gas stations started selling it 3 years ago, I became addicted and when they were banned from selling it I had to find more. I found it online and have been ordering it every since. I leave work early sometimes so I can go smoke it. The only downside I've noticed, is that I'm less sociable (in person) because of how I look when I'm high (red eyes, droopy eyelids) and it makes me tired extremely fast. Sometimes I will wake up at my computer desk wondering when I fell asleep or how long I've been out. I'm sure it's probably not good on my lungs either, but I smoke cigarettes so I'm used to knowing I'm harming my body internally. I just love the way it makes me feel, almost like a reward. I use it as an award for coding something beautiful. "Oh that code actually worked?! Time to smoke."

I hope we both find help. We need it.

Yes, it was AA that supported me through it. No, I am not religious now and wasn't then. I was just willing to suspend disbelief long enough to try something. I am at a loss to explain why it worked but that doesn't matter.

Despite what many people think AA requires no faith or belief of any kind beyond acceptance of the fact of your situation.

Many read "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity" as a statement of belief in a spiritual solution. It is not that at all, it is merely a hypothetical that is pretty hard to deny on the face of it. Bill and Bob were really, really smart.

Take that hypothetical, suspend disbelief, do the recommended prayer and meditation with the caveat "I don't know if this has any real meaning but, whatever" if you need that and see what happens. That's what I did. I don't question the mystery of my recovery I just marvel at it. You can choose your eventual spiritual path or none at all later in the game but you have to have a game left to play to do that.

In summary, believe nothing but try anything.

Everyone in this thread has different advice from different experiences. Different things work for different people. Here's my advice: tell your friends to hold you accountable, ask them if you can call or text them when you're feeling vulnerable. Hell, move in with a friend if you're currently living alone. If you don't have anyone like that in your life, join a group like AA.

Humans can be solitary creatures if we let ourselves, and when solitary the world looks very different. Surround yourself with positive relationships and open yourself to them so they can help hold you up.

My theory is that addiction is best "cured" by replacing it with something better. That could be doing more satisfying things in your life, but perhaps also simply a less destructive addiction, like playing video games.

I think if you make it into a willpower challenge you are probably doomed to fail, in fact it might make it worse because you'll feel like a bad person for presumably being "weak" (having no willpower). I think modern understanding is that for willpower challenges it is better to arrange things in such a way that the challenge becomes easy (like having no alcohol at home), rather than making it a contest of iron will.

I really enjoyed the books on Willpower by Kelly McGonigal and and by Roy F Baumeister. I suppose just reading such books won't cure an addiction, but perhaps they could be of interest to you.

I'm sorry, it's easy to talk since I never had a severe issue like that. But I had a lot of therapy - what always stuck most were the points when I learned to accept myself.

Being part of a group will accelerate your recovery , drain your negativity and heal. Talk is cheap so I will stop here.

I can only tell you that beating the thing called "alcoholism" is to decide to stop drinking. That's it. My father after many years did it, one day, just like that. No one belived him. He's over 60 now and enjoys alcohol in very normal way. My friend, also 31, quit drinking completely 3-4 years ago and he was a person who drunk unbelievable amounts, even to me, just crazy. Now because of health problems he's 100% sober and he's fine! He's happy and can enjoy everything he was doing before.

So. People will tell you that it is a disease, that you are sick and you won't be able to quit on your own.. Wrong. It's only about you, your decision, your life. Take care and ask yourself some hard questions. Self-awareness and self-acceptance is the key.

Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 step programs have a high drop out rate (about 50% within the first 90 days) and are not backed by science, so you should talk with an addiction medicine doctor first (and go through an appropriate detox program).

That said, what makes 12 step programs effective is the support community you build in them, so find some people you feel safe talking with and who you can call anytime. In fact, find as many of them as you can. You have ~200 people on HN who took the time to comment, so there's a start.

I'd like to see more discussion about the enzymes needed to metabolize alcohol. AFAIK, it's very much a genetic matter: some people (or, of note, peoples) just lack the genes needed to process it in a manageable manner, tend to feel the effects with greater intensity than others, and thus find it much faster to go too far and harder to get out of that state and not go back. Those who have it can enjoy a few without further compulsions; those who don't dare not a drop. All this, of course, is poorly expressed and based on fragments I've gleaned. Anyone have a better analysis, and perhaps a way to test for this genetic predisposition to alcohol tolerance or lack thereof?

Have you ever tried just cutting down? Even just a little bit? I don't believe in this "Just stop and never drink again" rubbish I think it has to be done in baby steps.

Anyway, hope you're okay and whatever you do don't go the religion route. It's a dangerous path to tread especially with the types who run these things.

I turned 21 in rehab, in po-dunk Rock Creek, OH. Only after a few weeks clean, and the bitter irony of where I was in life, did I have that "moment of clarity" and have a little bit of willingness to accept that I was powerless over alcohol, and my life had become unmanageable. AA does not have a monopoly on recovery, but it has worked for me. We suffer from a spiritual malady, and our recovery is contingent upon a daily reprieve. "what am i doing today for my recovery?" I think you are posting this because you need to know, and you need to hear that everything will be ok. There is hope, I promise that you are NOT Condemned to live with active addiction. Know that you are going down a path that is not unique, so many before you, who have done worse things, and lost more things, and suffered longer have gone been in your shoes. And for them too, there is way to beat this disease. Anonymity is the greatest form of Humility. We are just people helping people, from one addict to another, I can empathize with you, I know how you feel, I have felt those pains before. Call an AA central office near where you live, send me a message if you need help

You have identified your problem. You can still recover, but get some external help!

You are probably aware that there is a very high risk that unless you get control of your habit you will die of it. Massive drinkers can develop memory issues - brain will develop lesions, short term memory will become poor. Not so good professionally. There are several high-risk medical complications that are likely. You might develop a liver cirrhosis. I hear this is extremely painful. You might get cancer. Also, painful.

Seriously, terminal alcoholism is something you really, really want to avoid. My mother spent the last month of her life psychotic in a hospital bed and before that she basically lost all control of her bowels. Reading had been one of the joys of her life but her memory became so poor that in the last years she could not really follow books (she did crosswords, though).

It's just not that you feel shit for drinking, the drink will turn you into a living husk in the long term. You will probably need psychiatric as well as physical treament. Get help. Any help.

The first time it was smoking heroin and cocaine. Lasted about 2 months. I used to do it at work too because I was addicted. Shortly after getting fired, I smoked crystal meth to get through the heroin withdrawl. This is how scary heroin is, I was addicted after the second time I picked up. With the help of a marijuana dealer, I got clean after he cut off my heroin dealer. I'd call like crazy but he would no longer sell it.

I still remember laying on my bed on my 25th birthday, withdrawing from heroin, thinking how seriously I fucked up.It took a few months of feeling complete apathy until I began to improve. However, I still relied on tobacco and weed to get through the hard stuff.

Few more months later I found another job, higher paying and less stressful. However, I began drinking this time. Half a bottle of vodka everyday after work and smoking weed before and after work. I'd come over with a hangover everyday and I eventually couldn't keep this up for long.

Fast forward to now, I'm totally clean from any substance. I have absolutely zero fucking desire to repeat what has been a complete wreckage of my financial savings, losing my flat, and a waste of time.

What does worry me is the health effect it might have, especially the street drugs I took during this short period of time on top of the weed and alcohol. I'm alright now but I still can't wash myself of the guilt and the regret. However, it keeps me well away from it.

Looking on to the future, I am willing to be successful, and I realized that I can't do it with dependence on drugs and alcohol. I simply couldn't allow it to get in my way.

My mother died when I was in my early 20s after years of addiction to alcohol.

She had her ups too, which made it hard for all of us to see everything fall apart again and again.

Until there was no coming back.

No AA, family support and interventions unfortunately ever helped her long term.

I hope you will find some reason to quit, even if it's just knowing that you can get your kids back - even if it takes many years.

It took me many years to "forgive" my parents (they died within 6 months of each other), realising there was no forgiving needed - they had their struggle and unfortunately failed.

Still saddens me that my own kids have will never know their grandparents.

I hope you will live to enjoy your grandchildren.

I've heard addiction defined as a "Confusion of your survival instincts" caused by prolonged exposure to a drug which seems to be an adequate and accurate description of addiction.

Now, I still drink from time to time, but it is easier for me to decide not to drink in a given situation.

http://mitko.github.io/2013/11/09/overthrowing-alcohol/

I had a drinking problem for 10 years, I am/was a successful systems engineer. I think I know how you feel.. Do you maybe find that you are living a life which doesn't belong to you? Or put another way, are you just "spinning"? For me, I would go on enormous binges of drink and drugs for 3 days, then abstain for 2 weeks or so. I fixed it by "pressing play" on my life again, which involved selling my house, and going on an adventure in another land. Ended up doing the same job, but my environment was so different, new language, culture, etc.. I stuck with counselling through this time and found a keen sense of introspection. Ultimately, I drilled down to the real problems that were manifesting the symptoms such as drinking, junk food, drugs, excess pr0n, etc... they were all methods to regain "control" over a situation I felt powerless over. Ironic, really, as with drink and drugs we actually relinquish our control.

Not sure if this post is going to help you, as indeed everyone's situation is personal to them, but the common factors persist with such self-abuse situations.

peace.

If you're feeling overly stressed, be real with yourself, do I have the sex life I want to have, am I missing out on some life experiences here? Be aware of how your sex life can relate to frustrations, addictive patterns, etc. because there is a real relationship, and it should not be discounted as a source of whatever problems you're having.

I'd recommend you start kicking you own butt: go to http://www.nerdfitness.com/academy-overview-page/ and subscribe, start building a routine. Stick to it and you'll quickly see that abusive drinking isn't just an option.

Today is my 180th day sober. If you asked me a year ago if I'd be dead or six months sober in a year's time, I'd have gone with dead.

Somehow I kept my current full time developer job through the past five years, but over the last decade have lost one job, bankrupted a company I co-founded and had my wife leave me. I offer the same advice as OP: Stop drinking now. Telling yourself you'll stop at some arbitrary point in the future won't work. The long term consequences are ugly; My teeth and skin are fucked up, my short term memory is cracked, and it's only been the past six months of my adult life that I've not been pissing away every paycheck. But I feel a lot smarter now than I was a year ago.

I decided I wanted to stop, and so I did the only thing I could: I moved away from the self-destructive social scene and habits I had been wallowing in. I just up and left (luckily could work in another city).

But keep in mind that post-stopping is really hard. I feel so productive and sharper now that it's ironically depressing; I know I wasted years and threw away dozens of opportunities. There are friendships where I fear I'll never be able to repair the damage that drunk me caused, but I will try. In the past month or so I've finally been able to man up and contact some of them to tell them what's happened. Some I owe money. I will fix this. Even if they still won't forgive me.

Having someone to talk to and an avenue to vent is essential. Big lifestyle changes helped me, especially getting out of the environment where I could get away with drinking like that every day and working from 11 or noon still drunk.

Other people here have mentioned the medical ramifications of quitting. It's no joke. I didn't quit until I feared dying from quitting as much as I feared dying from continuing. Maybe this is the choice you have now. I hope you choose life. After all, that's why we're here.

From my experience of quitting:

Read up at the Crippling Alcoholism subreddit. Lots of good resources on quitting.See a doctor, get evaluated and say, "I need help."If tapering helps, do it. I tapered for four days before checking in. It's different for everyone, but I had night terrors, sweats and I heard voices. This lasted a couple of weeks. Get medication for anxiety. But don't stay on it long. I'm back to having the occasional anxiety attack, but that's better than puking on my laptop once a month or so.Eat better, lose weight. Focus the addictive part of your personality on fitness goals. I've lost 2.5 stone so far. I almost feel like a person again.

Message me if you want.

In particular, pick one that's as close to actual combat as possible. MMA is great, but perhaps too intense. I've started training brazilian jiu jitsu and can't recommend it enough. Something about fighting for your life against someone who could easily put you to sleep/manhandle you that's therapeutic.

Sam Harris blogged about it here: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-pleasures-of-drowning

I wish you all the luck in the world in getting past this.

i) Sport, cannot be stressed enough how benefitial it is for human body any kind of regular sport activityii) Change of current habits, which might be in turn conducting you to your current situationiii) Travel for an extended period or regularly, will effectively break your acquired habits and may open your mind to new ideas (it changes the perspective)iv) the jacobson method of progressive muscle relaxation, which can be as effective as anti-depressants and that's no marketing talk. at least it worked for me.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation

Also - as a person that has struggled with (thankfully) only weight - there are no silver bullets.

If you don't want to talk, get to an AA meeting or if you don't think you can control yourself, check into rehab. Strike while you care about it, don't wait for yourself to start making excuses.

Good advice, but I doubt that developers would be especially prone to alcoholism.

My problem is simply I can't go to bed on time. I try many times, forcing myself to go to bed but I just can't. I always stay up late and even when I feel sleepy I can stay awake =. I am getting tired of staying awake all the time. :(

Today, I have a wife and two sons and I don't miss drinking one bit. But I had to get pretty low to stop. Everyone's bottom is different, I was lucky that I hit mine so young.

The original study on nurses in Israel estimates the probability for stressed people to give in to addiction to be 150% more than average.

Coders are liking this culture of burn in/burn out like junkies anyway.

It is clear our way of working is health hazardous.I never saw another profession more despising that much CHSCT or usual working wisdoms or health protection.

In my former (game company) the alcohol was even bought by the company every friday and it was poorly accepted people refuses to share a toast. And I saw the casual boozing a lot in a lot of places.

The average drinking in computer development and drug use {when I include the graphists designer} are way above the average of my supposed to be unsafe with all these junkies suburb. I don't come from a favela, just one of the banlieue that gives nice rioting picture on CNN/fox news every 10 years.

The work culture in IT is the most dangerous and irresponsible I never saw. No respect for anyone, neither workers, nor providers, nor sometimes customers.

It makes me sometimes feel as if I was working with psychopaths, and I did my conscription, so I met psychopaths. But soldiers made me feel more secure.

Alcohol does not make you into a problem. You make yourself into a problem, and lump alcohol in with all the other things that you could blame it on.

Grow up. Be accountable to yourself. Don't externalise blame.

I have a hooker problem, no joke. Since we are talking about addictions here?

The comments on HN aren't perfect, but they're far from bad when compared to other sites of this nature. There has been a downwards trend most probably due to the increasing popularity of HN. A response is warranted. However, this system has the potential to silence a lot of high quality comments on any threads that aren't on the front-page for an extended period of time. Thus, you get a feedback loop. Good posts require quality discussion to stay on top, but must stay on top to get quality discussion going with this added approval lag.

I think you should ease these changes in as conservatively and gradually as possible. For example, apply it only to the top page at first, and reduce the number of endorsements required for display to 1. You might also consider merely greying out comments that have not yet been endorsed, as currently happens to down-voted comments. Another option would be to apply the endorsement system only after threads have reached a certain age so as to jump-start discussions. Additionally, I would recommend that authors of a parent post should be able to see all child posts regardless of their karma. Below, Babuskov raised the point that the endorsement system will obstruct useful back-and-forth discussions between sub-kilokarma users in buried threads that often takes the place of a private messaging system on HN. This would fix that more effectively than merely reducing the endorsement requirement.

You should not entertain any illusions that you can flip the switch and watch this system work perfectly, and that you will therefore be able to avoid confusing people with many changes over a lengthy period of time. Tweaking will almost certainly be required.

Is there some timeout? If not, commenting on a several-day-old thread will guarantee that you can never post another comment, since once threads drop off the front page it's not likely that many 1000+ karma users will even see those comments, never mind endorse them.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/one-developer-makes-o...

It might not actually exist in packaged form, but Secure Shell is everywhere now and it will do this easily, with an appropriate setup. Secure Shell relies on the same basic scheme as most modern encryption methods -- public-key cryptography.

With Secure Shell, one would have the normal peer-to-peer chat scheme, with one difference -- the communications channel would be encrypted using the SSH protocol, and both participants would have exchanged validations.

For a round-table chat with more than two participants, it becomes more complicated.

Wait, hold on -- I just thought of something simpler that does exist. You could use a Secure Sockets Layer approach. You would send your friend an URL preceded by "https://" and identifying a server that has a chat server and that supports the SSL protocol. That would be much simpler and it already exists. If you had a chat server running on an SSL server, each participant would be linked up securely, and the round table issue would be resolved.

If that's the case, then they should be willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Ask them how much they would be willing to pay for a solution like yours and whether they would be willing to pay (even half of) that upfront.If they don't want to, perhaps they don't really need it or are not your real customers.

There is nothing that will validate your idea better than pre-paying customers.

Also the page doesn't work well on browser windows less than 1300px. Just an FYI. Wish you the best!

However, to me it seems like an itch that is very hard to scratch. It all really depends on your execution.Can you really build a product that doesn't annoy the costumers? If so, then it's an idea worth pursuing.

One good way to validate your idea is to look at competitors. Are there any players in this field? Are they making money? Can you provide something better?

Another way might be to perform some sort of "smoke test". Build only the software component that calls and talks to people. Then start calling people you know (without them knowing it's you), and have the service ask them simple questions. Do they hang up instinctively? Do they provide any info? You might even want to call them in person afterwards and ask about the experience, though they might not want to speak to you ever again...

By the way the site has way too much text.

I can say that 1 month of mentorship at my job was equivalent to those 6 months, so I'd recommend you start applying for Junior Developer positions to further grow as a developer. I took a brief look at your github page and I think the next area you should work on is rspec and testing as I see a lot of empty spec/ directories.

I see a lot of people saying to pair remotely and I'm going to go against the grain and say that I think that would be a poor decision for a newbie looking for mentorship. At my current job, we don't really do pairing so I can't help you out but there are plenty paid pair programming opportunities in the Bay to choose from (Pivotal Labs and their clients are a good place to start).

And you probably overshot a bit. I'm sure most of the interesting bootstrapped tech businesses out there were probably started by people who could barely code. Don't focus too much on the tools, focus on the end results.

As for pairing, what is it that you are really looking for? Are you looking for a job? Just looking to be a great programmer first and then figure something out later?

Don't pair for free. Get paid. If it's a job, then you should be fully on the team as an equal to everyone else. Otherwise you are probably just dead weight.

Better yet, build something! FFS, what I wouldn't give for 6 months just to block out to build something. I haven't been able to do something like that since high school. That's why I roll my eyeballs when somebody posts on there that they are 14 and they built X app. If I had the spare time that I did when I was that age and access to the stuff people have today, I would be flying on a rocket to Mars by now. ;)

Edit: Okay, building rocket ships isn't cheap.

Disclosure: I'm one of the co-founders of Screenhero :)

If it's not better along some axis I care about, then unfortunately the answer is probably $0 :/

Of course, only do it if you're actually in the right, so check with a lawyer first.

I had a similar experience. I founded a company 3 years ago where we open source the majority of what we do. We entered into a discussion with a well funded (>$40M) "startup" about how they could use our service as a whitelabeled SaaS offering to their customers.

After a few promising exchanges including a Skype call with their Founder and VP of Engineering they stopped returning all of my attempts to see what the next steps should be. Turns out the reason was because they forked a private repository of the work we did - web, iOS and Android.

We found out they're using our code because they didn't even bother taking out our Crashalytics code and we started to get a bunch of pings. To this day their iOS app still uses our "yellow" color for toggle buttons.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dcpbbnbltm2bmq6/Photo%20Mar%2026%2...

They didn't violate any terms of our license (MIT) but I lost some faith in humanity because of what they did :).

--

My company is Trovebox - code @ https://github.com/photo

Why?

Proof. You say they took your code but whats to say they already had something similar in development. Without actually seeing the code changes you are just making assumptions (although it does sound suspicious).

Personally I would say take the moral high ground. Just forget it and move on. A lawyer will take you money and you will probably be worse off than before.

However, many entrepreneurs still want to help create and bring new and exciting things into the world. Becoming a VC is one relatively low-stress way of doing this. It is also a way of "giving back to the community".

The few ex-entrepreneur VCs I know have been amazingly helpful, and frankly I don't think any of them are in it for the money - they have quite enough already.

Investing seems like it is fun and easy to a lot of people who haven't done it. I'm not saying it is or isn't, I'm only saying that there's a perception that it's a fun and easy job. That perception might be right or wrong, and might not be a simple binary yes/no.

Sure, there are big plusses, and yes you can make a lot of money doing it. Starting a company is no cakewalk either, and investing is a nice way to get paid while enjoying the ability to talk to lots of smart folks who educate you about a broad array of subjects.

It's also not easy. A lot of investment funds fail. Not everyone is enjoyable to deal with. There are many hard truths.

FWIW I know a VC who left investing to start another company b/c he hated having to say "no" to so many folks, and to deal with some of the other pressures in the environment. There are negatives that aren't always obvious. http://www.quora.com/Venture-Capital/What-is-the-worst-part-...

As to your bigger point about the moral and social value of investing -- I think nearly everyone would agree that religious and community leaders are more deserving of high praise than a VC. In some cases, people who sweep their sidewalks might be adding more social value than some investors ;)

That being said, I think it's unfair to paint every investor with the same brush.

A good VC adds value and helps companies grow and succeed. The jobs created are good for society. A company like Tesla also serves a bigger good -- moving us from fossil fuels to renewables is a good thing for society, and capitalism is an effective tool for pushing that forward. The people who gave Elon Musk money to make that happen are (indirectly) helping.

Not every company is quite so noble. There are certainly lots of terribly useless investments -- http://www.businessinsider.com/a-year-later-41-million-start...

That being said, if we're going to point the finger at the investors, what should we make of the business people and engineers who work on these 'useless' apps? Are they also profiting from socially useless activities? Is there no room in human life for entertainment? Is there no value in an app that makes it easy for families to share special moments with one another?

I think there's a certain amount of acceptance required that not everything in a society will/can be focused on directly moving that society forward in the most obvious way, and being ok with that.

Also, it's harder than it sounds to invest in startups. It's not the case that any rich idiot can multiply his money by being an angel investor. It's very, very easy to lose your shirt that way.

I've often thought about this. Why do we have the right to own land? The people who own the land rights to various parts of Manhattan, Bay area (and other popular places) might pay some taxes and handle some paperwork but other than that they just collect what's basically a tax on everyone who wants to be where the opportunities are. Same with operative systems APIs (like win32) and processor instruction sets. It's not really relevant how the specific individual/company/family got into the position as a gatekeeper. It could have happened hundreds of years ago. Now they're just a taxman you can't vote on. Constrained gatekeeper resources like land or frequency spectrum should be government property for all eternity and rented out to the highest bidder on, say, a fifty year basis. Non-constrained gatekeeper resources should become public domain.

Money isn't nearly as bad, though. You can take investments from the lowest bidder after all, but you can hardly get around Manhattan/Windows/x86. Basically, the issue here is that it's easier to let your money work for you than working yourself. Maybe you could put into law that for each share sold or dividend given (basically, whenever an investor gains cash from his/her investment) a certain percentage also has to be equally distributed among employees. That might work, but I can imagine that investment targets would be vulnerable to investment competition from countries without such a law.

In my personal experience, I've worked with a pair of founders that have become amazingly successful at creating viral growth in companies. So by investing & advising, they've been able to multiply their impact on the world.

Also, the most successful entrepreneurs actually continue to create companies, often in very different areas: Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Martin Varsavsky, Oleg Tinkov.

This mentality that somehow sitting in office for long hours and cranking shit out is just so horrible. I really believe that this has to do a lot with the individual employee/person rather than just management. Yes, I am not counting out the pointy haired bosses and all but to a great extent, it is up to you, the employee, to dictate how long will you be working on a given day. Sure, some of us love sitting in office because we probably have nothing better to do (been there) but learning to value your time is really underrated. People, learn to value your own time and you will suddenly see how everyone else around you respects you for that. /rant

Now, just to add the other side, creating value is a lot more than spending x hours in office. Like you said, you designed a major component of the app which is what matters. Yes, there may be days when you want to crank that stuff out like there is no tomorrow because you are excited about it, go for it. And yes, go work on some weekends if needed for the team (release/critical fix etc). Take one for the team but do it wisely. Let everyone know that you are willing to raise your hand but you are not a doormat.

In your case, since are you doing the right thing, your company does not deserve you and based on what you said, they already don't care about you. So like everyone else is saying and you know the answer anyway, find something better and move on.

ISSUE #2 - Quantitatively, your numbers may be hyperbole, but they don't bear out your claims. Your co-workers have 3x as many fixes as you, but they only work 2.6x as much as you (assuming 14 hours / day 7 days / week). By these numbers, they are 15% more effective than you are. (And they're harder workers.)

Fundamentally there's a culture mismatch. You think you have differentiating skillsthey don't agree. You think you are more efficienteither they don't agree or that's not their metric. You want to work a 40 hour weekthey want people who will kill themselves.

There are a couple options (e.g., going hourly), but I don't think they're realistic given the context. After all, your effective hourly rate is way higher than someone who takes home the same salary but works twice as much. So I agree with the other commentators: find an opportunity that's a better fit for you.

A developer that always leave at exactly 17.00 and adamantly refuse to come in on a Saturday, gives a very clear signal that they don't give a shit about the company, the product or the team. They're there to get paid.

While most employers realize that your work isn't (or should be) your single burning passion, it is very negative for team morale when one of the guys always flakes out when the clock hits 17 regardless of the fire in the kitchen.

I knew a developer who always left at exactly 17.00, because "that's what they are paying me for". On several occasions, he deployed breaking changes to production five minutes before leaving. Other devs had to come in and work very late to get the system back online. While he is technically in his right to leave at 5, he causes his team much grief and as such is not an asset.

The other side of the coin is that lots of software companies, really has little to no control over software development. Especially startups run by young, inexperienced guys rarely have any idea what they are doing. This is a company where crisis' occurs daily or weekly instead of maybe once every couple of months.

They make up for this by rampant overtime, and excuse this with BS about being dedicated and a team player. You know you're in such an organization if they talk about how "that's what the industry is like".

Your organizations work culture seem like that - very long hours and (seemingly) no extraordinary reason for coming in on Saturday.

If that's the case, then leave. There's not much that can be done except a total change of top management.

But if it's a rare occurrence that they call you in on Saturday and there is a good explanation for it, then buckle up and help your team mates.

What is puzzling to me is that you sound like a skilled and confident developer, yet seem afraid of wading into the job market. Are your local employment options that bad?

With that said, I think it's bizarre how some of the commenters here are vilifying your management. I don't know the specifics of your company, but you can't run a startup at crunch time with devs putting in 7.5 hour days. Even at Google, which I considered extremely cushy and laid-back, there was the overt expectation -- repeatedly referenced in internal literature -- that engineer-weeks were about 50 hours long.

I think it's great that you've identified the level of work-life balance that will work for you and are standing your ground. But you need to understand that working 7.5 hours days is not some sort of universal human right. In the (near) future when you search for jobs, you need to communicate that preference up front and make sure that management is on board with it rather than taking for granted that they will be.

Either way, you should probably quit. But if you can figure out what they actually need, it might help reduce your stress a little bit. Only a little, though, because having abusive managers or coworkers is really terrible and wears at you in a way that's pretty hard to describe. So you should probably quit.

Give your 2 weeks but be OK if they let you go on the spot.

If you dont have a lot of money, maybe you could put in a few more weeks before you quit and literally try and save every penny you can. If you have vacation time in the bank hopefully you get paid out for it.

I've been in situations where the "Boss" doesn't have a clear technical understanding between different roles and it is very hard. It feels like a Dilbert and/or Office Space moment to me.

If they need you to do more work beyond your 40 hour week, to the point that they threaten to fire you, then your supervisor likely realizes they need you.

If you find that at 5pm that you are twenty minuets away from finishing something up, then you should consider doing that from time to time, just to show you're on the team.

I am lucky enough to be in a position that I am on salary, but I am still paid overtime if the work load moves beyond 40 hours a week. If I need to work an extra 15 to 30 minutes to finish up what I'm working on, I don't count that as overtime. If I get a ticket that needs addressed, but there isn't time to do it in the normal work day, that counts as overtime.

Maybe consider proposing something similar. If what they really need is a little more help, but don't want to hire a new dev, they may be willing to come up with a compromise.

Good luck.

> Now they want us to come in on Saturday.

I would definitely GTFO!

Productivity != hours sitting at a desk.

I have worked at a company like this and the issue was definitely poor management direction and poor technical discipline.

My own theory is that most young engineers start out by valuing their own time -- but they find themselves in a situation like this. They then relegate themselves to working long hours to please management, and eventually they work inefficiently all the time and are OK with that.

They're too withdrawn/introverted to stand up to management or take the leap to find a new job.

Regardless, like many others said, time to quit. They're not a good fit for you and a "bugfix scoreboard" sounds absolutely vile.

tl;dr: Working more than 8 hours a day is unprofessional (except in rare, extreme circumstances where it is rewarded).

In fact, I think setting appropriate personal boundaries is extremely important. A lot of devs recognize 'hour creep'. You know, stay in a few days until 6, and before too long, it becomes expected. I am saying this as a founder and someone who puts in as many possible hours.

At first, I thought, "Are you guys not really in the game?". But now I recognize that there are only a few people who I should really expect to be on that level, and it should be made explicitly clear from the get-go.

In this case, there is a clear metric that the employee is facing. However, this person certainly adds quite a bit of value.

I think this is worth confronting management over. But I also agree, that if there is a rare occurrence for weekend work, then that is also part of the team. Rather than quit outright, like many suggest, I would confront management very clearly about your personal boundaries and ask them explicitly what is the gulf between their expectations and what you are giving.

"The moment I step through my work door I set a timer for 7.5 hours." This is a terrible work ethic. You set a timer? I don't agree with doing unpaid overtime either, you certainly won't see me in the office on a Saturday, but sometimes things need to be completed before you leave for the day. But maybe that's just my opinion working in a remote office in a vastly different time zone to head office where my work needs to be delivered.

Although not a metric, I did chuckle that you state your co-workers work twice as long as you (14hrs vs 7.5) yet have three times as many fixes as you and then reference the reason for this is the time they spend at work.

Also, this is why you keep a 6-12 month emergency fund, in case you have to walk away or get fired.

(...And if the barn is always burning down, look for a new job.)

Quitting isn't fun, but sometimes it's the only way to solve a problem.

Accept their offer to buy out your contract. If they try to terminate you, be ready to lawyer up for a breach-of-contract suit.

Get out.

[1] http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/05/duck-duck-go-sea...

how about reading some patents of flash bangs? that what patents are for.

also, a glass? the idea that the assailant will be making eye contact is nice, but your eyes will also be there

Just sayin'

That means if I'm typing and I don't realize the misspelling until the next sentence, I can correct it WITHOUT moving the cursor. Once you do this, you can't go back!

Just discovered this yesterday and wish I had known about it earlier.

[1] http://orgmode.org/

I don't know your details but this could be your mind and body telling you to change for the better. Do you exercise, do you sleep well (at least 7-7.5 every night). Do you have hobbies outside software? Do you get out and hang out? How's your personal relationships? All these things matter and if something is really out of sync your mind/body starts to fight you. Listen to it. The trick is to have a balance to your life and still get to where you want to go. Sometimes the balance shifts in one direction or another but it's always good to try to maintain the balance.

Get up earlier and spend some time right away working on your smaller things requiring focus. I don't think your core work day would be robbed of anything either, a significant portion of the energy loss is the context switch from work to commute to home.

If you get up two hours earlier and go to work at the same time, the end of the day will feel a bit latter but i'd wager you'll be just as productive as the end of a day right now.

Note: Speaking from speculation, not experience.

15-20 days - really motivated work 10-12 hour days5-8 days - motivated but uninspired4-5 days - completely unmotivated and uninspired

that is pretty much my typical month, every month. the lows are low but the highs are high. just find your groove and stick to it. everyone becomes unmotivated at times.

I may be under qualified to say this, but I believe pretty strongly that the number of people that truly understand everything that happens when they use a computer is tending towards zero. This is partially the fault of rising hardware complexity, but more fundamentally your Intel/AMD CPU, your SSD etc is not open source. It is unlikely then that you will be able to understand exactly what your computer is doing when you execute an instruction, because Intel will not tell you how it works, only that it does. You could of course reverse engineer the chips, but I do not believe that anybody has.

There are a number of places you can go to learn more about how modern systems work, I will list the fruitful resources I have used below.

- wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page

This wiki has a lot of valuable information, if you have not already found it.

- www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectures-software-developer-manuals.html?iid=tech_vt_tech+64-32_manuals

The Intel manuals describe how the CPU frontend functions, but does not explain how this functionality is implemented on the backend. The problem here is volume. The combined volumes weigh in at over 3300 pages.

- scholar.google.com

- Wikipedia

I hope this has been helpful - good luck!

"The site contains all the software tools and project materials necessary to build a general-purpose computer system from the ground up. We also provide a set of lectures designed to support a typical course on the subject."

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/

I have also done a small amount of FPGA work which is more towards the hardware level, bypassing a CPU altogether.

For a slightly more common architecture (although hopefully we are entering an FPGA-enabled golden age), try Harris & Harris's "Digital design and computer architecture". It covers the MIPS designs (using both SystemVerilog and VHDL simultaneously) in H&P's "Computer organization and design", but in a more compact and systematic way (omitting H&P's broad but shallow coverage of advanced topics).

I can think of no better way to grok the underlying hardware. Write a simple assembler. Next, begin writing an OS.