
Ask HN: What decision has made the largest impact on your life? - adawg_4
I want to soak up some life lessons today!
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hola_mundo
In 2012, somebody stole half of my life savings.

I was halfway through college (I was an econ major) and had hired somebody to
build a website for me. Immediately upon paying them half of the invoice, they
fell off the face of the earth and never shipped a line of code.

I was left cash-less and code-less.

I _decided_ to teach myself how to program so that I'd never need to be that
dependent on somebody.

I watched hours upon hours of YouTube, audited a handful of CS courses at my
university (UVA), and, after about a year, I had become a decent iOS
developer.

As school neared an end, a mutual friend pitched me on a startup idea he was
working on. I agreed to build the MVP, joined him as CTO, and our startup went
on to have a $50M+ exit a few years after I graduated.

Hugely impactful decision.

I'd probably working some finance job I hate if I hadn't made that decision.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
Three come to mind rather than one. Deciding at 13 I had to learn how to make
video games. Having the guts to ask out my future wife at 19. Deciding in my
20s I would no longer allow myself to be tormented by bullies/events of the
past. I’m 36 now. I’m happy I made these decisions, huge impact.

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farrelmahaztra
I'm 19 so the bar for "impact on my life" is relatively low, but probably
choosing to cold-email a bunch of startup CEOs whose emails I guessed at the
start of 2019. It got me my first SWE internship, which helped me get full-
time positions afterwards.

~~~
jeremiecoullon
Nice one!

How many email addresses did you try for each CEO ? I'm guessing the most
common one is firstname.lastname@company.com ?

~~~
farrelmahaztra
I sent only one each since I put in my guesses in some free email validation
site beforehand. I also sent out emails to other C-level people.

The formats were usually firstname@company.com for most of them, but
firstname.lastname came up a few times.

------
Trias11
Writing a blog post about something I built in my spare time and then sneaked-
in to share with co-workers.

Then boss reprimanded me, but another company read my blog post and hired me.

Turned to be the best job of my life.

