Ask HN: What did you learn the hard way? - donkoz_ab
======
bunderbunder
Worse is better

Or, to put it a bit more optimistically - usable now is better than perfect
later. I've found that, if I disappear behind a curtain and spend a long time
trying to make something really well-polished and feature rich, that just
gives the user a lot of time to build up their expectations, and also to get
frustrated by the delay. By the time you ship, they'll be actively looking for
ways to find fault. When I YAGNI my way into a 80% or 90% solution and turn it
around quickly, though, more often than not, they'll initially just be
impressed at how quickly I was able to help them. Requests for changes will
come, but they're generally small, so it's usually relatively easy to turn
those around quickly as well.

~~~
bitfhacker
> Or, to put it a bit more optimistically - usable now is better than perfect
> later.

This is the same principle of Minimum Viable Product. In MVP you launch the
first version of your product with sufficient features, but not all, to early
adopters so that you can get feedback from them.

MVP and the "Build Measure Learn" feedback loop, gives you important tools to
leverage your product.

~~~
bunderbunder
Yes, absolutely.

The language around MVPs tends to be couched in terms that pretty directly
implies designing a product for external customers, though, so it tends to be
harder to internalize for people who are doing in-house work, and even people
who are somewhat removed from the product design process, such as many junior
developers. What I've seen in is that it's common for people who are eager to
impress their clients or teammates to want to say "yes" to everything. So,
even if they like the idea of building MVPs in principle, in practice, their
MVPs end up being pretty maximal.

Which is why I think there's value in framing the principle in terms of human-
human relationships, and not just in terms of stuff like finding product-
market fit. It's a more personal, relatable way of thinking about it.

The magic insight for me was when I finally realized that I could give people
less than what they asked for, and they'd actually be _happier_ than if I
tried to give them everything they wanted.

~~~
bitfhacker
> The magic insight for me was when I finally realized that I could give
> people less than what they asked for, and they'd actually be happier than if
> I tried to give them everything they wanted.

I consider that a form of art/skill that we learn through multiple experiences
(and errors too).

I work closely with developers and I observed that the majority try to
implement always the perfect solution that normally comes with a high cost and
time to develop. Clients normally prefer a solution that is quicker to
implement but that responds to 80% of what he wants.

------
smarri
Great question!

1\. As a younger man I done a business deal on a handshake and then got ripped
off after putting in a year of work - always get it in writing!

2\. Companies are not loyal to people, people may be loyal to people, but
never think an organisation will be

3\. I ran up some debt as a student until I figured out personal finances,
which boils down to; increase income, reduce expenditure, save and invest the
rest, avoid liabilities as far as possible (e.g. do you really need a car on
finance)

4\. Avoid getting drunk! Get tipsy, not drunk

5\. You'll always get over a breakup, no matter how difficult it seems at the
time

6\. Sometimes you have to leave a group of friends, a partner, or even family
behind, to grow into who you want to be

7\. Don't wait for other people to help you in your career or life, any help
you get it a bonus and be grateful, but you're the captain of the ship - push
yourself forward

8\. Be yourself

9\. You're better and more capable than you think

10\. Tell those you care about you how you feel, you never know when you might
lose that chance

We live and learn!

~~~
csomar
> 3\. I ran up some debt as a student until I figured out personal finances,
> which boils down to; increase income, reduce expenditure, save and invest
> the rest, avoid liabilities as far as possible

I agree with but I'll be careful. When you are young (20-30), you are better
off investing the money in yourself. So I say do spend reasonably but on
things that might grow you. I learned the hard way that renting an expensive
duplex with a garden did wonders to my mood and productivity. You might spend
more but you get in returns.

Also don't be a cheap jerk with yourself. Nowadays, I value experiences more
than gadgets (like I'd go on a trip to a close city than put 12 hundreds on an
iphone) but do these things. When you are old, you can still do them but being
young was different. Even when in budget.

So I say be careful but don't be greedy and while interest can pile up on
money you save, that trip you have done or that money you spent to go to a
conference might pay up x1000.

~~~
smarri
Fully agree, great point

------
chrisacky
My "life lesson" happened when I was about 18. I was running a game server
hosting company, everything was organic and I took it from 1 physical 1U
server which I owned and co-located to about 10 servers, before I made a
catastrophic mistake.

Anyway, I reached a point where my colocation fees were about 1.2k per month,
I had been with my supplier from the very beginning, so from 1 server... At
the peak I was grossing about 4-5k per month but generally monthly lows were
about 2k, and everything had been organic, so I had no debts, and was just
pumping everything back into the business. What happened was my provider
offered to sell me his business for about 12k. You gotta keep in mind I was 18
at this time.

I took out a loan (my Dad was guarantor) and purchased his business. The aim
was to, acquire his contracts for colocation with the datacenter and I was
expecting to inherit an operating business which was turning in about 2-3k per
month in normal "web hosting" businesses. All the sites were spread across
about 30 servers, all of them _really really old_.

So, things went sour literally from day one. It turns out that he either
fudged all of the sites on the billing software or they decided to just exodus
on day one of me taking over. I ended up going from having healthy profit each
month to operating at a deficit. Long story short it destroyed my business and
nearly caused me to lose my degree at Uni from the stress of hacking away
trying to save a failing business and continue with my degree.

Anyway, what did I learn?

Due diligence. Don't rush things. Don't trust people. You can really summarise
this as a life lesson where I essentially ended up gifting someone 12k for "my
patronage". It quickly became apparent I was his only customer and my success
kept him just about ticking over, so I ended up "buying myself". I was pretty
bitter about it for a long time, but I think I was just angry at myself for
being so childishly naive to think someone I trusted wouldn't screw me over
cause it suited him.

~~~
gammateam
> So, things went sour literally from day one. It turns out that he either
> fudged all of the sites on the billing software or they decided to just
> exodus on day one of me taking over.

I don't really understand the issue. Didn't you buy a bunch of prepaid servers
and server administration software for just 12k?

~~~
chrisacky
Nah, I already had all of the infrastructure and technology. I can't even
remember the software I used for game hosting[1] , but they were the largest
paid technology that provided this kind of thing at the time.

I bought him with the intention of moving into "web hosting", since at that
time my business was entirely focused ONLY on providing services such as
"teamspeak", "battlefield 2" hosting, GMod, Call of Duty etc, I thought I
needed to diversify, because when I started "1 slot" was about 1.50-2.00 per
user. Then it just started being cut throat and I ended up overselling to keep
up with the competition's lower prices.

I ended up inheritting bills I could not pay at the datacenter. Old servers
that weren't worth the scrap metal and obviously a loan... I started to
struggle to cover the loan and ran into huge/unbearable stress from my
mistakes. It was just a series of rushed decisions, head down, plough through
a purchase because I thought it would help me grow, when it was the complete
opposite.

I can't even remember what the billing software was, but it was something off
the shelf... and was for an industry (web hosting) I really didn't know much
about. Not that that mattered since I never had to support any of the
customers...

Update: [1]: I researched it for my curiosity.. It was called TCAdmin. Was
pretty critical to my early success, without it I wouldn't have had a clue
what I was doing.

~~~
SteveNuts
Wow that's quite the story, are you still in the hosting business?

~~~
chrisacky
Yes and no...

Now I help run a vacation rental/holiday rental software company -- so instead
we help host people. We provide management/distribution for agencies. The
original product was to just focus on a web marketing front-end software (so I
suppose a little bit of "hosting" through our SaaS product). I started that
business a few years after the above story.

------
polpenn
Life, by default, is suffering.

The surprise is not the fact that there is suffering around the world, but how
we managed to achieve the level of prolonged peaceful co-existence that we
have today.

We should act in such a way that suffering or chaos is reduced---however small
such reduction may be.

Suppose you had a choice between watching T.V. and washing the dishes.
Watching T.V. means, perhaps, that your spouse will need to do the dishes. You
can reduce overall suffering by choosing to do the dishes instead of watching
T.V.

Given that the default path of most processes is chaos, we should always act
in a way that prevents this.

~~~
jonesdow
Speaking of dishwashing and life lessons. When I was in college (20 years ago)
and sharing an apartment with 3 colleagues, the guys were leaving their dishes
unwashed in the kitchen sink. Initially I washed my _own_ dishes after
finising a meal, only to find out the colleagues happily used _my_ clean
dishes then let them dirty in the sink. I realized I'm washing them twice:
once when picking them dirty from the sink, washing them so I can eat and
secondly after I finished eating. So I optimized: only washed them once like
all folks do: _before_ eating.

Lesson: when in Rome, do like the Romans.

And P.S: no, you can't argue with the Romans and make 'em wash their dishes
_after_ eating.

~~~
your-nanny
no but you can do like the Romans and break all their plates.

~~~
skate22
I just kept mine in my room

------
munchbunny
I learned the value of patience and moving slowly through many mistakes where
I moved too quickly.

In the startup world, the default is to move as fast as you can, and it's
often easy to mistake a maxim for product development as a maxim for _life_.
The problem is that it's not good advice for many things in life. Examples:

1\. Shopping. Especially big ticket items like cars and places to live.
Urgency favors the seller because you don't do diligence well and you don't
shop around for better deals when you're in a rush.

2\. In a similar vein, negotiating. I got screwed on deals because I felt too
much in a hurry to bring up issues I had. The important point here is that I
could afford to wait, but I didn't want to, and that worked against me.

3\. Job searching. Taking the time to line up offers will pay returns on your
salary and happiness, even if in the moment you really just want the job
search over with.

4\. Managing people. I've had people who work for me ask "how am I doing", and
in my urge to avoid the awkwardness of the conversation, I would answer some
variation of "fine" even if in my mind I knew there were problems. The problem
is that answers like those are very hard to take back once you give them (and
especially hard to take back during performance reviews). So instead of trying
to get rid of the problem fast, I eventually learned to step back and say "let
me think about this, and let's talk about it tomorrow."

5\. Relationships. If your goal is to find a life partner, you have a lot of
diligence to do. Enjoy the honeymoon period, but don't mistake that for deeper
compatibility. That comes from spending time together and requires getting
through rough patches together as well.

6\. Professional relationships too: on the one hand, you can't be passive in
developing your professional relationships, but you can't rush them either.
Respect is earned over time, so you have to play the long game.

When it comes to building products, then yeah, moving fast is an asset, but
many things in life and career are marathons, not sprints, and you're just
hurting your future self if you outrun your own pace.

~~~
dacohenii
1\. Shopping. Especially big ticket items like cars and places to live.
Urgency favors the buyer because you don't do diligence well and you don't
shop around for better deals when you're in a rush.

I assume you mean urgency favors the seller (unless you're urgently trying to
sell, of course).

Or, in general: (s)he who has the greater time constraint has the
disadvantage.

~~~
munchbunny
Good catch, thanks!

------
b_t_s
If the ship is sinking, don't bail harder, get your butt onto a ship that
_isn't_ sinking ASAP. It's much better for your mental health, and it's the
logical free market thing to do....reallocating resources to more effective
companies.

~~~
RickS
It's shocking how tightly scoped one's mindset gets in these situations. The
hull of the boat so easily becomes the bounds of the world. Every time I jump
ship, I'm shocked by how quickly and painlessly the things I once thought were
life-or-death fall away.

------
jfc
A few things:

1) People's words are like deep water. Pay careful attention to what people
say--it's profoundly revealing (more than they realize). By listening, I've
been able to identify people who intended to trouble me in some way. It's
incredible, they just can't keep it inside even when pretending to be nice.

2) Actions speak louder than words (given #1, this is really saying
something). Don't look for people to be who you _want_ them to be; wait long
enough for them to _show themselves_. And they will. ETA: You may occasionally
encounter someone who is able to fool you for extended periods of time, like
years. But even then they often leave useful clues as to their agenda.

3) If the product is free, the product is me!

~~~
sufiyan
Could you expound on (1). I have been toyed around by my former Co founder who
sweet talked me into believing him. I still think I suck at understanding
human behaviour and nature. Are there any telling signs that help you?

~~~
cannabisceo
Most often I've seen it in the form of jokes. You're in the final stretches of
negotiating a deal with someone you consider a friend and they make some joke
about how now they're going to stop showing up to work. Red flag. You might
think "why would someone say something like that?" I was negotiating a deal
where the other party was guaranteed 7.5MM over the next 5 years. They made
the joke because they thought they already had me wrapped up in the deal. I
walked away based on that joke alone. The logic is that at some level they're
trying to prepare you for what you're in for. Everyone's armor has chinks. As
the deal gets closer to being done you see the real person on the other side
of the table.

Another red flag is if you put something in email and they call you to respond
on the phone. I treat email almost entirely defensively now. It's simply a
record of things I'm comfortable being read aloud in court and a
memorialization of what was agreed to in conversation. If I'm not comfortable
with it being read in court it's discussed on the phone or in person.

------
40acres
Personal finance.

I never took a budgeting class in high school and college, my parents lived
paycheck to paycheck (still do), when I earned my first internship I was
making over $1000 per pay period, that was a lot of money for someone who had
only worked part time jobs for $10/hr before hand.

By the time I got my second internship I earned more than my mother, who was
the breadwinner. Once I was converted to full time I had more money than I
knew what to do with. It took a few months to stop making stupid purchases,
learn how to budget, save, and invest. Painful lesson.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Any particular advice on managing your finances that you're willing to share?

~~~
wafflesraccoon
If you want to buy something and it will require you to run monthly balance on
your credit card, you can't afford it. On the flip side, credit cards are a
very powerful tool that should not be ignored.

------
swagtricker
Sadly, after more than 20 years building software, _NEVER_ trust a business
person. My faith in humanity had to have me bitten by this the hard way more
than once.

~~~
jondubois
Yeah, I'm surprised that they trust each other at all. What keeps them from
bashing each other with sticks?

When I see business people smile at each other and shaking hands, I cannot
make sense of this in my mind. What's the point of smiling when both people
couldn't care less if the other person dropped dead on the spot.

~~~
cercatrova
They care whether they can get some use out of the other before either drops
dead

------
markdoubleyou
If you're a dev, don't work for a company where software development is viewed
as a cost center--you want your work to be viewed as something that brings in
revenue.

(Learned the hard way when I worked at a large bank.)

~~~
smilesnd
I agree with this full-heartedly I work for a company where my boss told me a
couple months in having a dev department was a waste of money for the company,
and we were lucky to have a job. The company bread and butter was software
that transcribe medical records from paper to digital. What the CEO and sale
force didn't tell anyone it was actually a cubical farm of humans transcribing
it all since the software was horrible. The environment was so horrible every
worth while dev/IT person regularly drop out as soon as there contract was
over or till they just didn't show up one day. The only reason the company
even keep "functioning" was out sourcing everything to India. There database
was duck tape and string together in ways that only the elders understood how
to pull things out of it.

If you walk into any company where different departments get praise more then
others it is a sign to walk out. You will always get treated like a second
rate employee in those environments.

~~~
alexcnwy
Sounds awful! I've been working my butt off with some friends on a system to
extract data out of scanned forms and documents (incl. handwriting) and I'd
really appreciate hearing your thoughts about it. Couldn't find your contact
deetz so please send me an email - address in my profile :)

------
jakobegger
When you tutor someone, don't tell them what to do step by step. When they ask
you how to solve a problem, don't solve it for them.

It's tempting to explain in minute detail something you are good at, but if
you always tell people how to do their job, they will become dependent on you.

Let them figure it out on their own.

When there's a bug in their code, point it out, but don't tell them how to fix
it.

If you alwaystell people how to do stuff, they will never learn to think for
themselves.

~~~
colanderman
> When there's a bug in their code, point it out, but don't tell them how to
> fix it.

It's funny, I've learned the opposite lesson the hard way.

I used to just point out bugs, like I was a tutor hoping they'd realize the
problem on their own and fix it correctly.

Unless it was an obvious brain-o (i.e. the developer knew what they were doing
and just flubbed), this resulted unerringly in a "fix" that (a) didn't solve
the problem, and (b) created another. I would end up coming off as a
nitpicking asshole trying to guide the developer into writing correct code.

So now I just reply, in detail, with exactly what fix to apply, often
including code verbatim. Call me jaded, but it works, and I've realized it's
not my job to get people to learn to think for themselves. Those that want to
already know how.

Related: never post example code you wouldn't want to see copy+pasted verbatim
into the codebase. I can't count the number of times I've said "fix it using
code like this" only to get a complaint a week later that the fix doesn't
work, and seeing my pseudocode complete with foos, bars, and made up meta
syntax copy+pasted verbatim.

~~~
jakobegger
The problem with this is:

a) it doesn't scale

(you are now doing the other devs' job)

b) it only works if you are infallible

(if there's a bug in your fix the other dev is going to say "colanderman told
me to do it this way")

I know that it is tempting to just tell people what to do, but it's not a long
term solution.

~~~
colanderman
> it doesn't scale

It's strictly better than repeatedly pointing out the same, but slightly
different, bug, in a series of incorrect fixes, before being forced to spell
out the solution upon realization that the dev isn't going to get it on their
own. Just skip to the end.

> if there's a bug in your fix the other dev is going to say "colanderman told
> me to do it this way"

So?

------
officialchicken
HR is there to protect the company, not you.

~~~
Humdeee
My SO is a HR Manager. I hear the constant drama first hand over dinner. My
take: HR are angels after hiring and during onboarding. After that, any
correspondence will be kept to an absolute minimum.

~~~
officialchicken
Who benefits the most from the work your SO does... employees or the
corporation? As others point out, they are to be avoided at all costs! And
usually play a really bad gate-keeping role when it comes to IT hiring. It's a
hard thing to learn early in your career.

~~~
Humdeee
Are you actually asking? If so, I think you misinterpreted my post. Please re-
read, we agree. If HR has anything to do with any part of the technical
interviewing process, the company is already misplacing their use. I won't
touch HR with a ten foot pole unless absolutely necessary.

------
ThomaszKrueger
Start each day with the thought: "if I got fired today do I have what it takes
to bridge it through to the next opportunity, and would there be companies out
there in need and willing to hire me".

If you can't honestly answer that with "yes" you are either accommodated, or
running risks higher than you realize.

~~~
meghana_h
I agree 100% with this. Especially if one is the software industry, it is a
top priority to keep up with the new tech.

------
k4ch0w
The people you spend the most time with affect how you think and what you do.

~~~
madeuptempacct
I originally posted this separately, but then saw your post and am adding it
here. What you said and the below were some of the most profound realizations
for me, even though it seems so obvious, but the extremely high degree to
which this is true isn't that obvious.

\---

People are incredibly hard to change.

Spent half a year teaching someone programming. They told me they wanted to
learn, etc. Ended up doing most of the bootcamp work for them so I could
explain it to them, etc. This person had 5 day breaks where they didn't study
a single thing. This also goes with "look at what people do, not what they
say, or how they present themselves."

That also comes down to "don't waste time on shitty people." I used to spend
time with everyone because of naivety, then I realized just how precious that
time is and a lot of people just waste it.

~~~
RickS
Absolutely agree. One phrasing I heard that changed my mind a lot was "It's
hard work keeping your own life afloat. Be careful who you tie yourself to.
They are as likely to pull you down as you are to lift them up".

In one interpretation, that's a scary thought encouraging selfishness. In my
view, it's a pragmatic description of reality, encouraging judiciousness. I
still find great joy in helping others, sometimes at some expense to myself,
but I now feel a lot less bad about making value judgements before deciding if
such a thing is worthwhile, rather than feeling obligated to help everyone
that might want it.

------
winkywooster
How to run..

After I first started running and losing some weight, I became enthusiastic
about it. Then with the notions of 'more is better' and 'no pain, no gain', I
cranked up the mileage and pushed through the pain. But I learned a hard
lesson when I tore a calf muscle.

Since then I've learned that form and technique, consistent and gradually
harder practice, and getting expert help are necessary to really learn
something. Ten years later, and over 18k miles logged, I can say I know how to
run.

~~~
stuxnet79
I have to say the same. Especially when it comes to weight training and
running. I've developed some issues with my hip and I suspect it's due to
running (badly). Bad weight training pretty much wrecked my upper body. How
long did it take you to recover from your torn calf muscle? That sounds
intense.

~~~
madeuptempacct
Tight IT band + weak glutes = culprit for a lot of hip injuries.

~~~
winkywooster
Tight IT band is an indication of bad form.

~~~
brianwawok
Not necessarily. It also tends to go along with tight hamstring which everyone
who sits 10h a day is going to have without a lot of work.

~~~
winkywooster
True, tight hamstrings are a contributing factor, but not the sole reason for
IT band issues. If rolling out your IT band is a painful experience, it's an
indication that you're improperly loading your legs when running—it's a form
issue.

~~~
brianwawok
Or it is an indication that you need to foam roll more, and perhaps work on
some quad strength such as squats ;)

Running is one of those sports that people tend to think the 1 thing that
worked for them is the answer for everyone. It's not that simple. People have
hips with different shapes. People have legs of different lengths. People have
ankle damage from previous sprains. Good form helps for sure, but if you want
to claim that all running issues are related to form - I have a bridge to sell
you.

------
saltcod
That working in a big government setting just isn't for me. Doing
data/reporting stuff in healthcare, to be more precise.

After 4 long, long years drifting around in my job, crumbled self-esteem, some
mild-ish depression, I finally found another job and got out.

After a few months I realized that I was just 100% incompatible for the job I
was in — not that I was unqualified or any of those other words that could
also be true. I was simply incompatible.

I've learned to look at things a little better/clearer since then — evaluating
things through the lens of my core values and how I feel rather than through
the lens of imposter syndrome.

Maybe this is useful, maybe not :^)

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Could you elucidate the differences in the dynamics? I'm currently working
with a company that works for the government, and I'm experiencing a lot of
the same symptoms, so I'm wondering what the differences are that you see.

------
niccl
Fix the problem you can see then deal with what's left

I was working for a company that made lighting equipment for touring bands.
One band had decided they wanted the biggest lighting desk in the world (this
was in the early 80's). We cobbled together two of the company's latest
digital desks as master-slave, and it nearly worked. Two problems remained as
we got really close to the band's tour starting: a weird flickering in some of
the indicator LEDs in the slave, and the output level (controlling the lights
on stage) would sometimes wander around unpredictably.

We had a quick look and decided that the output level thing was a major issue
which had to be dealt with first. The LED flickering problem was a) minor, and
b) caused by a simple clocking problem which we could deal with later. We
spent 48 hours or more with no sleep, trying to fix the output level thing.
Got it just about useable, but not perfect.

The tour was due to start the next day so we decided to give up on the output
level problem and fix the LED flickering, so that there was only one issue,
albeit a bad one. Spent an hour fixing the clocking issue so that the LED's
were OK, and lo, the output problem was sorted.

If only we'd dealt with the simple problem first, then we'd have managed to
get some sleep!

And before you say that was a one off and bad luck or bad triaging or
something, I've used the same heuristic more than once and it's always paid

------
ponyous
I was 14, just released my first text based game (think simple travian) to the
world via national aggregation site (reddit of my nation at the time) got few
thousands sign ups and few active players.

I hosted the project on some PHP hosting who's owner was a guy I met while
playing online games. I edited and worked on the game live through some editor
that offered FTP connections.

Because I was 14 I didn't have a card and I had to go to the post office to
make a payment I missed it once and the dude shut my site off immediately &
deleted everything. No backups. Since I was editing remotely I didn't have
recent backup I had some old copy of the codebase. I never manually backed up
the database, I didn't even know what backup was probably... So a game died 2
months after it was launched :(

related memory: I didn't know how to configure a cron job so I asked the dude
if he can host me 1 machine open Opera on some url, right click and set
"Refresh every 60 seconds" (Versions before 12.00 had that)

~~~
the_clarence
On the story of backups, I bought a webcam when I was young and started doing
sketchs with my friends. We recorded so many videos, created our own tv shows
acted like hosts and so on. later, my computer was not working well with some
games, so I asked the place where I bought it to take a look. I came back a
few days ago and they told me they had formatted the hard drive. I was like
what? All my stuff was on there. I cried so much. Childhood trauma right here.
Now I have multiple backups of everything.

------
tryauuum
That mysqldump adds "DROP TABLE IF EXISTS" by default. So if you want to
backup and restore several rows, you are in trouble.

Not really the hard way because DROP TABLE isn't instantaneous on big tables.
So I managed to kill the query before the table was gone.

------
raesene9
Never write something in e-mail that you wouldn't be happy seeing forwarded to
the person you're talking about.

Always keep records of what you've said and agreed, people will have a
different recollection of events down the line, and a written record is very
handy at that point.

~~~
vl
I have a good one:

Give negative feedback in private email, then it gets forwarded to multiple
layers of management behind your back, then a single quote from this email out
of context is cut-n-pasted into your perf review few months later by
management. (Happened in big advertising company that also runs search
engine).

~~~
vl
The lesson of course is not to lie in emails, but not to work with asshole
managers.

------
kichik
A company is a company, not a family. It's about making money, not about
relationships. For better or worse, it's never really personal.

~~~
balladeer
My late realisation (and at a cost) may be related to yours - your coworker is
not your friend, better keep it that way.

~~~
Insanity
Another related one: having friends become colleagues can be challenging.

------
_bereanboarder
Before you get into a business partnership, while everyone is smiling and
optimistic, put in writing how the two of you will end this partnership should
the time ever come.

Things happen. They aren't who you think they are. Or maybe they suddenly
decide they don't want to lift a finger, but they still get 1/2 the profits.
And since it is a 50/50 partnership you can't even insist they let you buy
them out.

Or maybe they are a great partner but they die in a car wreck and their spouse
is a nightmare who just wants the business sold, now. Even if it wrecks your
life. Be very wary of 50/50 partnerships without clear escape clauses.

------
elorant
Sales. You know, as probably every programmer out there you finish your
product and you think that clients will start flocking in because you've build
such a fucking great service. And then reality hits you in the face and you
realize that the hard work just started. You have to go and talk face to face,
listen to their needs, adjust your service accordingly, pamper them because
they can't understand half of what you're saying, publish and then repeat.

The good thing is that once you get the grip of it you feel invincible. All
the fear and the doubt you used to have while building a product disappear
because now you know how to approach clients, and if you're smart enough you
won't even start building a product without first having some feedback from
potential clients.

------
schen57
Documentation is like sex. If it is good, it is good. If it is bad it is good

~~~
fhood
"Our code is self-documenting. If you need documentation then the code isn't
written well enough"

-Assholes who don't know what it is like to work with mature code bases.

~~~
itsreallyme

        "Our code is self-documenting. If you need documentation then the code isn't written well enough"
    
        -Assholes who don't know what it is like to work with mature code bases.
    

\- People who don't know how to write clean code

~~~
flatb

            "Our code is self-documenting. If you need documentation then the code isn't written well enough"
    
            -Assholes who don't know what it is like to work with mature code bases.
    
        - People who don't know how to write clean code
    

\- People who think that not only they figured out what 'clean code' even
means, but that everyone else will agree, thus single-handedly ending some 50+
years of heated industry-wide debate, numerous billion-dollar attempts by some
of the most talented people in the world, and troves of 8-dimensional mental
gymnastics about design patterns by way of a $21 ebook, a code review and some
blog posts

~~~
fhood
Not to mention thinking that clean sensible code is always an option. There
will always be something. It could be a kernel bug, it could be a quirk of an
external library, it could be just to get the bloody thing to link against
static libraries, but there will always eventually be an issue that requires a
workaround that doesn't make sense without context.

------
humbleMouse
Being in a leadership position in a software org usually involves going to
meetings all day and telling people bad news.

------
bairrd
Get everything in writing. EVERYTHING.

~~~
johnwheeler
Ha, I’ve learned the hard way that: By the time you invoke a contract, the
relationship is already in trouble.

~~~
wwweston
This is usually true. There's two saving graces, though:

1) Just having the contract sometimes gives people pause about what boundaries
they're willing to cross.

2) A contract can help you salvage things that are not the relationship once
the relationship has gone south if you choose too.

~~~
pmiller2
Keep in mind that #1 works, even if what’s in the contract is unenforceable.
Companies use this to their advantage a lot.

------
monstachess
1\. Not to naively trust others so very easily.

Which leads to... drastic change in your personality and that leads to..

2\. Being very assertive, dominant, outgoing, life of the party, charisma,
worldy wise etc.

I wish I was the same idealistic person I once was. I am definitely enjoying
life way better than ever before but I no longer am naive.

~~~
wallflower
Can you please expand on your transition? Was it something that felt like
acting at first? Did you give up “neediness”?

------
artificial
Always make backups. The little bit of time it takes will be a life saver if
anything transpires unexpected. Oh and don't deploy on Fridays.

~~~
peckrob
On this same note, _test_ your backups occasionally.

Untested backups are worse than no backups.

~~~
ci5er
Disaster recovery is hard. For startups, I finally learned to do this drill:
Restore the entire business to fully operational status on clean computers
from offsite backups in under 24 hours. You always hope you won't need it,
but...

------
bootlooped
You can never get back the time you waste. I'm talking on the years scale.

The fact that it's never too late to make positive change in your life doesn't
mitigate that.

~~~
GoToRO
Time is the ultimate luxury.

------
jackconnor
Accept all negative criticism advice as well as you possibly can. If it's just
someone being an asshole it's very easy to know that and just ignore, but if
it's real it's the most valuable feedback you can get.

~~~
java-man
This is not going to go well in the US or the British culture...

~~~
Bjartr
I'm an American and consider myself good at accepting criticism and using it
to better myself. I'm not sure what you're trying to say, could you explain?

------
kccqzy
I learned programming the hard way—by starting with imperative programming.

(Of course this doesn't apply to everyone, as I'm already a pretty
mathematical person, and functional programming just immediately clicked and
made sense. YMMV. In contrast, the first time I learned quicksort I spent an
entire afternoon before I made sense of all the swapping and
increment/decrement of array indices. In a way, I really hoped I hoped I would
be introduced to programming with a better textbook, say SICP, which doesn't
talk about assignment until one third into the book. It just suits my style so
much more.)

------
client4
Know when it's time to quit, and when to accept failure.

Putting hours, effort, and emotion into a person/project won't save it from
inevitable collapse if that's the direction it's headed in. Set a timeline,
create metrics, and if you aren't on a positive trending track, quit,
otherwise you'll just keep chasing something that will lead at best to
mediocrity.

------
Tistel
Don't read the marketing department's descriptions of the product. "Its an AI
driven, machines learning tuned, blockchain, smart contract jamboree!" (ok, I
added the jamboree part). News to me. Also, don't go on the the business trip
sales pitches. They literally just make up promises without asking the devs
the difficulty/time line.

------
debt
Business decisions are financial decisions but the narrative you will be fed
will be personal.

Open office plans, culture fits, promotions, etc. are disguised financial
terms made by someone in business. Open office means they're trying to save
money, culture fit means "how often will you listen to me" and promotion means
"up or out"

The quickest way to shut someone up or shut someone down, is to provide them
with numbers and facts corroborate by 2+ other people.

------
slimshady94
There's a limit to grinding it out alone. To grow as fast as possible, you
need to learn from those who have already walked your path - you need mentors
and good guidance. In both academics and business, social skills and gymming -
to go fast, go alone, and to go far, go together.

------
eranation
1\. Unit test everything, document everything, it is ALWAYS worth the cost (at
least for a minimal test + mini design/spec/javadocs and the likes)

2\. Don't do premature optimizations / Measure before optimizing

3\. Keep your cool when asked for estimates for something with unknown
requirements / unknown team. Losing your mind or temper is never worth it.

4\. Beware of the silver bullet new framework, right tool for the right job,
avoid they hype on one hand and learn to move on when a technology dies out.
(Hi Flash/VB/Cobol/Mainframe developers, I know you still have job security
for a few years... but not forever...)

------
cannabisceo
Either I'm your customer or you're my customer. All transactions with another
business should be buy/sell.

~~~
berbec
This one is great; easier to understand than the often quoted one. I shall
steal!

------
jtthe13
"You are not that special." Can be a shock to the ego when you leave a top
school, but if you take it the right way, it takes some pressure off.

------
czep
Always roll up your window when driving past the archery range.

~~~
tastyfreeze
I really need to know the story behind this.

------
ryandrake
The need for exponential back off when retrying a connection to a server.
Learned _after_ deploying to millions of client devices :)

~~~
grstearns
Exponential back-off is one of my favorite simple algorithms. Just remember to
set a sane upper limit, you don't need them to wait hours between tries.

I will sometimes use a "pseudo exponential" like 1,3,5,10,25,50,100 and hold
there. Of course, if you're trying to avoid collisions on a shared resource,
the classic algorithm is pretty good.

------
vfinn
That all my conventional-sounding musical ideas are easily captured by basic
music theory. Even though banging your head against the wall has been useful
in developing the ear, avoiding music theory doesn't make any sense since you
keep repeating those well-known patterns, and in the end you have to start
developing that pattern against pattern type of thinking instead of composing
note against note & note after note.

Edit: "in favor of" -> "instead of"

~~~
jmmcd
> in the end you have to start developing that pattern against pattern type of
> thinking in favor of composing note against note & note after note.

I think there is a typo, or this is ambiguous. Are you saying you _should_ use
"pattern against pattern type of thinking" (and what is that?) or that you
shouldn't? You _should_ use "note against note & note after note" or you
shouldn't?

~~~
vfinn
Sorry, meant to say "instead of" not "in favor of". I'll edit.

What I meant to say that if you haven't learned the proper classification
system that we now have in general music theory (dominant & tonic chords, sus
chords, and let's say basic modulation principles), you might walk a long time
in the dark looking for "that feeling" or "that continuation".

------
xkcd-sucks
Corporate politics is just as much a thing in startups as it is in large
companies, and owners are just as likely to screw over their employees (or
more likely, when it comes to equity).

Kind of like politics and petty concerns are a big thing in academia too.

------
csours
There are (at least) 3 sides to exercise: Strength, Cardio, and Stretching.
They are each at least as important as the others.

Go to the dentist. Even if you have great teeth.

~~~
AuthorizedCust
Stretching is probably mostly hype. E.g.,
[https://www.painscience.com/articles/stretching.php](https://www.painscience.com/articles/stretching.php)

~~~
madeuptempacct
Tell that to gymnasts and martial artists. I have seen the "science" of this
over the years, but I have also seen the practical fact that it's absolutely
unavoidable.

~~~
tralarpa
Gymnasts, martial artists, ballet dancers and some athlets (e.g. javelin
throwers) stretch to increase their range of motion because the latter is
beneficial for their activities. The effect is temporary (+) unless you start
at a young age and ruin your joints (-> China). If you don't belong to those
groups, stretching doesn't do much for you, as has been repeatedly pointed out
in various publications. The other benefits attributed to stretching, e.g. a
lower risk for injuries, are actually caused by the warming-up effect of the
stretching movements and can be also achieved, in a much safer way!, by some
simple exercises.

(Side note: When talking about the benefits of stretching, some people also
mention Yoga, but that's a different story and 99.999% of Yoga teachers and
practitioner don't have the slightest idea what they are doing.)

(+) That's the reason why you have the impression that you are stiff when you
skip stretching for one or two days.

~~~
madeuptempacct
Try squatting deep without being flexible. Squatting --> strength --> better
posture, metabolism, & bone density.

------
MrEfficiency
Make things pretty.

No amount of hard work and usefulness can amount to a beautiful product.

I have strong feelings about Lean Startup who told me to create a MVP, which
made me look like an amateur.

So, listen to the marketing people and wait to release a beautiful finished
product.

~~~
birdman3131
As a user I beg of you not to sacrifice usefulness and features for Pretty.

Seen way too may times where stuff was rewritten to look better but usability
suffered.

Case in point: Walmart recently redid their self checkouts. The new system
looks a lot better and I like it if it did not take 3 times as long to pay. It
even took forever compared to the old one to register cash being inserted. And
there were several complete lockups.

Recently it seems better so I believe they have been working on the back end
but for a while I would not even touch them

~~~
Humdeee
Waitmart takes even longer with these systems? I generally always go to
cashiers for that reason. I feel like I'm becoming the minority who would
rather deal with an actual person than an automated system most of the time,
and I develop automated software.

~~~
brianpgordon
I avoid the self-checkout because I don't appreciate the (perceived)
atmosphere of suspicion that you're trying to steal something.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Math.

Multivariable calculus and differential equations weren’t a part of my
undergraduate CS curriculum. Now that I’m doing an MEng in AI, I have to learn
the hard math I skirted by before.

I don’t have the time or money to take the proper math classes so I’m learning
everything myself. I have to figure out my own structure and timeline.

Without the math, I wouldn’t be much more than a technician when it comes to
AI. It’s worth the work.

------
poulsbohemian
It doesn't matter if they have money. It doesn't matter if they espouse
religion or any other outward signs of honesty. It doesn't matter what they
say. If you have any reason to believe they can't be trusted, even if it is a
silly gut feeling, then they can't be trusted. Nor can you give them any
possible wiggle room, like payment terms.

~~~
your-nanny
except that some people have great difficulty ever trusting again,
particularly after trauma. What then?

~~~
poulsbohemian
You put a big moat around things. IE: stronger, more painful contractural
terms. Cash up front payment terms. Process and procedure that make sure you
never get screwed again.

------
AnimalMuppet
When one of your children's behavior abruptly goes from more-or-less normal to
almost completely out of control, do your best to _find out why_ , rather than
just trying to manage the situation.

------
oneshoe
How to successfully roll out a product/site.

Released "Version 2" which was an entire newly built system that we worked on
for an entire year (we also thought we were "agile" btw). This completely
crashed and around 10K users were unable to use the product for almost 2
weeks. We did plenty of things right but we also failed.

Biggest Lessons learned: 1\. Release features and changes in manageable
incremental chunks 2\. Load test, load test, load test - just do it! Yeah,
sure, your app worked with your one user when there is 1kb of data in your
datastore - what about 5000 users accessing it with 10GB in your data store?
3\. Get and use an APM - when it feels like everything is on fire you'll need
to know where the fire is coming from 4\. One way changes that can't be rolled
back are the devil. Take the time needed to make sure you can roll back -
manageable incremental changes help with that.

~~~
jackthetab
What is an APM in this context? Google just tells me about Alternative Payment
Methods.

~~~
cosmie
Application Performance Management/Monitoring.

New Relic, AppDynamics, and DynaTrace are a few vendors in this area.

------
JeanMarcS
Start a company with a friend will bite you back one day (for me 20 years
after the company starts !)

~~~
meiraleal
A 20 years partner is a great partner.

~~~
makapuf
25 years after, definitely. 20 years after it might be brutal and personal.

------
jackconnor
When coding, learn to type fast and not use autofill. Your code will be better
and you will retain the code in your mind it much, much longer.

------
hyperbolejoe
Playing with stocks. I decided to try to win big in the market. Took my IRA
money out of index funds, and started trying to play some stocks. Lost big on
one, panicked, and got out. My timing was awful. That stock eventually
recovered to my purchase point after six months, but I put my money into
another sure thing based on my research. Lost more. At least this time I did
not panic. Now I'm trying to make up for it by playing the long term on a
stock that should bounce back, but I'm content if it doesn't. Maybe it'll take
a year or two, but I should at least be back to where I was. Then I'll be
moving back into index funds.

------
thisone
Anything dealing with date/time will take 4 times longer than you expect and
involve 10 times as many discussions as anything else.

------
enf
Never move from a neighborhood you like to one you don't like, because you'll
never be able to get back in.

------
gdiggity
Make sure you put a tax distribution requirement in our LLC's operating
agreement if you have a partner. I'm on the hook for a huge amount of revenue
with no money from the company to pay the IRS.

------
sp527
Unless you're a founder or you personally know and trust the capability of the
founder(s) recruiting you, max out cash and ignore options.

Also, unless you've been especially good at proving your value to people
(either through credentialing or having worked with someone directly or with
someone they trust), no one is going to come to you with an offer to hop
aboard a rocketship. Assume by default that any offer made to you is unfair
and skewed to favor the person making it. Negotiate accordingly.

------
doctorRetro
If you're going to hop a fence to take a shortcut to your friend's house to
play Mario Party after your last winter exam, check how deep the snow on the
other side is first.

------
ModernMech
I learned the hard way that sociopaths and psychopaths are real, they're not
all monstrous murderers, and some of them you may even call friend or family.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Amen to that. And some of them are super good at appearing normal even
charming.

~~~
ModernMech
Most of them! That is their deadliest trait. They've a lifetime of experience
trying to disguise themselves among normal people. Their ability to cloak
themselves is how they prey on you.

------
ggregoire
I learned the hard way than using a Macbook Air 11" for 10 hours a day during
1 year was a bad idea. I now have a small myopia and have to wear glasses.

------
peckrob
The importance of having a plan and smart [0] goals. This has manifested
itself over and over in my life.

Take more time to plan up front, save yourself a lot of time and effort wasted
if you don't.

[0] [https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-
goals.htm](https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm)

------
bobosha
No matter what you do, you will end up p*ssing off someone. No matter what.

~~~
ModernMech
Corollary: stop caring what other people think. The sooner you manage that,
the better off you'll be.

------
catwind7
That end to end tests for critical business functions will save your ass the
moment you, your team, or your test suite fails to spot a bug.

I once added a line of code that did not execute in test environments because
it involved a request to hosts that were only available on staging and
production. So the tests were obviously fine but shit went south in
production.

------
dsnuh
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned (with legal representation).

------
Silixon
You are the only person who will recognize and value your own
overachievements. Prevailingly, others will view your efforts and either think
nothing of them or wonder why anyone would go to such lengths.

If you're going to go above and beyond, you should seriously question why you
are doing so. When in doubt, do it for yourself.

------
kposehn
1\. Delegate

2\. You can’t help everyone

3\. When you fail, let it go and move on

~~~
kposehn
4\. Don’t be afraid

------
yc-kraln
How to be a good husband.

It took pushing my marriage to nearly the point of breaking to realize that my
obsession with work, lack of participation in the house, and
aggressive/demanding interpersonal communications was only leading to a dead
end.

------
superasn
You don't have to be nice to everyone all the time. It's better to be grumpy,
opinionated and even a nay sayer sometimes than to fake smile through
everything.

Because doing the later can give you physical symptoms like real back pain and
migraines (collectively known as TMS) and millions of people suffer from it,
get surgeries, medicine yet don't know that their persona is the cause of
their physical pains.

This is what I learned the hard way after suffering from such aches and pains
daily for nearly two decades and geting better quickly by just understanding
the most basic thing about how our mind and body works.

~~~
tempotemporary
Could you elaborate how being nice can cause a physical pain?

~~~
superasn
It's all there in the amazing book by Dr. John Sarno called the divided mind
which I wrote about here (1).

It's the clash between id and the super-ego that causes it and there are
thousand (if not more) people who got better from this pain.

If you search google for "TMS pain personality" you will find thousands of
articles but this seems like a good start as any (2).

Unfortunately it's not for everyone because you really need to have an open
mind (it's okay if you're a skeptical though) to unlearn your pain.

(1)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17980964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17980964)

(2)
[http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/TMS_Personality_Traits](http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/TMS_Personality_Traits)

------
h1d
Trading and to an extent, savings.

Bought Bitcoin worth about $30k over time which turned into $120k after a bull
run after a awhile and I put my foot into leverage trading without knowing
what I was doing. Kept losing and got margin called until I emptied myself. If
I had kept it without a single trading, it would've been around $300k today.

That gave me a pretty bad blow when my company went into not so good state and
my income took a hit, I no longer had any spare money and I've learned to
trade after I know what I'm doing and split your savings instead of going all
on your single favorite financial vehicle.

------
devhead
1\. question everything.

2\. trust no one, not even yourself.

3\. hard work, is money in the bank.

4\. with two paths in the road... take the scarier one.

5\. pay off your debts faster than expected.

6\. give more than you get.

7\. listen more than you speak.

8\. always be prepared, to find another job.

9\. love unconditionally.

10\. try not to think in absolute terms.

11\. everyone has a story

edit: format

------
whitfin
tl;dr _always_ make production setup the same as staging.

We once had a production-only crash inside our Elasticsearch setup (we had
written plugins). On preproduction it was fine, development fine, etc. But on
production it would crash with NoSuchMethodError coming from the Jackson
library (I think it was floatValue()). After several hours and rolling
back/forward, I took a shot that there was something clashing with the class
in the JVM (which I didn't know was possible at the time as I was a fresh
dev). After backtracing for a while, it turned out that our production ES
environment had some AWS autodiscovery plugin installed. This plugin depended
on the AWS SDK, which depended an AWS common library, which depended on a
Jackson version _just_ old enough to not have floatValue(). It appears that
this was being loaded first, causing our plugin to crash because we were
calling a method which didn't exist in their version.

Turns out that I actually filed a ticket for the SDK to update
([https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java/issues/411](https://github.com/aws/aws-
sdk-java/issues/411)) but I think we ended up just migrating away from
floatValue() altogether. As a younger developer, this definitely opened my
eyes to the need to ensure parity across test environments (I remember this
happened whilst I was on a tz that had me trying to debug this at 4am).

------
magtux
Grokking is not enough, go through the details. Spent weeks debugging a silent
memory corruption on an 8-bit processor due to the incorrect usage of strtok
in an SCPI parser.

~~~
hinkley
?

Have you read Stranger in a Strange Land? I suspect someone else has taught
you that word and they did it badly. To grok is to understand something at a
profound, visceral level.

------
makapuf
Management can be nice. As a dedicated coder, in depth, work hard and lean
code better, going into management can give you the levers to bring others
what you wanted to have and just be meta. But don't stop coding just do it
meta. You can be a hacker and just manage people to do what's needed. Not all
managers are assholes. Be prepared to talk more and understand more.

------
RickS
The danger of overly ambitious goals is their brittleness, and when they
break, they break all the way. Much like "the best camera is the one you
have", the best diet is the one you keep, and the best course is the one
you'll attend. It's better to set yourself up for modest success than
spectacular failure.

\-------

Community matters. Relationships with other people matter. When I thought
strong work would scratch my every itch, it's because I'd yet to discover the
contours of other ways of life one might have. I was fine being an antisocial
workaholic at 20. As I approached 30, my face went white as some unspoken
emotional thing in me began to realize what I'd missed. But you can come back
from that, and it's very worth it. If you're willing to suss out the rules of
engagement and play it straight, the world is happy to have you.

\-------

Western religion and American conservatism (archetypically, not the current
implementations) have interesting and important insights about society and
conduct, and they're things that off-the-shelf liberal culture suppresses or
misunderstands, not from raw malice, but from calcified disinterest.

Revisiting the bible and last-generation conservative ideology with the idea
that it might be an imperfect set of abstractions with something to teach
rather than a guidebook for cruelty to be read literally led to a lot of
personal growth, since the stories are archetypes about different types of
conduct and their potential consequences. These stories aren't always right,
and aren't always useful, but they were a second voice that, living in a
coastal/liberal/progressive filter bubble, I had never heard. Seeing and
understanding the "best" of what the right thinks, instead of the most
"otherizing", led me to a worldview that feels more balanced, more centrist,
and less polarized. It makes me assume positive intent in more people, and
pick sides and fight less often.

I credit Jordan Peterson's lecture courses for packing these in a way that my
progressive athiest self didn't immediately reject.

\-------

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
negotiation/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

Everything @Patio11 says about salary is true. I missed out on gigantic sums
of money, but later got them back on the table. The mental models in the
article have, on a 5 year timeline, resulted in serious earning growth with
absolutely no negative consequences.

~~~
kup0
I think the calcified disinterest in some of us comes from being raised in
(and eventually leaving) a Western religious and conservative environment.

~~~
RickS
Certainly true. The pointed rejection of all forms of religion after having
been wronged by it is common, and Slate Star Codex makes mention of it in a
note that's somewhat relevant to this topic.

My personal hunch is that it mirrors an experience my friends have described
about sushi and coffee, neither of which I enjoy. Apparently, bad versions of
those things are unpalatable if you don't know what would make them good. If
you start there, you wonder "why the hell does anyone consume this". But once
you've had the very good versions, you "get it" and know what you should be
experiencing when you go back to the lesser versions, and more easily
"forgive" their imperfect representations of a thing you enjoy.

I've definitely had that experience with religion. I grew up in a family that
was ambivalent to such things, failing to understand why anyone would care at
all. Then as an adolescent I saw all the horror, at home and abroad, wrought
by religion, and rejected it as superstitious mumbo-jumbo at best, and a
pretense for violence, bigotry, and a return to the stone-age at worst. When I
finally managed to encounter a packaging that let me see what might be good
about it, I was grateful to finally understand what the fuss was about, even
if I'm not all the way bought in.

I now have approximately the view that Sam Harris[1] does:

"I still considered the world’s religions to be mere intellectual ruins,
maintained at enormous economic and social cost, but I now understood that
important psychological truths could be found in the rubble."

[0] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/09/all-debates-are-
bravery...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/09/all-debates-are-bravery-
debates/)

[1] [https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-
one/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/)

~~~
kup0
Yeah, I don't disagree- but I do sometimes wonder if those same psychological
truths could have been derived without said religions. That said, I did read
Harris' book Waking Up and thought it was interesting and his thought was that
Buddhism did provide some specific/keen insights on psychology and the mind
that we really haven't encountered or arrived at anywhere else, at least not
before Buddhism did. So I think my stance would be near the statement you
quoted too.

I do have a passing interest in Buddhism (but not as an adherent, though I do
meditate, read about, and appreciate some of it) though both Buddhism and the
better forms of Christianity I still don't think are for me (nor is any
organized religion) but I can appreciate parts of them from a distance and
those that are still adherents, if their actions follow positive paths from
them. I think I've matured since my journey out of the faith began, so it's
easier now to be a bit more measured (yet still firm) in my rejection of it.

------
incadenza
That I typically only learn the hard way.

------
php_is_okay
Respect that stress is a real thing. Don't stress yourself too much. It will
fuck you up in the long run

------
fastbeef
Most of us will be extremely handsomely rewarded to carefully build something
that will be torn down within a few years and replaced with something new.
Usually because someone made a PowerPoint where a made up number was smaller
than a different, slightly less, made up number.

------
crb002
Chesapeake Bay is not in a costal county list of hurricane zones because it
isn't in a county.

------
kluck
Do not get blinded by enthusiasm. Think on your own.

I had a startup, co-founder persistet on bad tech, never stood up to him.
Startup failed - and all for the wrong reason. I basicly had two choices:
speak up or leave and I did neither, dragging along. I will never do that
again!

------
feydaykyn
That sometimes, there's nothing to learn, only the obligation to make either
bad choice 1 or bad choice 2. Both will bring regrets and negative
consequences of their own for a long time, if you're lucky, longer if you're
not.

------
Stronico
1\. Never combine invoices - accounting bugs are difficult to spot and even
harder to agree on. 2\. Eye contact and thanking people mean more than you
might think 3\. Be wary of sales/persuasion people with good peripheral vision

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Could you explain #3?

~~~
Stronico
It's just something I've noticed over the years. Personal charisma as it
relates to sales/persuasion/compliance correlates with peripheral vision.

I went through a period in 2012 where I did more negotiating (car buying and
lots of contract negotiations) than I've ever done before and noticed that the
more personally charismatic they were the greater the ability to focus on me
while being visually aware of what was going on around them.

I don't know of any greater meaning behind it but I've noticed a correlation
then and since.

~~~
Stronico
And to clarify the "wary" part - the higher the charisma the less skeptical
you will be of the person you're negotiating with.

------
theshrike79
Burnout is a real thing.

One round of SSRIs later I now know how to handle my stress levels and say no.

------
tmaly
Always read the fine print before you sign.

This has bitten me so many times. The last I could recall was a car lease
where the salesman has told me the overage cost on miles was 10 cents a mile.
Turned out it was 20 cents a mile.

------
tyingq
The closer you get to death:

\- you care less about work and money

\- you care more about family and relationships

~~~
your-nanny
I've injured myself before, so that I was relatively helpless, and found that
to be true. Maybe because I accepted that I had nowhere to go nothing to do
except to let my kids sit on my back watching perp and the big wide world.

------
methusala8
Always have a exit plan before you begin.

This sounds like commonsense for most people. But I learnt this the hard way
while drifting through my 20's in a mediocre career. Still rebuilding after
going back to college.

------
Humdeee
When asked for a time estimate, give 2-3x longer, possibly more if you can.

------
brightball
How not to run a contract development business during a recession. :)

------
rrival
Make sure sales compensation is very closely tied to performance, i.e. don't
put salespeople on a vesting schedule tied only to time passing.

------
Dowwie
The only useful policy is the one that is followed

------
Delmania
Choosing a spouse or life partner is a major decision. Don’t rush into it. If
you did, have the strength to end it.

------
dougmwne
Your reach should exceed your grasp. Bigger dreams, bigger goals, bigger
risks, bigger wins.

------
nextlevelwizard
Keeping high quality in a code base either requires dedicated person/team.

~~~
makapuf
And management. Look for quality management.

~~~
ju-st
The best direct manager is of little use when all the levels above him/her are
garbage.

~~~
makapuf
N levels or garbage and 1 good level is not quality management.

------
throwaway180118
PHP. I'm refactoring something I wrote a 13 years ago and it's hell.

------
johnwheeler
Don’t fish without a license

~~~
RickS
I'm really curious about this story.

~~~
poulsbohemian
I don't know johnwheeler's story, but I got talking to an Oregon game warden a
couple weeks back. His story was that the state is handing out jail time and
big fines in certain circumstances. What he described was work parties (large
families, for example) coming from as far away as Seattle to pick up clams on
the Columbia river. This particular type of clam is in vast numbers, but it is
an invasive species. So you would think the state would be thankful to have
them gone, right? What he described though is that the state is concerned
about the spread to other bodies of water - so they want them left right
there, rather than transported and potentially dumped somewhere else to
spread. Given that these groups are collecting them for restaurant sales, I
suspect that is an unlikely scenario, but there you have it. He said the
biggest ticket he'd written was on the order of tens-of-thousands of dollars.
So apparently this can be a hard lesson to learn.

------
wildleaf
Why are there so many duplicate responses in this thread?

~~~
RickS
Because we all want to reject a lot of the same inconvenient truths of the
world, and when we finally stop, it makes such an impact that we're excited to
share. If 100 people instead of 2 tell me the same thing is important, I think
that's more exciting than redundant.

~~~
wildleaf
I understand that but I meant there are a lot of the same accounts making
multiple of the same/slightly altered comment.

------
settings11
C Programming. Did it on the CLI while there were IDEs.

------
Caillebotte
Don't build rocket fuel in your house.

------
walrus01
Quantity has a quality all of its own.

------
jordic
zope, the zca and plone. But so happy to jad discovered these awesome tools :)

------
alexashka
Everything worth learning.

------
jscholes
Python.

------
pixelmonkey
C.

------
aaaaaaaaaab
It isn’t the most capable person who gets promoted. It’s the person who can
make their superiors believe they’re the most capable.

~~~
RickS
I've got a slightly different take, though I think they have some overlap:

Capability for a job is more than raw competence, which is why most people
reject the Brilliant Asshole, even when that person is genuinely brilliant.

I've seen some inarguably mediocre workers get some great roles – and I've
worked alongside of some of them. And I loved every minute. If you're cranking
out 65% of the work and make the team 400% more enjoyable to be on, that's a
worthy form of force-multiplication.

The best teambuilders wield this principle smartly instead of meritocratically
rejecting its existence.

This is a great thing to know in job interviews, and lots of otherwise
irrational-looking hiring behavior becomes sane when viewed through this lens.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You're both right. A person can be a force multiplier for the team even if
their direct output is low. But I've also seen people simply bullshitting
their way into better projects and positions.

------
madeuptempacct
Someone told me something along the lines of "Every event in your life can
change your life entirely - you get into Harvard or you don't, you get the job
or you don't, you win the tournament and go on to become a champion, or you
give up on the sport when you lose. Every little decision can be a fork in
your life, though most aren't."

Sure, it's oversimplified, sure some "bad-seeming" things are good in the long
run, etc. But I find the fork part interesting to thing about - the fact that
one little thing can spiral your life of in a completely different direction.

~~~
kluck
I see this more clearly in hindsight. By pure accident I ended up in software
development: My mother found this university, I did not have anything else on
my mind at the time, just started studying, graduated and here I am 10+ years
later professional sw dev. In school I was much more into arts and crafts so I
never really anticipated that I would end up. All because of a small decision
back then... ridiculous really ;) Some people really think they are in control
of their lives ...

------
theandrewbailey
Agreed. Some advice from Mr. Peterson:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLvd_ZbX1w0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLvd_ZbX1w0)

~~~
madeuptempacct
The fact that you are calling him "Mr" Peterson says a lot of depressing
things about you.

~~~
cercatrova
What is the context of this comment? I don't know who Jordan Peterson is or
what he's done.

~~~
dghughes
There's a video from the Munk Institute where Jordan Peterson, Stephen Fry and
two other people debate whether political correctness is good or bad.

[https://www.munkdebates.com/The-Debates/Political-
Correctnes...](https://www.munkdebates.com/The-Debates/Political-Correctness)

