

The Paul Dacus collection - jfolkins
http://thepauldacuscollection.tumblr.com/

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jfolkins
How did this happen?

@PaulDacus99 is in the same hacking community I am. I have never met the guy
IRL. I watched his hilarious tweets scroll across my screen for two solid
days. You could tell he felt like he had been put through the wringer.

After I got done laughing, I realized that a lot of what was said resonated
with me. There was value underneath the hilarity. And it made me wish I had a
book of small sagely pieces of advice, that I could call upon when making
tough choices.

So when @PaulDacus99 meme appeared, that really started to take on the look of
what I was after. Internally, I started to compile his thoughts into a "How
to: Not Get F*cked [Startup Edition]" type of book. And I really like that
idea. Better yet, I wished I owned the book 10 years ago.

What can offer?

If you have anecdotes of value, whether a coder, business dev, or VC, feel
free to share. Please obfuscate and anonymize them. Names really aren't
important, just the lessons learned. Ideally these are rooted in the view
point of how you personally failed or failed to know, this adds weight to the
lesson.

If you have mentor's or blogs that you read or talk to that help in your
education of making sound career and business decisions, feel free to also
voice those. I'll try to build a list from which people can start learning
from.

If they are concise enough, tweet them to @PaulDacus99, it looks like his meme
is taking requests.

Hopefully this all makes sense, thanks for reading.

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pluies
I don't always spot things that look like memes on HN...

But when I do, I don't really understand what's going on.

~~~
jfolkins
I've always thought the most powerful education is subversive! So here is the
first edu-meme. Buzzworthy? Maybe. Smart? Arguable ;-)

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5hoom
_“IF YOU HAVEN’T PUT OUT A MAJOR FEATURE (no, not MINOR) IN 6 MONTHS, YOU
NEVER WILL. You are coding a mudball and MUDBALLS HAVE NO FEATURES”_

Outstanding :)

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BerislavLopac
Hm. This one: "CEO 101: When you say COME TO ME WITH PROBLEMS and no one
shows, THERE ARE PROBLEMS EVERYWHERE."

I would rephrase it as: "CEO 101: When you say COME TO ME WITH PROBLEMS and no
one shows, THE PROBLEMS ARE ALREADY WITH YOU."

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kahawe
Here is a fact that will hold true no matter where you are working and whether
it is the smallest, most promising little startup or the biggest governmental
behemoth, whether you are just a low-level code grunt or the CxO:

Do not ever put yourself in a situation where you are blindly giving and
bleeding into projects or the company because the chances are oh-so-incredibly
promising and you blindly threw all caution and personal limits overboard. No
matter how awesome the chances, you need to know where your limits are,
whether they are financial or personal and you need to know what you are
getting out of it right this moment. Not all "compensation" is exclusively
monetary. There are a lot of other things you could be getting out of it. But
think of it as investing your time, energy and resources and ask yourself what
really are the things you are getting in return? This is not charity, this is
work - no matter how much passion is involved. (And even people working in
charity get some very real returns; they are by no means all altruistic.)

Yes, people WILL lie to you (for their own advantage) and they'll give you
lots of brave talk to get you to hold on, so see it for what it is and do not
let it affect or cloud your judgement. Whatever it is, you need to make the
situation work FOR YOU in whatever situation you are currently in. Don't make
it work for that one glorious point in the future and then keep holding and
clinging on and totally forget about the path leading there and the very real
possibility of failure. It has to be viable and sustainable (for YOU) now and
each turn where it is not, each turn where you are giving more or too much:
take that turn consciously and know exactly why you are still giving and
bleeding into it, understand your motivations and accept them or otherwise do
NOT do it.

These decisions won't be easy but be honest with yourself and realistic and
understand all your time and energy as a very valuable resource you are giving
away, so it is just fair you are getting something in return - whatever that
something might be. And on the upside: there are a lot of other chances out
there. There hardly are that many romantic "only one shot" situations in real
life.

Do not ever put yourself blindly into those situations where later on you will
end up being the one who got completely screwed over and all you have left is
your rage.

