Thank you for your reply. I'm not a native speaker and find your writing style quite intriguing, which always makes me wonder "what does this person read?". Could you suggest a couple of your favourite books?
Apologies for this public private message, there seems to be no contact info in your profile.
thank you, they are of an era, but read something by W. Sommerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Robertson Davies, P.G. Wodehouse, the economist and weekend FT newspaper columnists. add Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis, Stephen Fry, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Douglas Hofstader, and Douglas Adams. Do a pass over poetry, so Blake, Auden, and Kipling and try to remember anything funny. Then forget all of it and argue on the internet for 30 years.
If you found this article interesting, definitely give "Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future" a read. One of the most eye-opening books I've read in the past few years.
If this is your first kid, keep in mind that the negative emotions you may be feeling are amplified a lot by all the exhaustion - physical and mental - a new baby brings.
FWIW, in one of my previous jobs, in a company with 1.5K employees, there was this engineering architect with great insights, deep understanding of the overall architecture, and true impact across the board. I would always follow the slack threads he was contributing to as there was always something to learn in there. It took me by extreme surprise when I learned he was completely blind.
I wish the best to you, your kid, and your family.
Semi-related: I guess some companies have already started augmenting their search with the use of LLMs. If you've worked on a similar project, what is your (very) high-level architecture? Did you see a noticeable difference in relevance and query time?
Genuine question - could someone give some insight on why the post was flagged? I found the article interesting and it wasn't my intention to divide the audience. If anything, I believe lots of the comments here contribute positively in forming a more educated and all-round view on the matter.
It is clear you are only trying to help - and honestly, thank you for that - but it is also clear (to me) you are making too many assumptions about us and our backgrounds. Simply put, we are both pretty decent engineers in our domains but also clueless re: how to structure a business. And it doesn't help that startup wisdom is very limited where we are now based.
The reason why it didn't sound like a red flag is that I'm not a founder, market fit has already been established, and google results suggest that 5% is a great deal in such cases. So the potential of going up to 9% sounds even greater to me.
My unknown unknowns are more than my known unknowns though, hence the post.
The described terms appear to be a red flag because there doesn't seem to be any good reason to reduce your quota of the company after a peak at three years: you are going to have a large share of almost nothing, then if everything goes well a smaller share of a thriving company. It is clearly not in your interest, so it must be in your friend's interest. To avoid giving away your equity for nothing you could just accumulate shares progressively and your friend could be entitled (or even obliged) to buy some of them at a guaranteed high price.
How, and how badly, your friends will fail you is an unknown unknown and unknown unknowns are a reason to design contracts for the worst case and write them in the most robust and comprehensive way; if you are clueless about how to structure a business, hire a lawyer (and I mean your lawyer, not your friend's one). Everything you don't analyze, discuss and specify is a risk.
For example, what happens if after two year you need to stop working there? Are you going to get shares or options? Options to buy, to sell or both? At what price and with what taxation? With the same schedule as others, or with divergent incentives? What happens if the company is bought? Do you have proper limited liability? In what situations more shares or more options would cause you to spend more?
That's an extremely myopic and immature view of what management is. You have probably only worked with incompetent managers and your experiences reduce a role that can be both stressful and complex to nothingness.
Ironically, competent managers also make it look easy. Because they must understand that their mood, behavior and what they say can really impact the morale of their reports and their relationships in the organization, many display a calm and professional demeanor. To the untrained, this outward apperance obscures the fact that they work very hard to position their team for success; and navigate, mitigate or repel shitstorms.
Exactly, what merit is there to putting a manager that pushes failure onto the team? Might as well have the team itself report to senior management if one is too eager to get out of the way.
After moving to the UK in 2016, I found my first job in London via Who's hiring. I formed deeply meaningful, very strong relationships with some of the amazing people I was fortunate enough to meet there.
Does anyone have any source (books/videos/open source projects) on backend development for multiplayer games? The scale and real-time aspect of it seems like a fascinating subject.
Apologies for this public private message, there seems to be no contact info in your profile.