davidamcclain

Quitting your old job seems like a very sane thing to have done. Your position now is unrelated to your position before. By that I mean quitting your job was one event, and what you did afterwards was another. If the current situation isn't working out for you, it's not because you left the previous (horrible) situation, it's that you've unfortunately found yourself in another horrible situation.

In other words, deciding to quit your old job was probably a good idea. If going freelance isn't a good idea for you it doesn't invalidate the idea of quitting your job. It just means you have to come up with a new idea.

I feel for you though man, freelancing was tough. Especially if you made as many mistakes in it as I did. From what you say however, I wouldn't have stayed very long at your old company.

I agree that some sort of cushion/runway is very important. But why do you suggest 12 months? Is the idea that you can spend 6-8 months making no money chasing around contracts and then you've got 6-4 months to find a job?

I'm sure I saw that a long time ago. It's just a landing page to explain how businesses can use Facebook (i.e. with ads or pages etc), right?

> surely a harder working software engineer will make more money than a lazy one

"Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it" Walter Chrysler

I always thought that it was the lazy programmers and engineers who got more done because they always sought out the quickest/easiest ways to complete a task. Ergo it's the lazy ones who are the most productive and therefore valuable?

(Or have I just been beguiled by an old wife's tale?)

As a colleague said "Wow, you can type really fast... for someone who only uses two fingers".

Now he's exaggerating a bit, but I am a slow typer that predominately uses index, middle and thumb. Now, I get stuff done, I'm a pretty smart coder but typing speed, to me, feels like a huge bottleneck. By far the most important area I need to improve on.

Unlearning bad habits is hard, any advice?

It's a shame they're just static images, the sound effects that go along with the GUIs are the thing I get the biggest kick out of!

I don't understand any of that (finance n00b). Can you let me in on the joke?

If Einstein were around today, I wonder if he'd be working on Wall Street?