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Schools are nominally about learning but actually about a whole of other stuff -- it's a non-goal to get better or revolutionize it, so that's the main blocker for actually getting better at teaching students.

Parents want their kids to get into college, admins want to keep the parents at bay, teachers are trying to get by, unions want teacher protections, etc. There's no QBR where people look at the stats and iterate.

What's the story around getting into YC in 2019 and then launching in '24? I'm guessing there were some interesting pivots along the way ...

Interviewing is a skill and via the right practice you can get better at it. I went down that path and got much better at it. Some things to think about:

- you can do practice interviews with peers, some people will be good and some will be bad. Anyway, record them, play them back, take notes on how to get better, and repeat.

- get a list of sample questions, all of them, and figure out through some thought what the best answer to each is, and then drill on that. I used Anki, made hundreds of cards

- learn about MECE and make your answers MECE compatible

YMMV but I was able to really make a leap via some deliberate practice over the course of a couple months.

Every company I’ve worked at in tech in the SF bay area has at a minimum been completely tolerant of LGBTQIAP+, to having dedicated employee resource groups, so these companies exist. My rec would be: not to bring it up in the interview, not because you are hiding it but because it is not relevant in that phase. Either pre or post interview you can check out the company to see if they fit.

How is it justified to not include investment income channeled into savings as not part of overall savings rate? Money is fungible after all.

Obviously giving life advice based on a couple paragraphs is a little suspect, but it sounds like you have some technical skills and are interested in security, so why not just go in for that? Some thoughts:

- security is really hot right now, my last role was a PM for security, many many companies have serious challenges in this area right now

- people who are in it really love talking about it, it would be pretty easy to talk to some people in the field and see what’s a good fit

- speaking of security, there are so many roles it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a role for you. Some are really technical, some have 0 coding at all (like program management)

- nobody wants to hire a downer, so work on your confidence game. Or learn to fake it

- consider some certs or some other LinkedIn bait to get recruiters to contact you, applying directly seems like a waste of time generally

- think about your narrative, e.g. you aren’t lost, while you were working you realized that you were really into security and have spent the last X amount of time skilling up on it

- don’t worry about comparing yourself to others, just try to get a little better everyday

- think about how you can get 1% better today in security, and do it, then repeat

- same as above, but for interviewing, attracting recruiters, and also working on your headspace

- nobody ever follows this but use Anki to build skill mastery for everything

- if you are weak in an area but consistenly add in 50 cards a day then you’ll get good fast

That’s my take on it anyway. Good luck. The universe wants you to succeed. Hiring managers are hoping that you are the one that can solve their problems. Recruiters are rooting for you so they can get their bonuses, managers are rooting for you to make them look good. I’m rooting for you and I don’t even know you! And so on.

This is impossible to answer without more information. How much money do you need? What’s your personality like? Were there any programming adjacent roles you thought were interesting?

Is your question about saas or white label saas? There are many saas moats, but I can’t think of any for white label saas.

I feel very fortunate to have landed a non technical faang role early in the year. Simply applying never worked but when I was recruited I always made it to the final round if I wanted to. The whole process took a lot longer than before. I really recommend doing lots of mock interviews, drills, and other prep. Think 20 hours a week until you get the job.

In a business there are profit centers and cost centers. Life is better when you work in a profit center. Having worked in security this general rule applies.

As someone non-technical grinding interview prep has been a game changer for me. So I would say yes, probably. Figure out what questions could be asked, then practice via study, mock interviews, and Anki. There’s only so many questions they can ask, and if you practice them all and are fluid then you will be in great shape.

Look them up on linked in or google the jd for reposts

Thank you for writing this comment so I didn’t have to.

As an additional piece, customize the resume to the job description as much as possible.

I worked on Birthday Cards, one of the apps listed out. Warms my cold pm heart to know that something I worked on was vaguely known about by high level Apple execs.

At the time it was hugely advantageous to have a native app linked to fb, I remember the week where we made it and released v1, we were the #1 app in lifestyle instantly.

What’s the issue with GDPR? If it is similar to other Apple products where data is collected / processed at the edge, then no more issues than anything else they do.