lostctown

This is a great goal to strive for. But to play devil's advocate, not all ideas and scopes are clear until several iterations in. Furthermore, some software projects carry around specific dependencies necessarily. If these dependencies are prone to change then there goes your stability. Given enough dependency incongruity, all projects die after a long enough period of non-maintenance.

You are totally correct by the way. I do agree that most software creators hand wave away the potential for their dependencies change faster than they can maintain their own product.

Right. I'm just saying it should be clearer. Ex: I want to have a list of accounts, netflix style, that I'm presented with on an empty chrome window. If in fact multiple identities don't merge data implicitly in anyway than this is just a UI issue.

But I have a hard time believing google truly partitions everything in a multi account setup.

I wish interfaces were more straight up about their intentions and made it easier to implement account level partitions. For work I love Google's magic tracking effects, but at 1 am, hell no.

Done this. Eventually one account always becomes my main account and I'm back to square one. I don't care enough about reddit to keep up with 2 separate accounts.

I'm logged out by default and only log in to comment, which is rare. I don't like leaving my username up for display if a friend/family member has to borrow my laptop for something. I've engaged in a couple of communities that are a little more counter-cultural than my peers.

I append "reddit" to any query not meant for a productive task. Except now the internet is mostly reddit for me, which kinda bums me out. Especially given the new js-heavy design. In 2019, if I want reliable search about something I know nothing about I must first search on google, then try again with "reddit" appended, then change www.reddit.com to old.reddit.com, then parse through what are often questionable answers from anon users, possibly still influenced by marketers, and then maybe, I get the answer or next lead that I was looking for.

Ha, I'm sure it's different for different folks but I attribute my lack of burning out (knock on wood) to caring about what I do beyond a paycheck. That and leaving town for a weekend every month or so to tune everything out and evaluate my progress really helps. I get down when I'm unsure that my time is being well spent. Re-evaluating my trajectory often does wonders to keep those emotions in check.

Which couldn't be more ok. Hacker news comes down hard on people who casually throw out their unrealistic work hours, but for some of us it's the only way we'd stay competitive. I'm 26 with 5 years development experience and frankly, not the smartest man in the world. Things don't come easy to me. I take longer than my peers to learn concepts in software and business. But where I win is in my ability to work harder than my peers and compound the knowledge I do have. Sometimes even, I am perceived as "smart" by those who haven't worked 1 on 1 with me. Watching someone learn something in a week that took you almost a month; or building a reasonably successful company without doing the 80 hour week thing kills me a little inside. But that's life. You're given some amount intellect and if you want success you will have to pay your own costs to reach success, which may or may not be as much as what your peers have to pay.

The only golden rule I follow, never expect another human to work as hard as me for something that mostly benefits me. I do not believe in shaming employees that only put in their 40 and get out. That's great, they care about different things in life. Some of them have hobbies, families, responsibilities, etc, and I respect that. But for the rest of us who have chosen personal business success as our long term goal and aren't particularly intelligent, we should not feel guilty for our 80 hour weeks. Sometimes it is just plain necessary. Stupid if it doesn't work out. But necessary if it is to work out.

Going through this now and boy is this true. Nothing like rewriting a 1k+ lib the day before a feature is supposed to be ready and then praying you didn't blow up some other lesser documented part of the code.

Like all lessons, it depends on the student. Personally, the author's way of thinking has been immensely helpful. I grew up an optimist, not able to understand why others couldn't see things the way that I did. After a few failed product/content launches and a few years of grinding later my self-bullshit meter is way more sensitive. This has led to me producing better products, features, and generally more success in my work life. Like the author, I assume no one wants to use my stuff at the outset, and this forces me to fight to overcome this.

But again, it's probably more a function of who this advice is given to. I've seen plenty of people get discouraged after making this realization. The key is to be aware that no one cares and then do it anyways.

But then how do I sell my mvp startup newsletter to all the people not capable of actually building a quality product? /s

In all seriousness, it is comical how often people apply revisionist explanations for the rise of certain companies. Its simple really. Great product + big market. You must have both, no exceptions.

It is not possible for a human being to work 20 hours a day. No exceptions.