I had an atheist phase when I was like 15. Probably lasted until my early 20s. I blame that on Carl Sagen, Richard Dawkins, et al. I obsessively read science books, and all of these smart people were telling me there isn't a God. They made sense; I believed them.
I think around age 20-21, I read Descartes' Meditations on Philosophy, which forced me to evaluate all of my beliefs about existence. Digging further into other philosophers (and religions), I realized there's not a whole lot I really know... about anything.
Eventually, I came to the belief of there being a creator, although who or what this creator is, I have no idea.
Yeah it’s funny to compare yourself now when you touched some real thinkers and real wisdom and years ago when you thought charlatans like Dawkins were worth trusting :)
Because modern so called atheists is a popular religious cult of its own, they tend to cancel anyone challenging it, because of lack of better arguments.
I built leetchess, a browser extension (works in Chrome/Brave) that makes your new tab pages full of chess tactics.
As a chess fan, I love it. It's something I wanted to exist. Although I haven't gotten any good feedback yet from other chess players. If you're a chess fan, please give it a try and let me know what you think!
You reminded me of one of the first interviews I ever had in tech. I took 2 phone screens, and a take home assignment. Last step: Zoom interview with some of the IT team (3 people). It started well, but I slowly started panicking. All three of them were shooting questions at me, which I answered them all correctly, as far as I know, but I was so... cold. Started stammering my words and speaking like a terrified child at the principals office.
I could observe myself and knew what I looked like, but couldn't break it. The CTO stopped me as I was speaking and said "this isn't going to work". As soon as he said that, I ended the call. I had some major imposter syndrome during that time, I think that played a huge role in my fumble. Still massively cringe when I think about that, though.
Honestly, it sounds to me like the CTO, not you, is the one who should be embarrassed by memories of that experience. Unless being a polished speaker under high pressure situations was a requirement for the job, the CTO, as leader, should have had the skill to make you more comfortable expressing your knowledge and skills.
I have memories of experiences freezing up and losing the physical control required to speak as well, so I have empathy.
(Having such experiences as a child are what led to me joining the high school speech team doing extemporaneous and impromptu events to get over them. I eventually went on to be a regional champion and a state competitor, but I still sometimes have to fight the physical tension when speaking in certain situations).
One of my worst experiences as a junior member of our interview team was when a candidate was "walked out" when the hiring manager decided that the person was not going to work out. I still feel embarrassed about it myself. What a terrible experience for the interviewee.
Some of my worst interview memories are from a company where the VP leading hiring had ideas that candidates needed to be made to feel as comfortable and positive as possible and treated equally, including giving them the same interview length after they got past the screener.
The screener mostly filtered out unqualified candidates, but when someone slipped through and then was obviously not going to make it through the interview we all had to pretend that they were doing a great job and keep pushing through anyway. There was lots of fake encouragement that most candidates could see right through. Really painful for everyone to have to sit through interview sessions when everyone in the room, including the candidate, knows it's not going to work out.
That shit makes me so mad. Bringing people to your office in a truly vulnerable state - they're inviting you to judge them. Anyone who doesn't treat them with compassion and kindness lacks what it takes to be a good leader.
I've had the pleasure of interviewing someone, for a coding job in C, where it became clear within 10 minutes that they just didn't know C beyond "hello world". Through body language etc they indicated they weren't chagrined by their lack of knowledge and we should just move on with the interview. At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?" I stopped that interview early and recommended we let the candidate go without completing the loop. No sense in wasting everyone's time and creating some kind of false hope.
This is one of those cases where "nice" != "compassionate". They applied for a job they were not qualified for. We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run.
I was that person once. It was horrible because the entire time during the interview I knew I was unqualified, and I had to do a coding task to prove it. But before the job, I had no idea, the recruitment agent assured me I had enough experience and I could learn more on the job.
> We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run
You're right, however
> At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?"
This is absolutely not the right way to go about it.
It's completely fair to say "hey, thanks for your time but we really need someone with C experience and we don't think you're a good fit for what we're looking for", but that's not even close to what it sounds like you did
You can cut an interview short and make it clear they won't be considered without being a huge asshole about it
Welp, this was 20 years ago and I was 25, and literally no one ever gave me any instruction on how to conduct interviews (over my entire career). If I was a "huge asshole" to this person, then I'm sorry, that wasn't my intent, and I hope they're doing well and weren't too negatively impacted by my attitude.
To be honest though, the whole corporate world is institutionalized assholery, from giving candidates take-home coding assignments and then ghosting them, to laying people off without even giving them a chance to say goodbye to their coworkers. The entire leadership of that particular startup was assholes through and through. It's difficult to maintain one's humanity in the face of that (esp at a young age) and I'm glad to be out of that game.
I wouldn't judge based on the limited context we've provided.
I've interviewed candidates for jobs requiring highly specific skills who claimed to have those skills, but in the interview they kept trying to divert the topic to something else. An analogy would be bringing someone in for a C interview and they keep trying to write all the answers in Python and pretend that C and Python are interchangeable.
So some times, asking the candidate if they know what they're interviewing for is really called for. You want to be sure the person understood the interview, not that they were confused by the questions.
Yeah, I agree with you. There is a right way to do that, and I assumed the comment I was replying to was describing the wrong way to do it given their reaction.
I've ended plenty of interviews early when it's clear the candidate isn't going to work out. I agree there's no point in wasting everyone's time, and hiring is time consuming enough. But there's a way to do it with kindness, and I think everyone in the interviewer's chair should have some sense of how. (That said, there are some candidates that are going to take rejection poorly no matter what - you can control how you treat a candidate but now how they react).
That's just a tech version of the age-old hostile (panel) interview.
I don't think it's a useful interview practice, at least in tech, below director level, but you just have to keep your composure and gently assert control.
If that CTO favored it maybe their company culture was unusually aggressive.
tbf it sounds like you might have dodged a bullet there, so try to not beat yourself up too much for thinking you weren’t good enough.
we all have imposter syndrome when we start out. as long as you didn’t outright obviously lie or something then you probably didn’t do anything particularly wrong that’s worthy of the cringe.
(i’ve done the exact same thing in interviews, most of us probably have some story like that).
> The only reason to dramatically overpay for the hosting resources they provide is because you expect them to expertly manage security and stability.
This and because it's so convenient to click some buttons and have your application running. I've stopped being lazy, though. Moved everything from Render to linode. I was paying render $50+/month. Now I'm paying $3-5.
I would never use one of those hosting providers again.
> Looking at linode, those prices get you an instance with 1Gb of ram and a mediocre CPU. So you are running all of your applications on that?
I ran a LoB webapp for multiple companies on a similar setup. Turns out 1GB of RAM is insufficient to run even the most trivial Java webapps, like Jenkins, but is more than sufficient for even non-trivial things using Go + PostgreSQL.
It could be $0 on Render too, but then there's going to be a 3 minute load time for a landing page to become visible, lol. So if you don't want your server to sleep, you're going to have to pay $20/month.
Static pages, sure. But what do you do if you want a contact form or something? Yeah, you can use services like formspree, but then you may end up paying $20/month for that alone. Perhaps I'm just ignorant.
I run a Rust webserver on a literal Pi3 in my basement and I think I managed to bench it up >1000 rps for standard loads. And that includes a bunch of tanvity querying as well.
I suspect I could do 3000+ rps with some tuning and a more modern CPU or hetzner VPS, but there's some fun cachet from running on an old Pi while there's still headroom.
I don't think it's impossible, but absolutely incredibly difficult. I tried everything.
Shopify stores, blogs (even owned a #1 tech blog), local job boards, global job boards, dating sites (which were shut down due to payment providers refusing to service these types of sites), various SaaS sites, etc.
Nothing made any real money. I don't know if it's just me - perhaps I'm just not meant to succeed here - but I'm still trying. Still building.
I think the biggest downer was when I built the coolest SaaS for martial arts academies. I thought it was guaranteed success, as I am involved in these communities, know a ton of owners. I reached out to all of them. Offered a free setup/trial. None of them cared, or even attempted to use it.
Likewise, I just built the coolest browser extension for chess players (in my opinion). I run a local chess club. Thought everyone would want to at least try it out. Maybe 2 users installed it. Lol.
I just stopped caring, and I look at it in a new way. Yeah, I may not have paying customers for projects, but I am expanding my portfolio. These are real assets that I own. The process is fun. Abandon the idea of making money, and it becomes more enjoyable.
>> The process is fun. Abandon the idea of making money, and it becomes more enjoyable.
100% this. Some things you do in life are for money. Other things are for fun. Turning fun into money usually removes the fun part.
We have a word for this, it's called "hobby" and somewhere along the line it acquired negative connotations. But in fact a hobiest has the ability to spend lots of time perfecting their skill.
A long time ago, if you wanted the best craftsmanship you went to an amateur not a professional. The amateur had time to make things perfect. (John Harrison spent years making a single clock) whereas the professional had to make money, so was forced to compromise.
Yes, you can turn your hobby into money, but it will remove the fun part. It will require lots of extra stuff (marketing, support etc) which all erodes the fun part. Plus the pressure of release requires compromising perfection.
If you think going this route makes your job into "fun" then think again. Yes, you'll still enjoy the coding part, but its an ever shrinking part.
So I think you've done the right thing. Stick to this as soon hobby, not your job. And I mean that in the most positive way.
> I think the biggest downer was when I built the coolest SaaS for martial arts academies. I thought it was guaranteed success, as I am involved in these communities, know a ton of owners. I reached out to all of them. Offered a free setup/trial. None of them cared, or even attempted to use it.
Did you speak with them about the idea before building the platform?
Some of them, yes. It seemed like they'd use it. I don't know. Maybe bad execution, or something. Although, maybe I should try again. Perhaps they were busy. I also didn't market beyond reaching out to people (which involved the people I know + cold email outreach).
It’s hard for these companies to switch once they’ve picked a platform. Just an idea, but I’ve seen people have success by looking up new business registrations. Get all new martial arts gyms daily, and try reaching out to them.
One of my all-time favorites. Almost every time I'm involved in a conversation about books, I always mention this. It amazes me how many people have never heard of it.
I just built a Google Chrome chess extension. It is a new tab page full of chess puzzles. It has various difficulties, and a speed run game (solve as many puzzles as you can in 60 seconds). I personally think it's the coolest browser extension I have ever seen (being objective as possible).
It works on Chrome and Brave for now. Planning a Firefox release soon.
If you're a chess fan, you'll probably love it, but if not, let me know why (I'll try to improve it).
Thank you! I think so as well, haha. it's something I personally wanted.
And oh no! really hate to hear that. I thought it was responsive, but didn't fully test on smaller devices. Sorry for that. I will work on a fix as soon as possible!
I think around age 20-21, I read Descartes' Meditations on Philosophy, which forced me to evaluate all of my beliefs about existence. Digging further into other philosophers (and religions), I realized there's not a whole lot I really know... about anything.
Eventually, I came to the belief of there being a creator, although who or what this creator is, I have no idea.
reply