In this position you will help design solutions, recommend technology, implement codes and bring solutions to life. You will be assisting the User Experience team members in creating prototypes of varying fidelity to discover innovative new products as well as redesigns of existing web and mobile products and services.
Prototypes may be created in HTML, JQuery, tools like Axure, Omnigraffle, or even hand-drawn sketches that can be evaluated by qualitative and quantitative user research.
Requirements:\n \u2022 Minimum of 2 years working in a digital development environment\n\u2022 Proficiency in HTML and CSS\n\u2022 Highly-motivated team player who cares about usability and understands what makes a great experience\n\u2022 Ability to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to discover and create new products \n\u2022 Expertise working daily with Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks and ability to provide visual specification and production ready files to engineers\n\u2022 Familiarity with quatitative and qualitative user research methodologies\n\u2022 Demostrated ability to multi-task and problem solve\n\u2022 Experience with Responsive design and touch interactions is a plus
Compensation & Benefits:\n \u2022 Competitive Base Salary\n\u2022 Wiley provides Incentive Plans to reinforce and sustain a culture devoted to excellent performance; to emphasize performance against specific objectives at the corporate, business, product line and individual levels; and to reward significant contributions that further the success of our business objectives.\n\u2022 For Health and Welfare Benefits information please click on the following link: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-301743.html"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Developer, User Experience"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH04/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=WILEY&cws=1&rid=3858 "}},"_tags":["story","author_mcordal","story_5856380"],"author":"mcordal","created_at":"2013-06-10T19:04:12Z","created_at_i":1370891052,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"5856380","points":1,"story_id":5856380,"story_text":"Wiley is seeking a User Experience Developer to help us design and develop next-generation publishing products and services.
In this position you will help design solutions, recommend technology, implement codes and bring solutions to life. You will be assisting the User Experience team members in creating prototypes of varying fidelity to discover innovative new products as well as redesigns of existing web and mobile products and services.
Prototypes may be created in HTML, JQuery, tools like Axure, Omnigraffle, or even hand-drawn sketches that can be evaluated by qualitative and quantitative user research.
Requirements:\n \u2022 Minimum of 2 years working in a digital development environment\n\u2022 Proficiency in HTML and CSS\n\u2022 Highly-motivated team player who cares about usability and understands what makes a great experience\n\u2022 Ability to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to discover and create new products \n\u2022 Expertise working daily with Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks and ability to provide visual specification and production ready files to engineers\n\u2022 Familiarity with quatitative and qualitative user research methodologies\n\u2022 Demostrated ability to multi-task and problem solve\n\u2022 Experience with Responsive design and touch interactions is a plus
Compensation & Benefits:\n \u2022 Competitive Base Salary\n\u2022 Wiley provides Incentive Plans to reinforce and sustain a culture devoted to excellent performance; to emphasize performance against specific objectives at the corporate, business, product line and individual levels; and to reward significant contributions that further the success of our business objectives.\n\u2022 For Health and Welfare Benefits information please click on the following link: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-301743.html","title":"Developer, User Experience","updated_at":"2024-09-19T19:39:48Z","url":"http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH04/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=WILEY&cws=1&rid=3858 "},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"PaulHoule"},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["devoted"],"value":"After being demoted and forced to retire, mRNA researcher wins Nobel"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/after-being-demoted-and-forced-to-retire-mrna-researcher-wins-nobel/"}},"_tags":["story","author_PaulHoule","story_37753368"],"author":"PaulHoule","created_at":"2023-10-03T15:41:12Z","created_at_i":1696347672,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"37753368","points":4,"story_id":37753368,"title":"After being demoted and forced to retire, mRNA researcher wins Nobel","updated_at":"2024-09-20T15:16:10Z","url":"https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/after-being-demoted-and-forced-to-retire-mrna-researcher-wins-nobel/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"gremlinsinc"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"I have an idea for Healthcare that makes hospitals become the insurer, taking out the middleman, while covering more people locally, and also without the hassle of hiring medical billers.
The SaaS is essentially a networked billing solution to act as the intermediary between multiple hospitals and auto-bill patients monthly.
Development for something like this -- to cover legal, and hipaa, etc is going to be somewhat costly - if it succeeds it could revolutionize healthcare in America, even negate the need for Single-payer healthcare.
How does one approach Angel's or Vc's on an 'idea' only?
Right now it's just a concept, as I have a family to feed so can't devote much time to this because I'm business doing freelance dev work."},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["health"],"value":"Ask HN: How to Raise Money for Healthcare SaaS at Idea/concept Stage?"}},"_tags":["story","author_gremlinsinc","story_17350584","ask_hn"],"author":"gremlinsinc","children":[17350748],"created_at":"2018-06-19T21:54:24Z","created_at_i":1529445264,"num_comments":1,"objectID":"17350584","points":1,"story_id":17350584,"story_text":"I have an idea for Healthcare that makes hospitals become the insurer, taking out the middleman, while covering more people locally, and also without the hassle of hiring medical billers.
The SaaS is essentially a networked billing solution to act as the intermediary between multiple hospitals and auto-bill patients monthly.
Development for something like this -- to cover legal, and hipaa, etc is going to be somewhat costly - if it succeeds it could revolutionize healthcare in America, even negate the need for Single-payer healthcare.
How does one approach Angel's or Vc's on an 'idea' only?
Right now it's just a concept, as I have a family to feed so can't devote much time to this because I'm business doing freelance dev work.","title":"Ask HN: How to Raise Money for Healthcare SaaS at Idea/concept Stage?","updated_at":"2024-09-20T02:36:25Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"999900000999"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"Edit: I'm going to keep updating this, I accidentally clicked save before it was ready. Enjoy the read.
Before I start this.
I'm in therapy. I hit on a girl at a bar a few months ago and she finally convinced me to get therapy by saying everyone just needs it .
Everyone, especially all of you with your fabulous incomes, get some therapy.
I am so grateful to all of you, to every programmer who helped me on stack overflow. To everyone on on the Unity forums, who would help me with extremely basic programming questions. When I first started programming, I had no direction. I didn't even understand what an array was. Now, despite my dad being a psychotic violent monster, kicking me out, subjecting me to multiple evictions with my mom,I had actually gotten into a nice college after High School. I did go to community college first, and there. I met so many amazing great people.
One girl from high school who was actually extremely smart, she got into a really good school.\nBut unfortunately she had to drop out of her for your school and go to a community, because her mom was demoted at work.
I will say from my time in college, and meeting people there's one policy I hate with the most fervancy
And it's affirmative action by far, all of my Asian friends have lives which were way worse than mine. A Chinese friend was living in a homeless shelter at 19 because his dad was so f*** abusive. His dad would just beat him every single day
I absolutely love programming. As long as you have a used laptop, you could find one on eBay for $100. All right. Maybe the battery doesn't work good, you now have a portable desktop.
Install Ubuntu on that and start hacking. That's what I did, I was like oh cool. I can like get the terminal and stuff about buying a Mac because Macs are expensive.
Shout outs to Google, for making it possible for broke kids to develop for Android phones. That 40$ Walmart phone, you can learn to run applications on that. The phone I had, the phone I used to show off the early apps that got me my first salary job. Might have been worth $100, maybe $150 at most.
And, I carry on this tradition. Programmers are a very welcoming bunch. I was a silly college dropout, and just because I installed Ubuntu on my laptop , experienced software engineers on various forums would help me with so many issues.
I think for a lot of you neck beards, it's almost like a calling. You need to help a 19-year-old who tried out Ubuntu for the first time and all of a sudden she can't play League of Legends anymore. You need to help her figure out how to install Wine.
It's surreal, and I do the same thing. My time is worth a lot of money, but if I'm on a video game dev forum and some college kid is struggling with a concept, I'll stop and take 10 or 20 minutes to research the problem and provide a solution.
It's so amazing how free all of this education is.
Now that I'm a Senior Software Engineer, I've started to give back. I've written tutorials, and I think learning to program is one of the last career options when you don't have an educational background.
It's crazy, as long as you're motivated and you have an internet connection. You can do anything. You can program and program and program and program, create the best apps you can. Get into Dev groups, show off your stuff. Eventually. Someone's going to give you a shot
And if they don't, give yourself a shot. Put your apps up on Google Play. Just keep coding. No matter what, just keep coding. Early in my career. I had so many recruiters laugh and say I should just go back to college.
Why, just say I'm not qualified.
I will say this country is absolutely disgusting to people who come from unstable backgrounds .
I still have numerous medical issues. I've only recently started treating because my dad outright refused to treat them. My dad is often confused and hurt as to why I don't talk to him now.
Back when I didn't have health care, I would often have days where I felt horrible. But hey when you're broke you just drink another Red Bull and keep going. Later on, once I started making money, I found the keto diet and lost about 80 lb. And I'm working on managing my health conditions, although my dad 's actions have caused permanent damage.
And then I found it much easy to meet someone, of course. That's never been a priority to me, as when I was 19 my first girlfriend dumped me when I lost my job
Gratitude, is the key to happiness. My first apartment, for at least 2 hours, I hugged the floor. No more evictions caused by someone else, if I was going to get evicted, it was going to be my fault. As a side note, I had to eventually estrange myself for most of my family, since they tried to get me to violate my lease which would have led to eviction 3. They're just bad people.
I wasn't getting evicted again, when I was 20 or so, I never missed a single day of work. Ever.
Work is redemption, because of my childhood. I always felt that I was unclean, that I was stupid, that's something wrong with me. I loved working 80 hour weeks. I love when the servers go down on Christmas Eve, and I'm troubleshooting server logs from my phone after I just landed.And to be honest, I'm going to be a messed up paranoid person for the rest of my life.
Even with therapy, this is who I am. Even writing this post, there's some slight fear this will somehow offend somebody. Let's just say I'm someone who would benefit from Affirmative Action. But fuck Affirmative Action.
I think of a friend of mine, who I've lost contact with. A very nice girl from a traditional Korean family. Her mom was so abusive, she spent much of her early twenties crashing on couches. She told me things I will never repeat, there's no way you're going to ever tell me that I deserve special help and she doesn't.
Fuck Affirmative Action!
In my early twenties, I was very political. I'm not anymore because regardless of political party there's one factor which will turn a person success above all.
And that's a supportive family. I never had that, my dad was so obsessed with fake prestige,. He had custody for an entire 2 years, and it was just horror. It was. I'm going to hurt you if you don't somehow get straight A's, in one case. He actually had me missed two weeks of school for a surgery.
Then when I told him, I wasn't going to catch up after missing so much school. He just kicked me out, he then later would show at my job at threaten me.
But several members of my family think this is fine. Usually people like my father have an entire support system of enablers.
Again, I was a junior in college by the age of 21. I have no idea why my dad was such a horrible human being. I was actually doing pretty well in school! The only reason I didn't finish college earlier, is because my mom didn't want to turn in a form. Now my degree in some irrelevant thing, sits on my desk as a nice conversation piece.
As a side note, therapy that you decide to attend. Can be great. Therapy someone else forces you to get is better described as forced behavior modification. I'm not going to say exactly what happened, but when this forced behavior modification did not yield the results my dad wanted. He just got even worse.
Much much worse. I went from at least having friendly chats with my father to severing our relationship entirely.
It was really really bad. Because of this experience I didn't go to therapy for well over a decade. Despite several partners practically begging me to.
One of my partners was practically perfect, you were everything I could have hoped for. Well educated, great career, carrying and compassionate. But I had just been through too much, she wanted me to get therapy, and if I ever bump into you somehow that's all I'll say .
I'll tell you I'm getting therapy, but I don't think it's going to work completely. I'm always going to have levels of paranoia that no normal person has.
And life is really good to be honest.
I obviously have no relationship with my father. But, I make enough money to finally take care of myself.
I eat great food everyday, I diet well, I travel tons. I have nothing to complain about.
Life is good."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Tell HN: My dad told me I'd be a high school dropout and I make 200k a year"}},"_tags":["story","author_999900000999","story_32441443","ask_hn"],"author":"999900000999","children":[32441567,32441709,32442020,32442041,32479950],"created_at":"2022-08-12T17:18:49Z","created_at_i":1660324729,"num_comments":14,"objectID":"32441443","points":12,"story_id":32441443,"story_text":"Edit: I'm going to keep updating this, I accidentally clicked save before it was ready. Enjoy the read.
Before I start this.
I'm in therapy. I hit on a girl at a bar a few months ago and she finally convinced me to get therapy by saying everyone just needs it .
Everyone, especially all of you with your fabulous incomes, get some therapy.
I am so grateful to all of you, to every programmer who helped me on stack overflow. To everyone on on the Unity forums, who would help me with extremely basic programming questions. When I first started programming, I had no direction. I didn't even understand what an array was. Now, despite my dad being a psychotic violent monster, kicking me out, subjecting me to multiple evictions with my mom,I had actually gotten into a nice college after High School. I did go to community college first, and there. I met so many amazing great people.
One girl from high school who was actually extremely smart, she got into a really good school.\nBut unfortunately she had to drop out of her for your school and go to a community, because her mom was demoted at work.
I will say from my time in college, and meeting people there's one policy I hate with the most fervancy
And it's affirmative action by far, all of my Asian friends have lives which were way worse than mine. A Chinese friend was living in a homeless shelter at 19 because his dad was so f*** abusive. His dad would just beat him every single day
I absolutely love programming. As long as you have a used laptop, you could find one on eBay for $100. All right. Maybe the battery doesn't work good, you now have a portable desktop.
Install Ubuntu on that and start hacking. That's what I did, I was like oh cool. I can like get the terminal and stuff about buying a Mac because Macs are expensive.
Shout outs to Google, for making it possible for broke kids to develop for Android phones. That 40$ Walmart phone, you can learn to run applications on that. The phone I had, the phone I used to show off the early apps that got me my first salary job. Might have been worth $100, maybe $150 at most.
And, I carry on this tradition. Programmers are a very welcoming bunch. I was a silly college dropout, and just because I installed Ubuntu on my laptop , experienced software engineers on various forums would help me with so many issues.
I think for a lot of you neck beards, it's almost like a calling. You need to help a 19-year-old who tried out Ubuntu for the first time and all of a sudden she can't play League of Legends anymore. You need to help her figure out how to install Wine.
It's surreal, and I do the same thing. My time is worth a lot of money, but if I'm on a video game dev forum and some college kid is struggling with a concept, I'll stop and take 10 or 20 minutes to research the problem and provide a solution.
It's so amazing how free all of this education is.
Now that I'm a Senior Software Engineer, I've started to give back. I've written tutorials, and I think learning to program is one of the last career options when you don't have an educational background.
It's crazy, as long as you're motivated and you have an internet connection. You can do anything. You can program and program and program and program, create the best apps you can. Get into Dev groups, show off your stuff. Eventually. Someone's going to give you a shot
And if they don't, give yourself a shot. Put your apps up on Google Play. Just keep coding. No matter what, just keep coding. Early in my career. I had so many recruiters laugh and say I should just go back to college.
Why, just say I'm not qualified.
I will say this country is absolutely disgusting to people who come from unstable backgrounds .
I still have numerous medical issues. I've only recently started treating because my dad outright refused to treat them. My dad is often confused and hurt as to why I don't talk to him now.
Back when I didn't have health care, I would often have days where I felt horrible. But hey when you're broke you just drink another Red Bull and keep going. Later on, once I started making money, I found the keto diet and lost about 80 lb. And I'm working on managing my health conditions, although my dad 's actions have caused permanent damage.
And then I found it much easy to meet someone, of course. That's never been a priority to me, as when I was 19 my first girlfriend dumped me when I lost my job
Gratitude, is the key to happiness. My first apartment, for at least 2 hours, I hugged the floor. No more evictions caused by someone else, if I was going to get evicted, it was going to be my fault. As a side note, I had to eventually estrange myself for most of my family, since they tried to get me to violate my lease which would have led to eviction 3. They're just bad people.
I wasn't getting evicted again, when I was 20 or so, I never missed a single day of work. Ever.
Work is redemption, because of my childhood. I always felt that I was unclean, that I was stupid, that's something wrong with me. I loved working 80 hour weeks. I love when the servers go down on Christmas Eve, and I'm troubleshooting server logs from my phone after I just landed.And to be honest, I'm going to be a messed up paranoid person for the rest of my life.
Even with therapy, this is who I am. Even writing this post, there's some slight fear this will somehow offend somebody. Let's just say I'm someone who would benefit from Affirmative Action. But fuck Affirmative Action.
I think of a friend of mine, who I've lost contact with. A very nice girl from a traditional Korean family. Her mom was so abusive, she spent much of her early twenties crashing on couches. She told me things I will never repeat, there's no way you're going to ever tell me that I deserve special help and she doesn't.
Fuck Affirmative Action!
In my early twenties, I was very political. I'm not anymore because regardless of political party there's one factor which will turn a person success above all.
And that's a supportive family. I never had that, my dad was so obsessed with fake prestige,. He had custody for an entire 2 years, and it was just horror. It was. I'm going to hurt you if you don't somehow get straight A's, in one case. He actually had me missed two weeks of school for a surgery.
Then when I told him, I wasn't going to catch up after missing so much school. He just kicked me out, he then later would show at my job at threaten me.
But several members of my family think this is fine. Usually people like my father have an entire support system of enablers.
Again, I was a junior in college by the age of 21. I have no idea why my dad was such a horrible human being. I was actually doing pretty well in school! The only reason I didn't finish college earlier, is because my mom didn't want to turn in a form. Now my degree in some irrelevant thing, sits on my desk as a nice conversation piece.
As a side note, therapy that you decide to attend. Can be great. Therapy someone else forces you to get is better described as forced behavior modification. I'm not going to say exactly what happened, but when this forced behavior modification did not yield the results my dad wanted. He just got even worse.
Much much worse. I went from at least having friendly chats with my father to severing our relationship entirely.
It was really really bad. Because of this experience I didn't go to therapy for well over a decade. Despite several partners practically begging me to.
One of my partners was practically perfect, you were everything I could have hoped for. Well educated, great career, carrying and compassionate. But I had just been through too much, she wanted me to get therapy, and if I ever bump into you somehow that's all I'll say .
I'll tell you I'm getting therapy, but I don't think it's going to work completely. I'm always going to have levels of paranoia that no normal person has.
And life is really good to be honest.
I obviously have no relationship with my father. But, I make enough money to finally take care of myself.
I eat great food everyday, I diet well, I travel tons. I have nothing to complain about.
Life is good.","title":"Tell HN: My dad told me I'd be a high school dropout and I make 200k a year","updated_at":"2024-09-20T11:49:19Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"cgoddard"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"First of all I ask that anyone commenting please leave off criticism of how I got into the situation I did. Trust me, I've already thought over millions of times how I must be an idiot to have gotten into the situation I'm in, and if I could go back and make different decisions I would. But right now I'm not exactly in the best shape to handle criticism, and don't need to be convinced of anything. What I really need is advice for improving my situation, or any info about programs or employers, etc. that I don't know about. I never had a course in high school or college on how to deal with poverty, even though that might have been really helpful right about now.
I graduated from a state university in 2009 with a degree in Computer Science. I graduated with honors and a 3.81 gpa. My gpa could've been a lot higher, but I struggled with untreated clinical-level anxiety throughout school which lead to severe procrastination or simply not turning in certain projects. I got a 1520 on my SATs, was a National Merit Scholar and an IB (International Baccalaureate) graduate. Although I never went through with applying to grad school I got a 1480 on my GREs with a perfect quant score.
Now I'm aware that being a good test-taker doesn't entitle me to anything, and if anything I'm more aware than anyone else how test-taking skills or academic success don't really apply to real-life success. I currently clean houses for a living, and am barely scraping by on that. Recently I lost one of my clients for unforeseen reasons, and that put me back in a risky situation just as far as getting by. I can still pay bills and rent, but my food and gas budgets are really restricted. I'm basically eating beans and rice and not doing so well nutritionally, which has been especially apparent these past few weeks as I've had a cold that doesn't seem to be getting any better.
I am also without health insurance. May of last year was the last time I was employed at a job that provided health insurance, and after about 4 months my savings dwindled to where I couldn't afford to make COBRA payments anymore. This wouldn't be such an issue, but I also have anxiety issues that have gone untreated for a while, especially after I decided to cut back on taking some medication I was previously prescribed due to not being able to meet the monthly costs.
I held a programming job back in May, one that I had for 2 1/2 years before finally resigning. I worked at the University I graduated from helping with a research project. When I graduated in December 2008, most of the companies I had spend the past few months interviewing for had put a stop to their hiring programs, and the job I ended up taking was the only offer extended to me. This would have been fine, but over time and especially towards the end I had a great deal of trouble at that job. It would probably be unfair to call my boss emotionally abusive, but the lack of any praise, the high level of criticism, the lack of any process, the expectation of constant overtime, constant coworker turnover, left me extremely burnt out by the time I left that job. That was in May of 2011.
Besides the fact that my boss continually trash-talked on my predecessor, my boss was infuriated with me for resigning when I did (burn-out hit me really hard and I gave short notice after my productivity dropped and my sleeping habits and punctuality became erratic, and so I thought I was actually doing the responsible thing by resigning since I no longer felt competent).
So anyways with my last job since I left I've had a high level of anxiety that any new job I apply for I have basically had no positive supervisor references. Since I left my last job I have applied for a handful of positions, but with no positive results and a sense that grew over time that I was unemployable due to my mixed work history, and my increasing interval of unemployment (at least in tech). Thank goodness a close friend of mine showed me how to clean houses and passed along clients to me, or I might have been even more thoroughly convinced of how unemployable and worthless I was.
Programming has never been a strong passion of mine, though I am fond of tech and read HN on a daily basis. I think I'm pretty decent at programming simply from being quick to learn new skills and learn from my mistakes, but I've never felt a passion to devote large chunks of my free time to it. I don't have a strong interest in doing personal projects any more than an accountant might crunch numbers just for fun on the weekend. I'm very much a people person too, and if I don't spend time socializing away from the screen in my free time I get depressed and generally unmotivated about a lot of things. I know this automatically puts me on a lower rung when hiring for programming talent, since I don't have any open source projects to show off, or have any number of puzzle solutions memorized for easy pseudo-coding during an interview, but I'd hope that this wouldn't make me unemployable.
I've also been pretty content to move away from the tech field, but since I also have a fairly significant amount of credit card debt which I acquiring during unemployment, after my savings ran out, but before I was making regular income, it's extremely hard for me to pay my bills with the generally low-paying work that I'm doing now (well at least after factoring in lots of unpayed commute time, and limited hours).
And paradoxically it seems to take a not insubstantial amount of money to file a successful case for unemployment, which I'd find pretty funny if it wasn't so depressing. Also low-income health assistance programs, food stamps, etc. can carry a pretty daunting set of requirements and lengthy waiting periods, both of which aren't so great for someone dealing with anxiety and situational depression, and also in need of more immediate assistance. I've tried my best to search for some sort of social work assistance, just for some help sorting through my options and figuring out what steps I need to take to apply, with no luck.
I've worked out I need to make $25k a year after taxes to cover credit card bills, living expenses, and have some sort of small savings (heaven forbid my car ever break down or some other unknown expense come up anytime soon, since I have no way to pay for it). This would be peanuts for any decent-paying career-type job, but it's quite depressing how far above the minimum wage this ends up being, and how far out of reach it might be for anyone with a not-so-stellar resume.
Family is no help right now, as they just don't have the resources to help considering their own financial and medical issues. Not every acquaintance I know is aware of my tough financial situation, due to embarrassment on my part, but I haven't had any luck in exploring opportunities the other 50% have proposed, because they are few and far between and the few that actually existed haven't panned out (I live in the Denver / Boulder area by the way, so I'm not sure if it's just the locale, or who I know or what, but networking hasn't made much of a difference)
So I don't mean to just dump some sob story on HN, or ask for handouts or anything. I'd really just like some advice on what to do. I admit I haven't been the most proactive at doing every thing I could possibly do to break back into the middle class, but believe it or not both a bad reference-less first work experience, unemployment, constant financial worry, etc. can feel a bit hopeless sometimes. And sometimes I'll think I'm making some progress improving at least financially, and then I lose a client the same month I have to make the car insurance payment and things seem even worse.
I'm not asking for advice on how to make myself a candidate to break into the top tech companies, or even get a starting position making the $70k+ a year that a lot of soon-to-be graduates seem to take for granted, even after the financial collapse. My next job doesn't have to be stimulating or glamorous. I don't have any travel money or even extra gas money, which I'm sure complicates things. I'd like to hope that even given the current constraints, that maybe there's still some way I can fix my employment situation and not have to worry if I can pay my bills for the month or if I have enough money to buy fruits and veggies.
So I guess my question to HN is basically, what's a destitute hacker to do?"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Advice needed: what's a destitute hacker to do?"}},"_tags":["story","author_cgoddard","story_3715834","ask_hn"],"author":"cgoddard","children":[3715907,3715927,3716002,3716023,3716053,3716086,3716149,3716217,3716309,3716363],"created_at":"2012-03-16T23:47:51Z","created_at_i":1331941671,"num_comments":27,"objectID":"3715834","points":5,"story_id":3715834,"story_text":"First of all I ask that anyone commenting please leave off criticism of how I got into the situation I did. Trust me, I've already thought over millions of times how I must be an idiot to have gotten into the situation I'm in, and if I could go back and make different decisions I would. But right now I'm not exactly in the best shape to handle criticism, and don't need to be convinced of anything. What I really need is advice for improving my situation, or any info about programs or employers, etc. that I don't know about. I never had a course in high school or college on how to deal with poverty, even though that might have been really helpful right about now.
I graduated from a state university in 2009 with a degree in Computer Science. I graduated with honors and a 3.81 gpa. My gpa could've been a lot higher, but I struggled with untreated clinical-level anxiety throughout school which lead to severe procrastination or simply not turning in certain projects. I got a 1520 on my SATs, was a National Merit Scholar and an IB (International Baccalaureate) graduate. Although I never went through with applying to grad school I got a 1480 on my GREs with a perfect quant score.
Now I'm aware that being a good test-taker doesn't entitle me to anything, and if anything I'm more aware than anyone else how test-taking skills or academic success don't really apply to real-life success. I currently clean houses for a living, and am barely scraping by on that. Recently I lost one of my clients for unforeseen reasons, and that put me back in a risky situation just as far as getting by. I can still pay bills and rent, but my food and gas budgets are really restricted. I'm basically eating beans and rice and not doing so well nutritionally, which has been especially apparent these past few weeks as I've had a cold that doesn't seem to be getting any better.
I am also without health insurance. May of last year was the last time I was employed at a job that provided health insurance, and after about 4 months my savings dwindled to where I couldn't afford to make COBRA payments anymore. This wouldn't be such an issue, but I also have anxiety issues that have gone untreated for a while, especially after I decided to cut back on taking some medication I was previously prescribed due to not being able to meet the monthly costs.
I held a programming job back in May, one that I had for 2 1/2 years before finally resigning. I worked at the University I graduated from helping with a research project. When I graduated in December 2008, most of the companies I had spend the past few months interviewing for had put a stop to their hiring programs, and the job I ended up taking was the only offer extended to me. This would have been fine, but over time and especially towards the end I had a great deal of trouble at that job. It would probably be unfair to call my boss emotionally abusive, but the lack of any praise, the high level of criticism, the lack of any process, the expectation of constant overtime, constant coworker turnover, left me extremely burnt out by the time I left that job. That was in May of 2011.
Besides the fact that my boss continually trash-talked on my predecessor, my boss was infuriated with me for resigning when I did (burn-out hit me really hard and I gave short notice after my productivity dropped and my sleeping habits and punctuality became erratic, and so I thought I was actually doing the responsible thing by resigning since I no longer felt competent).
So anyways with my last job since I left I've had a high level of anxiety that any new job I apply for I have basically had no positive supervisor references. Since I left my last job I have applied for a handful of positions, but with no positive results and a sense that grew over time that I was unemployable due to my mixed work history, and my increasing interval of unemployment (at least in tech). Thank goodness a close friend of mine showed me how to clean houses and passed along clients to me, or I might have been even more thoroughly convinced of how unemployable and worthless I was.
Programming has never been a strong passion of mine, though I am fond of tech and read HN on a daily basis. I think I'm pretty decent at programming simply from being quick to learn new skills and learn from my mistakes, but I've never felt a passion to devote large chunks of my free time to it. I don't have a strong interest in doing personal projects any more than an accountant might crunch numbers just for fun on the weekend. I'm very much a people person too, and if I don't spend time socializing away from the screen in my free time I get depressed and generally unmotivated about a lot of things. I know this automatically puts me on a lower rung when hiring for programming talent, since I don't have any open source projects to show off, or have any number of puzzle solutions memorized for easy pseudo-coding during an interview, but I'd hope that this wouldn't make me unemployable.
I've also been pretty content to move away from the tech field, but since I also have a fairly significant amount of credit card debt which I acquiring during unemployment, after my savings ran out, but before I was making regular income, it's extremely hard for me to pay my bills with the generally low-paying work that I'm doing now (well at least after factoring in lots of unpayed commute time, and limited hours).
And paradoxically it seems to take a not insubstantial amount of money to file a successful case for unemployment, which I'd find pretty funny if it wasn't so depressing. Also low-income health assistance programs, food stamps, etc. can carry a pretty daunting set of requirements and lengthy waiting periods, both of which aren't so great for someone dealing with anxiety and situational depression, and also in need of more immediate assistance. I've tried my best to search for some sort of social work assistance, just for some help sorting through my options and figuring out what steps I need to take to apply, with no luck.
I've worked out I need to make $25k a year after taxes to cover credit card bills, living expenses, and have some sort of small savings (heaven forbid my car ever break down or some other unknown expense come up anytime soon, since I have no way to pay for it). This would be peanuts for any decent-paying career-type job, but it's quite depressing how far above the minimum wage this ends up being, and how far out of reach it might be for anyone with a not-so-stellar resume.
Family is no help right now, as they just don't have the resources to help considering their own financial and medical issues. Not every acquaintance I know is aware of my tough financial situation, due to embarrassment on my part, but I haven't had any luck in exploring opportunities the other 50% have proposed, because they are few and far between and the few that actually existed haven't panned out (I live in the Denver / Boulder area by the way, so I'm not sure if it's just the locale, or who I know or what, but networking hasn't made much of a difference)
So I don't mean to just dump some sob story on HN, or ask for handouts or anything. I'd really just like some advice on what to do. I admit I haven't been the most proactive at doing every thing I could possibly do to break back into the middle class, but believe it or not both a bad reference-less first work experience, unemployment, constant financial worry, etc. can feel a bit hopeless sometimes. And sometimes I'll think I'm making some progress improving at least financially, and then I lose a client the same month I have to make the car insurance payment and things seem even worse.
I'm not asking for advice on how to make myself a candidate to break into the top tech companies, or even get a starting position making the $70k+ a year that a lot of soon-to-be graduates seem to take for granted, even after the financial collapse. My next job doesn't have to be stimulating or glamorous. I don't have any travel money or even extra gas money, which I'm sure complicates things. I'd like to hope that even given the current constraints, that maybe there's still some way I can fix my employment situation and not have to worry if I can pay my bills for the month or if I have enough money to buy fruits and veggies.
So I guess my question to HN is basically, what's a destitute hacker to do?","title":"Advice needed: what's a destitute hacker to do?","updated_at":"2023-09-06T21:18:41Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Aurametrix"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"The Problem: There are more medical mysteries than one may think. In order to solve them, we need help of the community, including healthy individuals, we need diagnostic measurements beyond human genome sequencing,
The Idea: Use Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, whatever you think would work, to tell about prospective projects and let people make pledges for the amounts of time they could devote, samples they are willing to donate, money to cover cost of reagents, etc
We are working with medically underserved populations willing to spend their own money to conduct clinical trials and find reasons for their conditions. We are lacking healthy controls for our diagnostic & observational clinical trials. We do comply with all applicable federal laws, so privacy and confidentiality is guaranteed.
Do you think these kind of projects could be crowdfunded? Would there be healthy people willing to pay for diagnostic tests and share the data with the trial researchers (HIPAA protected)? In return, we will analyze their results and place it in the context of other people's data and known biomedical information, make predictions, give early bird access to software, device and so on. Could such a project be Kickstarted? Thanks for your input!"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: How to motivate people to help speed up medical discoveries?"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":""}},"_tags":["story","author_Aurametrix","story_1429001","ask_hn"],"author":"Aurametrix","children":[1429049,1490345],"created_at":"2010-06-14T05:40:15Z","created_at_i":1276494015,"num_comments":3,"objectID":"1429001","points":4,"story_id":1429001,"story_text":"The Problem: There are more medical mysteries than one may think. In order to solve them, we need help of the community, including healthy individuals, we need diagnostic measurements beyond human genome sequencing,
The Idea: Use Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, whatever you think would work, to tell about prospective projects and let people make pledges for the amounts of time they could devote, samples they are willing to donate, money to cover cost of reagents, etc
We are working with medically underserved populations willing to spend their own money to conduct clinical trials and find reasons for their conditions. We are lacking healthy controls for our diagnostic & observational clinical trials. We do comply with all applicable federal laws, so privacy and confidentiality is guaranteed.
Do you think these kind of projects could be crowdfunded? Would there be healthy people willing to pay for diagnostic tests and share the data with the trial researchers (HIPAA protected)? In return, we will analyze their results and place it in the context of other people's data and known biomedical information, make predictions, give early bird access to software, device and so on. Could such a project be Kickstarted? Thanks for your input!","title":"Ask HN: How to motivate people to help speed up medical discoveries?","updated_at":"2024-09-19T17:01:25Z","url":""},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ccarpenterg"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"Hello,
I live in Chile and until today I was working for a Credit Card Processing Company. The layoffs began last year since some banks and retails decided to process themselves, trying to cut costs. The truth is that the recession hit the credit industry and therefore hit our market.
The problem is that even though I'm single and I have no children I give to my parents some financial aid. So at least I have to earn some money to support them (it's not a huge amount BTW).
I've been working (in parallel) for my startup since 2007 and although this is a kind of a disaster to me, I could survive three months with the severance compensation and without a job. So I will devote all my \"leisure time\" on my startup. And now I'm finishing the design of the UI and I'm starting to code the app (I'm not a programmer), so it's the right moment.
Well,I feel very optimistic but the sad truth is that now I'm vulnerable to some threats (health problems for example). So looking for another job is an issue to me too but I don't want to waste all my time in interviews and in all that corporate crap.
So I can say that this financial orgy did hit me.
Best Regards.
PS: I can give some advice about credit cards (Visa, MC and Amex) if you need it."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Tell HN: I was fired today"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":""}},"_tags":["story","author_ccarpenterg","story_539331","ask_hn"],"author":"ccarpenterg","children":[539382],"created_at":"2009-03-30T23:30:33Z","created_at_i":1238455833,"num_comments":2,"objectID":"539331","points":3,"story_id":539331,"story_text":"Hello,
I live in Chile and until today I was working for a Credit Card Processing Company. The layoffs began last year since some banks and retails decided to process themselves, trying to cut costs. The truth is that the recession hit the credit industry and therefore hit our market.
The problem is that even though I'm single and I have no children I give to my parents some financial aid. So at least I have to earn some money to support them (it's not a huge amount BTW).
I've been working (in parallel) for my startup since 2007 and although this is a kind of a disaster to me, I could survive three months with the severance compensation and without a job. So I will devote all my \"leisure time\" on my startup. And now I'm finishing the design of the UI and I'm starting to code the app (I'm not a programmer), so it's the right moment.
Well,I feel very optimistic but the sad truth is that now I'm vulnerable to some threats (health problems for example). So looking for another job is an issue to me too but I don't want to waste all my time in interviews and in all that corporate crap.
So I can say that this financial orgy did hit me.
Best Regards.
PS: I can give some advice about credit cards (Visa, MC and Amex) if you need it.","title":"Tell HN: I was fired today","updated_at":"2023-09-06T19:41:20Z","url":""},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"SqMafia"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"I'm currently employed at a large software corporation that treats me well but where I am incredibly bored by the things I do. The environment doesn't fit my personality. I have learned so much more on my own time reading and hacking than I have over the past couple years at the company. Ultimately, my eventual goal is to start a company or work at an early stage startup. I don't see my current path leading me there. I'm considering quitting my job so I can devote my time to learning new things and starting/joining a startup. My biggest worries are: 1. Resume gap 2. Healthcare
I've been good about saving money and living frugally so I can go at least a couple of years without a paycheck.
Should I make the move and just quit? How do you go from a corporate job to a startup? Am I right in thinking that I will be challenged and learn a great deal more about technology, management, and business at a startup?"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Going Unemployed?"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":""}},"_tags":["story","author_SqMafia","story_1454194","ask_hn"],"author":"SqMafia","children":[1454383,1454637],"created_at":"2010-06-23T05:35:08Z","created_at_i":1277271308,"num_comments":3,"objectID":"1454194","points":2,"story_id":1454194,"story_text":"I'm currently employed at a large software corporation that treats me well but where I am incredibly bored by the things I do. The environment doesn't fit my personality. I have learned so much more on my own time reading and hacking than I have over the past couple years at the company. Ultimately, my eventual goal is to start a company or work at an early stage startup. I don't see my current path leading me there. I'm considering quitting my job so I can devote my time to learning new things and starting/joining a startup. My biggest worries are: 1. Resume gap 2. Healthcare
I've been good about saving money and living frugally so I can go at least a couple of years without a paycheck.
Should I make the move and just quit? How do you go from a corporate job to a startup? Am I right in thinking that I will be challenged and learn a great deal more about technology, management, and business at a startup?","title":"Ask HN: Going Unemployed?","updated_at":"2023-09-06T19:38:36Z","url":""},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"angelheaded"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"Hello world!
I'm not exactly sure the right way to approach this, I've never been much for doing things in an orthodox way, so I'll just be straightforward about it. I need to find an investor.
I believe that I have all of the necessary ingredients to be successful at what I'm trying to accomplish, but I realize that I need others to believe in me to help me to achieve my potential; few people ever get there alone.
I hear prominent figures say that they invest in the people more than the ideas and I wonder how true that is. Do you care more about me or my actual startup? In this case I think both are awesome, so maybe it's your lucky day (or mine).
So, yes, I've got a startup. That's a lie, I've got two startups, but one is my baby. We'll get back to that later, for now I want to talk about who I am and why I am writing this.
Maybe I suffer from the Dunning\u2013Kruger effect, but I think I might be just the right mix of crazy, creative, and calculated to accomplish something fairly impressive.
I'm a developer / programmer / sysadmin / hacker with a pretty impressive skill set, but I also have an artistic sense and graphic design background. I'm also very well read in literature, science, and philosophy and am possessed by an insatiable thirst for knowledge and experience. I am equally exposed to the arts and sciences.
I probably don't look very good on paper. In fact, I probably look pretty bad on paper. When I was slightly younger (and quite a bit more stupid) I would have conjured up some inspired sophistry to explain away my mistakes, or I would have tried to blame my lousy circumstances on someone else, but I'm past that kind of nonsense now. I'm old enough to know better. Not too old, though. I'm three years younger than Jack Dorsey and three years older than Mark Zuckerberg, so I think I'm sitting in a cultural sweet spot. I'm wise enough to accept that don't know everything, but experienced enough to trust myself when it counts. I'm confident in my judgment and abilities, but not to the point of arrogance and closed-mindedness. I've read that fools surround themselves with idiots so that they will feel superiority, but the clever surround themselves with the wise so that they gain wisdom. That's not a useless maxim if you ask me.
Paul Graham said: \"So who should start a startup? Someone who is a good hacker, between about 23 and 38, and who wants to solve the money problem in one shot instead of getting paid gradually over a conventional working life.\"
That's me. Of course, there are a million people who fit that description. Who am I kidding? Probably a few million...
So why me? Why am I worth someone's time and resources? Great question. Let's start at the beginning.
As I led with, I probably don't look very good on paper. Based on what the \"paper\" trail says, I come off as a bad bet. I owe some personal debts, my credit isn't exactly superb, and there are a few other little complications I'll be happy to elaborate on if your curiosity can't contain itself by the time you finish reading this message in a bottle.
Where were we? Oh yes, I'm a bad bet. Not a confidence inspiring statement, I'm aware, so let's fix that.
Seabiscuit was a bad bet, too, and that's me... I'm Seabiscuit. One day I'm limping along looking pathetic and broken and you think I'll never walk again, much less race. Yet, here I am, running... fast.
I've made some less-than-stellar choices in the past, but I've learned incredibly valuable lessons from those mistakes. They were always born out of emotion, confusion, or desperation; never out of malice, spite, or envy. They unexceptionally occurred whenever I was following my heart instead of my head, as I was always encouraged to do as a child. I've learned that I need to take more precise and calculated risks and follow my intuition rather than take wild risks and follow my desire. That's all very vague and ambiguous, I know, but it's important for me to convey that I am somewhat self-actualized in that regard. I'm at peace with where I stand and I am a forward-thinking person; it's an important characteristic of who I've become and who I intend to continue being.
Most of my issues were always self-induced, such as quitting jobs that I couldn't stand even when it wasn't a financially stable thing to do, or spiraling out of control when a relationship would end and then relinquishing any shared assets, bank accounts, vehicle, etc, or running away from home as a teenager. I would always respond to situations without proper emotional intelligence, a skill I've acquired and begun to master in recent years. I've also developed an incredibly humanistic and empathetic side as my emotions have matured.
My repeated and intentional detachment from material possessions coupled with my inability to submit to the complacency of \"the norm\" and a regular job has only fueled my creative and entrepreneurial spirits. I don't have a burning desire to fill my pockets with dollar bills, but a fire does rage inside to build a successful business and to, as Paul Graham put it, \"solve the money problem\". Which brings us to ambition and motivation...
Why do I want financial flexibility? Why do I need money if I don't care about things? Why am I writing this? Why am I driven? How driven am I?
Good questions.
I want to enjoy my life. I want to help others. I want to do something with my life, something positive. I want to leave something in the world that wasn't here when I arrived. I want to contribute and make a difference. I want to do something that matters.
I have a family (not a wife and kids or anything, but immediate family, parents, sisters, brother, nieces and nephews) who really need some help and breaks in their lives. I've done all I can to help them at every turn, given my parents money that I simply did not have, given up my rent to help them keep food on the table and pay heating bills, etc. I've supported them as much as I can when I've been thriving, but I've always been torn between keeping a job that destroys my soul just to provide some help vs. trying to succeed on a larger scale and making things easier in the long run rather than day-to-day. I won't go into the details of my various family concerns (health problems and bills, lack of economic opportunities, etc) but I have more than enough reasons to push myself to the limit. It consumes me that they are not taken care of and that they struggle the way that they do. I must help. I know now that what I need to do is live as close to the metal as I can for now and put off helping them as much as I can until I am financially secure. This means building my company and resolving my personal financial issues so that I can focus on my work without financial stress and distractions.
I have a tremendous work ethic that I wish could be applied to something I really care about.
I am tired of worrying about how I will survive and how I will make enough money to take care of everything and still find time to work on my businesses. I want to know that what I'm supposed to be focusing on is my business.
My biggest downfall in pursuit of that goal has been that I've never really tried wholeheartedly at anything worth doing. I don't mean that I haven't put enormous amounts effort into things, because I've definitely done that (studying, learning, programming, art, music, reading, preparing myself, etc), but I've never before had something that I cared so much about that I actually wanted to (or have been able to) devote all of my time to making it grow and succeed. I've wanted to have something that I was that passionate about, but I always found myself busy working on someone else's project or at someone else's company, usually doing something that disagreed with my personal philosophies and tastes. I'd quickly burn out and become uninspired and leave behind the mind-killer to go dive into my own creative development (music, writing, code, etc). I've had ideas, companies, little startups here and there, but nothing I ever had the time and resources to really make succeed. I've never been able to find someone who can get as excited as I can about something and then believe enough in it to actually follow through and manifest the idea. I finally have that now. I need to be able to build upon my existing product and I need to be able to get good people involved.
I very recently ended a 5-year relationship and for the first time have had an appropriate emotional response to the situation. I've focused on my work, my clients, my own companies, my networks and relationships and the outcome has been very positive. I am now completely free of being tied down to a particular place and I am no longer subject to normal relationship distractions. ALL OF MY TIME CAN FINALLY BE DEDICATED TO MY COMPANY AND I AM READY TO DO THAT. I CAN FOCUS COMPLETELY ON BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS AND AM VERY MOTIVATED TO DO SO! I have so much built up passion ready to let loose it is unreal. I am ready to pour myself into this.
I have a myriad of clients that I consult and develop for (government and commercial), I am part of a great open source development team, I have two startups of my own, and was just offered the CTO and lead developer position at a funded startup that is building a mobile gaming platform. I want to work on my own projects, but some of the other opportunities are making it too lucrative not to consider them. If I go that route I will be falling right back into working on someone else's dream instead of mine. I don't want to do that again.
I have been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. I started on my first paper route when I was 10 years old. I woke up at 3 a.m. every day before school and on the weekends to stuff and wrap over 200 newspapers to deliver all over the small midwestern town I grew up in. I delivered newspapers before and after school for 5 years, through all kinds of weather, reading the newspaper every day as I delivered it. I was responsible for purchasing newspapers from the publishers, collecting payments from my customers, and handling the financial balancing act. There was once a contest to sell newspaper subscriptions all over the area that I lived in. The winner was awarded a $200 gift certificate to the a mall in addition to being entered into the \"Newspaper Carrier Of The Year\" competition. I sold 200+ subscriptions all over the region and won the contest.
In high school I started my first web company with two other students while I was already working at a web consulting firm as a developer after school and on the weekends and also at the technology services center for the school district I attended.
After high school I moved to California and joined as the CTO of a startup hosting company that also gave me equity, but because of a bad business deal and trusting the wrong friend I didn't receive any financial payout when the company was sold. Lesson learned about people, business, money, and contracts.
After that experience I bounced around a few companies, usually clashing with the people who ran the place because their goals never corresponded with mine. Most places I worked were stagnant and comfortable and inspired no ambition, drive, or loyalty. They were jobs. I am not a job person. They always lacked culture. I am a work person, just not a job person.
I caused a little trouble in my 20s, learned a lot of life lessons, opened my eyes and ears and started to grow up.
I've spent the last 3 and a half years building two companies, one on top of the other. One is a PAAS (Platform as a Service) and the other is a typical kind of startup (built on top of the PAAS), but it's the one I'm most excited about and have put the most effort into. It's fully developed far past prototype, has users, but is stealth-ish at the moment. I have an amazing network of people ready to help me and promote it and develop it further. I have a vision and high standards and want to do so much more with it than is already built but lack the resources. I keep seeing companies get ridiculous amounts of funding or being purchased for huge sums; I don't need anything close to those numbers! I don't know how some of these people can blow throughs o much money and have so little to show for it. It baffles me.
So... here I am.
I'd rather not spend my days making tedious changes to minutia at the request of clients and bosses. I'd rather do something interesting that inspires me to solves problems using creativity with a group of clever and awesome people.
I consult nearly full-time right now and spend my other waking hours working on my open source projects and my own companies, often skipping sleep. I want to spend much more time on my own stuff, but that's simply not possible when I have to worry about my financial situation and do work for others.
I don't want a mansion or a yacht, I just want to work on positive things, take care of my family, build more things, and make a difference.
I have my finger on the pulse of culture, business, industry, art, society, and a lot of other things. I read Hacker News and read and watch everything I possibly can that might give me helpful insights.
I keep seeing how being a risk taker with a mind of your own is a big plus for founders. Well, look no further. I saw what Peter Thiel said about \"Founder as Victim, Founder as God\".
I'm passionate, motivated, capable, aware, insightful, open-minded and eager.
I know the Silicon Valley names, I know who the big players are, who the go to guys are, but I'm not sure that's the game I want to play.
I own 100% of one of my startups and 50% of the other (the more exciting one). The other founder (non-technical) is open to a buyout, although I don't have the resources to do that myself. They are also willing to stay involved under the right circumstances. I'd prefer to run things completely autonomously, but I'm flexible. The other founder is willing to let me make all creative, technical, and financial decisions; they only want their ownership for now (unless I can buy them out). The company is incorporated in Delaware and is in good standing and is set up as a California foreign corporation. The company name / domain name is trademarked and the concept and execution are quite good. We've been offered a somewhat reasonable investment a couple of times, but I wasn't happy with the conditions. I completely believe in the idea, the execution, and the possibility of its success, now it's time for me to find someone else who does too.
Hopefully I will find someone who can appreciate that while I have a vision and a goal, I lack some of the more annoying pretenses. I don't feel entitled to anything.
If you want to know the specifics of my companies and have an interest in possibly getting involved with me in some capacity (even just to give me advice or ask questions) then respond to me and I'll send you the details. You can email me privately at angelheaded@yahoo.com (I created an account just for this)
I'll also send along a more detailed summary of my own skills and experience.
I'm not looking for someone who wants to see what my companies are and then go talk about them on the internet or something just yet, I'm looking for someone serious to get involved and provide what I need to help me continue to build something real and substantial that we can both benefit from.
For once in my life I would like to not have to worry so much about things that I care so little about.
Bet on Seabiscuit, he's going to win this race. I do not give up.
----------
\"If\"
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
--
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
--
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Seabiscuit and \"The money problem\""}},"_tags":["story","author_angelheaded","story_4158975","ask_hn"],"author":"angelheaded","children":[4167429],"created_at":"2012-06-25T22:03:37Z","created_at_i":1340661817,"num_comments":2,"objectID":"4158975","points":1,"story_id":4158975,"story_text":"Hello world!
I'm not exactly sure the right way to approach this, I've never been much for doing things in an orthodox way, so I'll just be straightforward about it. I need to find an investor.
I believe that I have all of the necessary ingredients to be successful at what I'm trying to accomplish, but I realize that I need others to believe in me to help me to achieve my potential; few people ever get there alone.
I hear prominent figures say that they invest in the people more than the ideas and I wonder how true that is. Do you care more about me or my actual startup? In this case I think both are awesome, so maybe it's your lucky day (or mine).
So, yes, I've got a startup. That's a lie, I've got two startups, but one is my baby. We'll get back to that later, for now I want to talk about who I am and why I am writing this.
Maybe I suffer from the Dunning\u2013Kruger effect, but I think I might be just the right mix of crazy, creative, and calculated to accomplish something fairly impressive.
I'm a developer / programmer / sysadmin / hacker with a pretty impressive skill set, but I also have an artistic sense and graphic design background. I'm also very well read in literature, science, and philosophy and am possessed by an insatiable thirst for knowledge and experience. I am equally exposed to the arts and sciences.
I probably don't look very good on paper. In fact, I probably look pretty bad on paper. When I was slightly younger (and quite a bit more stupid) I would have conjured up some inspired sophistry to explain away my mistakes, or I would have tried to blame my lousy circumstances on someone else, but I'm past that kind of nonsense now. I'm old enough to know better. Not too old, though. I'm three years younger than Jack Dorsey and three years older than Mark Zuckerberg, so I think I'm sitting in a cultural sweet spot. I'm wise enough to accept that don't know everything, but experienced enough to trust myself when it counts. I'm confident in my judgment and abilities, but not to the point of arrogance and closed-mindedness. I've read that fools surround themselves with idiots so that they will feel superiority, but the clever surround themselves with the wise so that they gain wisdom. That's not a useless maxim if you ask me.
Paul Graham said: \"So who should start a startup? Someone who is a good hacker, between about 23 and 38, and who wants to solve the money problem in one shot instead of getting paid gradually over a conventional working life.\"
That's me. Of course, there are a million people who fit that description. Who am I kidding? Probably a few million...
So why me? Why am I worth someone's time and resources? Great question. Let's start at the beginning.
As I led with, I probably don't look very good on paper. Based on what the \"paper\" trail says, I come off as a bad bet. I owe some personal debts, my credit isn't exactly superb, and there are a few other little complications I'll be happy to elaborate on if your curiosity can't contain itself by the time you finish reading this message in a bottle.
Where were we? Oh yes, I'm a bad bet. Not a confidence inspiring statement, I'm aware, so let's fix that.
Seabiscuit was a bad bet, too, and that's me... I'm Seabiscuit. One day I'm limping along looking pathetic and broken and you think I'll never walk again, much less race. Yet, here I am, running... fast.
I've made some less-than-stellar choices in the past, but I've learned incredibly valuable lessons from those mistakes. They were always born out of emotion, confusion, or desperation; never out of malice, spite, or envy. They unexceptionally occurred whenever I was following my heart instead of my head, as I was always encouraged to do as a child. I've learned that I need to take more precise and calculated risks and follow my intuition rather than take wild risks and follow my desire. That's all very vague and ambiguous, I know, but it's important for me to convey that I am somewhat self-actualized in that regard. I'm at peace with where I stand and I am a forward-thinking person; it's an important characteristic of who I've become and who I intend to continue being.
Most of my issues were always self-induced, such as quitting jobs that I couldn't stand even when it wasn't a financially stable thing to do, or spiraling out of control when a relationship would end and then relinquishing any shared assets, bank accounts, vehicle, etc, or running away from home as a teenager. I would always respond to situations without proper emotional intelligence, a skill I've acquired and begun to master in recent years. I've also developed an incredibly humanistic and empathetic side as my emotions have matured.
My repeated and intentional detachment from material possessions coupled with my inability to submit to the complacency of \"the norm\" and a regular job has only fueled my creative and entrepreneurial spirits. I don't have a burning desire to fill my pockets with dollar bills, but a fire does rage inside to build a successful business and to, as Paul Graham put it, \"solve the money problem\". Which brings us to ambition and motivation...
Why do I want financial flexibility? Why do I need money if I don't care about things? Why am I writing this? Why am I driven? How driven am I?
Good questions.
I want to enjoy my life. I want to help others. I want to do something with my life, something positive. I want to leave something in the world that wasn't here when I arrived. I want to contribute and make a difference. I want to do something that matters.
I have a family (not a wife and kids or anything, but immediate family, parents, sisters, brother, nieces and nephews) who really need some help and breaks in their lives. I've done all I can to help them at every turn, given my parents money that I simply did not have, given up my rent to help them keep food on the table and pay heating bills, etc. I've supported them as much as I can when I've been thriving, but I've always been torn between keeping a job that destroys my soul just to provide some help vs. trying to succeed on a larger scale and making things easier in the long run rather than day-to-day. I won't go into the details of my various family concerns (health problems and bills, lack of economic opportunities, etc) but I have more than enough reasons to push myself to the limit. It consumes me that they are not taken care of and that they struggle the way that they do. I must help. I know now that what I need to do is live as close to the metal as I can for now and put off helping them as much as I can until I am financially secure. This means building my company and resolving my personal financial issues so that I can focus on my work without financial stress and distractions.
I have a tremendous work ethic that I wish could be applied to something I really care about.
I am tired of worrying about how I will survive and how I will make enough money to take care of everything and still find time to work on my businesses. I want to know that what I'm supposed to be focusing on is my business.
My biggest downfall in pursuit of that goal has been that I've never really tried wholeheartedly at anything worth doing. I don't mean that I haven't put enormous amounts effort into things, because I've definitely done that (studying, learning, programming, art, music, reading, preparing myself, etc), but I've never before had something that I cared so much about that I actually wanted to (or have been able to) devote all of my time to making it grow and succeed. I've wanted to have something that I was that passionate about, but I always found myself busy working on someone else's project or at someone else's company, usually doing something that disagreed with my personal philosophies and tastes. I'd quickly burn out and become uninspired and leave behind the mind-killer to go dive into my own creative development (music, writing, code, etc). I've had ideas, companies, little startups here and there, but nothing I ever had the time and resources to really make succeed. I've never been able to find someone who can get as excited as I can about something and then believe enough in it to actually follow through and manifest the idea. I finally have that now. I need to be able to build upon my existing product and I need to be able to get good people involved.
I very recently ended a 5-year relationship and for the first time have had an appropriate emotional response to the situation. I've focused on my work, my clients, my own companies, my networks and relationships and the outcome has been very positive. I am now completely free of being tied down to a particular place and I am no longer subject to normal relationship distractions. ALL OF MY TIME CAN FINALLY BE DEDICATED TO MY COMPANY AND I AM READY TO DO THAT. I CAN FOCUS COMPLETELY ON BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS AND AM VERY MOTIVATED TO DO SO! I have so much built up passion ready to let loose it is unreal. I am ready to pour myself into this.
I have a myriad of clients that I consult and develop for (government and commercial), I am part of a great open source development team, I have two startups of my own, and was just offered the CTO and lead developer position at a funded startup that is building a mobile gaming platform. I want to work on my own projects, but some of the other opportunities are making it too lucrative not to consider them. If I go that route I will be falling right back into working on someone else's dream instead of mine. I don't want to do that again.
I have been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. I started on my first paper route when I was 10 years old. I woke up at 3 a.m. every day before school and on the weekends to stuff and wrap over 200 newspapers to deliver all over the small midwestern town I grew up in. I delivered newspapers before and after school for 5 years, through all kinds of weather, reading the newspaper every day as I delivered it. I was responsible for purchasing newspapers from the publishers, collecting payments from my customers, and handling the financial balancing act. There was once a contest to sell newspaper subscriptions all over the area that I lived in. The winner was awarded a $200 gift certificate to the a mall in addition to being entered into the \"Newspaper Carrier Of The Year\" competition. I sold 200+ subscriptions all over the region and won the contest.
In high school I started my first web company with two other students while I was already working at a web consulting firm as a developer after school and on the weekends and also at the technology services center for the school district I attended.
After high school I moved to California and joined as the CTO of a startup hosting company that also gave me equity, but because of a bad business deal and trusting the wrong friend I didn't receive any financial payout when the company was sold. Lesson learned about people, business, money, and contracts.
After that experience I bounced around a few companies, usually clashing with the people who ran the place because their goals never corresponded with mine. Most places I worked were stagnant and comfortable and inspired no ambition, drive, or loyalty. They were jobs. I am not a job person. They always lacked culture. I am a work person, just not a job person.
I caused a little trouble in my 20s, learned a lot of life lessons, opened my eyes and ears and started to grow up.
I've spent the last 3 and a half years building two companies, one on top of the other. One is a PAAS (Platform as a Service) and the other is a typical kind of startup (built on top of the PAAS), but it's the one I'm most excited about and have put the most effort into. It's fully developed far past prototype, has users, but is stealth-ish at the moment. I have an amazing network of people ready to help me and promote it and develop it further. I have a vision and high standards and want to do so much more with it than is already built but lack the resources. I keep seeing companies get ridiculous amounts of funding or being purchased for huge sums; I don't need anything close to those numbers! I don't know how some of these people can blow throughs o much money and have so little to show for it. It baffles me.
So... here I am.
I'd rather not spend my days making tedious changes to minutia at the request of clients and bosses. I'd rather do something interesting that inspires me to solves problems using creativity with a group of clever and awesome people.
I consult nearly full-time right now and spend my other waking hours working on my open source projects and my own companies, often skipping sleep. I want to spend much more time on my own stuff, but that's simply not possible when I have to worry about my financial situation and do work for others.
I don't want a mansion or a yacht, I just want to work on positive things, take care of my family, build more things, and make a difference.
I have my finger on the pulse of culture, business, industry, art, society, and a lot of other things. I read Hacker News and read and watch everything I possibly can that might give me helpful insights.
I keep seeing how being a risk taker with a mind of your own is a big plus for founders. Well, look no further. I saw what Peter Thiel said about \"Founder as Victim, Founder as God\".
I'm passionate, motivated, capable, aware, insightful, open-minded and eager.
I know the Silicon Valley names, I know who the big players are, who the go to guys are, but I'm not sure that's the game I want to play.
I own 100% of one of my startups and 50% of the other (the more exciting one). The other founder (non-technical) is open to a buyout, although I don't have the resources to do that myself. They are also willing to stay involved under the right circumstances. I'd prefer to run things completely autonomously, but I'm flexible. The other founder is willing to let me make all creative, technical, and financial decisions; they only want their ownership for now (unless I can buy them out). The company is incorporated in Delaware and is in good standing and is set up as a California foreign corporation. The company name / domain name is trademarked and the concept and execution are quite good. We've been offered a somewhat reasonable investment a couple of times, but I wasn't happy with the conditions. I completely believe in the idea, the execution, and the possibility of its success, now it's time for me to find someone else who does too.
Hopefully I will find someone who can appreciate that while I have a vision and a goal, I lack some of the more annoying pretenses. I don't feel entitled to anything.
If you want to know the specifics of my companies and have an interest in possibly getting involved with me in some capacity (even just to give me advice or ask questions) then respond to me and I'll send you the details. You can email me privately at angelheaded@yahoo.com (I created an account just for this)
I'll also send along a more detailed summary of my own skills and experience.
I'm not looking for someone who wants to see what my companies are and then go talk about them on the internet or something just yet, I'm looking for someone serious to get involved and provide what I need to help me continue to build something real and substantial that we can both benefit from.
For once in my life I would like to not have to worry so much about things that I care so little about.
Bet on Seabiscuit, he's going to win this race. I do not give up.
----------
\"If\"
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
--
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
--
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!","title":"Seabiscuit and \"The money problem\"","updated_at":"2025-09-24T03:16:15Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"reubens"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"I'm a fourth-year medical student in Melbourne, Australia, with interests in CS and AI.
In 'Preparing the healthcare workforce\nto deliver the digital future', Eric Topol suggests that "education providers should ensure genomics, data analytics and AI are prominent in undergraduate curricula for healthcare professionals."
But there isn't much out there on what specifically should be taught to future doctors. I see much of the benefit of AI to be in freeing up time for the clinician to devote to direct, human patient care. So how much technical background would be of use to the doctor?
What would you like the doctor - who is using your tools - to know?"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: How should AI education be incorporated into med school curriculum?"}},"_tags":["story","author_reubens","story_20111477","ask_hn"],"author":"reubens","created_at":"2019-06-06T04:02:35Z","created_at_i":1559793755,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"20111477","points":1,"story_id":20111477,"story_text":"I'm a fourth-year medical student in Melbourne, Australia, with interests in CS and AI.
In 'Preparing the healthcare workforce\nto deliver the digital future', Eric Topol suggests that "education providers should ensure genomics, data analytics and AI are prominent in undergraduate curricula for healthcare professionals."
But there isn't much out there on what specifically should be taught to future doctors. I see much of the benefit of AI to be in freeing up time for the clinician to devote to direct, human patient care. So how much technical background would be of use to the doctor?
What would you like the doctor - who is using your tools - to know?","title":"Ask HN: How should AI education be incorporated into med school curriculum?","updated_at":"2024-09-20T04:20:54Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"geekamongus"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["devoted","health"],"value":"I've been rebuilding old games with Claude. While creating a modern take on SimTower and having election news on TV in the background, I had the idea to build the economy of the game around democratic socialism instead of capitalism.
Instead of a real estate tycoon, you are an elected steward of the building, held responsible by the Assembly. Homes are allocated off a waitlist, dues are set on a sliding scale, and you face outside pressures from neighboring capitalist landlords.
The crown jewel is attracting a large grant to establish an observatory at the top of your tower, attracting scientists. To get there, you must make sure the people are fed, housed, healthy, and entertained. If the Assembly doesn't have confidence in your abilities, you get voted out.
It kinda works, and the potential failures in the game are pretty unique. I'd be interested to hear HN's take. An entire SimCity clone based on a different economy like this could be fun."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://intergalacticrobots.app/skyline-coop/"}},"_tags":["story","author_geekamongus","story_49195297","show_hn"],"author":"geekamongus","children":[49195380,49195392,49195864,49195872,49195939,49196039,49196060,49196076,49196124,49196127,49196141,49196675,49201100,49202163,49203051],"created_at":"2026-08-06T11:37:43Z","created_at_i":1786016263,"num_comments":41,"objectID":"49195297","points":41,"story_id":49195297,"story_text":"I've been rebuilding old games with Claude. While creating a modern take on SimTower and having election news on TV in the background, I had the idea to build the economy of the game around democratic socialism instead of capitalism.
Instead of a real estate tycoon, you are an elected steward of the building, held responsible by the Assembly. Homes are allocated off a waitlist, dues are set on a sliding scale, and you face outside pressures from neighboring capitalist landlords.
The crown jewel is attracting a large grant to establish an observatory at the top of your tower, attracting scientists. To get there, you must make sure the people are fed, housed, healthy, and entertained. If the Assembly doesn't have confidence in your abilities, you get voted out.
It kinda works, and the potential failures in the game are pretty unique. I'd be interested to hear HN's take. An entire SimCity clone based on a different economy like this could be fun.","title":"Show HN: Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism","updated_at":"2026-10-07T23:47:52Z","url":"https://intergalacticrobots.app/skyline-coop/"}],"hitsPerPage":50,"nbHits":17,"nbPages":1,"page":0,"params":"query=Devoted+Health&tags=story&hitsPerPage=50&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":11,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":16},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":4,"total":4}},"fetch":{"query":7,"scanning":1,"total":9},"total":11},"query":"Devoted Health","serverTimeMS":16}