A couple thoughts after reading this. They aren't meant to be criticisms, just a reflection on my own experiences as well because I have had plenty of failures myself.
For one, failing is probable. Most small businesses fail. The chances that you get it right on your very first try is low. Sometimes it takes many failed business ventures before you learn all the lessons. A lot of the lessons can be learned from reading books though. The common and cliche things like "identify your target audience" and "researching competitors" and "see if there is an interest in the product" are mentioned in every book but still skipped by so many.
There is a lot of talk about the things being built and the technology, but almost no discussion about the marketing side which is arguably more important. I wonder how much effort was put into that aspect.
It sounds like there was not a lot of product/market research before building the thing. I'm guilty of this too, building a product nobody wanted because I didn't do homework first to see if anyone cared.
Some of the ideas sound like they had no passion behind them. For example, the affiliate site for selling dresses. Was that something that was inspiring, or simply an easy-way-to-make-money thing? I think that can have a huge effect in quitting or sticking with it.
And it also sounds like there was a lot of quitting too early because things weren't growing fast enough. The marketing aspect may have played a factor here, but from my experience...solo startups DO NOT grow fast. Having that expectation in the first place might have been the reason for such disappointment. Running a business is a long-term thing that could even span beyond your lifetime.
Sounds like they were unhappy working there and did not like the CEO or their management. Kind of interesting they are suing in an effort to go BACK to work there.
Something sounds really suspicious about this offer. How does a company afford to pay people 3k/month without anything in return? They're paying 3k/month just so some people adopt their technology?
This just raises red flags and smells.
There's got to be some catch like they are going to start charging those companies a monthly fee to use their product or license it after they have already committed and it's too late to change.
I think it is hilarious when people argue with Trump on Twitter, because I realize he is 71 years old. He's literally someone's old grandpa on Twitter. How many 71 year olds do you know on Twitter? How many people do you know would argue and talk shit with a 71 year old grandpa on Twitter?
I understand he's not just _any_ 71 year old grandpa, but it's so funny to think about it that way.
Honestly, I doubt they did it for _financial_ reasons. Likely an old division that is being closed or downsized, like they specifically mentioned last time (the old cable tv divsion was being downsized in favor of the online streaming divsion). Most companies do layoff rounds at the turn of the year. Honestly, I think firing people can be a good thing. How many people do you work with that are total dead weight and you wish they were fired? It's normal business practice to do this, and 500 people out of 153,000 is 0.0032 or less than half of a percent of employees.
> maybe it was finding common ground talking about your wife instead of your husband, maybe it was when you didn't need to wonder whether you were turned down for skill or skin color
And maybe I am a self-taught gay Puerto Rican who disagrees that gay people need special encouragement in order to succeed.
> My career (and surely the career of the article writer and anyone else who is not a bro) came as a result of the other 50%, talented, generous men and women whose shared their expertise and encouraged me.
I guess the difference is that some people don't need the encouragement of others in order to succeed. Many great programmers are self taught and self motivated. How has being gay made it harder to learn to program? Did people tell you gays weren't allowed? Did they tell you to quit because gays aren't good at coding? Did they ask you, "Wait, you're a programmer, and you're GAY!?" Did other programmers make fun of you for being gay? Was the encouragement you got specifically about being gay? Is it because you are gay that you needed the extra encouragement? Just trying to understand...
Why is being a woman so important it is part of the title? Do women have a harder time learning? Is it a bigger accomplishment when a woman does it? Are people more fascinated by the fact that a _woman_ was able to code? I know, whenever I hear that a woman learned to code, I immediately think 'holy cow! no way! I wouldn't have cared if a man learned to code, but this was a woman. I better read this article.'
Do titles like this make girls feel empowered or does it make them feel like only super-women can program because if a woman learns to program, it is worthy of magazine article. If I was a young girl and I saw articles like 'I'm a woman, and I learned to program!' I'd probably feel like 'geez, it really takes a lot of work for a woman to be a programmer and it is so rare that whenever it happens they write articles about it.'
I would rather see independent (private) solutions before inviting a bunch of bureaucratic red tape to manufacturers.
For example, someone could create a company that issued certificates of security. Manufacturers would pay a small fee to these companies to perform security tests and give them a certificate of security. They can put that label on their products to provide confidence to consumers. Some products may warrant a much higher level of scrutiny than others so there could be different levels or different companies that offer it.
I think people will naturally choose the products that are 'certified' over the ones that aren't, and manufacturers will have to end up doing it to stay competitive.
This is part of the reason Go is gaining so much popularity. It gives you back all the power and speed of typed, compiled language but without all the tedious parts of C like managing memory and complicated threading.
You can already "go run program.go" from anywhere, even outside of a project structure, which is the same result as running an interpreted script.
It's a novel idea but I don't really see it taking off. Is there really that much benefit to having a shebang at the top of the file versus executing "go run" and is it really worth having a REPL for a fairly verbose language? I certainly don't see myself wishing for a Java REPL, and I don't particular see myself reaching for a Go REPL either.
It's the same reason they can't get good security experts to teach at universities. There was a study of 121 top universities and none of the top 10 require a course, top 3 didn't even offer an elective. Only 3 of the top 50 required a single security course.