Hi Mike, please, no need to apologize for the delay. I really appreciate you taking the time to look at this.
These are all great points, especially regarding the signup process and and permissions. I think you have validated some of the concerns that I have had regarding these issues.
I do have delete and rename, but maybe I should pop up a quick intro screen for first-time users to get acquainted with the functionality.
Mike, wow...thanks for the offer. I re-launched my site as a paid service about a month ago. It is an online text editor for Dropbox. (I guess you can disregard this if you are not a Dropbox user).
I hope you don't mind temporarily shelling out $6, but I would really appreciate it if you could sign up for the service and answer a few questions:
- Is it clear how to sign up for the service on the home page?
- Does the signup/payment workflow feel straightforward?
- Is it clear how to get a refund? Is the process straightforward?
Using Node has helped me think more in terms of streams because the APIs afford such thinking. PHP has streams but I never thought to use them, and I haven't really seen it done.
Node Streams really help performance in my application where I am proxying API calls from the browser to the Dropbox API. It's much faster to stream the response from Dropbox through to the client rather than request, wait for entire response, then send.
I agree. I don't know about TCP behavior, but this seems really wrong in the sense that it ignores HTTP semantics of GET and POST. I imagine this could cause unintended effects in intermediaries like caching proxies.
1. backlog.txt - a list of all potential ideas and tasks
2. changelog.txt - a list of iterations/versions/milestones
Whenever I have an idea or bug, I add it as a line in backlog.txt
When I want to actually work on code, I pick 3-4 tasks that I want to complete and move them to changelog.txt. The number of tasks depends on how much I can do in one or two sittings.
backlog.txt is in a format like this:
* Fix IE9 compatibility
* Refactor CSS
* ... etc
changelog.txt looks like this:
1.1.0 - next release
--------------------
* Fixed IE8 thingy
* SSL encryption enabled
1.0.9 - March 10, 2012
--------------------
* Fixed null-pointer crash
* Catch exception in sendmail.java
* Enabled websockets transport
Keeping everything in plain text helps me from fiddling around too much with the tool, which I am very prone to do. (Meta-bonus, my product is a text editor so I can organize my product with itself.)
You could say that I assumed the general risk of dealing with people, but amirmc is correct that I did not assume any formal business risk. I.e., I did not receive stock options or any other compensation that is normally given to risk-bearing stakeholders.
Yes, the other employees that have beef are taking it up with the CEO. I wasn't a real "CTO" as you one might think. But as far as that small company was concerned, I was responsible technology direction, although I didn't have my own budget for hiring.
I've heard that through the grapevine, and other commenters have concurred, but I've never confirmed it.
Update: according to 11 USC Section 507, wages fall in 3rd place. I am not a lawyer so I may be reading this all wrong, but it goes "administrative expenses", "unsecured claims", then wages up to $4000 (about half of what I'm owed) and earned within 90 days of the bankruptcy filing. It's been about a year since I quit the company, and the wage claim through the labor board has a 3-year statute of limitations. I wonder what would happen if I filed a wage claim on a bankrupt company...
I think you hit the nail there in that I'm really curious on how to solve the social problem in more of a win-win way as you described. I would probably break down and rank the problem like this:
1. Character - how do I carry myself with justice, mercy, and compassion, yet not get pushed around and maintain self-respect?
2. Social - how do I maintain relationships?
3. Financial - how do I get my money?
Thanks for your comment trizk. I think you capture what I mostly feel in my gut. I really do feel like the CEO really believes in the company to a fault. His gift and curse seems to be that of a hyper-visionary; what he sees in the company doesn't jive with my reality of the company. He has expressed remorse for the situation, but at this point he's lost my trust; I now read his remorse as mere bluffing. Not that I believe he was out to maliciously defraud, I just see this as the outcome of poor judgment and incompetence.
You are right, I did assume risk in joining the startup. That was not apparent to me at the time because it was not really communicated, but now I know. Looking back, I see a lot of "I should have known" moments. The lesson is that one should not look to the leaders of the company to look out for their interest.