I agree that hanging out with the Wall Street types, going to Wall Street bars, and living in Wall Street apartments probably skewed his perception of NYC's tech scene greatly.
But, hackers like myself who hang out with hacker types, go to hacker bars, and live in hacker nabes probably are probably equally skewed, albeit in the opposite direction. It's people like me who are shouting from the hilltops that NYC is the new SF, when in reality it's probably somewhere in between these two extremes.
Brooklyn reminds me a lot of Boston, tech-scene wise. There's a plenty of computer programmers around and a fair number of of young entrepreneurs, not to mention a startups located there. I know a few bars frequented by coders and there are coffeeshops galore. Not having spent time in SF I'd still say it's probably a more arts/entertainment oriented than tech oriented crowd, but the recently gentrified areas of Brooklyn are lightyears away from old-money Manhattan.
My motivation for posting my wall of text is that I just don't think his problem is external. Maybe external changes will prompt some introspective changes, maybe it won't, I just genuinely don't believe that latching on to meaning given to you by others (job, house, debt reduction) has inherent value when it comes to getting over an existentialist funk.
NYC rates, yep. I'd make significantly less elsewhere.
Three things:
NYC is expensive. A 6 pack of crummy beer is $14 across the street from my office, and a studio in Harlem is still $2,000/mo. Realistically, $100k/year in NYC is like $60k/year elsewhere. I know quite a few people making six figures that live 2 hours outside of the city because they can't afford it and I've read that you shouldn't even consider having kids in Manhattan until your household income is over $200k/yr.
Second, IME a lot of startups in NYC have deep pockets. I believe this is because most of the startups in NYC are funded by big companies with NYC HQs. Otherwise, they'd start up elsewhere because everything about running a biz is expensive in NYC (employee wages, taxes, rent, etc).
Third, there's a talent drought in NYC. If a tech savvy type of guy wants to be on the east coast, they usually end up Boston/Cambridge.
High cost of living + startups w/ lots of coin + talent shortage = $$$$ for devs.
Also, I made some broad generalizations. There are plenty of self-funded startups in NYC too.
> It's not the environment that matters, it's the change of environment.
That's a good point. I think as long as a person doesn't put too much hope into the idea that the environment itself is going to force changes upon oneself, it's a good idea.
I'm going to offer a counter-point to your suggestion:
I don't believe changing the external environment, or income, or people who you are near, is going to do jack shit.
Here's why: I feel exactly like the OP. Failed weight loss. Failed relationships (in my case it's making good friends / co-worker relationships). A giant list of failed or incomplete side projects. Still can't pay off my loans.
The difference: I make 3 times as much as the OP. I work for (and have always worked for) exciting startups. I live in a trendy area of NYC (not SF, but the same health-minded social stuff).
The money, the atmosphere, the location: false hopes. They don't change you you are. You're not your salary. You're not your neighborhood. You're not your job.
YMMV, but as someone who's been-there-done-that and hoped that a better job, more money, and better location would somehow fundamentally change who I was, I think that line of hope is no different than someone who thinks a bigger TV, fancier car, or hotter wife is going to make them happy. It won't.
EDIT: Let me be a bit more specific. I don't like it when people do some hand-waving and claim that it's just The Way It Is.
The main issue is that your environment does effect you, it just doesn't change you.
Money: I've lived on ramen & water. I had friends who understood that drinking cheap beer at home was the best I could do. Once I started making more money, I certainly thought I could avoid spending more. And for a while, I did. But things start to add up. First, you network with people who make the same Good Money that you make. So you pretty much have to up your entertainment budget or else be a recluse. Like it or not, your old peers will envy your money. You'll stop getting invited to basement parties (age is certainly a factor too). You decide one day you deserve better than living in a slum with bars on your windows and doors and rats in your walls and upgrade to an OK apartment. You decide it's time to "grow up" and stop buying used clothes. You decide Natty Light isn't the best beer in the world. Your old $25k/year lifestyle is now a $75k/year lifestyle with only incremental changes. This leads me into...
Location: If you move to a yuppie place, you'll spend yuppie money. Coffeeshops cost more. Old dirty grocery stores give way to Whole Foods. There will be subtle, almost subconcious pressure to spend more and be even more critical on yourself than you already are. The "keeping up with the Jones'" cranks into high gear. If you feel like a fat loser in the midwest (or wherever), it's 10x worse when you're surrounded by wealthy in-shape people. Trust me. My smug sense of being better than most people when I lived in poor suburban/rural areas has given way to feeling like a worthless fat piece of crap every time I walk outside (this is a bit of an exaggeration, but with a BMI around 30 I'm easily the fattest guy I can see 95% of the time).
And finally, job: A job is a job. Some are better, some let you work in your boxers, but from 10,000 feet they're all just ways to give you more money to spend on shit that you hope makes you feel better but doesn't. You can try to derive happiness from a job and for some people it works, but it never worked for me because I don't really have much control over my job. At 25 years old I'm not yet in the position of actually making big changes. Sure I can decide on a framework or the language to use, but do I choose which direction the company goes? Do I make hiring decisions? Not yet. Certainly in 5 years this will change but at 3 years out of college, even in startups, you're not given the sort of responsibility, IMO, that gives significant job satisfaction.
Anyway this is all just IMO. There's certain to be folks with the exact opposite feeling on this, so I'm not claiming I'm right, just that this is my experience.
> we prompt them to share their new page with friends immediately after signup
Does this actually work? I've seen a few places that do this but I've always assumed it's probably a poor performer (and makes your site looks spammy) because people haven't had a chance to evaluate if they want to tell their friends about your site.
> Second, and this is the most important point, because it's come up again and again in the comments, he is consistently missing deadlines and has failed to be very productive.
So I wrote a pretty harsh post previously before this little bit of -very important- info was added. Not getting things done while not working full hours is WAY different than getting things done on an unusual schedule.
I think the OP should be thankful his dev doesn't walk. If I partnered up with some biz guy who demanded I show up early for no other reason than appearance I'd assume he's an empty suit and leave. (9am is early in this industry, I've never had a job that demanded I show up before 10:00).
OP: You're a 2.5 man closet startup and you're asking your other half to be less productive for the sake of appearance. Are you sure he's the one with the problem?
All this talk of being "unprofessional" is a joke when it's two guys who just scrounged up enough capital to rent a cheap office trying to impress a fucking intern. Jesus Christ.
On second thought, I'm certain I'd bail if the OP was my "partner." The lack of thought put into this, the fact that you've considered trying to oust him instead of confronting him, the fact that you seem to lack the ability to look at your company critically (again: 2 dudes and some interns == 9-5 IS NOT A BIG DEAL) all shows a severe lack of biz sense or even common sense. You're obviously insecure (cares too much about appearance to some teenagers), ill-informed (does not understand developers or managing developers) and not equipped for a leadership position (talking to HN instead of the one person in the company who he should be talking to).
I hope the "partner" you're treating like an employee reads this thread and bails. You reached out to a forum instead of talking to someone who's your other half. I can't imagine how you'd run an actual company.
I know it's just a GIMP script but I was pretty impressed at how well the returned image was.
My only advice is to make the instructions clearer. It's quite a simple idea "send a whiteboard photo to XYZ, get a clean version back" but I had to go to a second page, scroll down quite a bit, then click a few other pages to find out exactly what happens when I send a photo. I might be dimmer than the average customer though.
> I have no hard data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that your average woman in her 20s is FAR more likely to be at least partially dependent on a husband or parents than a man of the same age.
Careful with your selection bias, though.
My experience mirrors yours (all my male friends are completely independent, many female friends are dependent on boyfriend or parents), but almost all my male peers are software developers, engineers, some PhDs, etc. My female peers, on the other hand, are from a more diverse pool of people.
Depends a lot on cost of living. For example, I'd never work for as low as $50/hr unless I was very desperate, but I also live in NYC. Typical contractor wages seem to be about $100/hr depending on YOE and type of work.
CS isn't a degree that teaches you how to program. For me it was much more like a discrete mathematics degree. I learned probably hundreds of algorithms (compression, cryptography, 3D rendering, AI), how to analyze and create new algorithms, but not how to program (except in the typical CS101 courses).
It was always assumed that any student could learn the language of their choice from an off-the-shelf book. I myself knew about half a dozen languages and mastered a couple before I graduated, but that was all extra-curricular work. In many ways I'd probably be a better developer if I obtained a Software Engineering degree instead, but CS gave me the foundation to tackle the interesting computational problems.
The professors knew they would be much more valuable explaining how RSA worked than how to debug a syntax error or learn the language of the month.
You sound like me. By changing jobs about ~6 times, I've gone from $16k/yr "assistant to the intern DB administrator" to well over six figures. Every job change was either because the job was gone (startup going under) or a very substantial (50%-ish) increase in pay.
The author of the article acts as though anyone who doesn't stick it out for 5 years is actively trying to screw over the company. That's just plain BS.
"You’re in it more for yourself than your company."
What a delusional asshole. If anyone says they care more about a company (and in turn the success of the shareholders) over their own success, they're lying. Anyone who expects this is insane.
You really think that there exist enough "incredibly intelligent" people to fill every tech role in existence?
Sure, every company can _ask_ for the top 1%, but unless they're delusional they're going to have to deal with the fact that some of the people they hire are just going to have to be average. Doubly so for a company offering no job security and long/chaotic hours for a very low chance of payoff in a few years.
Trust me, I know the risks because I've worked almost exclusively with and for start-ups. To me it's completely self evident why startup culture attracts the crazies or "rockstar" programmers. Who else is going to gamble so much time and effort on a what's almost certainly a failed venture? Usually not the industry's top talent, unless they're one of the founders.
Of course, I'm speaking very generally and making sweeping, stereotypes based on my own experience, which may not accurately reflect reality.
--edit--
My post above sounds a bit more aggressive than I intended, sorry. All I'm saying is that "incredibly intelligent" programmers with good communication skills are rare and it's pretty unreasonable (IMO) for a startup founder to just expect them to show up just because he has an idea and a little bit of money.
> I think that a startup is not the place for that kind of person. I just want incredibly intelligent, competent people who are opinionated but value each other as well.
Well good luck then to you, sir. If you find that Perfect Employee who's willing to start a job that might not exist in 6 months with below average pay and benefits (the standard startup MO), hire him or her immediately.
It's not a conspiracy if they're right in the open about it. They're praising a platform that does not exist yet, and what do you know, they have an app that will be available (for $$$) at launch.
I don't mean to imply it some Big Evil Conspiracy. NYTimes is a business like any other and they need to make money. NYT has a vested interest in the iPad's success.
But, hackers like myself who hang out with hacker types, go to hacker bars, and live in hacker nabes probably are probably equally skewed, albeit in the opposite direction. It's people like me who are shouting from the hilltops that NYC is the new SF, when in reality it's probably somewhere in between these two extremes.