bdrocco · HackerTrans

I would pay them 2x or so and ALSO hire a second junior/entry level developer with the remaining budget. The senior developer benefits by having a sounding board and someone to put more menial tasks to. The junior developer gets great experience learning from a wizard, doesn't get stiffed on pay, and provides the n+1 redundancy needed to at least keep the project going if anything happens to your superstar.

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

I switched away a long time ago when I got a cold call from GoDaddy trying to up-sell me their hosting... when I told him I use Amazon for all my hosting the salesperson was convinced I was confused about what he was trying to sell me having never heard of Amazon Web Services.

Either way... I was stuck with some domains on auto-renew I couldn't transfer out right away but today turned out to be a good reminder that I still had those last domains to transfer. Bye Bye GoDaddy!

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

Didn't anyone here play Sim Tower? Obviously you want the send all your elevators to the ground floor for the morning rush hour and distribute them evenly among your floors for the later part of the day. Perhaps leave a couple extra ones at the ground floor 24/7 for mid-day visitors. :-P

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

I can't say I'd mind youtube getting shut down for a day...

It'd be comical though when a study puts a value to the U.S. productivity increase when youtube videos are an inaccessible distraction.

Some of those videos have sucked up millions of man-hours of viewing... if even a single digit percent of those views were by workers procrastinating, we're talking millions in lost productivity. (Per clip!)

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

Except that we'd be putting a price on opportunity... Sure maybe big companies would put up $100k for international talent, but anybody else that would want to immigrate for that price probably isn't doing it to work hard and make their lives better. Isn't that the appeal of the USA?

I agree we need to keep more talented foreigners in the country, but a $100k price tag isn't the right solution. How would an immigrant save up that money while studying in the US (or while in their former country)? If he/she drops out of college they wouldn't be able to stay on their student visa...

In fact, this author's suggesting we blindly accept anyone that can pay $100k. It seems to me this approach would attract more terrorists and/or criminals with those types of resources abroad than freelancing entrepreneurs.

Nevermind that this wouldn't solve the current illegal immigration problem either.

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

You can be extremely hard working, but that doesn't make you an entrepreneur.

The one common trait I've found among great entrepreneurs...? They want to change the world in a big way.

The great ones don't care about the money or being their own boss or working from wherever. And almost certainly, they love what they do precisely because they aren't sitting back cracking open a beer (no matter how high up the podium)... instead, they've got bigger things to achieve. The drive never stops.

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

I would suggest Wikipedia needs a 'second page' site to host these types of 'less than notable pages' and they be eligible to be promoted to the main site.

But really I would just classify this as a #FirstWorldProblem

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

Simple solution. File a small claims court case for the cost the replace your library. The less offensive option that I've used in the past is finding the corporate contact from the Better Business Bureau and going directly to them. It works fairly often and fairly well because most companies value those reputations.

I agree with some of the comments here, simply because your company is an 'internet company' doesn't mean a 'Help' webpage is all you need for support. Actual personal support handling is virtually non-existent from large scale web companies and it's a disappointment.

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

I'm not much of a self help guru, but positive visualization was often taught to me in sports growing up. In these cases, it would seem the lower blood pressure and heart rate would enhance focus and improve coordination. What matters is how well you perform in actuality.

In neither sports nor work, nobody celebrates visualizing success over actual success, people celebrate tangible accomplishments. However if you're not motivated to achieve certain goals in the first place, positive visualization obviously won't change that, it only gives you that warm fuzzy feeling this article describes.

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

Isn't "the percentage of search queries that result in a visit to a website" a bogus measure of success? I find myself having to follow more Bing links because the captions are irrelevant sections of the website.

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

Why don't we turn the patent review process into a public endeavor?

Hacker News / Digg style... vote up the novel patents and down the obvious ones, while commenting with conflicting patents or prior art... then the examiner can use this as input.

If the system is perfected eventually that examiner could be eliminated. This also would create jobs in the private sector as companies would be inclined to hire contributors to this process to protect their interests. You obviously need transparency to see who's providing this feedback to prevent abuse, but that's a minor aspect.

Finally, IMHO software patents specifically deserve more stringent guidelines for patentability. There's no intrinsic technological worth in a major percentage of software patents. "It's software, if you want a word processor I can make you a word processor"... if you want a button to tap and order something instantly, I can make you a button. Now, if you want a button that can be clicked by millions of people over a minute, there may be some novel technology behind that. These differences need to be isolated.

bdrocco

15년 전discuss

As I once heard serial entrepreneur Tim Bucher say... "Always hire people who are smarter than yourself." It's an extremely difficult task since every entrepreneur wants to do something bigger and better than anyone else.

I'd like to think my friends are the smartest guys on the block. ;-) We founded a startup in 2008 that had a successful M&V, but our engineering team was already tried and tested prior to the company.

However, don't assume this is a curse of "twentysomethings," this is a problem that I've seen span generations.