I am dealing with the exact same situation handling a 7 year and a 2 year old. Its actually worse in my case since my wife is a healthcare professional and has to be at her job - so its effectively just me looking after the 2 kids during the day.
I tried working 1 week from 6-12 in the night, but was exhausted since I still had to wake up when kids woke up. This week, I am trying to do 3 hours before they wake up, another hour when the younger one naps and then finally 2 more hours once my wife is back home. Several folks in my reporting chain have similar aged kids or a tad bit older, so they are empathetic to the situation.
My productivity is definitely impacted, but then these are unchartered waters. I am just trying to stay sane through the process :-)
best thing you can do -- buy a town home or home -- try to manage the minimum 10% down payment (if you can manage 20%, thats great) and then rent out the bedrooms to other single folks. I wish i had done that when i was a entry level software engr.
2 awesome things about this release:
1) No need to wrap siblings in an enclosing element - upgrade is worth it just for this change alone (j/k)
2) I'm surprised no one has mentioned it so far -- but this release uses the new fiber architecture - I saw the video presentation about fiber and think it could really help in terms of performance
IIRC Bezos chose seattle not just for available talent but also the fact that there are no income / corporate taxes in the state of WA.
I believe this factor will be also significant when they choose the 2nd HQ. Texas / Florida / Nevada are the competitive places that come to mind that have no income tax. Perhaps Austin (availability of talent pool) seems likely ?
If you read the story, it mentions digging dirt on Sarah's family. Family includes children.
>> But what is wrong with threatening a woman's children?
Clearly you dont have children. If you dont see anything wrong with this notion, having a thoughtful discussion with you is a moot point. Do you work for uber ?
Similarly, Mcdonalds is fighting a case that it doesnt control or influence how franchises pay the workers. Its the whole minimum wage issue being fought out by workers vs Mcds.
Working on http://www.buzzerati.io - I crawl, mine and discover tech news and rank them based on fb shares/number of tweets and linkedin shares. So, you can see what is the hottest content being shared on social networks.
Congrats Docker team. Docker is an amazing product and I've been following it closely as well as playing with the latest version. Not one bit of the hype is vaporware. Cant wait for it to get a little more production ready. I'm sure anyone who has done even a small amount of dev-ops can appreciate what a huge pain point docker will solve. VM's have been commoditized, but with docker, they can be obliterated altogether.
One question I have for Solomon -- do you guys have a product roadmap on the site anywhere ? As in, what features are planned etc. and by what release/time ?
With so many startups doing things similar to this (do local tasks, fetch food, deliver stuff, clean home, do laundry) -- I am wondering where and how they will all be able to hire local runners (lets not forget ebay, google and amazon also trying to get into this 'get it now' mania).
It might actually be a killer idea to employ these local runners -- and then get jobs from all these varied companies/startups. So, doordash, instacart, prim etc. could all contact you and use your workforce -- you essentially remove the headache of hiring, scheduling and logistics for these startups. But then -- what would be the point of all these startups -- you could just offer these services yourself if you owned the runners :)
if you read through it, (2) specifically is about usage and adoption, not monetization. commute in bay area is more limited to work and back -- most of the folks in east bay and south bay dont use / rely on public transport for their weekend travel.
I am a regular Caltrain rider and here's my honest feedback.
First, to be completely unbiased, the app looks awesome and pretty slick - so great job on it.
Now the challenges:
1) This app will be incredibly difficult to monetize unless you reach significant scale and then use advertising
2) Most of the daily commuters in the bay area are either bart riders or caltrain riders or muni riders -- as in, the mode of public transport they take is fixed. As a Caltrain rider, i have never taken the bart in the last 2 years i've commuted to the city. And I believe vice versa is equally true. Bart riders are unlikely to ride Caltrain regularly (discounting every once in a while ride). Why am I saying this and how is it relevant ? Most of the existing daily commuters have already downloaded free apps which provide the schedules, maps etc. -- most will have very little incentive to download your app, unless it provides some additional value above and beyond the existing apps
3) This app could be more valuable for those who are visiting bay area -- although most of my friends who have visited bay area rent a car -- since they plan day trips to napa, carmel etc -- while in the city, most just tend to use cabs.
This kind of app makes a lot of sense for a place like nyc or london where the subway and public transport system is much more complex and extremely well connected. And where majority of the people use public transport. But even then -- those whose daily commute route is fixed, the app adds little value, IMHO. But I havent used it in nyc, so I could be wrong.