Save 22: A Tech Startup, My Family
Written by one of the guys who worked at the startup I was with for a year. Ah memories.
The Spiffy Dapper
A friend recently started a bar.
Now when most people hear this, they think its some rich bloke who has started a snazzy bar with fantastic decor, expensive booze, pretty waitresses and a nice VIP lounge for friends and friends of friends. This is not the case for The Spiffy Dapper. Starting literally means starting up, like any startup would.
I have been in contact with startup culture for some time now and it is super refreshing to be able to take part in this experience of starting a business that requires not just your hands but blood and sweat. Granted I am on the sidelines as an active supporter, but the stories that can be told alone from this journey my friend is taking blows me away all the time. I am so fortunate.
The bar is not polished… yet. It is rough round the ages, as it should be fitting of a 1920s like speakeasy. It has second hand furniture, or borrowed history as I like to call it, and the amazing thing is that this adds to its history and richness.
The story of how it came to being is in itself a fantastic one. The story of how it is going to continue and build itself out could be a lesson in applying lean startup principles in real life non technological businesses. Well maybe apart from the use of Facebook to spread the word.
My friend George has his fair share of history and stories that lead him up till this point. I know him because we struck up a conversation at another bar he worked at 7 years back. I’m glad he is returning to what he is good at, making a mean cocktail and just generally engaging you as a person.
The trails and tribulations he’s faced since meeting 7 years ago have made him a more intense and deep person, ideally what you would want in a bartender who can, not only accurately make you a drink you would like, but also engage you in conversations about life, love and everything else.
It is not for everyone. But for the very few who like good conversation, great drinks, a truly rough round the edges and totally not mainstream experience, I cannot recommend a better place.
Or maybe its just me being hipster.
Living with Less
If anything the past year working at the startup in Philippines has taught me is that less is more and the value of money is literally the amount of value you place upon it.
I have come to the realisation that life is just too bland, boring and most of all meaningless to even bother about being in the rat race. Money is just a means to an end, a resource that just gets things done and that’s it. Food, shelter and work you find meaningful is so much more important to feel like a human being that I can’t imagine trudging along with others trying to “survive”.
Hopefully at some point in time, people will slow down enough to realise that all the things you accumulate, you cannot take with you when you die. What then, is the meaning of it all.
Maybe being idealistic with ambitious isn’t so bad after all. That maybe leaving a legacy behind is perhaps the thing of paramount importance we have to work to achieve instead of trying not to be the last in the race.
After all, isn’t the race just a mental competition. By not obeying the rules is perhaps our salvation.
Granted, I am in a very interesting position. My work and expertise are both sought after, which allows me to be highly paid, but it did not start out this way. For a year, I basically just had my basic needs taken care of, a small stipend to buy other miscellaneous things and work I find fulfilling. I lived out of 3 bags for that year and that was all I needed
I was happy.
Sure I was braying about the benefits of startups and why people should take them up instead of a cubicle job. Now I know that that is just the tip of the iceberg. The real message is that all the things society says you need, you don’t really.
Maybe it is just me, but I don’t like to have my life dictated by others, but the benefits of needing so much less just has me in awe all the time. Mobility in everything is such a sorely understated thing that society tries to cover up it is not even funny.
I am now trying to cut the ties that bind, which largely consist of the damages that I have to pay for my scholarship which was terminated. That and also the other various “loans” that would otherwise paralyse my ability to take flight.
If I were Chinese Singaporean and wanted to be world class, I would fear being noticed by my own community. All communities have this tendency of soothing and comforting their own kind to death.
Most of all, though, listen to your developers. If you’ve hired the right people, then they want clean, extensible, scalable code as much as you do.
Moving to New York
After a month and a half of unemployment, I have recently taken up a job with a NYC based startup and will be moving to the Big Apple once the H1B visa process concludes.
Meanwhile, I will be working remotely/commuting regularly.
It has been a wild ride the past month and a half of just bumming around, talking to startups/companies who were interested in my unemployment as well as doing remote technical interviews and coding tests. I will be writing about some of my experiences in this regard as well as some thoughts in my forth coming series on unemployment.
Apart from that, I am super excited for my trip next week to Poland and then on to NYC for the initial orientation with the company. Also I’ve always wanted to see snow and apparently mother nature has seen it fit to dump a shit tonne all over the state of New York.
What makes it really important though – beyond the cinematography, acting and script – is how the film sets up the series to reach even greater heights in the future.
In fact, it my experience the best technologists are akin to artists. They’re highly creative. They’re sometimes moody. They work on their own schedule and are often hard to manage. They may work strange hours such as 2am – noon. They don’t love documentation. They often don’t love testing. Of course I’m generalizing. But barely. The characteristics are so prevalent. These people are your purists
Every time there is a claim of “near C” performance from a higher level language like Java or Haskell, it becomes a sick joke when you see the details. They have to do awkward backflips of syntax, use special knowledge of “smart” compilers and VM internals to get that performance, to the point that the simple expressive nature of the language is lost to strange optimizations that are version specific, and usually only stand up in micro-benchmarks.
Oh hey! Locally made SAR 21 assault rifle given big thumbs up. And not a “sponsored” review too!
Source: youtube.com
That’s about right for me.
(via tastefullyoffensive)
You’re my country. You’re responsible for me as I am responsible for you too. Protect me as I protect you for the next generation to come. You have a duty to me, as I have a duty to you too. Because that’s what real patriotism is. It’s not selective. It’s certainly not about the person. It’s about the people.
Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.
Mostly it’s about developer sanity and having something well-understood that you can cling to amidst the swirling noise of people whose needs and visions of the right solutions never quite line up with your own.
Doing it like only a well spoken British Gentleman would know how, the Mayor of London talks about rugby and a little about soccer.
Source: youtube.com
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