AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

Top comment by jamesholden

Personally have been going through this myself, and recently. Some things which make me feel better:

* Finding my own independence to do things. I often tied my own activities to that of my partner. So many times I felt like I was WAITING for things, when I didn't need to be.

* Find your own hobbies which are outside of work related things. I am interested in kite surfing for example. I've never done it, but I've begun digging into it.

* People will say this often: Exercise. Don't quickly dismiss this. It's MENTALLY hard to motivate yourself, I get it. I HATE going. But, I ALWAYS feel better after having gone. There is something about tackling things you DON'T want to do, and getting satisfaction from having accomplished doing it. Plus, your whole body, including your brain, get distinct benefits which persist longer than the time you work out. So you work out 30 minutes, but you feel great for hours after, and your body physically benefits well beyond too.

* Find friends you can just hang out with. I moved to a new city and hardly know anybody. But I still take trips 1-2 hours away to see friends because I NEED that interaction. It breaks me out of my own world/thoughts.

2. Ask HN: Starting Your Own LLC?

Top comment by mdorazio

1) Doing taxes correctly as anything other than a sole proprietorship is a huge pain in the ass, especially if you're selling things across state borders, and doubly so if you're in California. I recommend finding a tax professional to handle that for you (the time it takes to do it yourself is generally not worth it). Also don't forget that if you're actually making money you'll need to pay estimated taxes quarterly.

2) Either learn basic accounting (if you don't already) and keep excellent records of all revenue and expenses business-related (ideally categorized into standard business categories) or find a CPA to keep your records straight monthly. A huge number of people get burned simply because they didn't keep proper records and then ran into tax or regulatory trouble later.

3) Definitely keep your business finances as separate from your personal funds as possible. Different checking account, different credit card, etc.

4) Think really hard before you hire anyone for anything, and if you do, make sure you're either doing 1099 correctly or get a professional to help with W2 stuff. Again, this is something that often comes back to bite people.

And lastly, remember that most businesses fail and that failing at business is not something to be ashamed of. If it's not working out, don't make yourself miserable and mortgage your future to try and save it indefinitely - walk away and try again with the lessons you learned.

3. Ask HN: Blogs about Being CTO/Head of/Lead Dev?

Top comment by wjossey

Also not a blog, but I run a free mentoring service for managers. Mostly meet with folks from HN and Twitter, and I do daily sessions.

https://freemanagermentors.com

While there are tons of great resources out there, one thing to keep in mind is that general advice is often bad advice, when it comes to teams and people management. Be careful about over-correcting for certain advice that on the surface seems helpful, but misapplied to the wrong context is detrimental.

One example is that a lot of the people I talk to have been attempting to apply Radical Candor to their culture, with fairly mixed results. There's a lot to love about the intent of RC, as an example, but misapplied to the wrong personality types can be disastrous, demoralizing, and counterproductive to the receiver.

I'd highly recommend as you try to level up any management skills, you talk to someone who has attempted to put something into practice and get a sense for the failure modes. This might help you adapt it to your culture and team so that the downsides are mitigated and the upsides are still there.

Hope that's helpful!

4. Ask HN: Is the “The Art of Computer Programming” Worth the Investment?

Top comment by vinayms

This is a series more for engineers who want to delve into the depths of "computer science" that takes them to the magical world of mathematics. That way, its not worth if you are looking for direct real world application, like the CLRS or Sedgeick books provide.

That said, I think its worth having this for the humbling experience it provides. This experience is very much needed for every engineer, and specifically software engineers, because after a while of reapplying same old tropes to churn out solutions to problems, there creeps a feeling that we are at the top of our game, and "experts", when in reality most of us are only "experts" in a specific insipid framework or technology which are as permanent as the latest fashion trends. This series of books makes us feel worthless and keenly introspect. It makes us see that there is a vast array of knowledge that we severely lack. It builds personality and keeps us grounded. It separates true musicians from college band guitarists who shred the neck to cheering crowds.

I have Combinatorial Algorithms Part 1 Volume 4A and it makes me cry every time I peruse it.

5. Ask HN: Do you keep a personal knowledge repository?

Top comment by stockkid

Yes, I built an open source tool called Dnote [0]. Basically, I can write down my microlessons as I learn them without leaving the terminal or browser. And it sends me a weekly digest to automate spaced repetition.

I used to use Evernote to write down my knowledge but I quickly found that I never look back at my notes, and quickly lost grasp of my knowledge. That's why I built the automated email digest.

My workflow is simple: when I learn something, I execute a command line program to write it down without leaving the terminal when I am coding. Every weekend, I receive a digest of what I learned in the past. This way, I can successfully maintain all the new knowledge I acquire.

Similarly to your requirements, I often search through my knowledge base in the terminal before doing a web search. Doing so saves me time because my knowledge base is already written in my own words that I understand well.

- [0] https://github.com/dnote/dnote

6. Ask HN: What tools/methods do you use to focus your time well?

Top comment by juvoni

I utilize a similar system to "reverse engineer the year".

Breaking down the major outcomes I want for the year into quarters which each having a specific focus and theme. At the end of each quarter I have a 90 day review to reflect on how I'm doing, where I'm heading and if there is any recalibration that needs to happen from changing priorities.

Each month I is essentially 3 "Acts" that play out the goals of that quarter and those in turn have weekly sprints.

With all that said the day is the most important of it all. What I choose to do each day reverberates across the year. This is where deep investment in intentionally building habits and focusing on systems over goals come into play.

I write more about that system here: https://juvoni.com/you-are-a-rocketship/

A great book that talks about that system is The One Thing by Gary Keller

As for time management tools I’ve focus on four categories

- Tracking

- Quotas

- Blocking

- Scheduling & Task Management

I talk about the tools I use here: https://juvoni.com/tools-of-the-time-manager/

Big highlights are:

- Rescuetime

- Freedom

- TickTick

7. Ask HN: Faking your resume to acquire projects

Top comment by ciguy

I'm guessing you're in India? This is such common practice that as a CTO I've been forced to blanket ban working with Indian firms. This is one of the least dishonest things they do, some of the other stuff I could tell stories about is far worse.

You're doing the right thing, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished for it in the short term. Hopefully someone recognizes your integrity in the long term and you are rewarded accordingly but there are no guarantees.

8. Ask HN: Examples of bad open-source code to learn what to avoid?

Top comment by neya

I feel like this could lead to very opinionated, non-constructive comments/flame, but if were to give you an example, I'd suggest taking a look at Wordpress eco-system. While Wordpress core's codebase has improved significantly over the years, some of the plugins haven't.

The top pick goes to WooCommerce, although an open source E-commerce solution on top of Wordpress, it has some terrible decisions under the hood.

The top pick would go to mixing presentational logic with business logic. For example, to render a table, instead of exposing an array of objects to allow the developer to loop through it as he/she sees fit, WooCommerce will force you to use a PHP function that renders a table for you and there's actually no way to modify the presentation logic if you wanted to.

It's a really fundamental programming paradigm that even top open source companies fail to adhere to.

Again, I'm not saying this to attack them or the maintainers behind the code, just my opinion of why I think it's bad quality code while respecting the fact that developers still do take time and effort for us to enjoy something with freedom and zero cost.

9. Ask HN: Biographies recommendations – both Westerner and Non-westerner

Top comment by ctchocula

The Power Broker - the story of how an idealist turned into Darth Vader

The Years of Lyndon Johnson - the story of how LBJ rigged the 1948 election for Senate and rose to power

Here's an excerpt from an interview with the author of both books:

> During all these years I did come to understand stuff about power that I wanted people to know. You read in every textbook that cliché: Power corrupts. In my opinion, I’ve learned that power does not always corrupt. Power can cleanse. When you’re climbing to get power, you have to use whatever methods are necessary, and you have to conceal your aims. Because if people knew your aims, it might make them not want to give you power. Prime example: the southern senators who raised Lyndon Johnson up in the Senate. They did that because he had made them believe that he felt the same way they did about black people and segregation. But then when you get power, you can do what you want. So power reveals. Do I want people to know that? Yes.

10. Ask HN: Developers with ADHD/ADD, how do you cope?

Top comment by belril

First off: Diagnosis and medication access is one thing, but maintenance is another key — find a psychiatrist or physician who you get on with well and can work with for a good long while.

Other tips:

* Use hyper-focus when you have it, to the best of your ability. I think of it like a gift from my brain, and I try to get the most mileage out of it as possible, even if the task I’m working on isn’t top priority.

* Focus on building good habits. I find it’s a way to trick my brain into doing things that are good for me.

* For meetings, have someone(s) who you can check in with about what’s been discussed. Ideally, someone who you can say “hey, I didn’t quite follow what happened — what are the key points?”

* Strong agreement with other folks on using task management systems. My general recommendation is to find one you like (Getting Things Done is my favorite, but there are no shortage of others) try it out for a good long while (2+ months), and slowly adapt it to your personal needs.

* Talk to your people manager about work you’ve been assigned to that you’re not interested in. Sometimes you’re really needed in a particular area and other times you’re not. If you express your preferences for particular types of work, you’re more likely to get it.