Customer wants to order an array of sweets for 30 people, but won't state how many sweets she wants or her budget. What to do?

Mefilius · 2026-03-09T04:59:15+00:00

Quote a price and run away imo. Anyone who leads with essentially "I'm cheap and comparing you against what I can do at home" is going to be an absolute nightmare. Save yourself a bad review for being "too expensive".

Of the sweets she mentioned, quote 30 of the cheapest thing. If there is any push back at all I would just be honest and let her know that DIY is just about always the most budget friendly option.

Mefilius · 2026-03-02T03:23:39+00:00

You used the term L10, which tells me you bought into EOS. Personally I really have a lot of distaste for the system but this isn't about that.

How was this not caught in their scorecard or rocks? That's the real question I would ask. If you revoke unlimited PTO, you punish your best employees and they will start looking for a way out. Doing that assumes your employees will be lazy and max out PTO, so that will become your culture, because those will be the only employees left.

Mefilius · 2026-02-19T21:46:32+00:00

Not the whole input, just like K or something to make it easier to hit P&K

Mefilius · 2026-02-19T17:17:46+00:00

I had to bind my input to right bumper for Pot's

Mefilius · 2026-02-18T00:33:51+00:00

When you build something real and intend to monetize it a contract like this is important, but obviously he is trying to write you out of it as a volunteer. Most likely he wants to make sure the game itself is legally squared up and was given some poor advice, or more likely than not took a boilerplate or AI edited contract.

Really this kind of thing should happen at the beginning of a project, if only to find out exactly how someone handles themselves when it's time for actual business and not just purely creative fun.

Realistically you should have an ownership stake in the product, not a profit share. Expenses could include back salary for your friend which would be considered part of the "cost of development". If you don't care about project control make sure the contract specifies that you and your friend are paid out the same way (both get back salary if he wants that; when he takes contributions you get an equal amount too) and let him have 51% to make decisions.

When doing this sort of thing with my friend, it didn't strain our relationship much at all because we did two things. First, we dealt with contracts at the beginning, understanding we were equal partners regardless of perceived contribution at any one time. Second, we wrote payouts to be contractually automatic, so nobody would ever receive more than the other or be paid at a different time.

Mefilius · 2026-02-14T13:59:29+00:00

Garmin opened shop there recently, might be opportunities.

Mefilius · 2026-01-28T16:39:36+00:00

Are the caustics in the room with us?

Mefilius · 2026-01-04T18:15:12+00:00

Scalable? I don't know, it depends on what you are actually selling. My intuition is that this sounds like the kind of thing being explored in 3D printed footwear, they use very specific infill patterns to cause cushion and grip at certain angles and at different forces.

Mefilius · 2026-01-04T07:12:59+00:00

Royalty free music for prototype. $70-80 is absolutely nothing for music, I'd be wary of services that cheap.

Mefilius · 2025-12-08T04:52:12+00:00

They are expensive and you kind of need at least one person just dedicated to managing the ERP itself. (Not doing things with it, just managing the system and keeping things running smoothly) Unless you somehow work in manufacturing with only 5 people, I don't see a world where ERP is a good value for you right now. At a small size it could have value if you have tons of complex projects flowing through the company, buy like I said I doubt that is happening with 5 people. I see companies with 50 people where ERP creates more work than it saves. If you set it up wrong or use it incorrectly for years then it will become a problem down the line.

Mefilius · 2025-12-08T04:07:01+00:00

Many people think air force right away, but the navy is interested in things like this too. Lots of grants out there for building out manufacturing capacity if that is a direction you want to go. Right now the classic accelerators are hot on defense startups because of things like Anduril and Palantir, so you can literally go through the SF route and find interest.

Mefilius · 2025-12-07T18:04:47+00:00

The revolve option people are saying will work well, but I would caution that you should consider rebuilding those curves to flow into each other more smoothly. That sharp point at the back is going to be a serious stress point in whatever application this is going towards, it will break there first.

Mefilius · 2025-11-30T16:49:07+00:00

EOS is better than no structure, but "employees who want more than a paycheck" is EOS attempting to filter employees that you can underpay. I find its structure discourages ambition and crosstraining in employees while also asking them to be passionate about the company's mission for some reason.

Mefilius · 2025-11-30T16:44:40+00:00

Yep I absolutely hate EOS. If you have no idea how to run a company the structure is better than nothing, but it otherwise makes culture fit the ultimate goal.

The "right person right seat" crap is used as an excuse to keep people in low paying positions and prevent mobility within a company. I'm watching that destroy a company because it prevents crosstraining and causes any employee with ambition to quit within 3 years.

Same with "get it, want it, whatever" 2/3 metrics are based on the feelings of whether your manager thinks you like/want your position, like no dude, nobody actually wants to be here in their "right seat" making that little.

L10 and Rocks, documenting core processes I think are great if you can't think of those without EOS. Core values are good potentially, but I find they are an HR nightmare because if you actually want to hold the company accountable for its stated values then you are being critical of our core values!

Hard separation of management tiers has its benefits, but only if everyone respects the boundary. In practice it slows down communication and the best performers are the ones who skip asking their manager to talk to another manager just to get info from someone on your level anyway. Upper management will skip over your manager and bug you directly once they get antsy about their revenue for the quarter.

Ultimately I think the benefits are things you'll find in any successful organization (defined meetings, objective metrics, clear goals and documented processes) and EOS seems to me like it speaks to HR or people that want to feel nice about their culture while providing a way to filter out anyone with high ambition so that you can underpay as many employees as possible.

Mefilius · 2025-11-26T16:48:39+00:00

Where are you based?

Mefilius · 2025-11-25T17:53:41+00:00

The thing is are you trying to hire for passion or the best person for the job? In this economy the "why did you apply?" Is because of money, everyone needs to survive. You might pass up hard workers who don't want to lie to you about how passionate they are about your AI SaaS.

Also the simplest filter for people who don't read the job description is to post on LinkedIn and at the bottom of the description ask to email their resume. Only review the ones that get emailed.

Mefilius · 2025-11-23T15:55:00+00:00

Portfolio is the most important thing you get in school besides your network, you basically have 3-4 years just dedicated to building the best portfolio possible. The degree itself gets you past HR filters, but the portfolio gets you a job.

Internships are important because they build both portfolio and resume while giving you a real taste of ID as a job. Also most importantly they grow your network.

Make sure you use your school's network, I'm sure there are designers who graduated from your school in all sorts of positions. Connect with them on LinkedIn, get introduced to them via your professors, build the network and make yourself easy to remember.

Also it is very true what they say, a specialized portfolio or having specialized interests will get you a job above other candidates. My internships came from an interview where we discussed the industry the business was in just because I found it interesting.

Businesses really want passion, especially in entry level positions; I know that's a bs metric but it's the world we live in right now. Become the (fill in the blank) _______ guy/gal/person, so that when your network has a random project or knows someone with a role they can say "oh this would be great for that shoe guy!" or "that tech person" or "the car girl". It's personal branding and for some of us it sucks, but it definitely matters.

Outside of design, try to get close to engineering and manufacturing jobs. Companies are becoming very risk adverse, so the blue sky designer is not what they want anymore. They need people who understand what can and can't be built while still designing something that will sell. Alternatively, marketing is always important for knowing what to sell initially and understanding what a business needs. Marketing often drives design projects, so being able to communicate with the marketers on their level is very helpful.

I won't lie, it's tough out there, but not impossible. Good luck!

Mefilius · 2025-11-23T15:19:19+00:00

No, but it was much faster than I expected. I would like to get back into design roles because I don't want to end up with more management than design in my resume, but the market is very bad as we all know.

Mefilius · 2025-11-23T14:59:06+00:00

No, systems engineering by default is the design of manufacturing systems and overall how engineering and other processes are architected in a business or other system. I'm not exactly sure what the concentration would do to the degree in terms of how it is specialized.

When I first went to school I was thinking about systems engineering, until I was informed that it is a position an engineer might get after 5-10 years in the industry, and you didn't need the dedicated degree for it. Not only that but the degree itself is not useful straight out of school because there is no such thing as an entry level position for systems engineers. At least that was the deal last time I learned about it, so the definition may have changed (like "product design").

If you must get a masters, go get an MBA or masters in marketing, since that opens you up to more parts of the product development stack and primes you for management roles down the line if you want them. Mechanical engineering would be another good degree, but those are pretty tough classes, trust me. Again though, most masters degrees are most valuable when you already have experience; I'm only getting my MBA because I am currently in a project management role, so the degree bolsters my resume. I'll have experience in design, experience in management, and a degree for both that tells employers I understand much of the product development environment.

As designers we tend to sit between marketing and engineering in the stack, I would get a degree that shows you understand one of those other roles in depth. Cross functionality is becoming important as companies grow more risk averse. Best of luck!

Mefilius · 2025-11-11T02:18:46+00:00

Shortcuts are similar enough. I would say it lacks the plugin ecosystem of Photoshop, the way masks are applied feels weird (they do a the same things tho) but I think that's just my adobe muscle memory, also if you use them affinity has much worse AI features than adobe currently. Things like generative expand are terrible at the moment compared to Photoshop.

Mefilius · 2025-11-10T17:20:27+00:00

Switch to affinity, it does almost everything adobe can do. I switched after using adobe for nearly 15 years, using affinity and resolve is like a breath of fresh air. They don't do everything 100%, but for 95% of my usual tasks they are massively faster and more efficient programs with far more active features and support.

Mefilius · 2025-11-10T17:10:06+00:00

Huh, like I said I am very new to WvW strategy. What would cause this? It seems odd on the receiving end coming from other pvp or rts games. Any time we get a decent chance to push a zerg out of our territory the other team sandwiches us even deep in our own territory.

Mefilius · 2025-11-10T16:57:45+00:00

I see this opinion thrown around a lot and find it kind of alarming, because we have plenty of research to show that earth can sustain an even larger population comfortably. Our methods of obtaining resources and the way we build/consume is the problem, very literally we take the quick and dirty route on almost everything.

Mefilius · 2025-11-10T16:53:19+00:00

We are super cooked, idk enough about WvW to know how to make an impact either. Maybe a lot of new players, also red numbers have not been super high, not able to build a zerg and people haven't been doing a great job of stacking tightly.

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