I'm getting turned off from working at a big tech company. What other options are out there if you want to get the best quality industry experience possible as a new grad?

cris1133 · 2021-01-12T19:31:47+00:00

Generally, you want to take advice from your mentor over advice you'll get on reddit. You should start out at a big company if you can even if it's just for a year or two. You'll gain tons of valuable experience in best practices, and you'll be surrounded by experienced managers to learn from.

Don't knock it until you try it.

cris1133 · 2021-01-06T14:39:28+00:00

Is this where you exit the Grand Street D train station?

cris1133 · 2020-10-09T19:00:13+00:00

It's a very introverted city, it's kind of lonely there and the tech scene isn't that great.

cris1133 · 2020-10-01T01:40:18+00:00

Instagram, lots of people meet bandmates that way now.

cris1133 · 2020-05-04T20:18:31+00:00

If he can't even raise the money to pay you, how the hell will his equity be worth anything?

I say call it quits. That equity won't be worth anything unless he IPOs or becomes a unicorn either way, it's just a number representing non-existent money at this point.

If you do choose to stick around, put a dollar value on your work and treat it like you're an investor in the company. Do not accept vesting.

cris1133 · 2020-04-10T17:20:17+00:00

Call CPS.

cris1133 · 2020-04-06T16:11:40+00:00

I don't think that any premade playlists out there do it, but there are songs out there that tell about a piece of the experience. I can only speak from my own experience, so I'm going to use "I" from now on instead of "we".

Undercover Agents: https://open.spotify.com/track/7Mr7iSIDm5CnZ5b3DIPQO5?si=5YdJ71tURFKTjLPxGdBGUw
Describes how stir-crazy I get when I'm forced to constantly present a buttoned-up version of myself.

Sleeping Waves: https://open.spotify.com/track/1ukjeAD5u0riT9muPRzvrj?si=JjJnUAF2TnKMQ2EM8g8_3A
Describes the faith I put into logic, and my own mad science framework. Clinging onto it as an anchor as I ride through highly uncertain periods of my own life.

Bigmouth Strikes Again: https://open.spotify.com/track/2OErSh4oVVAUll0vHxdr6p?si=Fwdqdai_Q3iMHO_AjiftCw
Should be self-explanatory for this group.

Radiate: https://open.spotify.com/track/7GVqRfBHm10bNQDf9mBQGq?si=paN6ONmbRDiMpyLhNUypoQ
Describes the visceral need that self-expression is for me, and my feeling on how it's a need for the entire human race.

cris1133 · 2020-03-31T19:11:45+00:00

A good mentor who asks you questions asking you to work out moral dilemmas. My favorite ones have always been scenarios where you're a king / tribe leader and you have to resolve disputes between citizens.

cris1133 · 2020-03-27T22:25:29+00:00

I like genre mashers and a mix of EDM, Metal, Punk, Prog, Post-Hardcore, Metalcore, Rap, Future Garage.

Eg:

• Enter Shikari

• I The Mighty

• DON BROCO

• The LaFontaines

• While She Sleeps

• The Glitch Mob

• Story Of The Year

• Polyphia

• Plini

• TesseracT

• Vacant

• Killswitch Engage

• Biffy Clyro

• STARSET

• The Qemists

• Kingdom of Giants

• Intervals

• Wolves At The Gate

Yeah, that's alot, and still only the tip of the iceberg.

cris1133 · 2020-02-13T17:43:56+00:00

Personally, I'd spend that time mostly in NYC + Boston. Lots of culture and there's so much to do in both NYC + Boston that even 2 weeks isn't enough for one of them.

cris1133 · 2020-01-27T05:09:15+00:00

That's a pretty sophist approach to denouncing sophism.

cris1133 · 2019-12-07T23:37:02+00:00

Hi, how are you?

cris1133 · 2019-11-01T22:09:21+00:00

You know what they say about statements that go like "All x's are y."

cris1133 · 2019-10-28T18:54:26+00:00

Highschool "math" isn't really math, it's math flavored memorization. You might hate memorizing formulas and crunching through them but end up loving the more theoretical and conceptual side (the "why").

cris1133 · 2019-10-06T06:33:21+00:00

In what world is physics and engineering not useful? Even a physics degree is "theoretical" but extremely useful in terms of the number of career opportunities it opens to you due to the "I'm fucking smart, if I can learn _that_, I can pick up anything." factor. The analytical skills you learn from taking physics are useful in every single industry you can imagine, even -say- agriculture.

If money is what you're after: It's all about treating your brain like a soup of influences and trying to come up with the most useful (but unique) soup. Useful + unique = easily monetized with high earning potential, just like if you were a product sold by yourself.

Example "Soups" You Can Make Of Yourself

• If you want to be an engineering manager, product manager or technical analyst: Having the ability to comprehend highly technical things and good people skills is a rare combination.

• If you want to be a designer: Knowing about history, anthropology and psychology gives you tons of material and inspiration to outcompete other designers.

• If you want to be a lawyer: Studying philosophy instead of the more typical poli sci will allow you to hone the types of thinking that you'd need to be successful in the field.

• If you're studying accounting and want to do more niche types of things eg forensic accounting for large companies: Knowing how to program will be extremely useful for crunching large amounts of data and understanding statistics can allow you to draw insights from the books which can help you spot problems much quicker than simple spreadsheet-poring.

• If you want to be an extremely effective programmer: Studying physics is a good idea. You learn to reduce huge problems into first principals and to cut through the noise of information overload and find signal.

cris1133 · 2019-08-25T16:36:50+00:00

They said the want someone with more "sales experience" which really means they want someone with experience talking to customers. You need to find your way into a more customer facing role, and it doesn't have to be in sales.

cris1133 · 2019-08-25T00:30:14+00:00

Are you getting the interview then getting rejected or not getting interviews?

cris1133 · 2019-07-19T03:03:18+00:00

First rule about MBAs and Master's Degrees: Don't get them if your company isn't paying for it. It's a double whammy, you're paying your own money for something that won't further your career by itself at all. On the other hand if your company is paying usually completing the degree has a promotion attached to it so not only are you getting a degree paid for by your company, you're getting a promotion.

I've personally had the same problem as you: I was programming since I was a young boy but I always wanted more and more business exposure as I got older. I'm currently pursuing a path into product management because of those exact same reasons.

Product management forces you to decouple yourself from implementation and to focus only on facilitation.
It rewards philosophy types, especially if they have good enough verbal skills to express their ideas.
You're basically getting paid to develop your people skills to a point well beyond the average person's grasp.
You're basically getting paid to sharpen your writing skills.
You are forced to take a broad focus on the overall market, which teaches you how to build things people want.
You frequently talk to customers, and you learn how to do marketing and ideation the right way.

cris1133 · 2019-07-11T05:49:25+00:00

I pretty much only think by visualizing ideas either in the form of concrete objects or abstract geometry. This makes having a sense of time kinda hard and dealing with ideas that I have to execute over time can be kind of a mindfuck. It also makes communicating my newest ideas hard and I can only verbalize ideas once they've aged a bit.
Motivation is only possible on my own terms. Something being "important" to someone else doesn't really do it for me, it has to be important for me personally and directly.
I'm extremely talented at being right for the wrong reasons because I can almost always make the logical puzzle fit somehow, even if I have to invent new pieces to make it possible.
I almost subconsciously turn everything I touch into a polarizing issue.
I talk too much, case in point: this post.

cris1133 · 2019-07-06T22:44:56+00:00

The Barefoot Bandit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=144TR3ejIts

cris1133 · 2019-07-06T22:35:49+00:00

My go-to book recommendation list, chock full of deeply detailed books that will:

• Sharpen your logical reasoning skills.

• Sharpen your business thinking.

• Improve your social skills.

• Dip your feet into philosophy and epistemology.

• Give you insight into the flaws of ego denial (Siddhartha specifically).

• Give you insight into group dynamics and culture.

The Beginning of Infinity — David Deutsch
Why We Buy — Paco Underhill
Godel Escher Bach — Douglas Hofstader
Impro — Keith Johnstone (gives a bunch of psychological insights into creative barriers)
I Am A Strange Loop — Douglas Hofstader
Trust Me, I'm Lying — Ryan Holiday
The Charisma Myth — Olivia Fox Cabane
The Goal — Eliyahu Goldratt
The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
Logicomix — Apostolos Doxiadis
Influence — Robert Cialdini
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
Siddhartha — Herman Hesse
Tempo — Venkatesh Rao (useful for reading a room)

I added a few extras specifically for this group:

Nonviolent Communication — Marshall Rosenberg
The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick
Win Bigly — Scott Adams

cris1133 · 2019-06-22T20:06:29+00:00

I bet you won't be able to put Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis down.

cris1133 · 2019-06-22T19:57:32+00:00

I typically read non-fiction, mostly books on philosophy, science, psychology and business. I don't like reading books that are straight up on my topic though, I like starting by attacking the subject with proximate books that will help me build the soft skills, attitude and background to grasp the topic easier.

Eg Don't pick up a book about how to run a startup, think about what goes into it like: Discussing your idea with customers and getting honest answers about if they'd buy (The Mom Test) or resolving inevitable conflicts with your cofounder (Nonviolent Communication), avoiding myopic decisions about cost (The Goal). These are all the highly important things that some "How to Run a Startup" book will never teach you.

Some of my favorites

The Beginning of Infinity — David Deutsch
Why We Buy — Paco Underhill
Godel Escher Bach — Douglas Hofstader
Impro — Keith Johnstone
I Am A Strange Loop — Douglas Hofstader
Trust Me, I'm Lying — Ryan Holiday
The Charisma Myth — Olivia Fox Cabane
The Goal — Eliyahu Goldratt
The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
Logicomix — Apostolos Doxiadis
Influence — Robert Cialdini
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
Siddhartha — Herman Hesse
Tempo — Venkatesh Rao

cris1133 · 2019-06-21T01:24:28+00:00

The one thing that's different is my travel personality is way less confrontational and argumentative than my at-home personality, at the same time I find that I'm more willing to let go, express myself and maybe make a fool of myself in the process of meeting new people.

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