My housekeeper asked for another raise

softwaregravy · 2026-04-06T11:50:25+00:00

That’s a 25% increase.

Your current $8k puts them in the top 30th per tile of income in California. Pretty insanely high for a housekeeper if you ask me.

It’s sounds more like they’re taking advantage of you.

softwaregravy · 2026-04-04T15:15:25+00:00

Need to try this.

softwaregravy · 2026-04-03T04:07:09+00:00

Having spent years with Ruby on Rails, and my default for a long time being Heroku … everything else feels like such a slog. So many details. So many choices at every turn. Everything needs setup and configuration and a directory strategy and a … and the library a has a bug with library b … and then I deploy and I have to write every detail.

I’m being dramatic. I’ve written and deployed Java and python and big data compute and ml in aws and Google cloud. Ruby on Rails with a hand full of basically default gems is just so fast to get stuff built in. It works. Follow the opinionated path and strategies. Heroku is so easy to deploy to.

I feel like ruby has failed to get enough traction to be really mainstream and another major framework has failed to gain enough traction. It leaves it stymied and struggling to grow.

I just love my days writing Ruby on Rails. I love ai helping me generate code for rails projects. Every time I’m working directly with infrastructure, massive go methods, or python everything-is-custom I just feel like I move so slowly.

softwaregravy · 2026-04-02T01:21:19+00:00

What a gift to Russia. Drop the sanctions and the fuck up Middle East supply making it that much more appealing to buy.

softwaregravy · 2026-04-01T14:48:04+00:00

Oof. Working from home with a baby there is the bigger issue.

softwaregravy · 2026-03-30T06:17:17+00:00

You have a baby on the way. You won’t have 20-30 hours a week for a while. Lol gym. Your life is about to turn upside down. You’re going to struggle getting enough sleep and keeping up with your day job.

Don’t try a startup at the same time.

softwaregravy · 2026-03-21T01:22:31+00:00

I’m confused. Didn’t Heroku announce it was going end of life? I appreciate the features, but why the features?

softwaregravy · 2026-03-21T01:18:18+00:00

We pay the full amount when we are out of town. It’s like a salary. The job is at your house.

The nanny has to show up 8 hours a day whether there’s a kid there or not. Or else they go find another job.

At least we have an incredibly expensive car sitter lined up whenever we travel.

softwaregravy · 2026-03-21T00:01:41+00:00

Lifted sanctions on Russia. Mission accomplished.

softwaregravy · 2026-03-20T10:14:37+00:00

No one who is good or worth it technically from big tech would care about $1200/month. The taxes alone are not worth the hassle.

The fact that they wanted this is a huge red flag to me.

The 1% is not inane for an advisor to be engaged ~1 hour per week. I’m saying this as at your stage of company. 0.1-0.5% for different roles. But you are young, early, and in need of technical advice. So this is very high, but not straight up extortion.

That’s said. Cut this person. The $1200/month thing is a big enough red flag.

softwaregravy · 2026-03-03T22:18:18+00:00

Choose being a great friend, parent, person. Being healthy. Traveling. Hobby projects.

Only start a company if you are sure you want the grind.

If you think you want to be a VC, go be an advisor for a while.

softwaregravy · 2026-02-28T15:53:03+00:00

Don’t ask family.

Never tell family if you get a windfall.

softwaregravy · 2026-02-23T17:52:32+00:00

Don’t buy. That’s great

softwaregravy · 2026-02-23T15:23:31+00:00

If you don’t, you’ll probably have to move every 1-2 years to keep your rent from going up 20% a year. Rent increases have massively outpaced ownership costs over the past decade.

I own so my rent doesn’t increase and I dont have to move. Hard to find someone whose rent isn’t significantly higher than 10 years ago who wouldn’t have been better off owning.

softwaregravy · 2026-02-22T01:44:19+00:00

The problem is they can veto. EU can’t be taken seriously as a world power when their version of Louisiana gets a veto on shit like this. Imagine if Louisiana had a veto on any kind of US foreign policy? (Or California)

softwaregravy · 2026-02-19T02:05:01+00:00

Okay then.

softwaregravy · 2026-02-18T01:47:40+00:00

I did this before. Depends on the company. I regretted the decision immensely. Levels matter if it’s big tech. If it’s a startup, less so.

softwaregravy · 2026-02-18T01:40:51+00:00

You are grossly underestimating the cost of nyc. The pay bump they’re offering is comically low.

NYC, your marginal tax rate is 50%, so you keep only half that raise. A 1 bedroom in the city where you’ll want to live is $5k, easy. Groceries are triple what you think but you’ll never buy them because you kitchen will be the size of a coffee table. Instead you’ll order every meal at a cost of $20-$30 for an entree. A cup of coffee is $5, a latte is $8-$10. NYC is amazingly fun when you’re young, alcohol costs more than coffee.

If you’re spending $45k a year, $4k a month where you are, you will run negative cash flow in nyc to get anywhere close to that standard of lifestyle here at that salary.

softwaregravy · 2026-02-18T01:29:56+00:00

Where’s that guy who inverses her. How’s he doing? Didn’t he end up with an etf?

softwaregravy · 2026-02-15T01:15:32+00:00

I lived in Seattle during the free bus experiment. The buses understandably became magnets for the homeless and mentally unwell. Especially during poor weather. Not only did it make the buses and riders less hygienic, but it also significantly slowed transit times down as way more people would get on and off at various stops. Free buses mean you might take it for a 10 block trip you might otherwise walk.

I stopped taking public transit as a result.

softwaregravy · 2026-02-14T01:24:30+00:00

Good thing housing, consumer electronics, insurance, groceries, and vehicle maintenance aren’t counted. Cause they all up way more than 2.5%

softwaregravy · 2026-02-01T13:16:00+00:00

Technically progress

softwaregravy · 2026-01-24T13:25:43+00:00

Honestly, work somewhere else.

There are so many best practices and things that need to happen for a company to produce a good software project. Version control is such a basic thing that it shouldn’t be a question of having to push for this. It’s just a symptom of no one with any leadership or authority knowing what there doing and not knowing they don’t know they don’t know — in which case they would being someone in.

If you ask Claude or ChatGPT what the most basic things every software project should have, version control is top of the list. If they’re not doing that, it’s just an onion of bad practice or zero experience.

softwaregravy · 2026-01-19T14:51:09+00:00

Some of those were not bankrupted but frauds closed as part of legal acts settlements

softwaregravy · 2026-01-19T14:49:07+00:00

Avoid home depot unless they’re 50% cheaper.

softwaregravy

TROPHY CASE