cutenewt (u/cutenewt)

cutenewt commented on Jessica Livingston (2015) paulgraham.com/jessica.ht... · Posted by u/cperciva

alexpotato · 2 years ago

One of the things she's best at is judging people. She's one of those rare individuals with x-ray vision for character. She can see through any kind of faker almost immediately. Her nickname within YC was the Social Radar, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it is

A manager at a past job also had a similar "x-ray vision".

During interviews, she would always sit in with another interviewer and never ask any questions of the candidates. She would just observe.

Over 5 years of working with her, every single person she said we should hire turned out great. Every person she said was no good, turned out to not be great.

This was particularly fascinating to watch when she was the lone dissenter either way. e.g. there were times where 7 out of 8 interviewers said "pass", she said "hire" and she was always right.

The first time I read pg's essay about Jessica, it immediately reminded me of my old manager.

It also reminds me of a story from, I believe, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink about the tennis coach who knew before a tennis player served if they would double fault.

Some people have either a natural gift or their brains have picked up a set of weights for their internal neural network that make them fantastic at this kind of thing.

cutenewt · 2 years ago

Fascinating story!

Your x-ray vision manager: what (interview) questions or criteria did she use?

cutenewt commented on In praise of blowing up your life sashachapin.substack.com/... · Posted by u/jger15

scarface_74 · 2 years ago

I’ve mentioned the last year of my life on HN where my wife and I decided to get rid of everything we own that wouldn’t fit in four suitcases including our cars and we became “hybrid digital nomads”. We fly to different cities across the US and stay in midrange extended stay hotels and stay in our own “Condotel”[1] the other six months in Florida.

What I haven’t talked about is what got us to this point. I grew up in a small town in southwest GA, moved to metro Atlanta in 1996 and stayed there until last year.

We had a house built in 2016 in the northern burbs and thought we had our “forever home”. All the time from 1996 -2020 I bumped around between 7 jobs as a journeymen “enterprise dev”.

My wife had lived in metro Atlanta all of her life. We got married in 2012 (both on our second marriage).

Everything changed in 2020. Our youngest son (my stepson) graduated from high school, Covid happened (didn’t fatally affect anyone in our inner or outer circle) and I fell into a remote job at BigTech.

When things got back to normal around 2021, we both realized that life is short and we wanted a change. That’s what caused us to blow up our life and we are both happier now that we really can’t acquire “stuff”.

When we left our condo in March to start our six month trip, we put it in the rental pool, it gets professional managed like a hotel room and we get half the rent to cover our mortgage.

We don’t own a car. We take Uber for six months once we hit a city and we have a Sixt subscription and we rent a car by the month when we are at home.

cutenewt · 2 years ago

Condo rental pool is a term I've never come across before.

What rental pool service did you use?

cutenewt commented on Apollo will close down on June 30th old.reddit.com/r/apolloap... · Posted by u/timf

Alupis · 2 years ago

> What would you have done instead?

Charge $5 monthly and refund the annual fee for those who want it (which is already being done it seems, regardless of Apollo's future).

Apollo has options. They're just choosing to shutdown. That's the founder's prerogative, of course, but it is totally unnecessary.

Look at the support in this thread alone - Apollo has tons of people willing to throw money at them.

cutenewt · 2 years ago

Exactly

cutenewt commented on Apollo will close down on June 30th old.reddit.com/r/apolloap... · Posted by u/timf

Alupis · 2 years ago

> they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients

Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user, and apparently doesn't believe enough people will be willing to pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running.

So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly) either has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business.

cutenewt · 2 years ago

> Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business.

Good call out. It's like the business equivalent of:

You changed the rules of the game because you didn't like how I played. So I'm not even going to bother playing with the new rules. I retire.

cutenewt commented on When feedback is not a gift softwaredoug.com/blog/202... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

padolsey · 2 years ago

I wrote a book, and remember reading the first review. It was a one-star rating complaining that the book had been published late. I was in hospital at the time recovering from a brain injury. My brother had helped get the book over the finish line with last-minute edits while I lay a few feet away in pain.

I don't really care for reviews. They reduce us to our produce. They ignore the very thing that materializes the creation: the human.

I take things to heart. It's not because I am "non-growth oriented" or over-sensitive. It's because I'm human.

cutenewt · 2 years ago

I wouldn't take it personally

You know the real circumstances

True hurtful one-stars is a rival who's mad at your book release

And got their buddies to spam the system w/ garbage reviews

cutenewt commented on When feedback is not a gift softwaredoug.com/blog/202... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

praash · 2 years ago

Yes, plenty of (bad) feedback is given in good faith, but I think there's a line where generosity ends and "feedback" becomes a hurtful one-sided channel of emotional venting. It only serves one person, at best.

Would you call it a gift if a visiting neighbour brought a smelly trash bag to your door while screaming at you for "looking like a dead squirrel"? They certainly took the time to carry that leaky bag, think of a sequence of helpful words to tell you, and even risk damaging their vocal cords! They certainly weren't obligated to do so, either. A slap in the face isn't necessarily "a generous act of ancient Egyptian medicinal practice to prevent disease".

We don't have to accept all "gifts" as gifts, so we certainly don't have to call any hurtful garbage as "feedback" in the first place. We don't have obligation to take it as a generous act, either -- wouldn't this make us feel guilty about feeling hurt?

I don't intend to be mean or snarky. Your comment made me think and come up with this sort of "insight".

cutenewt · 2 years ago

The customer that gives a $.25 tip on bad service

Hurtful garbage yes

But still a gift

cutenewt commented on When feedback is not a gift softwaredoug.com/blog/202... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

TheAceOfHearts · 2 years ago

I don't believe in rating systems, so I just give 5 stars to every book I finish.

One time I made a very negative comment on Reddit about a fantasy book, and the author actually responded to me. When that happened I felt incredibly bad, because I didn't expect the author to actually read what I'd written. But that experience taught me that you can just reach out to people that make stuff you like. You can make people feel good about something that made you feel good, and it's entirely free. Since then I've reached out to various authors just to tell them I really enjoyed their books.

One of the best things about reading indie authors and smaller creators in general is the ease with which you can communicate with them. I remember making a comment about a minor detail to an indie author about one of his series, and in the next book he actually incorporated my suggestion.

I think once you reach a certain scale or popularity there has to be some kind of filter or process between a creator and their comments.

cutenewt · 2 years ago

I saw a poll once re: 5-star rating systems:

Roughly 50% tolerate or like them The other 50% completely hate them

cutenewt commented on Triplebyte acquired by Karat karat.com/blog/post/karat... · Posted by u/forbiddenvoid

cutenewt · 2 years ago

Will Karat be around after the AI revolution?

I wouldn't be surprised if an OpenAI + Zoom solution makes Karat obsolete.

I, for one, won't shed any tears. I've wasted too much time conducting interviews. I'd like to have more time to focus on work.

cutenewt commented on Google Workspace increasing prices from April 11, 2023 workspace.google.com/blog... · Posted by u/lightwin

partiallypro · 3 years ago

Zoho is great, if you only need email and basics. O365 and GSuite are still unmatched as a package though. Still think O365 is the best deal (for SMBs+), though it's a bit more.

cutenewt · 3 years ago

I use Zoho for email along with https://workspace.google.com/essentials/

Works beautifully

I do miss Gmail, but it's easy to workaround it

cutenewt commented on Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT cnbc.com/2023/02/10/googl... · Posted by u/bribroder

AceJohnny2 · 3 years ago

At this point, I'm curious which you think is which.

cutenewt · 3 years ago

gregw134 nailed it