Sounds like a weird and bad situation. Here's a question, you are going into debt over this company... is the CEO also doing the same? Is it shared pain? Or... are you the only one who is under pain? Or under-paid?
I've seen startup situations where the CEO earns > $250k but pays everyone else < $100k. And says there isnt enough money. But the truth is the CEO himself is squeezing the company dry and killing it. Are you in that kind of company?
Another thing to consider, are the founders ethical? Are they good people? Have you considered if they are sociopaths? Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
The reality for me is that I would never ever ever take a startup job less than break-even cash. That means I am not paying for my day-to-day living out of savings while taking a substandard salary. Because in a properly backed startup, they CAN afford to pay people $120k a year. If you are taking major cash hits, you need to be a founder.
On the founder side, it's a pretty clear cut rule... are you a founder - if the answer isnt "yes" immediately, without a doubt, the answer is in fact NO. First employees arent founders. Employees with stock options (ISO or otherwise) arent founders. "VP of X" or "Director of Y" - not a founder. "But I did the technical due diligence" - not a founder.
Being a founder in major part is also about how the other founders treat you. Are you an equal business partner? Usually if you were hired in substantially after, the answer is NO. They might respect your opinion, but also reserve the right to ignore it. Real founders and partners don't get to ignore the other's opinion without consequences later on. This is true in business and your personal life as well.
In short, if your founders are the Dark Triad type, you may wish to extract yourself. If they are not, you may be able to come clean with them, and come to a negotiated situation. Such as allowing you to find consulting work, or perhaps paying you more, etc.
Well, let's face it, the most revolutionary things have all started sounding silly and insane. People will buy things over computers without having actually seen or touched them? Humans will fly? Will travel to the moon? Everything is actually well modelled by equations that imply that everything is a wave and has probability it exists?
So just because YOU think it sounds crazy or insane, doesn't mean it doesn't have a chance at something big.
After all, who would want to communicate in 140 characters only, or have a real time feed of everything their friends do, or want tiny square pictures on their phone?
On the subject matter, I've lived in SF for a few years now and I was born in Canada. In the US people will give you a chance, in Canada companies want to know what you have done and get you to do more of it.
Yes, a lot of big companies were once ridiculous ideas.
The founders where tenacious, and would have succeeded regardless of any synthesized hype.
I argue there's more companies hurt because of this than there are that thrive.
Interesting paper, I hope to see a follow on that actually describes the algorithm in full. As written, it doesn't cover the failure recovery, data-drift and timeout cases.
Also maybe you could speak to a few constraints:
- missing updates
- unique index
and outline your thoughts as to how an application developer might avoid pitfalls. Most applications I have seen tend to require/run in to these issues.
I'm sorry but this is possibly one of the worst comments I've seen... There is a conservation of complexity that you just can't get rid of in an application. To suggest that Scala encourages small programs, you are also suggesting that Scala is only appropriate for small problems, and thus it isn't a scalable language.
Ultimately, the baseline requirements drive the minimal complexity of code. Sure a poor programmer can drive up the complexity with unnecessary constructs, but the converse is not true: a great programmer can drive to simplicity. For example, a flight control system for a 777 can never be reduced to a single file of 700 lines of code. It will likely always be 2000+ files, and have lots of inter-dependencies.
So I guess (run time safety issues of Scala aside) Scala is not an appropriate language for complex problems by your own words?
Scala's compile speed (with incremental compiles) is generally acceptable if you have reasonable dependency patterns. If you have cyclic dependencies, it's a problem. However, cyclic dependencies are signs of things that are wrong in development practices that can't be blamed on the language.
You mentioned flight control systems: those are unlikely to be written in Scala, being real-time systems, but if one were, it would not need to be compiled and recompiled on the fly.
Scala's a great language but it's not the right language for every problem. No language is.
Why do you feel that sbt isn't simple/a disaster? I actually think it is the nicest of the build tools on JVM. I can set up basic projects with no configuration. Also, its triggered build feature[1] combined with its interactive console is a killer feature set that I think all build tools should have.
It is extremely inconsistent. The config file is a list of Scala expressions, however it is not a valid Scala code as a whole. And when you want subprojects, then suddenly the config file is not able to do that, you need to setup another directory with a totally different style of config to do that. On the other hand the interactive console is a killer feature, agreed.
I don't really think it is inconsistent. Sbt has two methods for configuring your projects. You can use a limited configuration file that has less boiler plate but also doesn't allow you to configure as much. The alternative is that you can use the full configuration that has more boilerplate but lets you configure everything. The reason I don't think this is inconsistent because the full configuration is a strict superset of of the limited configuration, both syntactically and semantically (with the exception that expressions need to be added to sequences instead of separated by blank lines).
Question, doesn't the full configuration require you to put your config stuff in multiple files? A lot of files?
The sbt 'directory of configuration' was always a bummer for me. The single pom.xml is a nice mechanism. Also maven has good CI compatibility.
The way I think of it is that maven has a good way of specifying a build. The mvn command is the slow, but complete, way of building. The normal development lifecycle is to load your maven model into an IDE then go from there, using IntelliJ's incremental build support, etc.
SBT in other words, solves a problem I don't have.
The other major problem is last year, SBT was a fucking train wreck between 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 and 0.10. Now that we are a YEAR out from that yeah sure maybe it's a lot better. I'd give it another year before I'd seriously try it again.
In the mean time, I am more interested in kotlin for sane static typed JVM languages, and clojure for real functional sauce. Scala is too slow for me :-/
SBT actually only requires 2 configuration files (even for multi-project builds). One for SBT plugins and one for everything else. You can use more files for organizational purposes but they are not necessary.
I actually like 'directory of configuration'. The SBT build configuration is actually an SBT project itself. So you can use a lot of the same tools to trouble shoot the build configuration that you would use to troubleshoot the build itself. Also, this means that in some cases (such as multi-project builds) you can use much fewer files.
I'm not sure about CI compatibility. I know that Jenkins/Hudson have SBT support but I have never tried to use it.
I actually think that way that most IDEs interact with maven builds is less complete than what you have with SBT. For example, frequently you need specify your build configuration again if you want your IDE to do incremental compilation or to run individual tests. This can be very painful if your build contains anything out of the ordinary. With SBT you just attach a remote debugger to a long running SBT process and then let SBT due all of the building and running. It takes care of the automatic incremental compilation and lets you run individual tests (which, unlike most IDEs, it can be configured to run tests automatically and it can probably run them much faster).
I can certainly understand if the previous 0.7 to 0.10 jump made you nervous about SBT. However, I think that SBT has matured a lot in the year and a half since then. I think it has finally reached a stability point where it is ready for general use. In particular I think the 0.12.x series is where this finally occurred. It has now has a steady release process and has fixed issues that SBT (along with Scala the language) had, in the past, with binary compatibility.
EDIT: lost a bunch of text in the submit, had to retype
As an former Eclipse user I had to switch to IntelliJ for the last 4 months and use it on a daily basis. I was very surprised how well the Scala plugin works. Excellent code completion, code search and refactoring options. I tried also Scala IDE in the Coursera Course and think the overall development experience of IntelliJ (with Java and Scala) is much better.
you can edit the pom.xml file, and have your project adjusted immediately. intellij will download and add the new jar to the classpath... BAM
intellij is really a much better experience in developing than eclipse. Lots of fit and finish things, also intellij is very keyboard-centric, so whereas eclipse had lots of graphical widgety things, intellij has all your normal day to day stuff fully keyboard accessible. It's the closest to emacs in an IDE I've ever seen.
I'd recommend using zinc instead if (like me) you aren't too crazy about using sbt. Zinc is basically the incremental compiler part of sbt stripped out, plus nailgun support. Large projects can still take some time to rebuild if critical dependencies were touched by a change.
i really just want intellij compatability. sbt doesnt offer that. it's incremental compiling is not useful because I do my java dev in intellij. So SBT offered me nothing that maven didnt already have, minus a few weirdo things (like putting the scala version in the name/version of a scala library).
To me, I had to give up scala due to lack of tool support. Maybe if you are used to an emacs/gcc paradigm, but I've gotten quite productive in intellij, as much or more than any C++-styled development. Why have another window with compiler output when you could have it inline with the code and using the typographic features?
I could go either way, but with Java, intellij I have 'develop and run anywhere' going on. Sure there are some super edge causes at the highest performance profiles, but that is always hardware specific, and unless you are developing on the same server class boxes you wont find it.
I was neutral on this guy until I read the wired story, and then I became a fan.
He is a self made man (way more so than romney!), he suffers from persistent discrimination (overweight) and he has cycled thru the hero's journey.
I have heard a lot of these "major success stories", but they are people who have been put in ideal situations and then they made the best of it. That is just emotionally dead for me. Kim's story is more interesting because it is relevant to ME. I can imagine myself in the same spot, and it overlaps with my own personal history (timewise) a bit too.
Ultimately, I believe there is minimal legal differences between youtube in the early days (which was made successful via RAMPANT piracy), and megaupload.
"He is a self made man (way more so than romney!)"
Most every con artist is.
"he has cycled thru the hero's journey"
Now, I think he's gotten a raw, horrid deal from how his most recent case has been approached, certainly. The most he has in common with "the hero's journey" is that his persona is based entirely on myth and self-propagated legend. His claims of personal genius are for the most part fluff and lies, pushed to credulous journalists. Heck, he couldn't even win Quake and Call of Duty bouts without being caught using aimbots and other chicanery.
I may be reading too far into this and his story is more interesting than the man himself, which I agree.
He hacked for profit. He traded in stolen phone cards and turned in his compatriots for reduced sentence. He ran a "premium" phone number scam. He ran a pump and dump scheme to defraud investors. He evaded prosecution by jumping jurisdiction. He tried (and failed) to run a fake hedge fund. He sold pirated software. He committed insider trading.
He's not a self-made man. He's a career criminal and a con man.
I find it shocking that so many people are eager to lionize this sociopathic asshole.
How so? If he committed some crime, got convicted, did the time, then started a business and bootstrapped to success, how is that not a self-made man? A great many successful entrepreneurs (Branson comes immediately to mind) were criminals before they were successful.
Some people find it hard to understand that it's possible for an investigation to be mishandled and the person being investigated to still be a criminal.
I don't support everything Kim Dotcom does.. but I do support Internet neutrality. I believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) the internet is one of the few mediums where the Government cannot stop free speech.. cannot stop people from posting their "real" opinion and the truth. And one of the few places where after reading an article you can do another search quite easy to ensure it is correct what you just read.
Television, Radio, the newspapers etc try to provide us with news a true as possible though I often question myself when watching the news, is this the entire truth? Is there not more behind it, or things they leave out to ease the mind of the crowd.
"Many people went thru an 'illegal period'..." What?
I think there's a pretty massive difference between the speeding, soft-drugs, petty vandalism and theft that characterise common illegal teenage behaviours and large scale fraud. Even sat behind a keyboard far-removed from your victims I'm sure the difference becomes readily apparent when the number at the bottom of your bank statement is a few digits longer than those of your peers.
As for sociopathic, so what? Didn't you know that most CEOs are sociopaths?
I don't think that's true. If I'm not mistaken, the percentage of sociopaths among CEOs is somewhat higher than among the rest of the population, but that doesn't mean that the majority of CEOs are sociopaths.
It still means you're implicating a large group for something they are good at doing, which is manipulating an environment to suit their needs.
If you're going to attack his history or his mental state, than at least be willing to acknowledge the man isn't all bad. From what I've read, it seems like some think once a criminal always a criminal, AND that mega upload was a scam.
I don't get what your point is. Are you defending sociopaths? I mean, yeah sure they are what they are through probably no real fault of their own, but they are a net negative on society's balance sheet. They are a problem that needs to be managed. Maybe back in the day when we had to worry about other animals hunting us for food, and a bit later when we had to worry about other tribes murdering us and taking our things, then yeah sociopaths served a purpose.
They don't now.
(Oh, and sociopaths aren't very great at manipulating their environment. The high-functioning ones, maybe, but most sociopaths are poor, stupid, and often in jail.)
I agree that to do better, especially in caring for each other, we need to re-evaluate what we value most.
In a society where money is power however, I don't think you can do much is what I'm saying. Regardless of psychological issues, if someone can function and amass money, then they're regarded as fine and maybe even successful.
My point was people vote with their money and time, and in this case is open. You can't really expect people to care about whether he was a delinquent in some's eyes, because to some, the other side is just as worse.
"As for sociopathic, so what? Didn't you know that most CEOs are sociopaths?"
I would ask for a source here, but I already know that you don't have one, you're regurgitating some pop-psych nonsense you once heard that sounded interesting and you assumed was true.
If he did all those things (not saying he didn't, might just be incompetence elsewhere) it should've been fairly easy to indict him at the time or on those grounds.
Still seems awful to wrongly impound an entire company with no due process.
Welcome to CAPITALISM 101.
All ethics are mere shades of grey. What is bad today will be good tomorrow, the villains will be heroes, the heroes will be losers who could have done more and every starry-eyed sucker aspiring to "make it" will swing like a pendulum within that grey spectrum, like it or not.
I guess YOUR startup isnt technical... But there are in fact technical startups out there. It's just that they make more money than yours, do better and are generally cooler.
...upvoted you for the pure and refreshing "geek power" spirit of the comment :) ...really miss this attitude lately, too much "business-think" everywhere ...now back to real work
I've seen startup situations where the CEO earns > $250k but pays everyone else < $100k. And says there isnt enough money. But the truth is the CEO himself is squeezing the company dry and killing it. Are you in that kind of company?
Another thing to consider, are the founders ethical? Are they good people? Have you considered if they are sociopaths? Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
The reality for me is that I would never ever ever take a startup job less than break-even cash. That means I am not paying for my day-to-day living out of savings while taking a substandard salary. Because in a properly backed startup, they CAN afford to pay people $120k a year. If you are taking major cash hits, you need to be a founder.
On the founder side, it's a pretty clear cut rule... are you a founder - if the answer isnt "yes" immediately, without a doubt, the answer is in fact NO. First employees arent founders. Employees with stock options (ISO or otherwise) arent founders. "VP of X" or "Director of Y" - not a founder. "But I did the technical due diligence" - not a founder.
Being a founder in major part is also about how the other founders treat you. Are you an equal business partner? Usually if you were hired in substantially after, the answer is NO. They might respect your opinion, but also reserve the right to ignore it. Real founders and partners don't get to ignore the other's opinion without consequences later on. This is true in business and your personal life as well.
In short, if your founders are the Dark Triad type, you may wish to extract yourself. If they are not, you may be able to come clean with them, and come to a negotiated situation. Such as allowing you to find consulting work, or perhaps paying you more, etc.
Good luck!