As someone just about to see my twenties consigned to history here you go:
* There is plenty of time to try a few things out and not feel like your doing anything wrong. I went from school to university and threw myself into a career and it brings you financial advantages which, I suppose, may compound in future life but looking around my peers nobody regrets the year travelling or the year working a couple of jobs that were never a career (teaching abroad?).
* I think most people would say its sensible to start early with savings/pensions and personally I have but, you know what, balance is as important.
* People do nice things for people they like. This, in my experience, has extended to pay rises and favours in work so I try to work for people who like me even if that involves playing a game. Another place I apply this is I'll only contradict or criticise someone at work is if they ask my opinion and even then only in the right setting.
* Finally, basically I wish I hadn't worried about stuff so much. Property prices, interest rates, fillings in my teeth, projects running over etc. At 29 I think I worry about 2% of what I did at 21.
So true. As a manager, I go the extra mile to keep employees I like.
> I wish I hadn't worried about ... fillings in my teeth
So wrong! If your teeth are fucked up, your life will suffer. Get a grade-A dentist and see him or her often. If you get fillings, go for Gold. It's crazy pricey, but they last for a very long time, don't decay, and won't fill up your mouth with mercury.
I'm in the UK too and its all manager's discretion so it varies massively.
One place I worked even let a guy save his allowance and work 4 days weeks from September to December. Another from time to time asked people to cancel their leave at very short notice because of the projects that were on.
Ever heard of duvet days? my mate's boss let him that day off by sending a text from his bed in the morning if he didn't fancy it that day.
Anywhere I've worked (UK) there's been a limit to the number of sick days you can take and restrictions on having to have a doctors note depending how long you were off. Currently I think I'm allowed 5 in a year off and after 3 within a week I need a note from a doctor.
Take more than 5 days off and you're relying on good will and have to attend meetings to explain it, in theory you might get dumped to statutory pay.
In terms of family emergencies you either take them as annual leave or you rely on goodwill. Normally I've been able to get half days for funerals but that's based on the IT world where they know I'm making up time for them regularly.
If you take time off long-term due to illness, you will get paid either the amount of sick pay that's listed in your employment contract, or Statutory Sick Pay, which is about £80 per week, whichever is higher. You might also qualify for state benefits – housing allowance etc.
You can claim statutory for 28 weeks, but your contract might allow more than this. After the 28 weeks, you switch entirely to the benefits system until you are fit enough to work again, but your employer doesn't have to take you on again after this.
My father was long-term sick, and was paid at 100% pay for 6 months, then 50% pay for a further 6 months, which was part of his contract. His employer extended the 50% pay to a total of a year out of goodwill.
Rob covers the basics below but bear in mind you can take out insurance policies that pay out if you have to take long-term sick absence.
Obviously these thing vary depending on age etc but my girlfriend has a policy like this and one for unemployment any they aren't preclusively expensive.
Actually does he not admit he doesn't give a straightforward refusal because the idea of the coverage actually makes him think its worth it? rather than the consequences of the confrontation.
The consequences feature in his thinking about if and when to report it to techcrunch a bit later on
Not meaning this as criticism of Daniel though who comes across fine - massive, massive difference between considering doing something unethical and actually doing it.
When talking to technology industry journalists, I'm not surprised that bribery starts to seem like a halfway good idea. Because most of it is bribery, of an indirect sort.
In this industry, people are allowed to fly journalists to exotic locations, throw them massively expensive parties, comp them entry to conferences, entertain them, take them out to fabulous restaurants, give them enormous amounts of their valuable time, allow them sneak previews, team t-shirts and other tchotchkes, etc. etc. etc. And that's the stuff that's on the books.
If you look at it as a simple ROI calculation, bribing a journalist seems like a good deal, and not tremendously different from all the other stuff you would have had to do anyway.
I'm not sure that it's simple ethics that makes us all recoil from bribery. Because we're obviously okay with all the other indirect, soft bribery.
I think, at a deeper level, people realize that once journalists offer direct quid pro quos, then there will be no end to their demands. So giving in to one will hurt all of one's colleagues (and oneself) in the future.
I think Dropbox is valuable enough to become ubiquitous but one imagines they need to grow to a certain size before such a feature exactly is rolled into a version of one of the big operating systems. Not that what they've done isn't technically difficult of course, but it just seems like something so valuable it might be on a Chrome wishlist.
Cool thing if the guys who make the software are reading this - started a new job earlier this year at a mostly non-software company managing a few development projects. I doubt most of my colleagues are aware of this startup culture or have heard of .NET much less Y Combinator.
First week "You've got to see this program we have the sales team using, called Dropbox... its tremendous there's about a thousand things we can use it for". Not only are they using it its their "we're showing this off to the new guy" thing.
It was a really interesting article but it draws a very general conclusion, that we can learn from the copy-cats "look how much they changed the business model" and listed a few examples, from a very specific example.
I mean, it what way were the job board and twitter clone different if we're drawing this out past a single example of successful dating website building in China
Not just exposure, but exposure to the right two communities: many designers follow them, and many coders. These groups tend not to hang out (like biz and coder guys don't...). If there aren't any other intersections, it's a unique competitive advantage.
Perhaps the trick is also in knowing what you got; and what problems others have got.
hmmm... I do wonder if some kind of specific advertising like this was a thought very early on for them when they started dedicating themselves to blogging, speaking to build an audience, as a financial rationalization of what they wanted to do anyway. :-)
Yes, they will get sign-ups because designers and coders know about them. But if I went to ANY of my web design clients from the last 7 years, I would have to say that maybe 1% or less of them EVER heard of 37Signals.
That being said, it looks to me like a bust in the making because if only other designers are looking at your $100 per month "ad", then it's actually working against you.
Nothing guarantees long term success. The point is that part of their competitive advantage is 'being famous'. This doesn't look like a particularly difficult thing to code up, but as stated above, without that initial kick, it would likely not go anywhere.
