Find me a co-founder of a startup who while telling about his/her company doesn't say "Machine Learning" in his/her speech.

I dare you. I double dare you.

Our most senior and most competent backend developer got fired, he got told he "wasn't committed enough". This dude did the most complex tasks really quickly (and competently), could configure the most boring stuff off the top of his mind, and brought great culture to the company from his previous 20+ years of experience. He was about to implement some cool automation stuff, and improved our processes a great deal.

Now he's being let go. I was fearing *I* would get fired because I'm much slower and less knowledgeable than this guy.

When I talked to him, he figured the so-called "lack of commitment" was because he had missed a few standups the last few days, and got late to today's standup.

Now the boss (who is a less experienced than this dev who was let go, but co-founder of the company) was changing the database credentials (which we somehow have access to) and had the product down for like half an hour because of it.

I don't think firing this developer was a wise decision at all, and that's putting it generously. What a shame. Now I'm also a bit scared because the responsibilities of this developer might likely fall upon me. But generally I think we're worse off without this guy, and getting someone as good as him will take time.

Congratulations on reaching 10k.

Thanks for co-founding devrant.

> Gained the skills to atleast land an internship
> Hyped asf
> Start applying for jobs
> Hyped asf
> Days go by without a response
> Hype starts dying
> Gets a REAL email delivered to my inbox asking to come in for an interview
> Hype levels regenerated
> Interview goes great and both founder and senior dev are fine with hiring me
> Founder needs to talk with co-founder first before giving the go and said he will get back to me in a day or two.
> The hype is too real
> 5 days go by without a reponse
> Hype levels: all time low
> Decide to follow up, founder said he left for a conference before the co-founder came back to talk about it and said he will get with her and let me know in a few days.
> The hypening is back
> A week goes by with no response
> I'm dead inside rn.

Quote by my non-techie co-founder: when a developer says a new feature takes X amount of time, you always have to multiply X by PI to get the actual duration 🤓

When you and your dev co-founder pitch your startup idea to an angel investor.

So today I basically "lost" the chance to enter this remarkable security StartUp. The dream made true... a couple of Python nice scripts, the logic test that wasn't that big, everything was going well.

I met the CEO, damn! He seems to be a great dude. But suddenly, a wild co-founder appeared.

The dude started to talk about money and how he didn't perceive me as a Senior developer (not even if my results were telling him the oppositive); he ended up with: you seemed to be Mid-advance.
I was like: Ok, I understand. Wasn't that big because I knew that I could have demonstrated my skills.

Then he asked about my salary expectations, I answered to him my realistic expectations, that to be honest, it wasn't a lot of damn money! Because, I really was expecting a chance to learn more, have bigger challenges, bring value, etc.

He said: Okay let me check this with my partner. But, that was a week ago.
Anyway, today I received an email from the CEO, with the typical apologize telling me that the vacancy will be paused by the moment.

Oh, I didn't mention that one friend of mine is working there and he told me a couple of hours ago that they have hired a Junior developer because he was willing to accept what they wanted to pay him. Puff it broke my heart, but I wish him luck because even though I was dying to be on that security StartUp, I’m not at the point to accept a misery of money to work harder, I just felt frustrated with that stingy guy.

I see all these tools for the past few years claiming...

"build an app without writing code"

Great, if you want to build a prototype and then try to find a technical co-founder who can actually build something.

Otherwise, none of us need another shitty cookie-cutter app.

There is a 0% chance you can build anything that will scale without writing some code. Your best case scenario is you sell it to some sucker who doesn't understand that what they are buying is garbage.

I give those folks 3 options...

1. Find a technical co-founder
2. Learn to build software
3. Fuck off

Thinking you can build a software company without building actual quality software if fucking moronic.

Of course, that won't stop the thousands of business grads each year from trying and saying...

"I have such a great idea, I just need someone to build it"

Let's get things straight. You have nothing. NOTHING! You idea is worthless without execution.

Although I dislike Microsoft tremendously, I had faith that they wouldn't be stupid enough to fuck up Github. Until I just read an article that the new CEO of Github will be the former CEO and co-founder of Xamarin, who says he wants to "make Github better at being Github".

A hybrid tool creator wants to make Github better. Ladies and gentlemen, we are fucked.

Devrant : The only social network where you get your first upvote from its co-founder @dfox

Any folks willing to join the GIT family in devrant...
Steps to join:
Change username with prefix "git" followed by your favorite available commands..
Example: gitpush(already taken and co-founder of this gang), gitpull

[long]
When searching for internship via school I found this small startup with this cute project of building a teaching tool for programming. There were back then 2 programmers: the founder and the co-founder.

Then like 1 week before the internship started, the co-founder had a burnout and had to get off the project, while the company was so low on budget the founder, aka my new b0ss, had to work separate jobs to keep the company alive. (quite metal tbh)

It's funny because I'm a junior developer, 100%. I've been coding as a hobby for around 8 years now but I've never worked in a big company before. (No exception to this workplace either)

First project I get: rewrite the compiler. The Python compiler.
"But wait, why not just embed a real compiler from the first case?"
-nanananana it's never simple, as you probably know from your own projects.

The new compiler, as compared to existing embedded compiler solutions out there, needed these prime features:
- Walk through the code (debugger style), but programmatically.
- Show custom exceptions (ex: "A colon is needed at the end of an if-statement" instead of "Syntax error line 3")
- Have a "Did-you-mean this variable?" error for usage of unassigned variables.
- Be able to be embedded in Unity's WebGL build target

All for the use case of being a friendly compiler.
The last dash in the list is actually the biggest bottleneck which excluded all existing open-source projects (i could find). Compliant with WebAssembly I can't use threads among other things, IL2CPP has lots of restrictions, Unity has some as well...

Oh and it should of course be built using test-driven development.

"Good luck!" - said the founder, first day of work as she then traveled to USA for **3 weeks**, leaving me solo with the to-be-made codebase and humongous list of requirements.

---

I just finished the 6th week of internship, boss has been at "HQ" for 3 weeks now, and I just hit the biggest milestone yet for this project.

Yes I've been succeeding! This project has gone so well, and I'm surprising myself how much code I've been pumping out during these weeks.

I'm up now at almost 40'000 lines of source and 30'000 lines of code. ‼
( Biggest project I've ever worked on previously was at 8'000 lines of code )

The milestone (that I finished today) was for loops! As been trying to showcase in the GIF.

---

It's such a giant project and I can honestly say I've done some good work here. Self-five. Over-performing is a thing.

The things that makes me shiver though is that most that use this application will never know the intricates of it's insides, and the brain work put into it.

The project is probably over-engineered. A lot. Having a home-made compiler gives us a lot of flexibility for our product as we're trying to make more of a "pedagogic IDE". But no matter that I reinvented the wheel for the 105Gth time, it's still the most fun I've had with a project to date.

---

Also btw if anyone wants to see source code, please give me good reasons as I'm actively trying to convince my boss to make the compiler open-source.

Cheers!

I don't care what idea you have. I am not joining your "startup" as a technical co-founder. I too wish I could go to the store and buy bread with fucking equity

I asked a co founder of a tech startup, "Why use MEAN stack? " his reaction \_(ツ)_/¯ because it's cool and famous.
STOP TRYING TO USE THINGS WHICH ARE COOL YOU'RE MAKING SOFTWARES NOT MOVIES

Question from a CTO/co-founder in an interview:
"So you've changed jobs every year or so and you were laid off a bunch of times. Do you think maybe it was because of your performance or the company choices you made?". You fucking privileged city dwelling gen-Xer. You got lucky with your startup until now. You sell recruiting software and that worked for a while when the market was booming but now that companies aren't hiring anymore you want to pivot and also make employee management and HR solutions. Guess what? Everybody else is also doing that.

Sigh, I'm the "tech" side of the startup. When I explain things to my co-founder on what is/isn't possible, it's frustrating to have to explain how it wouldn't be possible without effecting something else.

When you realize that you work 10x more than your startup co-founder...

If I say, "I don't have co-founder for my startup", it's not that I don't have capability to listen to others suggestion...

!Rant
I got a co-founder for a thing I'm building.
Building this thing will only get better as all the struggles of building a startup thing get wurse.
Today, my rant friends, is a great day.

# Retrospective as Backend engineer

Once upon a time, I was rejected by a startup who tries to snag me from another company that I was working with.
They are looking for Senior / Supervisor level backend engineer and my profile looks like a fit for them.
So they contacted me, arranged a technical test, system design test, and interview with their lead backend engineer who also happens to be co-founder of the startup.

## The Interview

As usual, they asked me what are my contribution to previous workplace.
I answered them with achievements that I think are the best for each company that I worked with, and how to technologically achieve them.

One of it includes designing and implementing a `CQRS+ES` system in the backend.
With complete capability of what I `brag` as `Time Machine` through replaying event.

## The Rejection

And of course I was rejected by the startup, maybe specifically by the co-founder. As I asked around on the reason of rejection from an insider.

They insisted I am a guy who overengineer thing that are not needed, by doing `CQRS+ES`, and only suitable for RND, non-production stuffs.

Nobody needs that kind of `Time Machine`.

## Ironically

After switching jobs (to another company), becoming fullstack developer, learning about react and redux.
I can reflect back on this past experience and say this:

The same company that says `CQRS+ES` is an over engineering, also uses `React+Redux`.
Never did they realize the concept behind `React+Redux` is very similar to `CQRS+ES`.

- Separation of concern
- CQRS: `Command` is separated from `Query`
- Redux: Side effect / `Action` in `Thunk` separated from the presentation
- Managing State of Application
- ES: Through sequence of `Event` produced by `Command`
- Redux: Through action data produced / dispatched by `Action`
- Replayability
- ES: Through replaying `Event` into the `Applier`
- Redux: Through replay `Action` which trigger dispatch to `Reducer`

---

The same company that says `CQRS` is an over engineering also uses `ElasticSearch+MySQL`.
Never did they realize they are separating `WRITE` database into `MySQL` as their `Single Source Of Truth`, and `READ` database into `ElasticSearch` is also inline with `CQRS` principle.

## Value as Backend Engineer

It's a sad days as Backend Engineer these days. At least in the country I live in.
Seems like being a backend engineer is often under-appreciated.
Company (or people) seems to think of backend engineer is the guy who ONLY makes `CRUD` API endpoint to database.

- I've heard from Fullstack engineer who comes from React background complains about Backend engineers have it easy by only doing CRUD without having to worry about application.
- The same guy fails when given task in Backend to make a simple round-robin ticketing system.
- I've seen company who only hires Fullstack engineer with strong Frontend experience, fails to have basic understanding of how SQL Transaction and Connection Pool works.
- I've seen company Fullstack engineer relies on ORM to do super complex query instead of writing proper SQL, and prefer to translate SQL into ORM query language.
- I've seen company Fullstack engineer with strong React background brags about Uncle Bob clean code but fail to know on how to do basic dependency injection.
- I've heard company who made webapp criticize my way of handling `session` through http secure cookie. Saying it's a bad practice and better to use local storage. Despite my argument of `secure` in the cookie and ability to control cookie via backend.

[NSFW]
What are the odds of a game studio's co-founder starring a R18 decensoring GitHub repo? Welp. Today one did. And I saw because I found his GitHub after Googling (I switched to Duck in September). Welp. This is gonna be embarrassing for the guy. Whoops.

Repo is DeepCreamPy btw if you're interested in "researching how it works".

Just had a very "OMG WTF!" kind of mini conversation with my co-founder, of a web dev startup.

Him: So what's LastPass then?
Me: It's a secure password management system.
Him: So let's use LastPass instead of Dropbox then. :-)

** quickly searches dropbox for passwords **

A little knowledge can be extremely dangerous if left unsupervised.

When you're trying to solve a problem and you're spinning your head around then you check your phone and see the co-founder of a service you love just liked your rant.

You feel like: awee!! thank you 😍

Then you get back to work with some good portion of dopamine in your head to support you

Thanks again for this service 🙏

Wondering who all looking for technical co-founder?

because when you are ceo and founder of something at a young age, you need to empathize that as much as you can

that roughly translates as: "21 years old, international robotics champion, co-founder and CEO @ {put your company name here}"

Non technical Co-founder comes up with some batshit crazy idea and says it’s Agile because he thinks that means you’re not allowed to argue with it.

Dumb people are dumb.

I HATE the idea of only releasing on pre-determined schedules despite work being completed and just waiting for that day to arrive.

I'm a co-founder of a small software company. We have partnered with another particular company that also writes software. Some of our clients have access to paid content of that company's services through our application.

Every once in a while, our clients will report issues with that company's service to us, because they access it through our application. They think it's our issue.

We then pass the report on to the partner company, telling them that their stuff is broken. Their reply goes like this:

"Ok. We'll get the bug fix scheduled, and we'll release it next Thursday."

"Next Thursday? The issue is now, they can't use the service."

"That's our scheduled release date."

O.M.G.

We voluntarily walked away from our safe, cushy jobs working for other people, taking enormous pay cuts to start this company. Now, we're 6+ years in, disrupting established fat-and-happy competitors in this space. I GUARANTEE you that if we had that same attitude, we would have been absolutely obliterated early on.

We are quick. Guided by kanban boards, our suite of unit tests and integration tests is vast and kick-ass. With continuous integration and the click of a button we know if we broke something or if the piece we're working on is ready to be pushed to production, IMMEDIATELY. Our "release schedule" is when the damn thing is complete.

It isn't all bad. Our integration with them has been beneficial for both of us. I just loathe their snail's pace which negatively affects our mutual customers. It can make us look bad, and we can do nothing about it.

Blah.

So my co-founder, tried to outdo my equity in the company, by asking me to give up percentage of our equity for his father, so that he could have the leverage.

He is not talking to me since then,
When I said politely to piss off.

Just because you are a techie people try to abuse you

Any advice ?

Rant

I was given a project to lead and develop with 2 other team members by the co-founder, I was told that I will need to deliver an initial demo within 30 days, 20 days in the project and I was told yesterday that they need a final release ready within the next 10 days !! Not just that but the co founder decided to assign one of my team members to another project!!!

I've worked today till 4am.

Guess who's working from home in the morning!

Being a Tech Co-Founder is both boon and a bane.

Boon: You know how to build it.

Bane: You just start building without thinking.

We often crave I will be using Redis😍😍, Kafka, Load Balancer, Muti Layer Neural Net

"Dude", Whatever you are building does anyone want it or not. Tell me that first.

How hard is it to make a custom steno-lithography API? And do I even need one?

Hi, all. My name is J.A and I am co-owner of 3DPrintedDreams with my best friend. (We are both 17.)

During a brainstorm of what should be the flagship feature of our shop should be. We decided to take user images, (exact specifications TBD), and then use an API to transform them into .stl files so my friend can print it on his 3D Printer.

I am asking how hard or "easy" would it be to make such an API and what would be the bottom dollar if I were to make a collab post here about it? If anyone would be willing to listen, I could explain how all this would work in relation to the full stack of my website.

p.s. I understand that experience costs money and I myself have experienced this, but, we spent most of our money on the Pallete 2 from Mosaic. (about $500).

HOWEVER, we still have some money left. If a suggested price is to much for us to pay up-front, 3DPrintedDreams is willing to pay you in installments dermined by mutual agreement.

Thanks for your time and have a nice day!

-Josh

Co-founder of 3DPrintedDreams, LLC (Pending).

The founder of the company saw my profile in linkedin. He dm me and said that he and his co founder reviewed my profile and saying that they were interested to hire me because my profile was good. And after a week. I officially joined the team, eventually the person that contacted me admitted that he's msg is just templated and sent to all related developers. I realize that they didnt even check my portfolio I thought they appreciate it. FML!

Former co-founder is harassing me and threatening me with lawsuits.

Get the f** off my face you fucking scammer.

#rant

Where do I start...

I have seen a QA load local code to a machine, run it and then say it was ready to deploy. Little did we know she wasn’t following the deployment process at all and didn’t even realize she had to. We were a week trying to figure out why the deploys wouldn’t work until she spoke up.

I knew a dev/founder that said to me “source control is only for large projects”, I tried to convince him and his cofounder to use github or bitbucket. Nope, they weren’t into it (fresh out of school listening to professors who hadn’t worked a development day in 20 years) One cofounder got disgruntled, thought he was doing most of the work and decided to quit, he also decided to wipe the code off his co-founders machine. I literally saw a grown man come out of a meeting crying knowing he would never gain back the respect of those mentors and advisors.

I once saw a developer create a printed ticket receipt for a web app. Instead of making a page and styling it to fit a smaller width, he decided to do everything in string literals. More precisely, he made one big long fucking strong literal and then broke it up using custom regex to add styling to different sections. We had a meeting and he was totally convinced this was the only way. In the end we scrapped the entire code and the dude didn’t last very long after that.

Worst of all! I once saw a developer find a IBM Model M keyboard and said “I’m gonna throw out this junky keyboard”. I told him to shut his stupid fucking mouth and give the the keyboard.

He did

Leave a "I will see you like a php team lead in five years" (CEO words) job and be a co-founder for a startup.

Co-founder: "It doesn't make sense in the sense that it doesn't make sense with regards to our services."

Me: I'll ask again when your meds have worm off.

My co-founder is evidently on some pretty strong pain killers, when I just asked him about a logo idea for promoting our company (it's a web dev company so it's relevant here).

So there is this guy with a startup, who wants me to work with him like a co-founder, putting innovations in to the startup. But I want to work like an intern, I will code, you will pay me money, if something breaks, I'm out.

Idk for how long, we can continue like this. Sometimes I feel I should leave, but then I think about the extra pocket money (I am a student). But he calls me like 10 times a day, talking for 15-30 minutes on phone, repeating the same things again and again, which really pisses me off as an introvert.

Should I leave the extra pocket money for some peace of mind?

I was going to incorporate today with my co-founder. And I just told him that after thinking it through, I want to found solo. Fuck. On one hand, I feel like it was a good decision (he was a UI designer, wanted 20% equity) for the startup, on the other, I feel like a douchebag. Well, let the adventure begin...

Service based companies and Nepotism

In India, most IT companies hires their own family members. Even they promote their own family members. One of the my friend worked as dev he found that mostly his co workers are relatives of founder or managers. He told me that he understand if they get hired from some kind of references but that's not case here. Even HR is also family member of manager/founder. Most of this guys don't know any language. Even they don't have any kind of professionalism

Imagine that working on companies where your co-workers and HR is family members of managers and founder. Where you find help because everyone will against you because all are family members.

they deduct PF of workers who are not relatives and never pay tax to goverment. In india, most developers are desperate to get job because that's what education system and society taught them.

Hope startup culture will kill all these shitty companies

Any technical cofounders here? I've been offered to be a technical co-founder for a new venture. This is a venture that has the same founding team as the startup I'm working with for last 3 years or so. The current venture may be acquired in the near future with the founding team exiting.

Now my question (s) are these:
1. I know the team. We're friendly. But until now the relationship has been that of an employer-employee. What all should i consider before taking this up?
2. Since founders generally take up salaries only what is required for them to sustain. It would mean a financial cut for me too. So I'm stuck in the dilemma of moving towards an entrepreneurial route vs if it fails and I've to work again i may have to start off with a lower salary in the future.

I'm a risk taker (some call it seeker) when it comes to that. Looking forward for some helpful suggestions.

New office stories during the emotional turmoil...

Story 1: The creepy fuck

So being unaware of the fact that I was connected with this guy on LinkedIn already.

Ron walks upto my desk and greets me on my first day on floor. Weird, but whatever.

I politely interact, because gotta make friends and create my following to get shit done.

The next day, randomly comes asking for a laptop sticker and I am like WTF! He is like sticker was an excuse, I just wanted to say Hi!

👀

Day 3: same random creep shit. Talks about personal topics and invades personal space uninvited.

Day 4: Keeps starring at me while I ignore and judges me evidently with stupid suggestions on how to exist without being asked for.

Fuck this guy.

Story 2: The classic case of Dunning Kruger effect

So I get introduced to my tech team today and everyone start piling on me to guide them on decision making. The CTO creates a Slack thread with me and Co-founder asking me to get things moving on priority.

The co-founder shut him out right away. Fucking hilarious.

But, a retard starts schooling me on how to use Slack. Lmfao.

Me being polite, said I'll follow.. dude starts bragging on how he wrote company policy to get everyone on Slack yada yada..

To be honest, the Slack experience is beyond broken based on what these idiot has setup.

He literally opened my Slack and responded to the CTO thread.

That's where I got pissed. I upfront told him that hey! Calm your tiddies down. I know how to use Slack. I have used it since it was in the beta.

I have been in much much mucy bigger orgs and places more well structured than what you have here.

I told him on his face what the flaws where and how I felt a downgrade from where I am coming from.

The look on his face was priceless and he started sweating. Lol

Never again he'll school anyone.

I mean I understand if you are humble and genuinely guiding a new hire. But being cocky unnecessarily and shoving things down my throat without yourself knowing shit or know about the other person is purely asshole move.

Anyway, I am still upset about the scam. Fuck this world.

Me: I am your fucking senior engineer...!
Co-founder: well, I still think there's nothing wrong with creating unsolicited user accounts and sending them mails unless you can quote a word-class source

Fellow ranters, I need some advice.

Work at an early stage startup to build their initial product(let's call it X) or work at slightly established startup with funding(let's call it Y)?

Both have their own benefits.

Working at X:
- I have equity (and a co founder position) thus chances of high rewards if the startup is successful.
- I get to build the whole product from scratch (great learning experience).

Working at Y:
- Don't know much about the company but I get a decent stable income.
- Work with a team (although a small one).
- Job security.

I'm currently in my final year and have given up on campus placements. Moreover, I'm not interested in wasting my time in pointless interview preparations. So I figured that startup is the way to go.

Hello!. I have a little tech app idea I'll love to startup. I made an educated guess that my target users are mostly on the android platform. At least 70-80%.Now I don't have funds to get a development team and I want to keep the expenses to the barest minimum. I have a little tech background. I have, used html, css, c# in the past. I always hated Java in school. But it seems I have to embrace it or Kotlin for the development of the app. I want to be able to build at least the MVP and try to gain traction. I am also thinking about cross platform options to cater for both Android and the few iOS users we may have. React Native and Flutter comes to mind. I also think I can get someone highly technical than myself as a co-founder to help. I will appreciate it if you can drop your 2 cents.

Hi Guys if you can share your opinion/experience in what I wrote below it would help me a lot, thanks !

Im a full-stack developer with 4 years of experience, worked with different technologies in backend, frontend, mobile etc.. so I have general knowdgele of how systems works and how they should be built.

So I work as CTO in a startup, Im for almost 2 years here I started here with minimum salary (I decided that, because they said to me we are startup and such things so I wanted to help) 2.2k Euros and it has been almost 2 years without pay rise, so last month I asked for pay rise, but they said to me that they dont have money and sent me +300 euros as gift.

One week ago I wrote to them again (co-founders) that I have a lot of pressure and I dont know if I can handle all of that for much time he told me that I got +300 euro pay rise (which it was gift from them in first place, I refused them to sent this to me), but TODAY CEO and Co-Founder wrote to again me asking if I accept +300 euro pay rise because they can afford to pay me 2.5k or if I dont accept this they can sent me 2.2k again (they think that 2.5k is maximum that they can pay me right now and that this is enough for me).

I want to ask you guys what would you do, would you accepting something like this, considering that right now Im only dev here (yes Im only dev) and Im taking care of these(yes all of these) :

1. Company Website (react js)
2. Web Admin Panel (that clients use to manage their data)(react js)
3. Web Application (that visitors use to see client data)(react js)
4. Widgets (some code that is integrated into clients websites it's same as application, but integrated directly to client website)(react js)
5. Backend of all 3 apps mentioned above (asp.net core)
6. AWS Architecture( some of services : Cognito,Lambda,RDS,API Gateway,CloudFront,S3)
7. DevOps Role

Also consider that I didnt take holidays for 1 year now working on weekends too :)

What should I expect from a final stage interview with a startup CEO/Co-founder? This will be the 3rd (and hopefully last) interview.

It's so hard to hire a co founder who would just work for equity.