patorick002

2 years agodiscuss

Several years ago, I worked at a company called Motif Investing that was conceptually similar this. It was marketed more as a "build your own ETF" kind of thing. You could assemble and weight up to 30 stocks in a "Motif" and manage it over time. We had some of the features you mention as well. I was happy with the product and enjoyed working their, but the business never really took off. I wish you the best in developing your company!

patorick002

2 years agodiscuss

I logged in solely to say that Kate was the main reason I stuck with KDE as my desktop environment, back in the KDE 3 days. I switched to Mac some time ago but I still use Kate as my editor. I'm happy that it still exists.

patorick002

2 years agodiscuss

Yep. If you build a worse version of commercially available product in a market that has viable incumbents, just because you felt like building something, that probably wouldn't be a good foundation for a startup. It probably wouldn't be a good idea for an internal tool either; even if it wins you some short-term recognition. I've also seen people get promoted for shutting stuff like that down.

Of the many engineering roles I've held over the years, building internal applications was one of the most enjoyable, mainly because I could directly observe whether our software was working well for its customers. It strikes me as an advantage to serve an internal customer first, if you get the opportunity to know them really really well and then use that knowledge effectively.

patorick002

3 years agodiscuss

Amazon eng manager here, at least for one more day. I think Amazon is easier to get into than the other FAANGs (I've worked at two of them and was very close to getting into another). This is partially because it's easy/required to manage people out, and partially because Amazon has a rotten reputation in the industry.

It even feels like some teams hire low performers specifically to feed to the pip machine. Supposedly the idea of having a bar raiser in the interview dissuades that, but it certainly feels this way at times.

comments