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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I'm sure its just the way it was written but it sounded a lot like the CEO was totally inappropriate, chucked a maddie and then backtracked - there's certainly a bit of ambiguity that the author might not have noticed, knowing the man personally as he does.
I don't see the comparison with respect to dating, this is sanctions against a media company on the basis they gave unfavorable coverage.
As far as the scale goes, this is what it is - its cost TC 600,000 followers on Twitter - if there is a numeric value to that of even a dollar I still personally find the situation interesting because I find the principal of this kind of sanction to be a moral point of debate.
Moral is a strong word though I admit!! I just can't think of another way to express it.
I'm probably slightly playing devils advocate but I don't mean to be controversial for the sake of it, I just think this is interesting.
TC is media/journalism and even if that's at a tabloid level personally I do believe that companies shouldn't withdraw privileges or sanction a media company based on unfavorable stories being written about them.
I think its a bad precedent to set even on this minor scale.
Of course I see what you're saying, its not a question of whether it is or isn't good will - it's whether you're comfortable with a company exercising this kind of power against a media company on the basis said company wrote something which was unfavourable.
As far as depriving revenue goes, I'm obviously talking up the effect because I find the stance Twitter took interesting. I'm not suggesting this is tens of thousands of dollars and I don't think its less interesting just because it isn't.
TC certainly shouldn't be in the industry of doing this or that because they do or don't hurt Twitter's image.
I'm not sure that "perfectly entitled to perform" statement holds up. "Legally" entitled to perform, yes... "Morally" entitled to perform, hmmm.
It does seem Twitter was willing to deprive a benefit (read exposure/revenue) granted to TC on the basis the documents were leaked. In the future if TC had interesting/harmful information on Twitter to reveal they would decide commercially whether to publish by taking into account any negative impact for them in exposure on twitter.
That's unhealthy isn't it? Twitter would be less likely to receive negative/unhelpful press than other similar companies on the basis they can punish those who do it.
I know I'm deliberately talking up what happened here but it is an interesting question, to me at least
Sorry but the fact that twitter did this to Techcrunch must be masking people's views here, otherwise I can't understand the comparison with someone's diary.
At the end of the day I value journalism of this kind which is in part investigative and doesn't, to my uneducated eyes, appear to have any personal cost. I'm not sure how interesting it was in this case, but in general "wasn't supposed to be published" is about a fraction of the rationale that needs to be there for a media organisation not to publish.
At the end of the day, TC broke a story here and leaked something Twitter didn't want out in the open. They took a hit on traffic and, by extension, to their exposure which as a media company presumably is a measure that affects revenue. Therefore Twitter deprived TC of revenue as punishment for publishing information they didn't want to see in the public eye.
That's a bad thing, for me, for a media company to have done and it is unusual + interesting.
I think I'm a reasonably private person, bit of twitter no photo's + no facebook but I suspect I'd buy one of these and wear one once in a while.
If use of these was as widespread as say twitter, then there's countless things I'd be interested in, imagine you could sit in at houses of parliament when "Xyz" law was passed 4 years later.
When I read Joel's articles I know I enjoy them, I know they're interesting and I learn from them but also that I'm reading marketing for his products and brand - its win-win and I subscribe to his marketing output along with everything else he publishes willingly.
I'd like to read about the impact "Joel on Software" and his celebrity has had on his success/sales though.
Its almost like you read the article and he discusses "this made my company successful", "this was a mistake of mine" but talking about his blog and celebrity is seemingly off limits, to a layman like me its a huge factor in the appeal of his products but it goes unsaid in his articles - as though it had no impact.
I wonder if there's a worry openly discussing the marketing benefit to Joel of us reading his articles would be almost breaking down a wall and change our perception of them.
Or am I wrong, has Joel (and/or Jeff Atwood) discussed openly the difference their blog-marketing has made to their business success?