It’s less of a book than maybe an introduction to a framework he uses with his coaching clients. It’s not Hemingway but the key insight he exposed for me was that entrepreneurial parents raise kids with higher rates of depression. I don’t think he did a study to arrive at this conclusion but it was more an observation of people he knew. So he created a way for parents to engage their children using a format called the family board meeting. It’s basically a four hour one on one session doing an activity of the kids choosing without a cell phone involved. Kind of obvious but very hard to commit to when your business needs constant attention.
That makes a lot of sense to be very supportive of your coaches. Maybe also keep it to a small cohort initially... As I’ve meet various gig workers one common complaint is that many feel like there are too many of them competing for too small deals or that they find it difficult to match deals with their specialty and end up passing or getting passed over because there wasn’t a perfect match in skills / career history. Back on the hippa topic... to me just even saying we talk to a psychologist about our kids development has stigma. Like what’s wrong your kids or you... so just even having an account May be a problem for some parents... also I bet quite a few will ask about using fsa dollars (which I assume you won’t be able to take) but maybe something to look into. Stigma aside I bet a lot of employers would pay for part or all of the fees as a perk.
It seems like you’re being thoughtful about your approach. Another question that comes to mind - how will you curate your providers? I think that’s been a challenge for similar models in other areas - they end up with a ton of providers ... too many initially to serve the customers they have...
The kids love anything by Susan Wise Bauer. The Story of the World audiobooks narrated by her father are in constant rotation in the car and these provide a jumping off point to go deeper into topics. There are a few used booksellers on eBay that sell just about any title for $3.99, so when I see something that is related to a recent topic, I just get it. Magic Treehouse is great too - we found someone selling their entire collection on Craigslist.. occasionally I introduce challenges like how to calculate the orbit of a satellite (we all failed to find the Starlink train but we learned our mistake). We also take lots of field trips. Wildlife is an endless topic of interest... we introduced iPads and raspberry pi’s early on but this was an absolute disaster so right now it’s old school: books, paper, experiences and lots of talking.
The first thing I would say is to resist typing your kids as xyz. I think everyone is genuinely afraid / hyper vigilant of kids who are “on the spectrum.” (As an example)... don’t give your kid a label. Second advice would be don’t evaluate your kids without evaluating yourself. Your kids are a reflection of you. As for books, I can’t say there’s a complete book that I can recommend. At best you find snippets here and there that provide ideas. The best thing we’ve done is connect with a psychologist. The kids don’t see her, actually don’t even know she exists.
Very good to hear that. How do you intend to use ML (I read one of the founders has an ML background)? Also what makes the service different from healthgrades other than facilitating the video call? How do you intend to ensure your providers follow hippa and/or aren’t charlatans? I’m genuinely intrigued... so above aren’t intended to shoot down your business.
As a privacy-conscious parent with five children, all of whom are gifted in numerous ways, we do often speak with a psychologist about how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into good behavior, etc. I couldn’t imagine not having such a guide at our side in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family. However, I would also caution you - and pardon me for being presumptive about what this service will do, but please don’t run ML on my kids. I really don’t need their lives contributing to mass collection of psycho-data and analysis.
100% in agreement. One major risk you’ve accumulated by slacking is that you may not easily get another job if google does eventually push you out. Your next employer will say, tell us what you’ve done - specifically. At some point you either have pride and integrity as a person or you’re an asshole. Google might tolerate that now when you’re young but I think fewer and fewer others will as you age. It sounds like you have some time to make some changes in your life - I would recommend you start there before kids and other life events take priority.
Agreed I was just trying to help the person achieve a bit of zen. it’s nice to think you can get him to sign something but chances are he’ll interpret it that the code is worth something and dig in...As they say in arendelle ... let it go, let it go...
I tend to agree with your thoughts but I would add this: If the cofounder is shutting one entity and starting another to do essentially the same thing, you don't want a piece of that pie. Count yourself lucky that all that happened is that the company failed and go to the next thing. If he's willing to do that, he's got next to zero character.
As for the code, I wouldn't touch it after the original company ceases. The code belongs to the entity that created it and when its gone, the code is gone. If you start something new from this code and it becomes successful, guess who is going to come out of the woodwork and want a portion of it? Yes, the same guy who likely would deny you anything from his new venture.
I've been in this situation and when you've written so much code, and it's good. It's painful to separate from it. I also flip houses and there are times when it's time to just sell the house already and I almost feel sad that I'm not going to get to work on it anymore. Sometimes I feel remorseful that I won't get to see all my good work after its sold. But here's the thing, if I don't sell it, I won't replenish the capital I need to do more. And in the software sense, if I don't move on from a project after its done, I will continue to mentally and physically labor on a work that is producing nothing. And if it does do something, you'll forever be looking over your shoulder for that cofounder who will sue you for a portion of it.
All this said, there are a couple of alternatives you can consider.
#1 is to simply agree with the founder that the company should open source the code base. This gives you the benefit of letting future employers, cofounders, coworkers, etc seeing your work. And this benefits him too as being associated with the project. it puts a coda on the project so that the work you did doesn't just disappear into vapor.
# 2 you should consider both signing separation agreements and put it in writing that everything is over and there are no claims on work product, intellectual property, etc.
Just remember what the article said - if you’ve met one, you’ve met... one. Everyone is different and what bothers me is the assumption of autism the instant someone does something unintentionally awkward. “Oh he’s on the spectrum...” I hear that so often as a dismissive that I wonder how actually thoughtful and caring that person really is... if we can’t have even the slightest bit of empathy towards fellow humans I wonder how these people would treat someone who actually does have autism.
Let’s face it someone who has deep frustration pretty much only cares about cya so in a way these two cases are in fact highly correlated. You might also want to question why you need a cya if you don’t harbor or anticipate “deep frustration.” :)
As a manager I typically open the conversation with hey hows it going, followed by taking genuine interest in the response. Then I will say hey we have a request from so and so to do x by y, how do you see it from your angle? They will usually say something like “I think I could fit it in if I drop the following.” And then we have a deal and we make a plan to check back. What do you guys think? Is that just the same as “can you please?”
I sure hope not. I’ve had a lot of managers who are women in my career and I prefer them to men because they are more direct. Could you please and it’s derivatives have almost always exclusively been a male trait unless the person was British/Irish (sorry to over generalize).