I have to respectfully disagree that you're trying to get people to do something they don't want to do. Sometimes you're trying to catch the attention of someone who needs what you have, but they aren't ready to look for it yet because of cognitive biases.

Thanks for your support Sahil, hope it's helpful to you :)

That’s too bad. Maybe you can get your employer to reimburse you for a portion of the fees? Glad you found somewhere to go.

For sure. I wish I could say that's the only crazy requirements story I have, but it was probably one of the most demotivating.

I had one client at the consulting firm I used to work at ask us to basically create a spec (they didn't want anything built until they "were sure we knew everything") for essentially Microsoft Excel for the oil and gas industry. We asked them to just export the data as an XLSX to let customers use Excel itself and told them they didn't have the budget to recreate a 2 billion dollar R&D product from Microsoft. Long story short, they paid over 400k for a 800 page spec, and never built it. The consultants involved (myself and others) tried to get our agency to walk, but the money was just too appetizing for the higher ups. It was sad.

This is a complicated topic with a lot of reasons I don’t fully understand, but I do wish there were more women in tech. I did a video on my YouTube channel last year where I talked about my experience with bro culture and how I was part of the problem. I sure can’t solve this one myself but one thing I think men can do is think differently about the culture in many companies and have a longer term view. I read a short passage from Brene Brown’s excellent book “Daring Greatly” that I feel captures some of the pressure men are under to keep up “bro culture”. https://youtu.be/oZvO4FL_0Cs

You can either read books, use sites like Leetcode or Hackerrank or my favorite - build apps, APIs, or other simple prototypes to get something to work yourself. This always forces me to learn algorithms that solve a real world problem - versus just demonstrating CS skills.

Love it. The courage to ask for better work conditions! I totally agree that we don’t always take the steps to do this when we should. I like your example of the simple math for justifying a purchase!

It must be nice for your employees to have you as a co-founder! Great attitude. I hope your products and company go far.

Fantastic. I sometimes fall out of my workout routine when work gets overwhelming but you are SO right. I love your mindset around teamwork and personal relationships. You sound like a very healthy software developer!!