starlord

I am sorry to sound callous, but reading all the news around I got quite concerned on the economic consequences of the recession and measures being taken.

So I was trying to determine how many people will be saved by Covid with the steep measures taken vs how many people might be pushed to death due to downstream economic consequences...

Quick search on google scholar didn't give me too many leads on clear metrics on change of death rate with recession or unemployment. Some studies even said last recession lowered death rate in Europe.

Anyone who deals with such stats here have any insights?

For folks who were nearing or already in burnout phase, how do next steps look like now in the post-covid19 world?

1. It seems the mental stress of processing all Covid19 impacts (real and anticipated) on the real and financial world is a bit much added to general depressing vibe when you're already in burnout phase. Any practical strategies?

  - Turning off news doesn't work, this is all even your mom is talking about

2. General advice is to stick to your current job for a while and perform good to avoid being termed "non-essential" and laid off. Any advice? (especially someone who has seen the decade old crisis first hand? I was still in college then)

- Personally I was planning to take at least a 3 months break as next step until this news of covid19 broke. I haven't taken any breaks in last 4ish years (2ish years on a startup as founder-CTO and then another 2 at a large company where we got acquired...) and I feel super shitty in a low productive phase right now which makes me question all my decisions everyday

2.1 I still feel slightly excited to learn new skills if I just leave job (and money/ptions) and invest a few months in upskilling after a break, but I don't know how long the recession would be and when will the jobs start appearing or the market start looking good again to start a company. Any advice on would be much appreciated here.

- Would expertise in Machine Learning/AI be good skillset to pick up in post-covid world? After crossing 30, I now feel like moving to a more hard skill based industry like health-care, biotech, robitics where I can actually help more real folks with my work and feel better about myself, but it seems quite risky to shift from software product industry at this age given how well it gets paid...

Since I got out of college, I have been trying to hustle through for growth and am finally running a funded startup now as founder/CTO. But last 6-7 years have just gone by damn fast. Always loved learning new stuff, but don't have enough time to really be immersive in anything. Now when I see an interesting problem in math/physics I can hardly give it an actual shot and it makes me very very sad deep down. Developing a strong desire to go back to college if this unhappiness continues, but has that really worked for anyone here?

> PS: I tried the philosophy as per http://www.paulgraham.com/todo.html:

[x] "Don't ignore your dreams" => Doing it. Makes some part of a day to feel good... |

[?] "Don't work too much" => difficult to achieve in combo with above :( |

[?] "Say what you think" => Not easy as an introvert INTP, but learning |

[?] "Cultivate friendships" => Damn difficult to meet genuine folks after college (Would love any suggestions on where to find them... Definitely not facebook :/ ) |

[ ] "Be happy" => Nope. This is just not working...

Often lying or not telling complete truth contextually becomes easier to have more efficient conversations and relationships. I started with being bad at it in early twenties, but now as I have grown older it's become second nature to quickly cook up a lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation (usually of minor significance most of the times) and to maintain relationships (especially the long distance ones, not necessarily romantic ones). Once in a while on some days, I get super depressed about having to lie so often though, even though they make life way more efficient and lower maintenance cost. On most days, I just accept it as a way of life to live better in present world... Was wondering how other people deal with it? (Asking in this forum, as I feel slightly more technical people will probably prefer to lie to quickly get out of a situation as it's more efficient use of time...)

We raised a few hundred thousand seed sort of round sometime back. Have been working on product for more than a year now, recently launched about a month ago. Response has been sort of nice. Have a few thousand users doing transactions.

But I still feel lost and burned out. I built out the product from scratch, later we hired a few guys who are okay in terms of skills. Now I spend a lot of time guiding them to deal with the issues that keep cropping up every now and then. Trying to move away from being a single point of failure in the startup. Finally booked a vacation, but feeling quite guilty about it. I know I need some rest time, energy levels aren't what they used to be. But still feel guilty and will probably end up working 4-5 days as week on vacation as well...

What do you guys do to recover from such situations?

Motivation levels are getting very variable everyday. Had quit job 2+ years ago, started withdrawing a small salary about a year ago so personal liquidity situation isn't that great either. But now need to start to raise more money soon for company... Is it normal to feel quite screwed while running a company most of the time?

I searched previous hackernews threads on this, and found a few suggestions I thought looked good: (1). Pair programming. (I am the sole tech cofounder and don't have another guy to work with yet...)

(2). Just saying "NO" till you are done on present task. (Being the cofounder, have to share responsibilities to deal with a bunch of other shit to get money, do legal stuff etc... so can't always just say "NO" for another few months till org grows large & can hire someone to get this done)

(3). Allocate blocks of time on calendar. I am solely developing the web app (usual front-end shit), backend rest api and the android app (android dev build waiting is the worst IMHO) and need to keep switching between these as well through these "blocks" of times I do get alone. I noticed these dev environment switch also slow me down a little even in these "blocks of time". Eventually the product milestones are quite screwed and I am massively depressed and low on confidence.

Really looking for any suggestions that worked for you if any of you have dealt with these things earlier?

(Context if needed/relevant: 29 yr old single guy, not high on energy anymore, no social life distractions either)

Apple could hit the trillion dollar market cap sometime soon, so I guess it isn't too wild to dream of building a trillion dollar company in next 5 to 10 years. IMO, Apple has been able to do that by being able to dominate in multiple product lines applicable for both consumer and enterprise buyers. So perhaps the next trillion dollar companies should be able to do the same at faster pace in markets where such demand could arise. So shortlisting potential areas: 1. Robotics: Consumer: household help; Enterprise: semi-skilled worker bots (12 sigma quality assurances anyone???); Govt: public transport drivers (no strikes, 24 hour service!) 2. Bio-engineering: Consumer demand- genetic target drugs, enhanced food (super healthy fries maybe...); Enterprise: super-workers, ; Govt: Super-soldiers; Universal demand: organ/limb replacement. 3. Space-tech: Consumer demand from-travel, tourism & settlement; Enterprise: Raw materials mining, commercial factories, real-estate dev for space colonies. (Heard Elon and Bezos are both trying some hacks there already I guess). Need help in listing more areas/ideas/plans...

Why even dream this? Because hey: "Billion dollars ain't cool, you know what's cool???? A Trillion dollar!"- Some version of Sean Parker And possibly some dev of humanity as well, you know to "Make the world a better place!"... but my way ;)

When you have had a bad day, what do you normally do to take your mind off/switch-context just to feel better/not-shitty...

Does anyone have any routines like some games, books or some other activity (apart from exercise as it's normally already 8ish in night when you realize the day is gone, and it was quite horrible, and you don't have much energy or motivation left to go to gym or a run...)

I had quit a corporate business analyst job and joined a tech startup to pursue programming full time instead of hobby. Joined as front-end engineer (as first few employees), within a few weeks due to other backend guys not joining picked up backend and wrote the whole web app from scratch. Now have experience with full-stack, deciding architecture of the app and other devops stuff. It's been great learning experience for almost 2 years now.

I see 2 red flags now: 1. I am not seeing people smarter than me joining (startup got $1M+ funding) i.e. I end up teaching stuff instead of learning stuff from others (I am pretty sure I don't follow all the best practices, so have a lot to learn). 2. recently learned the equity vesting will start few months later than what was initially agreed upon... so even after 2 years, i will have much lesser vested stock :( Also strategies around growth by other team members haven't been much successful as yet either... so can't evaluate how valuable the stock will be eventually...

Would appreciate if you could share opinions if this is normal in most startups or if I should actually start looking out specially from the perspective of learning opportunities in the early career years...

PS: I am single and in 2nd half of 20s. This is just my 2nd company out of college.