You both need to get familiar with math, and how it can be used to evaluate whether his “want” can be turned into an actual plan.

What’s up with everyone desperately wanting to save up money just to go pour it into real estate instead of letting it sit in the market? Is everyone so delusional that Tik Tok influencers have convinced them that being a landlord is actually passive income?

I'm not worried about losing my job because AI can replace me, I'm worried about losing my job because some executive thinks that AI can replace me

Don't the vast majority of companies use "unlimited sprints" in the sense that every few weeks you start again without a gap in the middle? That's been standard for well over a decade. Sprints are just an abstraction. Just work at a sustainable pace within whatever abstraction your company uses. Be explicit about pulling tech debt into the sprint if that's what you think needs to be prioritized.

" *I had no audience and no clue what problem I was solving. Just vibes....*

 ...*We never talked to users just built what we thought was cool.*...

... *But I undercharged,"*

  
It seems you already knew what was the cause of failure, should have fixed them before quiting. 

Personally I grinded for months before having orders, it's only after 3 years I understood I will make it. Before that, I can't even say I had ups and downs, it was just setbacks after setbacks.

I think your plan sounds fine but are you saying you don't have a credit card, and only two debit cards?

Way better customer service at any CU I've ever dealt with vs. a bank. Generally lower fees (if any). Auto loans are great through CUs as well and just walk into an auto dealer with your own financing so you can skip that part with the auto dealer.

Unless someone has business banking needs, I don't see why anyone want to deal with a bank over a CU.

Response to update;
If there’s a charge on your debit card you didn’t make, someone has your debit card information.

You still need to cancel that debit card and get a new one.

You can’t time it, if you’re scared and wait around, you can possibly miss out on substantial gains

If you’re nervous, hold shares for long term and then hedge & buy a few puts as insurance for if things go down substantially

Getting your GED is a great start. I’m honestly impressed that you hit $70k without it. 

You didn’t give a lot of details about your work history. What is your background and what skills do you have? 

Career planning is about finding that sweet intersection of three things - what you’re good at, what you like to do, and what someone will pay you to do. Focus your efforts on figuring that out and then find a way to get qualified for the part about someone paying you for it.

If you zoom out till 1990, you will see that QQQ made a 800% gain between 1995-2000.This was greed and  based on highly overvalued internet companies who made little profits.today nasdaq 100 is much better balanced between sectors. Also the mag7 companies also make good revenue, high nett profits and yearly growth what explains their high PE valuations. This also pushes up sp500 PE’s. So comparing today’s PE with 20 years ago and conclude we market is overpriced doesn’t make sence. The higher PE’s in growth companies will stay.  But can a 50% drawdown happen again in the future? Yes it can, when we would have high valuations and a bear market starts together with some other world event,.. QQQ dropped -30% in 2020 covid crash, -34% in 2022 bear market,.. if something else would have tumbled down when QQQ sat at -30% more downside would be possible

70K is probably more than most graduates make ...

“Sprint” is a terrible word for a development iteration. You aren’t supposed to be “sprinting” in terms of effort, it should be a sustainable pace where handling technical debt and refactoring are part of development of each feature.

If you have no time for this you’re underestimating the features and overcommitting to what you’ll accomplish.

HVAC. Tool and die. Pipe fitter. Electrician. Don’t do tech. I’m assuming you mean I.T. Support. Way too many laid off I.T. guys.

Yes. Your mileage might vary, but there are tons of credit unions that are very friendly to lower income people. Find out which ones you're eligible for and you could get a good banking relationship that lasts your whole life.

For many years my credit union had literally free checking (I had to buy checks, no other fees), and a $5 minimum on my savings account. That was it. It was amazing. The checking account now has some BS marketing thing attached to a monthly fee. But it's also only $7/month with no other fees, so it's hard to consider jumping other another bank.

The truth will be a year in. Or two. I was laid off abt 2.5 years and loved life for abt 9 months… free and easy. I was in a similar industry and probably had similar stressors. After 9 months I started curiously looking and “got an offer I couldn’t refuse” with a hefty signing bonus to boot. I lasted 5 months… was miserable, in spite of the coolness of the work, and quit. Paid back the signing bonus and everything. Am now 1.25 years into “2nd retirement” and am finally at peace with my decision.

Thanks for sharing. And what's your most successful product?

This gets posted a million times a day but I think the AGI expectations have been tempering. Reddit seems a lot more realistic about this stuff lately

Online banks are pretty good if you don’t require in-person services.

Thank you for sharing and congrats on your new phase in life!!! These are my favorite kinds of posts.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I wonder what I’d do with my time when I finally walk out of the office for the last time, the naps sound like a very compelling reason to bring that date forward!

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I’m a professional software engineer, and today something happened that honestly shook me. I watched an AI agent, part of an internally built tool our company is piloting, take in a small Jira ticket. It was the kind of task that would usually take me or a teammate about an hour. Mostly writing a SQL query and making a small change to some backend code.

The AI read through our codebase, figured out the context, wrote the query, updated the code, created a PR with a clear diff and a well-written description, and pushed it for review. All in just a few minutes.

This wasn’t boilerplate. It followed our naming conventions, made logical decisions, and even updated a test. One of our senior engineers reviewed the PR and said it looked solid and accurate. They would have done it the same way.

What really hit me is that this isn’t some future concept. This AI tool is being gradually rolled out across teams in our org as part of a pilot program. And it’s already producing results like this.

I’ve been following AI developments, but watching it do my job in my codebase made everything feel real in a way headlines never could. It was a ticket I would have knocked out before lunch, and now it’s being done faster and with less effort by a machine.

I’m not saying engineers will be out of jobs tomorrow. But if an AI can already handle these kinds of everyday tickets, we’re looking at serious changes in the near future. Maybe not in years, but in months.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? What are you doing to adapt? How are you thinking about the future of our field?

I just watched an AI agent take a Jira ticket, understand our codebase, and push a PR in minutes and I’m genuinely scared

[Source](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-14912689/trump-401k-private-equity-bombshell-move.html)

President Donald Trump is weighing an executive order which would allow 401k funds to make private-market investments in a huge shakeup to retirement packages.

Trump is expected to announce the new policy soon, but precise details are being kept tightly under wraps and are still subject to change, the [Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/trump-executive-order-to-help-open-up-401-k-s-to-private-markets-c90c6788?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAjwWmilgZDFvJy8qjnFxRENG-bo7SlS9Aqrc5lOorSRNE-aypKsO8o2&gaa_ts=6877a6bb&gaa_sig=zN_1W3sdTDQgFBuDT-Mg3ZhPusocJ7grCNRW1ZBS8HvwadFsFVbXN4zfNtRdRT61uvZrPpUny7RV-Am6dFO5Lg%3D%3D) reported.

The executive order is expected to instruct the Labor Department to begin working with the Securities and Exchange Commission on guidance for employers and plan administrators.

It would represent a huge victory for the private equity industry, which has long been lobbying to gain access to workers' 401k plans, which currently is worth about $12.5 trillion.

These portfolios have long been primarily comprised of stocks and bonds, largely because they carry less risk than other forms of investment.

Private markets would give accountholders greater opportunity for growth and long-term rewards, allowing investors to capitalize on private equity, venture capital, real estate and hedge funds which aren't on public exchanges.

Trump to open 401k accounts to private market

Both are from 1992 and are commons stocks for Walmart and they're each for 63 shares how do we find out the value of them and what do we do to actually sell them

My mother in law just passed away and we found 2 common stock certificates she left my husband

My new mortgage requires 100% of the salary to be direct deposited into a checking account that has essentially 0 % interest.

The reason this is an issue is I also have a  checking account that earns 4% interest and has gotten me ~$50 a month for the last 15 years. This account also requires a direct deposit each month(doesn't specify the % though). 

Trying to figure out if there is any way to do both without getting in trouble with the mortgage credit union.

Edit: a lot of people are saying to just transfer the money but that looks like a transfer instead of a direct deposit to the bank(according to other comments here). My high yield account specifically needs a direct deposit to get the nice interest rate(I will be transferring the money regardless).

Edit 2: I got in touch with the mortgage company and asked the questions you all had and the explanation is below.

There were 2 parts to the 100% direct deposit:

1. They have an escrow hold of ~5k. This is standard for them as the loan closed before the job started and the stipulation to get those funds released is to provide a pay stub and show 100% of the direct deposit went into the mortgage companies checking account within x days of closing or that money is taken permanently permanently by the bank. 

2. The loan type we got(physician loan) had some benefits like 4% down and no Mortgage insurance but it also had some stipulations like depositing 100% of the direct deposit amount into the mortgage companies checking account. The loan officer did not know the penalties for not following this and said they would check with underwriting.

How critical are "100% of your salary must be direct deposited into your checking account" rules for mortgages?

I'm currently in the boring middle, 37M, wife 2 kids.  I think for people who are on a longer trajectory to FIRE and shooting for age 50+ there's this idea you just have to "get through the boring middle." But there's a point at which that boring middle is actually what your life is.  You can do boring for a little bit but can you do it for 20 years? It's tough.  As you get older (I know i'm not particularly old) you start to realize nothing is promised, especially as you age, and that the boring middle is actually your life. so you might want to invest in it some.  Long story short i'm buying a house with a pool b/c fuck it!

Small Boring Middle Rant

My currently job pays $160k a year. It’s the same industry as my side gig. The quality of work on both is kinda diminished since I’m spread thin. I may be getting a client that will take me from $13k monthly to $17k monthly. This would be my biggest client and I’m thinking of finally pulling the trigger and going full time with the side gig to make sure I stay sane and the quality of work improves. 

Possibly going to hit $17k monthly with my side gig, time to quit my full time job?

I applied for swe positions and got rejected. Then I applied to IT help desk positions and got rejected. Then I applied to call center or data entry positions and got rejected. The only jobs that won’t reject me are fast food places. Is that really the best I’m capable of? I don’t understand why I even bothered to go to college if the best I can possibly do is fast food. It’s so frustrating to have worked so hard for nothing. I could have never gone to college and still qualified for the exact same jobs I’m qualified for now. I hate myself so much for being tricked like this. 

I don’t understand what I even qualify for with a CS degree

Just wanted to drop this here for anyone else grinding through the job hunt right now.

Back in March, I was working a job I liked in terms of the work (creative stuff, which is my thing) and the people I worked with. But the industry? The corporate structure? Straight garbage. Corporate lingo, fake smiles, broken processes, and people in leadership who had no clue how to lead. I started seeing red flags, meetings full of fluff, vague reorganizations, and then finally they told me my position was being “eliminated.” But lucky me, I could “try out” for a new one. Sure.

Anyway, I knew what this was. They were doing the whole quiet firing / job creep routine. I played along but I knew where it was headed. So I got to work. Applied to over 100 jobs. Interviewed at 10-15 places. Talked to startups, big companies, small teams. Some interviews were great. Others ghosted. A few dragged things out forever. I got three offers in the end.

One of them was from a family member, but they’re still getting their foundation in place. Good pay but no benefits yet, no "physical" space, not quite ready. Another was a cool startup I actually really liked, but they kept pushing things back due to “budget.” Still technically on the table, but I couldn’t wait around on a maybe.

The one I took is with a company in a space where I’ve always thrived. Good people, solid role, not a massive company but they seem to actually care. The pay’s fair. Most importantly, I think I’ll enjoy the work. 

When my last job told me about the "trial period" I did negotiate a severance incase I "didn't make the cut". I already knew I was set up for failure.  Got my PTO paid out. Got my bonus locked in. So I had a bit of runway, which helped a lot. But that came from me seeing the writing on the wall early. I didn’t panic, I prepped. Built up my resume. Tweaked it for different types of roles. Hit all the job boards. LinkedIn. Indeed. Glassdoor. Reached out to old contacts. Did the damn thing.

At the end of the day, I ended up landing this job through Indeed, even though most of my best interviews came from LinkedIn.

If I had to leave anything behind for others here, it’s this:
	•	Trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is.
	•	Don’t take corporate promises at face value. “Work hard and we’ll take care of you” means nothing without action.
	•	Job creep and vague role changes are major warning signs.
	•	Stay ready. Resumes, portfolios, referrals, have them tight and ready to go.

This sub helped me a lot through the process. Just wanted to return the favor. Glad this chapter’s closed. On to the next.


Got quietly fired, or did I just play the game better?

People say that everyone in trades will earn at least 100k when according to bls only 10% of tradesmen earn this wage? Is that lies or idk what?

Why everyone says that if you go into trades you will earn six figures when according to statistics only 10% tradesmen earn so much ?

For context, I am a father with toddler son and a wife. This is important for this post. 

I started off my career in tech pretty early, working my way off from the very bottom as an intern at 22 to becoming global sales dept head at 28. I essentially grew with the company and the company grew with me. The sales department I led was a department that I founded and built from the ground up since the company didn’t have dedicated Sales force at that time. The company went from a 50+ men company to 300+ men company within 5 years. The salary was really good, I was making close to 350k EUR a year. The downside is that I had to travel a lot and the job was just really stressful. 

Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 29 and ever since, it has affected the way I see my life. Suddenly, I value time with family as more than anything else. And since my son is now a toddler, my absences have started to affect his behavior as well. This created immense moral conflict within me. But after much contemplation, I quit that job and joined a company located close to home as Senior Client Project Manager, making a third of what I used to earn. My direct boss and my colleagues are super welcoming, but they feel that I am wasting my career history working as project manager, especially since I am still young (30).

Yes, I am aware that joining as a senior project manager is a step back in my career journey, but I have my own personal reasons for that. Even that 200k I had to let go, I considered them to be the price I have to pay in order to be able to spend more quality time with my family. 

But now I am doubting again my decision to step back and I am starting to feel afraid that I am not going to be able to regain that position again. Did I just kill my career? 


Did I Just Kill my Career?

HELP!! Husband wants to retire at 45 yo, he works in a very hard industry and if we work in the road for the next 5 years, we will be able to pay the home mortgage, and save like 200k for a second property that we can rent, that and 500,000 in the 401k (by age 45) that he will use once he hits 59 . After that, he wants to retire and works 20 hours per week, and probably make 40k per yea,  he also wants to have a kid, and it worries me, because I mean, are we able to afford a kid with that? I also make around 50k a year in a full time role that I don’t see any growth in the near future. We are both 35. 

He says that he already worked a lot in the past I am no understanding him for wanting to retire early, I think is a huge risk to want to retire that early specially if we are going to have a kid

Expenses: 2000 a month ( utilities, groceries, dinning out, clothing and others)
And like other 4000 per year traveling to my country 

Husband wants to retire at 45 yo,

First was a clothing brand. Spent $3k on inventory, logo, a Shopify site. Got 6 orders. I had no audience and no clue what problem I was solving. Just vibes.

Second was a productivity app. Looked great. No one used it. We never talked to users just built what we thought was cool.

Third was a content agency. Had clients, made some money. But I undercharged, said yes to everything and worked myself into burnout.

Now I’ve got no money, no wins, just a pile of failed domains and tax forms. 

And I keep asking myself am I learning or just wasting time?

My heart and mind always says business. 

I failed 3 Startups and it’s starting to mess with my head

Hey guys. When I used to look at charts of spy, qqq. I used to look at different time periods and they were all mostly positive with great returns. 2007-2025, 2013-2025, 2002-2025. All worked out great. 

Until recently I accidentally zoomed out a little bit more. And found that if you had bought qqq in 2000, it would have taken you 15 years to breakeven. That's a lot of time. Even for spy, even though it broke even at around 2007, it crashed immediately after finally started giving profits in 2013. 

Was wondering if you guys think such downturns are possible again. And what would you do if it were to happen. Coz buy and hold would be really challenging in this scenario for most investors. 

Now wether it might happen, I am not sure. But I Iooked at P/E ratio of nasdaq 100 and it's around 32.5 and forward p/e is 27.5. and comparing with the the 2000 period, it was around 80-100. What would you guys say that has fundamentally changed in the market that there can't be decade long drawdowns anymore. 
Can you not assume that over a long enough period (5-10 years) stock markets go up?

Is a dot com bubble kind crash possible again?

Warning of incoming text wall. 

After much deliberation, at 42 years of age,  I left work three months ago with 2.1 million. This was after tariff announcements and a \~25% drop in the market. Since then, the market has rebounded and then some leaving me at 2.7 million but who really knows what the future will hold. I'm going to brain dump what I experienced and what I am thinking moving forward. 

Ego death. What I mean by ego death is the death of roundearththeory the blahblah engineer at blahblah company who worked on blah as a core component of my identity. It's not dead yet but I am letting go. When meeting new people and am inevitably asked what I do, I say I was in tech for a while but left and keep the conversation moving. If the conversation moves to my old career. So be it. If it doesn't. So be it. This is a vast minimization of what this part of my life was but it opens up room for all different types of discussion. I am learning I can still be a smart and clever person without leaning on career accolades. 

Mental and physical health. I am happy to say that I am better than ever. Upon leaving I scheduled basically every doctor and specialist appointment I could to baseline what my physical health is and figure out what I need to improve. In terms of mental health, escaping from the grind and expectation of the corporate life has been miraculous. I don't think working for a company is inherently toxic but my relationship with work was. I both excel at and absorb tremendous stress from my job because I am obsessive with it. The blade cuts both ways. Earlier in my career when I had less responsibility and had more stamina for the negative aspects of work this was manageable. This didn't scale well into the present and things became overwhelming for too long. This is something that I have begun to take a hard look at.

Personal relationships. I made the time and conjured the energy to mend important relationships. I made the time to be present with friends in different parts of the country. I made time for myself to be alone. In theory I could have done this while working but when I was pouring myself into my job, I didn't have the mental and emotional bandwidth to do this. This has probably been the single greatest thing that I have done in the past three months.      

Finances. When I originally left I had 2.1 million thanks to a big market downswing. People commented it wasn't enough. People commented it is enough. Intuitively we all know there isn't a correct answer as our circumstances are all unique. But I do know this; when you start looking at days, weeks, and months solely as currency, i.e. just one more year and I'll have X more dollars, you are in troubled water. You also need to think about what you would be giving up in that extra year in terms of mental and physical health, relationships, and the opportunity cost of having different experiences. 

What I do with my time. I can't say that every day is a paragon of happiness, productivity, or some other superlative. But, an interesting phenomena is that I am excited for each day. I'm excited for my morning coffee and brewing up what I am going to do. And I often find myself wishing days didn't end as soon as they do. My days involve reading for leisure, writing, exercise at the gym, listening to music, pursuing my hobby, and bullshitting with friends. Also, naps. A lot of those whenever I want. A simple trip to the bookstore on a Thursday morning is an amazing experience. There are no lines at the barista and there is an infinite amount of books to satisfy my curiosity. I'm not exactly sure if this is sustainable but I am affording myself this time to rest and simply be present with whatever it is I do.   

Moving forward. It's plain to see that this life is so blissfully devoid of stress. I've granted myself the space to catch up with many facets of life that I have neglected. But stress creates growth and inaction breeds atrophy. I think I am not afraid of the stress of hard work. My mind is already mobilizing and thinking of what I can do. I am, however, afraid of lacking agency over my precious and finite time and energy. I have the opportunity to return to my career and try forging a healthier relationship with my work. I also have the opportunity to continue riding into the sunset and continue pulling on this thread. I'm unsure of the path I take but I'm okay with the uncertainty. My decision won't be forced by need. Is it a copout to return to work after the song and dance of finally pulling the FIRE trigger? One of the beautiful aspects of ego death is that it works both ways. I am not defined by my career just as I am not defined by retirement. It's just one aspect of my life.

If you've read this much, thanks for sticking with it and giving me the opportunity to do a brain dump. It's been helpful to put my feelings into words.  

  
TLDR; Do it. 

Three Month Fire Update; 2.1M to 2.7M

UPDATE:  I just called the number that was at the end of the merchant's name (888-605-6664) and I still don't know who they are, but they somehow did have an account attached to my phone number and they were able to confirm the last 4 digits of my debit card, so they said they have issued a full refund and canceled the "account" so that there will be no future charges.  I have no idea how they got my information, but hopefully it is all squared away now and I won't have to cancel my card.



I woke up this morning and had a very strange charge on one of my bank accounts in the amount of $35.93 from a merchant by the name of "PVER3.US8886056664, West Hollywood CA."  I tried doing a Google search on this company, but came up with nothing.  Obviously, I'm going to need to dispute this transaction with my bank (SoFi), but the timing is super inconvenient as I am going out of town tomorrow for the weekend and they will have to cancel my debit card and mail me a new one, which means that I would be without my card all weekend, so I'll probably have to wait until Monday. I'm also expecting a refund to this debit card from another company and the refund won't be able to post to a canceled debit card.    I'm hoping to somehow find a way to get in touch with this merchant and deal with them directly so I can avoid having to cancel my card.

Has anyone ever heard of this merchant or know who/what they are?  I certainly have never heard of them and definitely did not authorize this charge!

Very strange charge on my bank account

If you think AI will be replacing you as an engineer, you are probably wildly overestimating the AI, or underestimating yourself. Let me explain.

The best AI cannot even do 10% of my job as a senior software engineer I estimate. And there are hard problems which prevent them from doing any better, not in the least of which is that they already ran out of training data. They are also burning through billions with no profitability in sight, almost as quickly as they are burning through natural resources such as water, electricity and chips. Not even to mention the hardest problem which is that it is a machine (or rather, routine), not a sentient being with creativity. It will always think "inside the box" even if that box appears to be very large. While they are at it, they hallucinate quite a good percentage of their answers as well, making them critically flawed for even the more mundane tasks without tight supervision. None of these problems have a solution in the LLM paradigm. 

LLMs for coding is a square peg for a round hole. People tend to think that due to AI being a program that it naturally must be good at programming, but it really doesn't work that way. It is the engineers that make the program, not the other way around. They are far better at stuff like writing and marketing, but even there it is still a tool at best and not replacing any human directly. Yes, it can replace humans indirectly through efficiency gains but only up till a point. In the long term, the added productivity gained from using the tool should merit hiring more people, so this would lead to more jobs, not less.

The reason we are seeing so many layoffs right now is simply due to the post-pandemic slump. Companies hired like crazy, had all kinds of fiscal incentives and the demand was at an all time high. Now all these factors have been reversed and the market is correcting. Also, the psychopathic tendency to value investors over people has increased warranting even more cost cutting measures disguised as AI efficiency gains. That's why it is so loved by investors, it's a carte blanche to fire people and "trim the fat" as they put it. For the same reason, Microsoft's CEO is spouting nonsense that XX% of the code is already written by AI. It's not true, but it raises the stock price like clockwork, and that’s the primary mission of a CEO of a large public company.

tl;dr AI is mostly a grift artificially kept afloat by investor billions which are quickly running out

Why AI is not replacing you anytime soon

I had so many incorrect presumptions that it's crazy. Right now I feel like for the first time I'm in a place where I know what to strongly ignore and it's a game changer. I won't write here about anything I am not sure about, but rather only about the things that are actively working for me. This makes this post both confident in message as well as **as-subjective-as-it-gets**.

First of, I did not start as a programmer as most startupers. I started as a physicist who knew how to code a bit, but not very much. The first experience with product launching therefore for me was a... PDF. Yup, really, not a real SaaS product even. But I was lucky enough to be the Product of the Day at that time. This was perhaps the very thing that made me stick to my plans rather than abandon after multiple failures that inevitably happened later.

My story is probably of secondary quality for you guys and girls, so let me present my current strong and tested believes topic by topic.

**1. Data-driven vs Intuition-driven**

The answer? Neither. Both.

First of, data is good to tell you what small tweaks would work, but most of the time when you make a product, you don't have a space to make small little tweaks, you need giant leaps. Leaps that make the very idea of the product itself.

Do an exercise sometimes and make yourself think of the things you don't want to think about. Whatever it is. (Protip: go for a forest walk when you do it, it makes it much easier) Why? Because then you will understand the hmmmm... bravery/strenght you need to find in yourself to make truly good things. I.e. not ignore the things that you so-much-want-to-ignore.

So what works? First off, dive into interviews with **Rory Sutherland**. His mindset will show you how to think about new products. You need to find in yourself ideas that truly resonate with you. (And not just such that you want them to resonate with you.)

When you have such an idea, or a list of such, then the "data moment" comes. Ignore market research longer than 1 day. It's honestly pointless. And don't ask people whether they would use something or pay for something, it's equally pointless, people want to be nice much more often than you think.

The step two is to get Your Own Data (YODa). I.e. see whether people actually pay for a product, not just say they would. And to do that you don't need a full-blown product. Usually we consider here MVP as enough, but sometimes you can even test with less, i.e. a so-called pretotype (with an "e"). This paragraph is by far not a standalone thing, read about idea testing in a book ***The right it*** **(by Savoia)**. Trust me.

**2. The key bottleneck**

Technically (perhaps) there's more products that people would want than the number of things that can be created now. Time travel for example.

But who cares. The truth is that most of the things that will come to your mind are probably buildable. The real question is whether people would want to buy them, not whether it can be made.

Bezos some time ago made the AI-driven shop that turned out to be run by a huge number of people from India. My first (and second to be honest) look at it was that it was super dishonest of him. Only recently I realised that it was actually a... good idea. Why? Because while doing it he was able to test whether there's a demand for the product before spending millions on building it. And this is something that should be your sole focus in the beginning: testing (with YODa) whether there's a true demand.

People often will tell you that the product needs to be done well or not at all. That's a way of thinking that will make you launch once every 2 years. And with a product that will turn out to be wrong either to a large degree or completely. Launch and test, then iterate. That's fine to **ignore the perfectionist in yourself** that wants things to be purrfect and pretty from the start.

**3. Minimal Quality Threshold vs Maximal Time Threshold**

This is something that I still often struggle with. But building things is not art or science in that it needs to be amazing or it's worthless. Why? Because once you finish a painting or a theory in physics, it's done. And once you finish a product... the first version is done. The very iterative nature of product building means that you approach greatness not via "one and done" but rather via steps.

This means that if you can hard-control the cadence of steps, you are better of than if you hard-control the quality of each step's outcome. I.e. the hard threshold should be time, not quality.  
This means that your job is to do  
\- **the best version possible in a given time**  
\- NOT: the good version in a minimal time

See? The hard thing, the threshold is time. And the thing you try to optimise is quality.

So hard to do. So hard. But often doable. I am now writing this post in one go and it will have many suboptimalities because of it. And that's ok, because I just have a little time to write it. Not the other way around.

**4. One thing at a time**

There's this great book called **One Thing (by Gary Keller).** People often misinterpret it into thinking that you can do truly well one thing in life. That's obviously wrong. You are at the same time a businessman, and for example a son or a daughter.

When activities are in different dimensions, they demand different verticals of your existence, you can be good at all of them at the same time. They do interact, sometimes constructively, sometimes destructively, but this is just a post - an approximation that works. For me at least.

My most productive days are not such that I have many things to do, but rather when I have one thing to do, just picked well. (One thing per dimension of course, so you can for example have a 1T for business and a 1T for painting or whatever you like)

And here we come to the wonderful Focusing Question from that book: "**What's the ONE thing I can do, in the goal of X, this day/week/month, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?**" This precise question is golden. Almost impossible to make it better. I tried many times and failed. Just use the question and ponder on an answer (for example during a forest walk - I recommend them again haha) to pinpoint the right answer.

Don't do many things at once. If your product needs building, focus on building. If it needs marketing, focus on marketing. If ideas are needed, focus on ideation. If execution is needed, focus on execution.

But answer the question precisely. You can use the frame of the so-called SMARTER goal setting or One Minute Goals (by Blanchard) to word your tasks correctly. They need to be precise (this is a topic for a whole other post).

**5. Value at every step**

I've done multiple product icons, taglines, first comments etc. What works (for me) is often not really about making each step captivating, but rather delivering value at every step. Or trying to do that at least.

It's just good to for example launch a product and have the first comment under it being useful in itself. Sometimes because there's some good info there, sometimes because it's funny, but regardless: provide value.

**Real value, not some "fafarafa" nothing soup. Value is subjective, but make your effort true and deep.** Try to be useful. You will never be useful to everybody, but you can attempt being useful to somebody.

For example, if I remember correctly, one time I made a product that had a funny icon (and being funny is of non-zero value), a useful first comment (with some contrarian good advice) and... practically no landing page. Still, the product was well tested on the market.

**6. Persistence makes and brakes you**

There was a time when I had 11 launches one-after-another and every single one of them went horribly. I spiralled into thinking that I need to do them shallower and shallower, i.e. making the MVPs more and more minimal.

It was the exact wrong approach.

**MVPs should be minimal, but you should believe in them and they should be such that they resonate with you.**

This conflict between minimalism and resonance is ongoing. **You will have to dance on this dance floor.**

We all fail. But I learned to slow down when things don't work. Walk more, relax more, look deeply inside myself more. Not spiral into action spirals.

Get away from social media. Get more into movement and sport. Surf, run, whatever works for you.

Then come back and listen to more of Rory Sutherland, he will help you find in yourself what product you really want to build.

**7. Consistency is the key to winning in life**

Go to the gym and ask the biggest guy how he works out. Then read some science about working out. You will find out that the guy works highly far from the best practices. But he's the biggest guy. Why? Because consistency is the thing that counts. **We highly underestimate the impact of compounding effects.**

I strongly believe that you can't actually start to believe in the power of consistency until you start being consistent with 1 thing in your life and start seeing the magic that it brings with time.

Pick one thing. Maybe working out or social media posting, whatever would work for you. Because this post is about product building rather than working out, I will briefly mention social media.

Everybody now tries to be an expert on X and elsewhere. But people want to listen to expert advice when there's some gravitas behind the advice (for example because it was said by a billionaire). Make your social media more personal. Sure, tell what you learned and what you know, but make it what YOU know. Talk about **YOUR experience**. This is what makes your story interesting and cool.

But if consistency is the goal, then let's be clear: this means that the intensity is secondary. So choose regular but brief over magnificent but sparse.

This does work in business, but not in art... or does it?

**8. Clay pots**

I often recall a particular experiment where participants who were going to be judged by the best clay pot they can do, were split into two groups:

Group 1: Make as beautiful pot as possible  
Group 2: Make as many pots as possible

In the end group 2 made more pots. Obvious. But they also made more beautiful pots. Use this info as you please :)

**9. Return On Luck**

Learn to **never ignore wins**. Sounds obvious, but in practice we often ignore wins, because we are going after a different type of a win.

Some products win like crazy and some give you a small win. Ignore neither.

Let me give you example of a not-huge-but-still-noteworthy win that I ignored:  
One time I built a product that was about people finding out case studies on what works in the real word. I got like $500/mo MRR from it. I destroyed it, because I thought that it can be made better anew. Anyways, the product is no more.

Just do me a favour and don't ignore your wins.

There's something in the idea of cooperatively solving problems that I loove, so I got back to this idea with what I'm launching now. And I'm always launching something, kinda what I love doing.

**10. Done is better than perfect**

Just repeat it to yourself a million times a day, done is better than perfect.

Anyways, hope this post is useful to you, I did my time-bound best :))  
If you have question, feel free to ask

I launched 20+ micro products - here's what I learned

I'm not sure how no one has burnt out yet - my co-workers do not like this either. However, I'm in a company that has 'unlimited ' short sprints (no breaks to clean up tech debt like my previous companies). It's not even a 'sprint' at this point because you never take a break. There's always pressure to make new features and higher management always talk about 'efficiency' lol.

Anyone worked in a company with unlimited "sprints"? how did that impact you & morale?

I make 70k a year but I work 50 hours a week and receive no benefits. I have no education, not even a ged - I'm studying now to get one but I would like to have some goal to keep me going. I live in a big city so l would like to start making more. Any advice on what I should do? What career can I focus on to make good money after getting my GED, I'm 32 btw so l don't want to spend too long or take a pay decrease if that's possible. The tech world has always been interesting to me. Going back to school sounds amazing but not sure what I could do that would allow me to maybe be in school for 2 years and make more than 70k to make it worth it. I’m open to any new career path. 

Edit: To give more details. I’m a nanny and starting to feel like I’ve hit a cap on how much I can make also a lot of nanny’s are making less than me. It’s possible to make more as a nanny but it’s less so about education, experience, or certifications but luck. 

I make 70k a year with no education but what else can I do?

I recently moved and I need to open a new checking/savings account. I’ve always used credit unions and my brief experience with a larger bank as a 20 year old was a negative one. But the sign up bonus Capital One offers, for example, is a bit tempting. I could take advantage of it and then switch but it would be a pain to switch all of my cards, benefits, etc over. 

As far as my banking needs, I’ll only be receiving one direct deposit per month and I mostly use my credit cards for anything I buy. I don’t want fees for minimum balances, etc. 

Are credit unions generally better to use, especially for lower income individuals, than bigger banks?

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If there&#39;s one thing that lawyers do a lot of, it&#39;s spending a prodigious number of hours going through documents. And they&#39;re often very well compensated for this work. So if there&#39;s one area where AI can obviously be highly disruptive, it&#39;s law. Documents that used to take hours to scan or format might be dealt with instantly. Finding relevant prior case law is becoming much faster, thanks to today&#39;s most advanced models. On this episode, we speak with Joel Wertheimer of Wertheimer Fleder LLP, a civil rights law firm in New York. We discuss the actual economics of being a lawyer, how it&#39;s changing, the effect that the technology will have on the distribution of income going forward, and what the entire profession could look like years into the future. Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox — now delivered every weekday — plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots?in_source&#61;oddlotspodcast" rel="nofollow">bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots</a>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener" rel="nofollow">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.

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