Is Strava really being greedy here? Last year at this time, software developers were jumping ship in every company to get huge raises at other companies. Salaries went through the roof. Now many tech companies are laying folks off.
What other options are there when you staff demands huge raises or leaves for greener pastures?
Flyover also helped me connect with groups that I would see riding in other directions. Since flyover was made opt-in, I haven't gotten any use out of it.
Opt-in is probably a really good idea, even though it killed the feature. I really liked that feature. But yea, it was too easy to abuse.
Are you able to see any frequent routes using the global heat map?
I just finished a ride from outside DC to Pittsburgh over 3 days, ~365 miles(587km). So 10% of Lachlan's ride. I had saddle pain after day 1, so I stood on the pedals more. This quickly became knee pain, due to the extra exertion on my joints. So I transitioned between standing and sitting, and then my shoulders and arms started hurting :)
Mark Beaumont[0] has said something along the lines of "fix every problem early". I should have gotten chamois cream instead of standing up.
Anyway, all that to say I have no idea how Lachlan could do this without falling apart. Really incredible.
I did a 3 month bike tour. On days I traveled, I went 60-80 miles on a touring bike with 30 lbs of gear strapped to it.
My experience was exactly the same as yours for the first week. I puked 4 or 5 times that week from riding up the maritime alps. Then after that I was a machine and felt like I could go forever. No pain, no chamois cream as others have mentioned - just padded compression shorts and lots of sunscreen.
If you are experiencing saddle pain after only one day (even a big day like you did!) of riding, it might be that your ride position needs some tweaking. A smooth pedal stroke will have you bouncing on the saddle less.
I switched over to riding a recumbant bike for long tours. I would never bike commute on one because it's not quite as nimble (e.g. if one has to swerve suddenly; you can't move your weight around), but for long touring caring tons of gear it's the best!
Top-end touring bikes are about $6-7k now, and you can get an Azub build for about the same price.
Just make sure to practice a lot, especially with a loaded bike!
On a normal bike the area where your foot can get caught under the bike is limited to the bit in front of the pedals. That's very bad when it happens but the chances of it happening are very small. On a recumbent that area is pretty much everything forward of your hips and when it goes wrong you're in a feed-forward loop that you can't break out of with a normal physique.
As it happened: hit a speed bump, right leg slipped off the pedel, foot hit the pavement, leg was sucked under the bike at the forward speed of the bike. Ambulance ride, quite a bit of time in the hospital waiting for a slot for the operation, 7 hour operation (pretty long for something as simple as a leg fracture, which turned out to be a lot less simple once things were opened up and accessible because some of the bone fragments were too small to be reliably fixed in place). Almost five years later now and I still have two 30 cm chunks of stainless in there and a large number of screws to hold it all together. Intermittent pain (usually associated with fast temperature changes) and needing to 'warm up' for quite a long time in the morning before I can get around without discomfort.
You're welcome. Note that depending on the ride height this is going to be made worse as you get lower to the ground and you have even less time/space to react. Low racers are probably the highest risk category recumbent, both due to the (easily achievable) very high speeds and the fact that there is hardly any clearance at all between the frame and the ground.
Are you saying you undertook a ride like that without using chamois cream from the get-go? Dang, man.
Not for nothing, but the amount of riding you did there isn't CRAZY high for a serious cyclist. Often, fit or biomechanical issues don't show up until longer efforts. If you're still into riding, I'd look into a professional fit.
I use chamois cream for every "serious" ride (which means anything but popping to the shops in my jeans) now. My butt used to be tougher but now I get saddle sores much more easily, particularly when riding indoors with worse ventilation and a more static position.
I did, and it was! I was short on time. I think stretching to 5 days would be perfect. I missed a lot of really cool towns due to time constraints. But that just means I can do it again and have a totally new experience :)
If your set up is good and you are used to regular riding shouldn't be a problem for 30 days of ~120 let alone 3. Assuming proper shorts and a good seat, of course.
For a short ride, perhaps. After a while most people will get chafing sores. A hard saddle, proper position and padded shorts "hurts" a bit on the sitting bones, but after one's adapted one can bike almost forever without any bum issues.
> I. How do you calculate a price for what you do?
Work in the industry you want to freelance in first. This way you find out how much clients value your work. Then you know what to charge.
> II. How do you write a proposal?
Work in the industry you want to freelance in first. Learn how the proposal writers do their job and what clients expect to see. Improve on it.
> III. How do you draft a contract?
With a lawyer who has experience in the industry you want to freelance in.
I supported a family freelancing for a long time, about 6 years. It's terrible. If you are unsure of how to do something, you have to wonder what value you are really adding. Learn it first. Then execute it as a freelancer.
I'd really like to see a study specific to female happiness with children. I live in the US, and I think men and women's experience with children is entirely different.
When my wife worked, she missed our kids tremendously. Almost 75% of her take home went to day care. She was pretty miserable.
Now she stays home. She gets a lot of off-hand comments from other friends with kids about "how bored they would be if they stayed home". Or from friends without kids about "how they feel like they are doing something with their lives".
Now she feels like she isn't doing enough with her life.
Maybe she needs thicker skin, or maybe the societal pressure for women is immense.
Men working is expected by society. IME, the dads I know who stay home get more of an "awesome bro!" type response when they say they stay home.
I just feel like no matter what I do, I will feel happy with kids. No matter what my wife does, she feels like it isn't good enough.
[Edit: so many links to books! I've exhausted my audible credits for the month. Thanks for the support!]
Societal Pressure on Women in the work place is immense.
Societal Pressure on Mothers is also immense.
They combine to make it exceptionally tough on Women. But mad props to those who have persevered despite that pressure--like my Mom and many other mothers out there.
> IME, the dads I know who stay home get more of an "awesome bro!"
If you are independently wealthy, sure. Otherwise, IME, you are considered a failure for not being able to provide for your family.
That's a problem with our culture, then, because early retirement (in the sense that you work on whatever you want irrespective of money and spend more time with your children) can be much more fulfilling than the vast majority of office jobs. Financial independence should be a goal of everyone's.
No data to back up my feeling that most of the pressure stay at home women get is from other women. My wife stays at home and we buck any negative comment together to keep those feelings at bay. We show we are proud of it, not ashamed by it and we aren't willing to let anyone else belittle our choices.
Any negative comment, any off-hand comment needs to be squashed immediately. Same thing happens with self-esteem issues I think. If the negative comments don't stop from 'friends' you have to make the sometimes tough choice to find better friends. I make sure to say with force how much she does, how helpless I'd be or what a mess I'd be without her help at home.
I think like yourself my mental state is strong enough that I choose lowering myself to lift her above the haters.
It seems there's no "bright" side. There are some stay-at-home moms in my wife's family and they were... defensive... when my wife went back to work.
So either way, you find a way to be resentful or ashamed.
Go back to work and miss your child's first steps/words/laughs. Go back to work and someone else raises your children. Someone else uses your child to teach their child how to be a leader. Someone else (accidentally) gets called "mom".
Stay at home and barely manage to tread water financially compared to your dual-income friends. Stay at home and watch your career disappear (unless you chose one of those "never need to skill up" careers that're considered "safe" for women, like teaching). Stay at home and prepare for a lifetime of resentment about men being further ahead than you career-wise. Stay at home and propagate stereotypes.
I guess though, in the end, there's no doubt that someone that chose their career will regret it at some point in their lives, where you might be able to escape without regret having chosen to stay home.
You can have a bright side if you can shake off the judgement of others. Some folks seem better equipped at this than others and I'd like to figure out how to "skill up" that trait!
The dual-income and DINKs (dual-income no kids) families will always win when appraised financially. Home, car, health. You have to work twice as hard for the same output on one income.
"Stay at home and propagate stereotypes" feels wrong these days. The stereotype and expectation seems to have both parents working and having one stay at home is bucking the trend.
All of the negatives seem to center around the individuals valuation of themselves based on outside opinions.
I'm too close to giving real opinions so I'm bowing out of the thread. ARRGGHH!
tread water financially compared to your dual-income friends
Screw that. Don't judge your life by how others live.
My newest car is 12 years old. I have a wife, kids, and a good job and could easily have new cars every few years but instead I have no debt other than mortgage and I put the money into my retirement and college savings. I don't begrudge the choices of my friends who like to buy a lot of new things but I also don't feel any obligation to live the way they do.
Clearly you don't live in the Bay Area or you bought in before the house price jump.
Treading water financially is an accurate way to describe life in the Bay Area for families with a stay-at-home parent. The modest standard of living you describe about yourself significantly exceeds what could be expected for the median software developer in the Bay Area. Families with incomes below that would not be able to sustain their cash flow without a commute that exceeds 90 minutes or exposes them to unacceptably high levels of crime.
Maybe more people should move out of the bay area? Especially if they have kids? It's so much cheaper essentially everywhere else. Even with a salary cut I would imagine it's worth it in many situations.
Yeah, I'm not disagreeing that the economic unit versions of these families would move to a place with a better salary/cost-of-living ratio. Moving takes time; the advent of eye-popping living costs in SF is less than 4 years old. Moving a family is a big deal. There is data that suggests that moving children in their teens more than doubles their risk of mental illness and criminal behavior. Certainly the U.S. has the lowest barriers to relocation, but it's not a trivial undertaking.
I can confirm that it is pressure from other women because my wife has heard the same. It seems that a woman can choose any profession she wants just not to stay at home with the children.
I'd also observe that there are probably time-sensitive issues; much of the day-to-day stuff with small children is dreary, but the long-term prospects are quite good. I've heard lots of older people say that having adult children is great, because they're self-sustaining and yet emotionally close / connected.
Many long-term projects (probably including startups) have somewhat crappy day-to-day moments but high long-term satisfaction. And many short-term satisfactions (like eating ice cream) may have negative long-term consequences.
Bryan Caplan's book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think is also good on these topics, and he points out that much of the supposed happiness research is overblown or misused.
I think this is sadly a cultural thing. My wife comes from a culture that really values being a stay at home mom. She gave her career up to be at home full-time to raise our child and I've never seen her happier (but more tired :).
Our peers are for the most part American born and have a very different view. The moms obsess about missing out on their previous careers and living life as they did pre-children. They seem much less happy (as do their children).
In large parts of the world raising kids is "doing something with their lives", just not in the US.
When I was growing up, my dad stayed home to take care of us and my mom worked. And he eventually felt devalued by the rest of society, socially isolated, and (as we grew up and needed him less) missing a sense of purpose and accomplishment.
I think it's an individual thing. Healthy boundaries are a good thing to have regardless of gender. It's important to learn not to give up things that are important to you regardless of the messages society sends, and that if society has a problem with that, that's society's problem and not yours. Society is pretty big, after all, and there's bound to be some portion of it that will accept your well-considered choices.
> maybe the societal pressure for women is immense.
It is. I think feminism left our culture with the belief that it is OK for a woman to opt in to do anything she wants. But we didn't also get the message that it's OK to opt out.
Want a career? Great! Want to raise kids? Great!
Want to not have a career? Bad! Want to not raise kids? Bad!
It's unfair. I've watched almost every single woman I know in my age bracket (late thirties today) struggle with this dilemma in her life at some point. Instead of feeling that they can do anything, they feel they have to do everything.
I've observed the same. My wife is happy working while simultaneously feeling like she wishes she could be home with the kids. She works with a number of women with master's degrees and they consistently opt to stop working as soon as maternity leave is up if they are able to.
Our kids go to late stay programs at school because we both work, which means that if they want to do an after school activity like soccer, dance, scouts, etc that it's a "rush from late stay, change as fast as you can, go to activity."
We aren't trying to overload them or anything either, just aiming for 1 after school activity a couple of days a week.
I think 90% of the pressure is people trying to justify their life choices or requirements.
If you are working mom and you have to be for income sake or to pay student loans, you'll see stay at home mom's with a "must be nice" attitude.
If you're a working mom and you don't have to be, it's a "I'd be so bored" or "What do you do all day?" or "My job gives me purpose" because it reinforces your own life choices (whether you believe it or not).
If you're a stay at home mom because your job would just be paying for day care, it's going to be a feeling that you should be doing more.
If you're a stay at home mom because you choose to you should feel nothing but contentment with it because you made the choice.
This is a hard lesson that a lot of people, myself included, are experiencing because we've all been sold a different bill of goods our entire lives. There's even a book on it called The Two Income Trap.
The simplest way to filter out negative chatter is to identify whether somebody is trying to make themselves feel better about their own choices or not. That's 90% of the negative chatter that I observe.
Wow, I have a very similar experience to yours. My wife worked, same thing, now doesn't work, and she feels lonely and like she (1) isn't contributing and (2) has no adult conversation.
I try to help her by mentioning how great she is with the kid, and by taking the kid places by myself so she can go see and do adult things.
Good point. No matter how you arrange it, its important to have respite, regularly. Back when the boys were babies I'd come home Wednesday night, she'd shove the youngest into my arms and head out the door for a night off with the girlfriends. Every Wednesday night. Just her time. It made everything else endurable.
A huge part of that is the lack of OTHER stay at home moms that would previously create an entire social group for each other. It's socially awkward to mix in a stay at home dad into that type of group for a number of reasons.
Add in moving away from home and family to the mix as contributors for the lack of adult conversation too.
I think the idea that you aren't doing enough with your life if you are just raising kids is wrong. Educating kids is one of the most important jobs. They will grow up to be full human beings, so the positive effect you can have on the world through them can easily be greater than the positive contribution at a job.
It the worst of both worlds I think. Pressure from the home duties and from work. Doing less than your best at both.
I have made it a point to suggest to my wife, if she ever chooses go out to find work at whatever point, that volunteer work would be the best. No financial pressures.
Pushing him out wouldn't be too hard? This sounds like a peach of a work environment.
I'm in a situation like this right now actually. However, I'm the lazy developer. All situations are different though, so I doubt I could help much with specifics.
My advice would be to work your hardest to understand this other person's point of view. Maybe they don't realize something that you do. Maybe the communication is bad. Maybe you need to rage it out for 10 minutes to find out, honestly, where the communication lapse is.
Unless they are just out drinking instead of working, it is very possible they are just not in the right place (in life) to work in a startup. That is a hard thing to admit in this climate, but it is very common.
As a bitter old dev with many failed startups behind me, I find this a tad insulting. This isn't an attack response, but maybe I can provide some perspective from the other side.
I work really hard. I organize multiple meetups. I give talks. I do open source(not well, but I try). I have a full time job making way more than the "status quo" working from my basement.
"Founders" are very quick to discard all of this, and ask me to put my full efforts into their idea for this equity concept. They tend to provide no incentive other than how their idea is the one that will make it.
I'm very motivated. Especially when I see the results of my years of effort everyday. Why throw this all away to work on somebody else's vision of success?
I would love to see your consulting model. You speak as if keeping a full sales pipeline while making multiple clients happy is a simple thing.
I'll agree that a single person consultancy is 0 risk. I can accept a job offer tomorrow and stop accepting new clients.
But growing your consultancy is just as risky as any other business, if not more so. You don't have a wide range of low paying clients, like a SaaS model. You have a few high paying clients. Any one of them leaving (or not paying) directly affects you and your employees.
I live in Washington DC, so I see this constantly. A large government contractor loses a re-bid on a contract, and they fire the team that was working on it. Fire them!
Not speaking for anyone else, but having to fire people every time a contract goes away sounds risky to me.
Firing people is risky for the person potentially being fired, not for the owners of the firm. Growing and shrinking over time is part and parcel of running a consultancy. That's why you see it all the time, and I'll bet if you look closer at the ownership during layoffs you'll find that they very rarely miss a paycheck and usually escape unharmed.
The fact that it's an unpleasant reality doesn't make it any more risky than e.g. having to pay taxes.
I agree with what you're saying, and this is probably why I don't hold a management position anywhere.
This also mirrors my experience with startups. I've been lied to about money many times to get me to keep working. The only things the owners care about is how they look to investors.
Well, no it's not simple. It means a lot of work and persistent marketing and sales efforts but it isn't particularly risky.
I'm running a single person consultancy. If I need help with handling the work depending on the client I can hire other freelancers. The secret to reducing risk is to always be selling / marketing and to not accept full-time projects. This precludes many project offers but you can stay flexible and don't have to decline projects or stop accepting new clients. Offering products, coaching and productized services besides your main consulting business also helps.
I agree that consulting becomes risky once you've got other developers on your payroll. It can be done, too though but you'd have to grow slowly and carefully.
I've been running my "consultancy" for over 5 years. Roughly 15% of my annual revenue is lost to non-payment. Customers pay late all the time. Literally. I've never had an invoice paid on time. Customers cancel projects right before they start, or pause projects half way through to focus on other areas.
Due to these situations, I try to always have 3 months of salary in the bank. I never do, but I try. If you are paid net 30, and invoice at the end of the January, that check will clear your bank account early March at best. This results in Just In Time mortgage payments.
If I were to hire somebody to code, and focus on sales, I'd need even more money in the bank than I have. This leaves me in a bit of a pickle.
You need a lot of capital. If 3 months of buffer salary for two employees isn't a lot of capital..... it's time to admit you are in a strong financial position and not everyone can simply be an entrepreneur.
(To answer the inevitable "charge more" question, I'm available for hire and I'll charge as much as you'd like :)
Have them put money in an escrow account. I have done freelance work since I was a kid and one thing I've always done was ask for money upfront, maybe not in my hands, but held by a 3rd party. Losses of 15% seem a bit high too me.
Writing software for someone else is kind of like painting a scene from someone's dream. There is a good chance you wont hit 100% of what they were looking for, and your goal is to make them just happy enough to pay you. If they part with their money already, they are much more likely to accept what you give them, than if they haven't already bought it.
With a few exceptions, businesses of all types have to deal with non-receivables.
A better strategy is to make sure the company that owes you money knows you are serious about collections and will aggressively pursue. Something as simple as having your lawyer send a collections letter by certified mail will deliver a good portion of the time.
If everyone did this, it wouldn't work. Companies that consistently pay late or continuously try to get out of paying are doing so because they simply don't have the cash. If they think you are going to cause them to spend more cash by them not paying you on time, you will get moved up the list.
What other options are there when you staff demands huge raises or leaves for greener pastures?