Suffering with a very similar situation but from Facebook. This hyper growth companies don't give a shit about customer support. They let their AIs and Machine learning models do all the work, which inevitably flags healthy businesses.
Reminds me of collateral damage and kills in a war.
But if you take into account the engineers' salaries you'll have to pay, servers, having to be on call every time the site crashes, cost of not having a super optimized checkout, etc.
You'll realize that Shopify is an excellent candidate.
Let Shopify take care of the commerce part and focus on what really moves the needle: your product and marketing.
Most of our traffic comes from direct sales pages, which shopify does not do very well. The membership functionality would be 3K a month at the enterprise level just to meet the needs of shopify integrating with our CRM properly. We've used shopify and are familiar with what it can and can't do well.
Disclaimer: I work for Shopify (But I also use it for my side hustles)
The biggest benefit is that with the Shopify checkout you can support credit cards, Paypal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Crypto and more with ONE integration.
You also get discounts codes and logic out of the box (buy one get one, X percentage off, fixed amount off, etc)
And all you have to do is listen to the order completion web hook and do whatever you want on your side.
I see a lot of comments criticizing your path and progress. Making remarks like "why didn't you stay at Google".
I applaud your decision, effort, and perseverance. I admire your risk taking and having skin in the game. Trying to make it out on your own.
People forget the journey is not just about the money. It's about learning, growing and bringing your ideas to life. Being an artist, and expressing yourself through products.
Keep on going my friend. There's no doubt you'll get there.
May I ask why you find yourself semi-unemployable? I'm in kind of a similar position as the OP in that I have a significant nest egg so that even if I spend a few years derping around and failing at a bunch of things, I figure that I just need to stop before that nest egg gets anywhere near dangerously low and go back to looking for freelance or consulting work, even at lower rates, should that become necessary to survive. I'm asking about your situation in case there are other pitfalls I need to be wary of.
I am right now an illegal alien in a country (not the US). My home country monthly wage is 5 dollars or so, so returning is not an option unless I can get a remote job.
Without knowing your situation, if you're a good developer it may be possible to get an H1B visa which would allow you to work as a software developer in the US.
I love to program but I am a career switcher. All my professional experience is in logistics, I have a B.S but not in CS, also I am 41. By all means if you have any tip to get a H1B (I have heard is crazy competitive) let me know.
Upwork rejected my resume some months ago. I am enhancing my portfolio to give it a shot again in the next weeks. I want to diversify my income so I have thought about producing digital products, but I need food-rent money now so that it is what I am prioritizing. I am also working on my Algorithms/Data Structures skills to try in TopTal, I dont know if you have any experience with them.
"I don't think I've cringed more than 'expressing yourself through products"
Can you rephrase this criticism in a way that meaningfully contributes to the discussion? All I see is your personal judgementalism directed at someone's phrasing.
You haven't seen the Scott's Tots episode of The Office, have you?
Seriously though, I didn't have that reaction. We each bring our own individual expression to everything we do, that's not sad or cringey at all. The author is looking for a way to use his unique gifts in a way that is satisfying and valuable. The problem he solves and the way he solves it will be unique to him. Or in other words, "expressing himself through his products."
The arts is full of people expressing themselves for pay below the poverty line, often not expected or wanted as remuneration for their expression. Treating business as expression and calling it the same thing as actual art is quite oblivious to the reality.
I made the original comment, and I think we see the world in a different way. This is how I see it:
Creating a business is a creative act. It involves logic and rationality as much as intuition and imagination.
I do think it's an expression of yourself, you're packing all you've learned into something that you think will be valuable to other people. Your personality is reflected in your product, so is your voice.
Ultimately it's up to the creator to treat their business however they seem best. If you want to be all about profits, good for you. If you want to explore ideas, try things and enjoy the creative process while slowly building revenue, also good.
> It involves logic and rationality as much as intuition and imagination.
Yes, because this applies to virtually every human endeavor (even though I find tech types have a tendency to discount the former in areas outside their expertise).
Very interesting that you point to a Meditation book (The Mind Illuminated) and a Stoic book (A Guide to the Good Life).
I've read both, and I like both philosophies. While they both share similarities (non attachment, living in the present), it seems that in Vipasana you wouldn't try to get rid of a bad thouhgt by using your rationality. You would just observe it.
While Stoicism demands engaging rationality to overcome the emotion or bad thought.
Have you thought on how to reconcile the two? This is something I've been pondering for a while.
I think early Buddhism and Stoicism can be cobbled together into a workable philosophy, and I think Vipassana is also complementary with a number of Stoic practices.
Like you've identified, a recurring apparent disagreement between the two philosophies is how to relate to positive and negative phenomena: In the stoic view, positive phenomena should be enjoyed, but we should be clearly aware that they're impermanent so that we're not disappointed when they inevitably end. Likewise, we should bear negative phenomena with the knowledge that we could always be experiencing something even more negative.
In Buddhism, there's also guidance for relating to positive and negative phenomena in a different way, but it doesn't appear to agree with the Stoics. In Buddhist thought, we should use concentration careful attention to our inner experience to cultivate equanimity toward both positive and negative phenomena while growing a deep sense of inner fulfillment.
I don't think these are actually that different: in both philosophies, the end state — whether that of a Buddhist arhat or a Stoic sage — is to be pretty much happy with whatever's going on, and the path is essentially to become aware of the bad in the good and the good in the bad. Really, I think the main difference is that the Stoic philosophy is phrased and framed in a more accessible way, but the practices complement each other well.
Concretely, imagine your dog is sick and will probably die. Stoicism tells you to appreciate every moment you have left with your dog but to vividly imagine your experience of him dying to lessen the blow when he does, and to prepare yourself for (and convince yourself of!) that eventuality. Buddhism would suggest you meditate on the mental talk, mental imagery, and emotional body sensations associated with your experience of the trauma. These are, in my mind, complementary ways to cultivate equanimity, and are even better used together than separately.
