DEV Community: Frank

Surrounded by Juxtaposition

Frank — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 22:05:40 +0000

One of my favorite things to do is take a concept and dig into it. Explore the concept from different angles, apply it to do different things, act like a child and try to see the concept without any bias or preconception. This last part is very difficult, but a really good mental 'stretch'.

Today I pondered juxtaposition and it was really fun! I even tweeted about it in a long form multi-tweet.. tweet, which was a really good experience. It was my first time using that feature on twitter.

Try it, it's really fun! What are some examples of juxtaposition you can find in the world around you?

Here's what I tweeted with a little additional context:

Todays word is juxtaposition:
"The fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect."

This is a picture of Goats foraging in Wales... which sounds like a completely different juxtaposition in itself!

You may already be familiar with the dramatic effect and contextual tension that is produced from juxtaposition. Once you start picking up on it, you start seeing it everywhere.

The juxtaposition of technology across nature, naturally produced electricity funneled through unnatural devices, the destructive nature of our preservation efforts, etc, etc

When a picture is worth a "thousand words", I feel it's often because there is a sense of juxtaposition in the picture.

This is the saddest picture out of all of these. I hesitated to even post it. This is a picture of the Paradise fire aftermath and is a display of much more than just juxtaposition. A forest fire that decimated Paradise (a town in Norther California). The juxtaposition of the car in a hellish landscape, of wheels in fire, of invention being consumed by nature's destruction.

Sometimes it seems like juxtaposition is another word for humans doing human stuff! But it's a concept that can be observed in everything across all dimensions we can perceive. Like river flows across a landscape, mapped over time.

I really really love this picture, and there are more online. This is part of a collection of maps that Harold Fisk created back in 1944. More information can be found here: RADICAL CARTOGRAPHY

At this point in my thought exercise, I started looking beyond the technical definition of juxtaposition and think of it as a general system of understanding contrasting elements.

So when you dig a little deeper, you realize that "being seen", in the definition, may not limited to sight. Well maybe technically it is, but with something this fun, all of our senses want to get in on the party!

👃👂👁🖐👅
Hopefully your browser can see those emojis. If not, they are the emojis for Nose, Ear, Eye, Hand, and Tongue.

Take a look at @milesdavis "Bitches Brew", a legendary jazz song by legendary group. In the first 15 seconds, we hear the juxtaposition of the keyboard over the bass. The whole track pretty much a living, breathing example of the concept. And with an album cover to match!

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew. If I accomplish one thing here and at least one person listens to this song that hasn't heard it before, I have had succeeded!

Sight, sound, and arguably touch juxtaposition. Well what about taste?

Check out a quality taco truck like @kogibbq! The juxtaposition of Korean bbq with Mexican tacos, sweet with savory, spicy with bbq. Food truck culture is fascinating from a juxtaposition perspective.

I might have just gotten hungry by this point. I started tweeting on a whim, DJ Trump style, then forced myself to finish before eating and getting back to responding to emails. So I was a little hungry by this point, lol! But the point is valid and Kogi is so bomb!

You wanna work remote?

Frank — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 06:04:52 +0000

For the past 7+ years, I've worked remotely, and I've learned a lot in the process. If you want to work remote, consider this post of what remote work is, why I like it, some things to consider, and some tips that can help it work better for you.

Remote work is

Just as much work as working in an office.
By definition, a communication challenge.
A high burn-out risk.
The best commute you will ever deal with.
NOT something you can do on a beach, barring a few exceptions.
NOT something your family and friends will understand the boundaries of, at first.

My remote experiences, in a nutshell

Technically, my first experience remote was as a mortgage officer. I had an office home base, which was important for storing the cubic ton of files that need to be stored. But I also spent about 40% of the time working on the road, meeting with lenders and clients. I learned a lot about what not to do during this time. Such as, don't leave home without a clear line to the internet/phone.

After that, I started a crypto remittance company called Dollero. I spent more than a year behind a desk working from the moment I awoke to the moment I went to sleep, with few breaks. It's no coincidence that I learned my most important lesson here: burnout is very real; balance is key to preventing it.

Balance, to me, is taking disconnected breaks. This means short walks, paying attention to my dog, playing a game, stretching, cooking, even doing chores.

The startup also taught me very important lessons in strong communication and how to communicate effectively when the team is not physically in the same location.

Most recently, I was a student at Lambda School (a remote full stack web development school) and a Section Lead within the school. As a student in Lambda, I learned a powerful remote tech stack, including Slack, Zoom, Trello, and Figma. As an employee, I learned the complexities of remotely managing teams of Team Leads that, in turn, remotely managed groups of students.

The complexities were almost entirely around communication. For example, it is important to communicate often with a remote team because, unlike in a physical office where you may sense your teammate is stressed out, you'll never know unless you interact with them. You gotta meet with the team and meet often to stay 'in tune'.

Why do I like remote work?

The most productive I have ever been has been while working remote. I like the freedom of setting my own schedule and I like the focus on deliverables.

I learned balance over the years, so I know how to step away when I need to. When it comes to pushing the envelope to meet a deadline, I can do it, because I've sustainably maintained high productivity.

Traffic sucks. I used to live in the Bay Area and I really don't like sitting in a car behind infinity other cars, with infinity cars behind me, for what seems like infinity time.

I like remote work in more ways that I'm going to go into here. My last reason is that I like to groove out. My version of groove out is often high volume jazz or rock. And headphones are cool, but I haven't found the right ones, so I prefer to play the music through the Bose. Not everyone gets down like that, so it helps that I'm miles away from each of my coworkers.

What are some things to consider?

Don't go to work in your sweatpants every day. It makes going to work in your sweatpants less 'special' and there's only one level to go forward from sweatpants. You definitely don't want to go there. So dress up normally.

Routines are important. This is tightly correlated with not wearing sweatpants everyday. The routine is good in the office and other places. It has just as much importance in a home office.

This leads to my next point, try your best to have a home office. If your bed is in your home office, that's not your home office. That's your bedroom. Your bedroom is for sleep and other recreational activities. Go to your home office to do work. Burn out happens to people that let their work take over all facets of their life (well it's much more complicated than that, but you get the idea).

Be wary of coffeeshops. I like to talk to people, and it's fun. But coffeeshops in a small town (like where I live now) is a big productivity killer.

Try to hold the weekends sacred. You need a break and you need to have balance.

Sleep. No one is at the top of their game if they are not getting the amount of sleep their body needs.

What are some tips to make it work better?

Use Git, Slack, Zoom, and Trello (or equivalent)
Install Slack and Zoom on your phone
Set auto sleep notifications
Communicate frequently and often
Communicate! It will feel like you are over-communicating, but strong communication is SUPER important when remote
Git commit with meaningful messages
Respond to messages in a timely manner
Turn on your camera when you Zoom
Create a place where coworkers can informally video chat (I like all day zooms, not required, with no set meeting) where team mates can join to talk about quick issues in conjunction with set meetings
Attend stand up meetings with regularity
Treat stand ups like sacred meetings that are only missed in exceptional circumstances
Be sensitive and understanding of everyones particular time zone; if you set regular meetings at 5pm PST, and your team has EST members, that might be right in the middle of their family's dinner
Remember that when you are working at home, you are still working; be professional, remind friends and family that you are working even though you are at home

Summary

If you have experience working remote and would like to add or disagree with anything here, leave a comment. If you are planning on working remotely for the first time, I hope this helps!

Good luck!

Are startup founders delusional or brilliant?

Frank — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 05:37:56 +0000

Or both? Or neither?

Why did I blow my life savings on a startup that crash and burned only to be driven to do it again?

Startup founders need to be a little crazy.

You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.
- Jimi Hendrix

Sometimes I describe it as a curse, this passion for taking an idea that pushes the boundaries of what's possible into the stratosphere of common discussion. If you woke up at 6am to work on something until midnight every single day for as long as you humanly can, all while making zero income, I think you might consider it a curse, as well.

You'd probably agree with me on the crazy part, too!

Or maybe you would just go about it differently. ^^you ^^smart ^^cookie, ^^you!

About 6 years ago I was consumed by, essentially, these two graphs*:

That's all of the remittances and their costs, respectively, on average, in the United States. *Graphs are the new versions of the ones I was ogling over 6 years ago.

Remittance is just a fancy word for sending money from one country to another. Think Western Union or MoneyGram.

The problem: remittances are expensive. The more I dug into them, the more I realized that they were not expensive because they were necessary to be expensive, they were expensive mostly because there were no less expensive providers. There are several banks involved in most remittances and each one of them makes a little, such that paying more than 7% per transfer is common. Some corridors (a remittance sender/receiver pair, ie America to Africa corridor) cost more than others, depending on the servicing partners.

Long story short, it seemed like an obvious problem that could be solved with cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, for instance, relies on no banking partners, and transfers anywhere with an internet connection for no more than it costs to send a text.

That is... until you want to turn it into some local fiat currency. Regardless, if you could cut the number of banks used in a transaction in half, you would be saving the end user enough money to be a reasonable alternative.

Mission accepted, let's fix remittances!

All I needed to do was find someone who knew how to build this thing.

I was totally 'into computers'. I was the go-to IT guy for the realtors I worked with in the past and for the screen printer I worked for at the time. I was the real deal; I built my own computer! In the 90's, as a kid, I got kicked off of AOL for using 'unauthorized code'. I didn't write it, but I sure knew some Javascript when I saw it! I even worked for a stint in 2000 at Sun Microsystems.

Why couldn't I build a professional enterprise-scale full-stack web application with a tablet-based interface made to run on in-store devices for consumers? Oh and a company that could go ten rounds with Western Union. Why not?

I was told I could do anything I put my mind to.

If you pay someone else to build it, they will come you will fail

The thought process went something like this:

[x] Found problem
[x] Thought up a possible solution
[x] Found investors
[x] Googled the shit out of remittances
[] Built solution

I had 4 out of the 5 things necessary to make this idea a real thing and compete at scale against the big boys. All I needed to do was find someone who knew how to build this thing...

Spoiley Alert!

Those were my famous last words. Nothing useful gets built, the next round of funding was not raised, and the world was not changed by my crazy passion for low-cost remittances.

Life crumbles.

Breathe.

I'm not a failure, I'm experienced

It was actually a little surprising that after my company failed, I was still alive. Inside, it felt like something big had died. The fact that my physical body was still doing its thing was like "whoa, there's life after this?"

I knew the statistics, like you are pretty much always going to fail. 90%
of the time, no way buddy. At some level, I must have assumed the people failing were always going to be the other 9 in the room.

Darkest before the light and all that good stuff, I came out of that deep depression with a newfound mission: knowledge.

After everything falls apart, leverage the lessons learned through experience to rebuild better than before.

The following are some little tidbits that I learned through the experience. And hey, you probably already know this stuff! If you do, feel free to chuckle at me and my obvious foolishness while you read them.

But, if you are like me, and somehow didn't "get it" by the time you decide to go out in the world and "get it", I hope the tips help :)

Lesson #1: Be the guy.

Don't rely on others for that which you can provide yourself. This doesn't mean 'do everything yourself'. This means 'be able to do all the important stuff yourself'.

Lesson #2: Be all possibilities.

Don't just envision 'success', or just 'one way you can be successful'. Envision all possible outcomes. Optimize for a preferred path, but anticipate all other paths in the process. Choose wisely. Roll with the changes. It's like prepare for the worst but expect the best, except without any silly "perspectiveness".

Perhaps Bruce Lee said it best: Be like water.

Always have contingencies in place.

Lesson #3: Hustling meditates.

Hustling is meditating. Hustling is taking frequent short breaks to stretch. Hustling is being connected to the project but still being connected to your loved ones.

Hustling makes time stop and smell the roses, and not only because that may be where the next startup idea lies.

In other words, find balance! Hard work doesn't mean you need to drink Soylent 24/7 and not leave your 'lab' until Series A.

Startup, again???

My response to failing was to learn, with a vengeance. And learn I did.

Eventually, I found my way into Lambda School, and consumed everything I could. I powered my way through every role and opportunity I could within the school. Some of my new-favorite people on the planet I met while being a student, Team Lead, Project Manager, Teaching Assistant, and Section Lead at Lambda.

For the record, Lambda does not train you to be an entrepreneur. If anything, it focuses on anything other than being an entrepreneur.

But the skills, oh the skills! With these skills, and better timing, I could have been the first to really slam dunk crypto remittance! With these skills, and these like minded killers on my side, we can make anything a reality!

And the ideas! How could I forget the ideas! It's like being back in the VLAB team, it's non-stop ideas and discussion and debate and collaboration and fun fun fun!

Breathe.

I like building businesses. Startups are an inseparable part of me. I can see that now.

Everything is different now. A startup now is something that I envision can run concurrently with a career in this thing that I love: software development. A startup is maybe something I can get going and pivot my life into, when the time is right. I have the team now, maybe we can just make progress on the side while we do responsible things, like get jobs with 401k's and unlimited PTO.

Well...

maybe just a couple angel meetings.