Coding is easy and predictable when you need to follow a pattern of writing styles, pulling data to store via actions and reducers. Coding is an unpredictable mess when you need to fix linking issues, intuitively understand what could get broken by the newest library release and how this is gonna look like on git diff. I have no idea how to teach it - it looks easier for me to hire such a person instead.

We continued negotiating an offer. The problem is while my market value looks like 140k RUR/mo, the company doesn’t want to cut the runway that much. There are many approaches to offer a salary:
— How much money can we pay?
— How much money do you need to get by?
— How much money will they pay you in other places?
— For how much money can we hire someone with the same skills?

They want to keep the runway long, but of course they don’t know for sure, how much they need before raising series A. I don’t need any money to get by: while my cash flow may be negative, I can get by on my savings. In other places they’ll pay me 150k RUR (Moscow) or more abroad (250-350k RUR) - but with different challenges and opportunities to grow. The last question is all that hard to answer.

We started discussing an interesting idea: we split my market salary in two parts: the real part and the imaginary part - say, 60k + i*80k. That imaginary part I’ll get only at the time the company raises series A in the US. The question here to agree for the next weeks is the following: I feel like I need to get a substantial gain on my imaginary part in case we hit the next round. The startup average probability of raising A after seed is kinda 35%, so I’d assume 3x gain - 300%. That is, my salary should actually be 60k + i*240k. Which is both competitive, challenging, rewarding, not very burdensome for the company at this stage, not that burdensome to pay out after raising A and so on. The only problem is that it looks very weird and unusual.

The new concern I got this morning is whether I should actually lead a development at this time in my life. For the last year I acted according to the “straight action principle”: if I want to learn how to build B2C-startups, I should go and build some and learn in the field, rather than exploiting more subtle strategies leading me to that point. It looks easier to validate straight paths, that’s why. Now my explanation for why I’m here is that a year here can promote me faster on the career track and range of positions open for me in the industry than one year anywhere else. Which still means that I should only assess my current offer for the next year, not for the next four. Life is changing rapidly still.

I discussed an offer with my friend. Consider my market salary is $2500/mo. If the guys are planning to raise the next round in 12 months, they’ll realistically raise it in 18 months. If I take a 100% pay cut, that’s like I’m founding the company by $48k = $50k total - 2.5% equity according to the last valuation. Now his point is that because I’m not a professional VC, my funding should still belong to FFF valuation which is like $500k - so I should pretend to get 10% according to this.

I currently see three points which consist our corporate culture:
— Guys use a lot of stickers and gifs in messenger chats.
— <> and <>'s sense of humour is about shit and sperm.
— We occasionally buy each other curd snacks [творожные сырки].

The first thing is neutral yet makes distractive, the third thing is awesome and the second thing already leads to <> doing mockups that are shameful to show to clients. I’m going to bring up this question on today’s 1:1.

I’m bootstrapping a channel where I post and comment on what I read (@thingsiread). So far I’m figuring out the content style and catching the steady energy to write new stuff. I’m going to announce it around mid September. That can boost my hiring funnel during the next year.

Yesterday I visited a front-end conference for the first time, and I’m hugely inspired. That is the kind of socialization my career is missing: to see fellow programmers and managers, to talk about their work, to adopt best practices, to grow new connections in the industry, to meet old friends. It would be crazy to emigrate without experiencing this first here.

That was part of my reasoning for quitting Replit and stopping the emigration process: as I was planning my possible life in San Francisco, I wanted to try all the same tricks here in the homeland at first. As a psychologist told me two years ago, I should solve my issues in the current family first and not run away from them in an attempt to build a new one. It won’t lead to success. Her words helped me deepen my joy of reconnecting with my parent family afterwards.

I’m starting to dream about office space. One of the parts of this dream is the feeling of being surrounded by experienced tech colleagues. From the point of keeping the team cost low it’s a good skill to learn how to build a remote team. However, there’s way more speed up and learning going on when you sit next to each other. Moreover, the office feels like “your own space” - and it can be a solid alternative while I don’t have my own room and don’t feel like starting to rent one. There’s still too much uncertainty in the near future.

Now when I have an understanding of how things go on the White square and how the guys use our products, what else can I learn if I’m sitting all day long in the cafes trying to code from the bad chair and being deconcentrated by the loud music? I’ve just realized that for the last month I was mostly sitting in Drinkit on my own without <> and <>. I need endless water, fast Internet connection and constant access to power outlets - and the only cafe to provide it is far from the White square center where <> and <> are needed during the lunchtime. Which is bad, because staying in touch with the team is one of the motivational factors that determine which project I’m in.

The others remaining are: we’re making the product for real users, we have a great bizdev team, and we're planning an attempt to launch in the US very soon.

Time is the most important part of an offer. My stretch goal is to have two full-time jobs - as Jack Dorsey. I can do that working remotely, that’s probably the key, so I’m running this pilot for September. This way I feel a stronger ownership of my time, I feel like I can plan and trade-off between making my own projects, sports, culture, health, friends. It’s not a full-time-oriented life anymore. There’s no center in my day, it’s bi-centric. Wow.

It makes sense to go with this team till the end, and it also makes sense to go beyond the project. If the project fails, the team of adequate people with business skills stays the same and more cooperative over time. That leads to choosing equity over salary.

It’s always hard for me to argue with our CTO even when we already established communication and understanding. So my strategy is to say “yes” to his ideas, or “yes, but later”. Then there’s a high chance that his plans eventually change, and nothing strange happens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23fBoqQxSgQ

<> told me that he’s actually doing Asap midday till midnight. He's been living like that since November 2016. Back then he had some “private life” and sacrificed sleep, but then they broke up, and now he doesn’t do anything else at all. He hangs out with some friends sometimes - and it’s usually when they come to the White square. At home before sleep he watches some Youtube. He’s telling that if he’d leave Asap “office” at 8pm, he’d be feeling the fear of missing out - because Asap always feels for him like the best way to invest his time. That’s where we dramatically diverge.

I’m generally disappointed because I don’t feel like I continue growing or achieving something. So during Sunday I talked with <>. He told me that if it’s not “your” company, then the work should be pleasant and bring new experience. Otherwise you shouldn’t do it. (Luckily, later in October it will become “my” company in the most natural way.)

Got hard times getting out of the bed. I still didn’t quite feel like I understood what I do at work and how it helps me.

I also got access to prod which also happens to be our test server - served from a different clone of the repo, both leaving next to each other under /home/ directory.

I met <> - a VC analyst. He said that there are no examples when Russians launch B2C operations in the US successfully. It may happen when founders already live there for years and got to learn some specifics.

He also suggested that I just go directly to Yandex, Snapchat, Uber, Stripe and work for them for some time. Also, speaking about Moscow, SkyEng has 50-100 guys and they are great, QLean and Doc+ are also cool places to work. He suggested monitoring conferences, hanging around, reading news and closely watching for information about new rounds of investment going around. An investment is a push for hiring.

Yesterday I went to a meetup for the third time - this time it was a Python meetup. There were a lot of 30+ yo guys which I don’t know why to approach because their life seems pretty clear - senior backend developer somewhere in 100+ pps team, wife, travel once a year. So I approached a guy of my age who asked some interesting questions to a speaker, and as usual he turned out to be quite simple: 4th year at bachelor’s degree, junior Python/Swift freelance dev not committing full-time because of the ongoing education, 50 friends in VK.

That is, I need other means of networking with software engineers - other than going to meetups.

[Sep 22] Whenever I don’t see <> and <>, I feel like they are very disappointed by my underperformance, they started searching for a replacement and they’re gonna fire me pretty soon. And that they constantly want to push me for “overtime work”. Whenever I work with them together, I feel like they enjoy how our team is going forward, how things are under control and how faster and more transparent the development process becomes every day.

[Dec 2] Lol. Go try to replace a team lead if you’re low on investor’s budget, not a guru of social media networking, work from cafes and can only offer half the market salary.

Yesterday I visited BeerJS, a networking event for front-end guys from Moscow to join at 8pm in the bar to hang out while drinking together. It was way better than the last three meetups because there I could actually talk and listen to talks for hours. I so much like brunches and life stories, and especially establishing contacts to new interesting people that are thinking similarly. Yesterday I met exactly the guy I wanted to meet at such events - <>, a front-end guy from a digital agency that read Thiel’s “From zero to one” and wants to build products. Yay.

Итоги 2021:

- преподавала в ЛМШ
- отвезла детей на УТЮМ, судила там
- впервые понравилось учиться в универе
- в связи с этим, начала в мл, дл
- впервые призналась в чувствах
- снова начала влюбляться
- впервые пособесилась, реджектнули
- успешно пережила эмоциональное выгорание (диагностировано мной)
- сгоняла на митинг
- отметила Новый год с друзьями
- началась аниме фиксация, закончилась аниме фиксация
- почти не занималась ебаным курсачом, закрылась
- впервые сходила на пересдачу
- волосы покрасила, волосы закрасила в натуральный
- получила седой волос
- начала ходить на ролевки
- сходили на потрясающий джазовый концерт к соседям подруги
- перестала париться из-за себя, друзей, отношений, места и мысли жизни. крч, отрефлексировала все, не связанное с учебой/работой.
- подняла рейтинг в шахматах на ~300
- начала ходить на турнир в южку
- осознала, что алкоголь не делает тусы лучше
- по-взрослому восстановила отношения с подругой
- начала на гитаре брынькать, бросила
- перевелась с ебаной специализации на умную, но все ещё ебаную

As for the offer, <> says that it’s blocked by their negotiation with the <CTO>. Basically, we need a head of development - and it’s gonna be either <CTO> or me. Putting <CTO> to this role has several concerns:
— He wasn’t involved in our hiring pipeline when we staffed two junior positions, and he’s probably gonna continue avoiding such tasks.
— We don’t know about his ability to coordinate a team. [What else should we know if he practically failed that during July-September.]
— We don’t know if it’s productive for him to spend a lot of time on coordination rather than coding the back-end.
— <> had several arguments with <CTO> about various architectural topics. <CTO> didn’t listen to pieces of advice all the time, and it required a significant pushing force to make him do what’s actually needed from the product side

So basically I have a small possibility of taking a CTO role soon.