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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: May 1st, 2022

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  • Just wanted to add me .2c here since I have some real-world experience with this and no dog in this fight. We’re a small computer engineering company with 1 mechanical engineer on the team. We had designed a custom chassis for one of our products (first time we had ever done this), and were looking for quotations to build a prototype. After some research and recommendations, we narrowed it down to 3 companies: A German, American and a Canadian company; all were highly reputable. We were given quotes of $15,000 - $20,000 USD, and told our CAD files need to be heavily modified because some parts of our design were ‘impossible’. We were also told it would take approx. 3 months to receive the prototype. Out of curiosity, we sent the CAD files to our PCB manufacturer in China and asked if they knew anyone who could build the chassis. They quoted us $300 and said it would take a week. We paid them, and honestly, we expected to receive garbage - it wasn’t. We had minor complaints but overall, esp. for $300 and a week, it was excellent.







  • Not me but a good friend of mine met a girl and lied about his job. He was already working a decent job as a floor salesman while applying to be a flight attendant which paid more money. He told her he already had the position he was applying for, which he never got and it kept snowballing until he could no longer come clean without major consequences. For 6 months, he had to make up a fake flight schedule, fake work-related anecdotes, etc., Needless to say when he eventually came clean she ended things, and I suppose he learned a very strange but valuable lesson. It was pretty funny to me at least.















  • TLDR: Computers

    I got super lucky being in the right place/right time. I started a company when COVID hit with the intention of just selling computers. The market sort of pushed me into selling computers for AI/ML which i knew nothing about but had a good background in Linux, so I could offer a lot of added services in terms of DevOps/MLOps, setting things up for customers as added value which my (much larger and more established) competition didn’t. This led to some enterprise connections, started selling servers, more things happened and 3 years later I have a full engineering team and we’re morphing into an OEM. There’s a lot I’m leaving out but if there’s one takeaway I can give, it’s that:

    1. Never underestimate what you’re capable of learning by just putting in the time and work
    2. Don’t de-value random things you’ve put time and effort into learning. Even something you were obsessed with as a teenager and seemed like a complete waste of time may eventually become critically important in your adult life.