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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • I have worked as an early employee at a startup that was then successfully acquired. In my experience it was great, although I think it did not match the situation at most startups. I think there were six people when I started working for them, as a freelancer at first, and then eventually we grew to about 15 and I joined full time.

    I did not get any stock, I was 100% remote (I live in Europe and the company was in the US, I never even met any of my bosses or coworkers), and I never worked long hours.

    It was also early in my career. I started as a freelancer, and this was my highest paying job until then, so I gladly took it. The work was hard (low-level and high-performance stuff), but as I said, I did not have to work over 40 hours per week. I did have meetings in the late afternoon though, and sometimes in the evenings, because of my time zone.

    After we got acquired, I told them that because I didn’t hold any stock, I still wanted some payout, so they roughly doubled my salary. The work also became more corporate and there was less of the hard but interesting stuff. Eventually I left when the company that acquired us was itself acquired, and now I work for another established company for even more money.

    TL;DR: the startup was acquired, I did not get a payout but it launched my career so I’m very happy I was involved.


  • More vulnerable, probably yes. Phones are very locked down and secured (unless you root or install custom firmware).

    But, they are still worse for privacy due to how they’re used. The phone (and thus Google and Apple and Facebook and others) has access to your location all the time - your computer doesn’t. The computer is only vulnerable when on - the phone is always on.

    The threats are different and from different sources. Random hackers mining shitcoins on your computer, big companies knowing what you’re doing when you carry your phone.







  • I’ve gone through many pairs of headphones too, I’ve worked from home for years and had a long-distance relationship in a time before smartphones (and before cheap wireless headphones) so Skype+headphones was the solution. Both driving over them with an office chair and accidentally pulling them were real dangers and caused real damage.

    Now I just don’t use them anymore, since I have meetings on a company laptop, and the relationship is much closer.



  • The battery will fail to hold charge and they will become useless. Not the truth for wired headphones.

    I don’t know how you use your headphones, but in my case I switched to wireless because every single pair of wired headphones I had would break. Usually the cable, earbuds because they were in my pocket, and the overhead ones I’d drive over with my office chair.

    Switched to wireless a couple years ago, no issues since then.