Re: 4. I think it’s totally possible to start super-short-lived orgs, as long as that’s the plan from the outset. Also I think there are a lot of people in tech startup / tech entrepreneurship space that are willing to mentor, but I agree finding them and making that connection is harder.
From my time working in tech, and spotting common weaknesses w/ new folks (though might not apply to you!): Statistics, Ethics, and Writing.
I think spending time learning statistics is probably a pretty good use of time, since a bunch of the technical aspects are non-obvious, and translate to super-powers when programming with stochastic or noisy systems. (E.g. knowing a sampling technique which more efficiently estimates a parameter is basically like knowing an algorithm with better big-O complexity).
Second, even in doing boring feature implementation for software systems, issues that have ethical ramifications come up surprisingly often. (Decisions about filtering datasets, how to normalize forms, etc). Spending some time getting a good overview and understanding of the field I think helps prevent the two big failure modes I see here: 1. not realizing that a thing has ethical implications at all, and then deploying a thing which becomes expensive to un-deploy or change, and 2. freezing when encountering a problem with ethical implications, without knowing where to go for a solution.
Last I think writing is a really great way to put practice and time and effort. The more I’ve done work in software, the more its shifted that the most important typing I do is documents and not code.
+1 asking HN. I think you’ll get a different diversity of answers there.
Re: 4. I think it’s totally possible to start super-short-lived orgs, as long as that’s the plan from the outset. Also I think there are a lot of people in tech startup / tech entrepreneurship space that are willing to mentor, but I agree finding them and making that connection is harder.
From my time working in tech, and spotting common weaknesses w/ new folks (though might not apply to you!): Statistics, Ethics, and Writing.
I think spending time learning statistics is probably a pretty good use of time, since a bunch of the technical aspects are non-obvious, and translate to super-powers when programming with stochastic or noisy systems. (E.g. knowing a sampling technique which more efficiently estimates a parameter is basically like knowing an algorithm with better big-O complexity).
Second, even in doing boring feature implementation for software systems, issues that have ethical ramifications come up surprisingly often. (Decisions about filtering datasets, how to normalize forms, etc). Spending some time getting a good overview and understanding of the field I think helps prevent the two big failure modes I see here: 1. not realizing that a thing has ethical implications at all, and then deploying a thing which becomes expensive to un-deploy or change, and 2. freezing when encountering a problem with ethical implications, without knowing where to go for a solution.
Last I think writing is a really great way to put practice and time and effort. The more I’ve done work in software, the more its shifted that the most important typing I do is documents and not code.
+1 asking HN. I think you’ll get a different diversity of answers there.