I don't know the answer to your question, but I'm Greg. I have been a small town solo founder (and a small town co-founder), so I likely know what you're going through. My email is in my profile - reach out if you'd like to talk.
I'm not in a small town but definitely in a small founder community. I'm my username at pretty much everything. Reach out and happy to be of whatever help I can be as well.
When https://chat.meatspac.es/ was busy, it was really good for this. Not sure lonely is a small town thing, it's both a founder thing and, well... a human thing. I'd guess we're all pretty lonely. :)
Looking for similar minded people to team up with. Anyone would like to chat, get to know each other for building an idea (consumer focus), please drop a line here. narenkeshav at gmail
Video chat, not sure. But somebody recently setup a Slack workspace[1] for this crowd. There's almost nobody on it yet, but if you want to jump on you're welcome.
Interesting concept. I sometimes work with friends, little or no talk, or chat that doesn't require brain bandwidth, also using appear.in (great service)
We (ZeroTier) and many others are residents. As a bonus it features a 3d printing lab, a martial arts dojo (which somehow fits with hackers), and regular meetings of loads of hacker meetups and hackathons and the like.
Hey, shout out to peoplespace! I've been by there but didn't fully take advantage of it. I used to live right at main and jamboree, and later at 55/macarthur. :)
Seen a couple Slack suggestions – you might fit in well w/ the Hello, Remote crowd: it's a Slack group I put together for remote workers. Lots of startup people there, join us!
Sorry about that! Had some issues w/ the now.sh deploy I was using. I've moved it to Heroku–the "Join Us" button should point to the right place on the home page, or you can go to https://helloremote-invite.herokuapp.com/ directly.
I'd like a place where I could log in and see people working. The https://complice.co/rooms stuff (just chat, no cams) mentioned above/below is an interesting concept. Pomodoro timers. X mins push, Y mins talk. Shame the rooms are empty.
I remember reading how someone actually did this. They hired someone from craigslist to sit with them at a coffee shop, quietly watch what they were doing, and poke them to stay on task if they got distracted. It worked out ridiculously well.
I paid someone 10% for this exact service. Nominally, they were supposed to be QA, but they ultimately did very little other than be interested in the project and hound me to make progress. Totally worth it, and to date the only large, multi-year solo project I ever finished and brought to market.
A while back I was playing around on shodan looking for open webcams and found a few where you 'could log in and see people working'. Or, mostly, watch people who probably should be doing something productive not actually working.
My favorite was a town square in Bulgaria, wonder if that one's still open...
Creator of Complice here. I agree it's sad the rooms are empty! I thought it would be way easier than it turned out to be, to get a room off the ground. There are a few private ones that are consistently active, but for some reason I've had a lot of trouble getting a public one to stick.
Last summer when IndieHackers launched on HackerNews and Complice was one of the businesses featured there, I made a "Hacker Hall" room (https://complice.co/room/hackers) and posted it to Show HN. It had people in it for a few weeks but it never quite stabilized.
Based on the experience with the private rooms, I think it would only take a couple of champions--people spending most of their working hours there--for it to then be attractive to visitors. This thread probably has enough people to do it. I'd say just comment below if you're willing to hang out in the room consistently for the next few weeks, even if nobody else is there. And if a few people are up for it, then give it a shot. And let me know so I can support you in that!
I think the other thing that's needed is for at least a couple people to actually turn on their cameras, and to chat during the pomodoro breaks, so that people are actually connecting with each other.
I've five weeks into working for myself and avoiding loneliness has become a key task for me every day. I wouldn't say I'm succeeding at it, to be honest. I know I could join a coworking space but I question whether it's worth $400+ a month when I wouldn't be able to attend the networking events since I have a family and need to be home at night. (And I don't need meeting space, and have a desk at home, and etc.)
I've started going to Whole Foods to work during the day just to be around other people. Not that we necessarily interact, but, you know, it's something.
I've found being around others helps tremendously compared with working solo. I believe there have been academic studies into this as well. Being around other people who are "productive" (whether they really are or not) helps my mindset. I would study in the quiet chunks of the library with other people around me, particularly leading up to big exams.
Or ... maybe not lonely. But want to feel a lively "buzz" that isn't from music or putting on movies in the background.
Maybe weird. But I don't like sitting in my quiet apartment alone working. (I'm not particularly lonely - I just like the energy better when I'm "out")
I've been a regular at a couple of different Starbucks locations over the past few years, and surprisingly, communities of people do develop over time. There are other regulars that you start to recognize, say hi to as you stand in line, and catch up with. I've met fascinating people by working at Starbucks. Engineers, managers, musicians, nurses, all friendly and equally happy to have someone else to talk to. Plus, there's the baristas, who I've also found pleasant to talk to.
Some days, though, you are alone at Starbucks, but it's a different kind of alone than working at home all day every day. You're surrounded by people, and when the alternative is zero social contact during your work day, it can make a difference.
In some theoretical parallel universe somewhere, and maybe even in the future of this one, I'm imagining people with private (tiny) airplanes flying out to some backwater dot county nobody knows about, just to code at one of the coffee shops there.
Because people are really forward in rural areas.
Hm, now I see the bugs in this idea; poor internet speed for one, compounded by the fact that said person is likely going to want to move out there permanently...
We are not solitary animals; we evolved to be part of tribes and bands. There's a part of us that's just not happy unless there's other humans around.
And it's perfectly cool if we never interact with them. That's fine. Maybe sometimes all we want is to have someone around to be faster than when a lion comes out of the shadows and takes the slowest person down. Even if that, or some metaphorical equivalent of it, is exceedingly unlikely in a coffee shop.
I get up at 5am every day to go to Starbucks at 6am every day. The "stillness buzz" of my apartment bugs me. I go to Starbucks and ignore everyone - but I still feel part of the mix.
I could, you know, go to the office, but everone interrupts me there. It's not lonely, but unproductive.
The trick is to be productive, but to feel like a human in the mix. For me, Starbucks does that.
Some kind of optimized noise is a weird concept, but I've found that it really works, from time to time. Especially if I'm doing something that requires a great deal of concentration rather than just "production".
The core of the UX is the Focusmate session, a structured, 50-minute video interaction, where you and another user act as accountability partners for one another.
You'll find lots of solopreneurs as well as a handful of sole founders, but above all, you get human interaction without compromising productivity.
Disclaimer - I'm the founder. I was a sole founder for a lonnnng time and doing these sessions was my saving grace.
If you fail at working from home it's going to cost you a hell of a lot more than $400 a month. Time to move on that ASAP. Later when you're in a better place you can think about alternatives.
If you make 20 $/h and you can only work 80 a month because you're lonely but you would be able to work 160 at a coffee shop then 400 bucks turns into 1600
I did the coworking space thing a few years ago, it wasn't worth it. No one there was doing anything interesting. There really wasn't much conversion. It was a waste of money for me. I can work alone for a long time. It's just the loneliness that slowly builds up over a long time from not talking about the project with peers walking the same path that sucks.
A good friend of mine who is a solo entrepreneur (...in a different city) said this was their experience too. They recommended finding a good coffee shop. They've been going to the same one for months and said that it slowly builds a culture of accountability and familiarity among the regulars.
Solves the socialization part, though not the lack of feedback and discussion.
I think it probably really depends on the co-working space. I was at one for a few months that made a point of socializing. They had a portion of space dedicated to meetups from 7pm. They had 4-5 meetups a week. They organized dinner outings. One person organized a programmer meet up where he'd give out a short problem, have everyone solve it in their language of choice, then we'd have each person explain their solution, it was enlightening so see why each person made their choices.
I don't know how to know beforehand if a co-working space has lots of social activities or not, maybe see if they have an event page or a FB page showing past events.
When I worked from home full time for a few years I found the gym to be a great place for social interaction. I would work at home in the morning, then gym, and work in a coffee shop in the afternoon. If you keep a schedule you’ll see the same people and eventually have some people to randomly chat with.
I’ve been solo for 4 years. I never once worked outside of my home office. At times it was very lonely but I didn’t do anything about it. I started a slack group for freelancers as a water cooler and advice type of place. It’s sometimes active but most of the time pretty quiet. Anyone looking for a place to just chat is welcome to join, founder or freelancer I don’t care, we are a mixed bunch: freelancehangout.com
For everyone commenting on going to a café every day, you'll end up spending the $400 on coffee, cakes whathaveyou and you won't have the guarantee of a quiet, thoughtful space when you need it. I needed some company some time ago and found a co-working space that I treated like a café - the coffee included, I brought my own lunch, and even though I'm not particularly sociable it was still much, much healthier than working alone and over time I got on fairly well with a group of people I still consider friends, though I've long since left. Have a look if there is something around you, you never know. And even just the looking gets you out of the house for a valid reason!
Well, you don't have to constantly be buying coffee, or stay there the entire day. I find about 2 hours and a single $2 cup twice a day to be perfect for re-energizing and getting some human contact.
This logic led me to join WeWork for a while and it was quite horrible. It was loud and WeWork didn’t care. Seemed like they need to provide a place for your average person, which makes sense, but that
average person is a sale/marketing/design type who won’t be bothered by noise. Not a good option for people trying to focus. Not to mention the coffee type never changed.
> I know I could join a coworking space but I question whether it's worth $400+ a month
I'm not sure whether this is available in every country/big city, but I've been working from Seats2Meet [1]. You can work there for free, and although it can get noisy, for me, having some buzz around me helps against loneliness and doesn't impact my productivity that much.
My friend Sherry is a counselor specifucally working with startup founders. Her husband Rob is the founder of Drip (and probably hangs out here) . She offers individual counseling and has some great group programs so you know you aren't alone in the challenges you face. I can not recommend her enough.
This is a real thing. And she has told me that the most common thing she works with is people thinking they are alone. And they are! Because the specific challenges founders face are unique to them and that compounds the feeling of "no one understands." But that doesn't mean community and counsel can't help immensely.
If you feel this way please get in touch with Sherry or listen to her podcasts and read the content. It can change your perspective and help embolden you.
I started a slack group for those of us that got rejected for YC, but no one participated so I shut it down. I'm also a solo founder in need of a support network. This is not about working around people but meeting up once a week for about an hour or so and sharing our progress and struggles and encouraging each other. Glad to know you are not alone. My email is on my profile. Ping me, anyone else interested should email as well.
unfortunately rejection is a difficult identity for people to rally around. consider joining some of the established slack communities mentioned here. good luck.
I work at a coffee shop with a few other solo entrepreneurs. It helps everyone stay sane. In the past I went to a coworking space, but I finally got tired of the wantrapreneur atmosphere. I go back there once in a while to reconnect with friends.
Personally, whenever I feel lonely I would go volunteer and help people. It makes you feel connected and really puts things into perspective (like, even if your startup doesn't do well, you would still be surrounded by people who enjoys you as a person).
Every Saturday, my wife and I volunteer at our local library (northside branch in santa clara) to teach people how to code.
We've been doing that for almost a year with surprising results. Now I'm leading about 10 engineers that I've taught from the ground up and they are happily building features for my app for minimum wage (temporarily). I'm hoping that one of my apps take off and I can pay everyone great salary.
You would do better to look in the Appleton area if you don't want to travel far, otherwise Milwaukee/Madison could be worth a trip (especially conferences) and Chicago should have everything.
Rob Walling is in MN right now, might be worth asking this question of him via his podcast, Startups for the Rest of Us. I assume he mostly interacts with his existing network remotely now though, not sure he could offer advice on creating such a network without bootstrapping in-person.
this is a bit of an awkward question but.. have you ever come across anyone who you tried to teach but in the end was just not suited for coding? can everyone learn to code?
Imagine a graph where one axis is how interested you are and the other axis is how quickly you pick it up. There is a diagonal line the separates those that will persist long enough to be a good coder.
If you compare someone with quite a few of the ai bots out there (image recognition, chat bots), you will realize how intelligent they actually are. Every human person is like a super AI machine.
Not everyone can learn to code (well), imo. But, that's not an elitist coding-is-harder-than-other-things statement -- it's just the truth for any discipline.
Not everyone can draw/paint; not everyone can sing; not everyone can learn new languages proficiently; not everyone is good with numbers; not everyone is good at teaching; not everyone is good with working with other people; not everyone is athletic. And by this I mean that some will naturally be good at learning and ultimately mastering the above list of things, while others have to work much harder to get even close, with a lower ceiling.
Most importantly though, it's not up to someone else to decide whether you're good at something or not. Everyone should have an opportunity to take class or learn a subject and find out for themselves if that's something that they're good at or naturally inclined to. And if they're not good at it, it's not the end of the world because there is something else that's probably more suitable for them that's just as important to this world as coding.
The trouble we run into is that we often think of programming or coding as something more important or more sacred than other disciplines, when in reality it's just another in a long line of disciplines that takes practice and a little bit of natural talent.
love your positive attitude. i think my weakness as a javascript peer mentor/teacher is that sometimes i get frustrated when people dont get what I am trying to teach and its either i am a bad teacher or they aren't learning it right. and constantly at the back of my mind i'm wondering if its worth my time/effort to keep trying to teach the person or if they should go ask someone else who is better at teaching.
Since you asked, I'll try to share what I've learned. You can become incredibly effective if you invest in the skills to become a better teacher. Usually if someone is not learning, its the teacher not doing a good job.
1. Test - before starting any topic, make sure your student has a grasp of the prerequisites by giving them simple tasks. Just because you have taught them the prerequisites a week ago does not mean that they didn't forget.
2. When you are teaching them, talk as little as possible. The only thing you should be saying is the concepts.
3. Ask lots of questions. Ie: What is an object (expect them to repeat what you told them); What happens if (insert 10x different cases). Teach by asking.
4. Set 0 expectations. If you get frustrated its because you have expectations. Many people have self confidence issues. Being disappointed will cause your students emotional stress and they will not be able to learn. They might start to avoid asking you questions...
5. Listen. Many times, your students could be saying what you wanted to hear, but worded differently. Their analogy could have the same concept as yours but very different. Learn to recognize what students are saying.
I can't emphasize #3 enough. When I teach, I never say more than 2 sentences without asking a question. Because you quickly realize that people have a hard time retaining more than 2-3 sentences at a time.
You should 100% invest your time to get better at teaching. Teaching is a skill that schools robs from our childhood growing up. It helps you sympathize with people better, understand people better, communicate with people better, etc., all pretty real skills to have.
In my experience of teaching I have to say it depends.
Basic coding is rather simple and basically everyone can do that.
Actually writing/designing larger applications is a skill most people don't have the time/patience to learn, similar to how most people can write on hackernews/twitter/facebook etc, but only few people can write a novel.
Apart from the sequential understanding of how a computer operates, not everyone can express the goal in code that is, for lack of a better word, beautiful. Meaning 'easy' to read/follow, simple, expressive etc. And even less people can document/describe what happens, and even less people can see how the code they uses resources (cpu cycles,wait times,storage,etc) and thus cannot optimize appropriately.
Any one can learn to code it isn't difficult to learn at all. Just like any one can learn math or english. What makes the difference is what level you can achieve. Just like math goes from elementary school to college level coding has a similar pattern where certain people get stuck in different areas. Hello world would be elementary level building large scalable enterprise application would be college level. You don't have to be able to build monsters applications that require knowing so much computer science that even physics and high level mathematics get involve. You can be a programmer that can build simple website that pays the bills. A entry level programmer doing simple website work makes $40,000 a year mattering your location and such. A senior arch developer makes around $400,000 a year also mattering location and such. Even some specialize areas pay their programmers $1,000,000 a year for what they can do. Some of the entry level people may make it to the top of the pile and some programmers will never leave that entry level position. I even know some programmers that are great, but decide to go another route. That has nothing to do with computers, because they get tired/burnout. Then I know some guys that are horrible programmers, but they enjoy it so much they just keep at it not caring.
By continually trying more difficult things. Of course, you may find that as you try more and more difficult things, your skills continue to grow. So your level can keep getting higher and higher. Also, note that some people reach higher levels in specific areas. One person might be amazing at low-level, highly optimized C++ or assembly, while another person might be amazing at building deep learning systems, while a third person might be great at designing hugely scalable and robust distributed web applications. Be curious, try learning a lot of things, find out what interests you, and what you're good at, and see how far you can go down the various rabbit holes.
"Know thyself". I don't know exactly what you mean by the question. That was just my first thought. If you are asking where you place in the spectrum of the guy that builds simple websites vs the guy that build large scale enterprise applications the only way you will know is keep on trying till you succeed. Some would argue failure is the measurement, but in truth we fail all the time. Failing is the easiest thing for one to accomplish so it could never be the metric we use to measure. Failing repeatedly till we achieve success is what life is about. Every time we run into a problem or new situation is a chance to grow to expand and to achieve something we couldn't the day before. The whole whats the difference between the master vs his apprentice? The master has already failed a million times while the apprentice has only failed a handful of times. The master never cared about reaching greatness he just cared about taking care of the challenge that was placed in front of him when it came. Those challenges are what turn him into a master and the same shall happen to you. The level you speak of is the spoon in the matrix it only exist in your mind the second you realize that then you can bend the spoon.
Volunteering is awesome and I'm glad you have found a niche and are recommending it.
For me, it's been excellent too but I chose something physical, challenging, outdoors and completely unrelated to tech. Selfishly, it's a needed change from sitting in front of a computer but still gives the satisfaction of helping people in deep ways.
But yes, directly helping people is deeply rewarding and satisfying.
I trust you're doing for the good, yet it reminded me a story I heard some time ago.
Story went like that:
I'm a gold miner. Gold mining is cool, everybody wants to gold mine. So I'll teach you FOR FREE how to gold mine, but during first year I offer you to gold mine for me at minimum wage. It's a shity goldmining you're doing, as you're newbie, so that excuses minimum wage, right? And I'm doing teaching for "free", right? There were hundreds I trained to goldmine and they didnt accept my WORK (sacred word) offer. They didnt also goldmine afterwards. I call it free service and in addition for my goldmining minions get 'feeling good' from it. Others call it sieve just to find enough 'wanna be gold miner' newbies.
It depends on what the exact deal is. I'm sure that in this particular case it is a good deal, however I've seen such jobs where they literally exploited these poor people.
yeah. My deal with them is to train them to become great engineers. No paperwork needed to enforce anything. They work with me 100% by choice and they know they could be getting a much higher salary somewhere else (and free to leave anytime).
If the only way to get a non-shit gold mining job is to have a few months experience in a 'real' gold mine, then the minimum wage job is well worth doing.
I started back in uni doing software dev for McDonald's wages. By the time I graduated I had two years' experience which got me my first 'real' job.
You make it sounds like the big corporations that pay developers good salaries are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. Apple, Google, Amazon, UBISoft, Nintendo, etc. are just as "exploitative". Part of developing your career as a software developer is knowing what you are worth at any point in time, and what your options are, and when to switch to a better option. I get the feeling the parent poster actually cares about maintaining a longer-term mutually beneficial relationship with his student/employees, which is already better than a lot of corporations out there.
Might I ask what kind of people attend your classes?
I am thinking on volunteering on an institution which helps people with less social resources.
Your idea sounds like a good way to give those people more possibilities, as you can learn to code without paying anything if you have an internet connection and enough motivation.
What I'm afraid of is asking too much from them. Did your 10 engineers start with some background in computer science or math?
I try to get people from government assistance (people who really need it). Recently CalWorks agreed to pay each student I take from them $13/hour for up to 6 months, so that really helps lighten the load on my wallet. All of them come with very little computer knowledge, let alone math or cs background. One of them never took a math class in high school.
Don't ask too much from them if your goal is to help them. People with less social resources have confidence issues (even though most don't show it) so compliment them frequently and make sure to tell them what they are doing well. Let them take their time!
What works for for me is that I have my students teach more beginner students so it lightens my teaching load and I can focus leading the engineering team. If someone is having a hard time understanding something, they just keep teaching that topic over and over again until they get it.
I have an accountability thing with a few close people in my life.
I commit to them that I'll do X items this week, and we catch up on them each few days. It helps me with keeping promises to myself and others, since I picked up bad habits during my depression's worst states.
It doesn't help with loneliness, but at least you have a person to talk to about what you're doing.
If you're working only on your startup, I'd recommend not burning too much time on it, and using the other time on other activities with other people.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadEdit: I was thinking of https://www.focusmate.com, which has live streaming.
We shall discuss a lot, just like dating. https://blog.angel.co/how-to-pick-a-co-founder-a984b704d0cb
If you're interested, check out https://electricautomata.slack.com/
If you need to be invited, give me a shout, I think I can invite people.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15600749
focusmate.com
If you are in Orange County CA check out this place:
http://peoplespace.us
We (ZeroTier) and many others are residents. As a bonus it features a 3d printing lab, a martial arts dojo (which somehow fits with hackers), and regular meetings of loads of hacker meetups and hackathons and the like.
https://helloremote.life/
People could check in with you every few hours and ask you about the progress on your TPS Reports.
All just for 5% of your startup.
A while back I was playing around on shodan looking for open webcams and found a few where you 'could log in and see people working'. Or, mostly, watch people who probably should be doing something productive not actually working.
My favorite was a town square in Bulgaria, wonder if that one's still open...
Last summer when IndieHackers launched on HackerNews and Complice was one of the businesses featured there, I made a "Hacker Hall" room (https://complice.co/room/hackers) and posted it to Show HN. It had people in it for a few weeks but it never quite stabilized.
Based on the experience with the private rooms, I think it would only take a couple of champions--people spending most of their working hours there--for it to then be attractive to visitors. This thread probably has enough people to do it. I'd say just comment below if you're willing to hang out in the room consistently for the next few weeks, even if nobody else is there. And if a few people are up for it, then give it a shot. And let me know so I can support you in that!
I think the other thing that's needed is for at least a couple people to actually turn on their cameras, and to chat during the pomodoro breaks, so that people are actually connecting with each other.
I've five weeks into working for myself and avoiding loneliness has become a key task for me every day. I wouldn't say I'm succeeding at it, to be honest. I know I could join a coworking space but I question whether it's worth $400+ a month when I wouldn't be able to attend the networking events since I have a family and need to be home at night. (And I don't need meeting space, and have a desk at home, and etc.)
I've started going to Whole Foods to work during the day just to be around other people. Not that we necessarily interact, but, you know, it's something.
Not sure why that never dawned on me.
Maybe weird. But I don't like sitting in my quiet apartment alone working. (I'm not particularly lonely - I just like the energy better when I'm "out")
Some days, though, you are alone at Starbucks, but it's a different kind of alone than working at home all day every day. You're surrounded by people, and when the alternative is zero social contact during your work day, it can make a difference.
Because people are really forward in rural areas.
Hm, now I see the bugs in this idea; poor internet speed for one, compounded by the fact that said person is likely going to want to move out there permanently...
And it's perfectly cool if we never interact with them. That's fine. Maybe sometimes all we want is to have someone around to be faster than when a lion comes out of the shadows and takes the slowest person down. Even if that, or some metaphorical equivalent of it, is exceedingly unlikely in a coffee shop.
I could, you know, go to the office, but everone interrupts me there. It's not lonely, but unproductive.
The trick is to be productive, but to feel like a human in the mix. For me, Starbucks does that.
Some kind of optimized noise is a weird concept, but I've found that it really works, from time to time. Especially if I'm doing something that requires a great deal of concentration rather than just "production".
https://www.noisli.com/
The core of the UX is the Focusmate session, a structured, 50-minute video interaction, where you and another user act as accountability partners for one another.
You'll find lots of solopreneurs as well as a handful of sole founders, but above all, you get human interaction without compromising productivity.
Disclaimer - I'm the founder. I was a sole founder for a lonnnng time and doing these sessions was my saving grace.
Solves the socialization part, though not the lack of feedback and discussion.
I don't know how to know beforehand if a co-working space has lots of social activities or not, maybe see if they have an event page or a FB page showing past events.
It sounds like "coworking space" and "coder makespace" got lumped together, and need to be teased apart to clarify what to expect.
I'm not sure whether this is available in every country/big city, but I've been working from Seats2Meet [1]. You can work there for free, and although it can get noisy, for me, having some buzz around me helps against loneliness and doesn't impact my productivity that much.
[1] http://seats2meet.com/
I’m currently working on a startup to help people that are remote so love this type of discussion.
Email is my username at gmail.
https://zenfounder.com
If you feel this way please get in touch with Sherry or listen to her podcasts and read the content. It can change your perspective and help embolden you.
Every Saturday, my wife and I volunteer at our local library (northside branch in santa clara) to teach people how to code.
We've been doing that for almost a year with surprising results. Now I'm leading about 10 engineers that I've taught from the ground up and they are happily building features for my app for minimum wage (temporarily). I'm hoping that one of my apps take off and I can pay everyone great salary.
Rob Walling is in MN right now, might be worth asking this question of him via his podcast, Startups for the Rest of Us. I assume he mostly interacts with his existing network remotely now though, not sure he could offer advice on creating such a network without bootstrapping in-person.
It may take longer if they're not as adept. They can try some strategies to assist coding, such as books, checklists, pair programming, etc.
Worded much better than I could have put it.
Not everyone can draw/paint; not everyone can sing; not everyone can learn new languages proficiently; not everyone is good with numbers; not everyone is good at teaching; not everyone is good with working with other people; not everyone is athletic. And by this I mean that some will naturally be good at learning and ultimately mastering the above list of things, while others have to work much harder to get even close, with a lower ceiling.
Most importantly though, it's not up to someone else to decide whether you're good at something or not. Everyone should have an opportunity to take class or learn a subject and find out for themselves if that's something that they're good at or naturally inclined to. And if they're not good at it, it's not the end of the world because there is something else that's probably more suitable for them that's just as important to this world as coding.
The trouble we run into is that we often think of programming or coding as something more important or more sacred than other disciplines, when in reality it's just another in a long line of disciplines that takes practice and a little bit of natural talent.
You have a bit of a goldmine here: there are _guaranteed_ a ton of people on here who wouldn't mind a bit of private tuition. Bam, instant feedback.
1. Test - before starting any topic, make sure your student has a grasp of the prerequisites by giving them simple tasks. Just because you have taught them the prerequisites a week ago does not mean that they didn't forget.
2. When you are teaching them, talk as little as possible. The only thing you should be saying is the concepts.
3. Ask lots of questions. Ie: What is an object (expect them to repeat what you told them); What happens if (insert 10x different cases). Teach by asking.
4. Set 0 expectations. If you get frustrated its because you have expectations. Many people have self confidence issues. Being disappointed will cause your students emotional stress and they will not be able to learn. They might start to avoid asking you questions...
5. Listen. Many times, your students could be saying what you wanted to hear, but worded differently. Their analogy could have the same concept as yours but very different. Learn to recognize what students are saying.
I can't emphasize #3 enough. When I teach, I never say more than 2 sentences without asking a question. Because you quickly realize that people have a hard time retaining more than 2-3 sentences at a time.
You should 100% invest your time to get better at teaching. Teaching is a skill that schools robs from our childhood growing up. It helps you sympathize with people better, understand people better, communicate with people better, etc., all pretty real skills to have.
Basic coding is rather simple and basically everyone can do that.
Actually writing/designing larger applications is a skill most people don't have the time/patience to learn, similar to how most people can write on hackernews/twitter/facebook etc, but only few people can write a novel.
Apart from the sequential understanding of how a computer operates, not everyone can express the goal in code that is, for lack of a better word, beautiful. Meaning 'easy' to read/follow, simple, expressive etc. And even less people can document/describe what happens, and even less people can see how the code they uses resources (cpu cycles,wait times,storage,etc) and thus cannot optimize appropriately.
For me, it's been excellent too but I chose something physical, challenging, outdoors and completely unrelated to tech. Selfishly, it's a needed change from sitting in front of a computer but still gives the satisfaction of helping people in deep ways.
But yes, directly helping people is deeply rewarding and satisfying.
Story went like that: I'm a gold miner. Gold mining is cool, everybody wants to gold mine. So I'll teach you FOR FREE how to gold mine, but during first year I offer you to gold mine for me at minimum wage. It's a shity goldmining you're doing, as you're newbie, so that excuses minimum wage, right? And I'm doing teaching for "free", right? There were hundreds I trained to goldmine and they didnt accept my WORK (sacred word) offer. They didnt also goldmine afterwards. I call it free service and in addition for my goldmining minions get 'feeling good' from it. Others call it sieve just to find enough 'wanna be gold miner' newbies.
I started back in uni doing software dev for McDonald's wages. By the time I graduated I had two years' experience which got me my first 'real' job.
That being said a founder support group is an awesome thing. I really want to go to a VR one if such exists.
I am thinking on volunteering on an institution which helps people with less social resources.
Your idea sounds like a good way to give those people more possibilities, as you can learn to code without paying anything if you have an internet connection and enough motivation.
What I'm afraid of is asking too much from them. Did your 10 engineers start with some background in computer science or math?
Don't ask too much from them if your goal is to help them. People with less social resources have confidence issues (even though most don't show it) so compliment them frequently and make sure to tell them what they are doing well. Let them take their time!
What works for for me is that I have my students teach more beginner students so it lightens my teaching load and I can focus leading the engineering team. If someone is having a hard time understanding something, they just keep teaching that topic over and over again until they get it.
I commit to them that I'll do X items this week, and we catch up on them each few days. It helps me with keeping promises to myself and others, since I picked up bad habits during my depression's worst states.
It doesn't help with loneliness, but at least you have a person to talk to about what you're doing.
If you're working only on your startup, I'd recommend not burning too much time on it, and using the other time on other activities with other people.