It's true, Sun does charge extra for its development tools. This is in my personal opinion pretty silly, but less of a problem than you might think. There might be advantages to using Sun's tools I don't recognize, not being a developer, but I haven't noticed the lack. Cross compilation, maybe? I haven't done very much of that.
I use gcc and friends instead. Apache on Solaris is also quite lovely, and where would we be without ssh? Or bind? How about the ever-lovin' sendmail? Okay, okay, someday I'll get with the times and try out qmail or postfix.... but note the commonality here? And I almost forgot to mention Perl! What was I thinking?
If you don't feel like compiling things today, you can get a selection of packages from http://www.sunfreeware.com/. They're already out with Solaris 8 packages.
If it makes you uncomfortable to use gcc because it's unsupported, there's ways to buy support. I've never bothered: things just compile cleanly for me, with no fuss or muss, other than the occasional need to tell Make you're using gcc instead of cc. On the other hand, I'm a system administrator, so I use it to build my usual suspect tools, and I'm hardly pushing it to its limits. It's possible that hard-core developers have other opinions of whether or not it has quirks under Solaris.
I don't know what's shipping with Solaris 8; my knowledge peters out in Solaris 7, since I'm a very conservative weasel and tend to run a rev or two back (no matter the source!) unless there is a pressing reason not to, or unless the changes are minor or fix a security flaw.
Try imagining how you will feel in three years if your stock options are worthless. If you would still feel like it was worthwhile, even at the lower salary, then it's worthwhile. If you would feel like you had gone down the wrong path, then consider another. Don't get distracted by multiplying your options by 10 or 100; remember that it takes a lot of work and luck to turn that paper into money.
If you are including financial factors in your decision, another important thing to consider is that the earlier you invest money, the more it is worth later. Therefore, thousands of dollars of salary are worth a fair amount more than those thousands of dollars realized four years later.
I find money is sort of like an invisible boulder; I can't see it, but it has undeniable properties of mass and displacement. It's hard to think about it clearly, or even to fully believe that it really exists and is mine, but if I set up automatic processes to deal with it, then it more or less takes care of itself. Automatic deposit was a godsend; so was setting up my account to automatically dump money into a mutual fund. Then I could look around and realize I really could <fill in the dream here>.
Here are my three proven secrets to financial happiness, all cribbed from my boyfriend who is really very clever on this topic:
1) Save money for retirement. 401(k)s are a great way to do this if they're available to you, even if your company doesn't match. If your company does match, it's free money! It'd be silly to turn that down. These are great because of compound interest. I put about 4 years into one about 5-10 years earlier than most people start and it will be a major factor in my retirement, if not the sole factor.
2) Keep an emergency fund. I used to go into a gibbering panic when a car broke down, because it could ruin me financially for six months to a year. Now we keep enough money earmarked to cover big car repairs, or health insurance deductibles, or an emergency flight home. It does wonders for peace of mind when you have the funds on hand, and a plan for how to refresh them after the emergency (monthly small payments, and count on law of averages to not feed you more than 2 emergencies in a short time.)
3) Budget for luxuries! This was a hard one to drive through to me; I assumed that if I was saving for something I should save all-out. No fun now for fun later, was the thought. This was a very silly way to behave. Luxuries for me have been as small as canned tomatoes or meat to add to my rice and beans, to an occasional movie out, to as large as buying a nice used car, as well as the rampant comics habit (or is that a necessity?). Luxuries are compared to your current baseline lifestyle, not to everyone else's, is the thing to keep in mind. We had a year where we had saved up $400 to go on vacation; when we realized that that would get us two days stay somewhere and not even cover the gas to get there, instead we took a week off, stayed home, and went to all of the restaurants we couldn't normally afford. Okay, maybe this sort of thing isn't much of a problem for your typical highly paid geek.
The basic theory here is to make sure that your present, short term future, and long term future needs, both tangible and intangible, all get met.
Which leads me to the passion part. I don't think it is worthwhile to work somewhere that demands the amount of work a typical startup will without it meeting those needs; it really really helps to be passionate about it. If you really love the company, then it's fun. If you don't, then it can be torture. For me a big factor is: "are we doing something cool? Am _I_ doing something cool?"
Startups are really crazy; I went looking for another startup precisely because I loved the energy and craziness of the first one I ever worked for. It pays off in a lot of ways besides money: working with clever people on hard problems is its own reward. I love working with people I can respect, and I love being put under pressure, even though the effects on me can be pretty grueling. On the positive side, the pressure is a big engine that makes me push myself harder than I usually would; I've possibly learned and done a lot more in a fraction of the time than I would have at a fun but more static Big Company -- because I had to!
Not to knock Big Companies; the people there were great, and I still sharply miss working with them. But a large reason why I left was because I wanted to try walking the tightrope for a while. And it's hugely worthwhile to me because of the intangibles. The options are more of a reminder that everyone at my company is in the same boat: we _all_ have a vested (no pun intended) interest in seeing the company succeed. I don't think it would be nearly as worthwhile if I were only "in it for the money."
To name a mouse from the keyboard side, has anyone used the Twiddler, at http://www.handykey.com/?
I drooled over the web pages a while back when I was thinking about getting an exercise bike (spot the geek!), but since I'm using a lot of different platforms right now, and don't have time to exercise, I'm trying to be patient until I don't have to build cables for some of them. The idea of having an inertial mouse sounds great, though I doubt it has the built in scroll function a la the wheel mouse (strangely addictive, that little wheel).
Basically, if you're holding the twiddler in your hand and point your index finger at the screen, the mouse pointer should follow what you point at. You don't have to do this; you can also just let your hand hang at your side and handle the directions relatively without pointing. What I don't know yet is if it's decent for people with small hands, if it fits my work patterns, etc.
Since I find that switching often between mouse and keyboard leads to aching wrists and a certain irritation factor from the context-switching, this sounds like about the perfect product once I either get more time to play or it becomes more commoditized.
Does anyone know of any other chord keyboard/mouse combos like this?
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It's true, Sun does charge extra for its development tools. This is in my personal opinion pretty silly, but less of a problem than you might think. There might be advantages to using Sun's tools I don't recognize, not being a developer, but I haven't noticed the lack. Cross compilation, maybe? I haven't done very much of that.
I use gcc and friends instead. Apache on Solaris is also quite lovely, and where would we be without ssh? Or bind? How about the ever-lovin' sendmail? Okay, okay, someday I'll get with the times and try out qmail or postfix.... but note the commonality here? And I almost forgot to mention Perl! What was I thinking?
If you don't feel like compiling things today, you can get a selection of packages from http://www.sunfreeware.com/. They're already out with Solaris 8 packages.
If it makes you uncomfortable to use gcc because it's unsupported, there's ways to buy support. I've never bothered: things just compile cleanly for me, with no fuss or muss, other than the occasional need to tell Make you're using gcc instead of cc. On the other hand, I'm a system administrator, so I use it to build my usual suspect tools, and I'm hardly pushing it to its limits. It's possible that hard-core developers have other opinions of whether or not it has quirks under Solaris.
I don't know what's shipping with Solaris 8; my knowledge peters out in Solaris 7, since I'm a very conservative weasel and tend to run a rev or two back (no matter the source!) unless there is a pressing reason not to, or unless the changes are minor or fix a security flaw.
Try imagining how you will feel in three years if your stock options are worthless. If you would still feel like it was worthwhile, even at the lower salary, then it's worthwhile. If you would feel like you had gone down the wrong path, then consider another. Don't get distracted by multiplying your options by 10 or 100; remember that it takes a lot of work and luck to turn that paper into money.
If you are including financial factors in your decision, another important thing to consider is that the earlier you invest money, the more it is worth later. Therefore, thousands of dollars of salary are worth a fair amount more than those thousands of dollars realized four years later.
I find money is sort of like an invisible boulder; I can't see it, but it has undeniable properties of mass and displacement. It's hard to think about it clearly, or even to fully believe that it really exists and is mine, but if I set up automatic processes to deal with it, then it more or less takes care of itself. Automatic deposit was a godsend; so was setting up my account to automatically dump money into a mutual fund. Then I could look around and realize I really could <fill in the dream here>.
Here are my three proven secrets to financial happiness, all cribbed from my boyfriend who is really very clever on this topic:
1) Save money for retirement. 401(k)s are a great way to do this if they're available to you, even if your company doesn't match. If your company does match, it's free money! It'd be silly to turn that down. These are great because of compound interest. I put about 4 years into one about 5-10 years earlier than most people start and it will be a major factor in my retirement, if not the sole factor.
2) Keep an emergency fund. I used to go into a gibbering panic when a car broke down, because it could ruin me financially for six months to a year. Now we keep enough money earmarked to cover big car repairs, or health insurance deductibles, or an emergency flight home. It does wonders for peace of mind when you have the funds on hand, and a plan for how to refresh them after the emergency (monthly small payments, and count on law of averages to not feed you more than 2 emergencies in a short time.)
3) Budget for luxuries! This was a hard one to drive through to me; I assumed that if I was saving for something I should save all-out. No fun now for fun later, was the thought. This was a very silly way to behave. Luxuries for me have been as small as canned tomatoes or meat to add to my rice and beans, to an occasional movie out, to as large as buying a nice used car, as well as the rampant comics habit (or is that a necessity?). Luxuries are compared to your current baseline lifestyle, not to everyone else's, is the thing to keep in mind. We had a year where we had saved up $400 to go on vacation; when we realized that that would get us two days stay somewhere and not even cover the gas to get there, instead we took a week off, stayed home, and went to all of the restaurants we couldn't normally afford. Okay, maybe this sort of thing isn't much of a problem for your typical highly paid geek.
The basic theory here is to make sure that your present, short term future, and long term future needs, both tangible and intangible, all get met.
Which leads me to the passion part. I don't think it is worthwhile to work somewhere that demands the amount of work a typical startup will without it meeting those needs; it really really helps to be passionate about it. If you really love the company, then it's fun. If you don't, then it can be torture. For me a big factor is: "are we doing something cool? Am _I_ doing something cool?"
Startups are really crazy; I went looking for another startup precisely because I loved the energy and craziness of the first one I ever worked for. It pays off in a lot of ways besides money: working with clever people on hard problems is its own reward. I love working with people I can respect, and I love being put under pressure, even though the effects on me can be pretty grueling. On the positive side, the pressure is a big engine that makes me push myself harder than I usually would; I've possibly learned and done a lot more in a fraction of the time than I would have at a fun but more static Big Company -- because I had to!
Not to knock Big Companies; the people there were great, and I still sharply miss working with them. But a large reason why I left was because I wanted to try walking the tightrope for a while. And it's hugely worthwhile to me because of the intangibles. The options are more of a reminder that everyone at my company is in the same boat: we _all_ have a vested (no pun intended) interest in seeing the company succeed. I don't think it would be nearly as worthwhile if I were only "in it for the money."
To name a mouse from the keyboard side, has anyone used the Twiddler, at http://www.handykey.com/?
I drooled over the web pages a while back when I was thinking about getting an exercise bike (spot the geek!), but since I'm using a lot of different platforms right now, and don't have time to exercise, I'm trying to be patient until I don't have to build cables for some of them. The idea of having an inertial mouse sounds great, though I doubt it has the built in scroll function a la the wheel mouse (strangely addictive, that little wheel).
Basically, if you're holding the twiddler in your hand and point your index finger at the screen, the mouse pointer should follow what you point at. You don't have to do this; you can also just let your hand hang at your side and handle the directions relatively without pointing. What I don't know yet is if it's decent for people with small hands, if it fits my work patterns, etc.
Since I find that switching often between mouse and keyboard leads to aching wrists and a certain irritation factor from the context-switching, this sounds like about the perfect product once I either get more time to play or it becomes more commoditized.
Does anyone know of any other chord keyboard/mouse combos like this?