That is a hard pill to swallow, and good on you for taking that feedback and learning from it.
Quite possibly the best two best pieces of advice I have ever received were on how to receive, and how to give, feedback.
For the former, always take critical feedback at face value, and take the time to thank them for it. Assume that their feedback is true, and ask yourself what you could or should change to address it.
Even if the answer ends up being "nothing", it is a very useful mental exercise, and chance to learn and grow.
It sounds like you learned that lesson well. :)
The second is that all feedback you give should be actionable, specific, and kind.
It is shocking how much those two small pieces of wisdom have improved my life over the years.
This relates to the Presenter's Paradox, where the presenter has seen both options while the recipient sees only one. As such, they prefer different things.
One study even quantified it[1]. For example, they found that people perceived the value of an iPod at $108, while an iPod with plus a free music download was valued at $86. Side-by-side, the choice is obvious, but individually humans tend to evaluate bundles based on some average rather than a sum.
This has immediate, practical applications for us in everyday life:
* If you're going to buy someone an expensive gift, don't add any extras or bonus accessories.
* If you're sending out resumes, mention your most relevant experience without padding it out with less relevant ones.
* If you're up for a review, "I fixed serious issue X" will make you seem more valuable than "I fixed serious issue X, and this unaligned icon on the web site"
* Eat better. Cook your own meals. Do meal prep to make it easier.
* Start exercising. Start 3x per week, 15 min of HIIT per day.
* Drink a large glass of water when you wake up. Drink water throughout the day.
* Don't drink more than one cup of coffee per day
* Don't use sleeping pills
* Work hard during your 8 hours and let it go when you leave.
* Say "No" more at work. Do it with a smile.
* Do a few minutes of stretching and meditation every day.
* Start looking for another job. Put the feelers out. Set up notifications. Take it easy and schedule one or two phone calls per week. Think of it like fishing. You're just chilling out and casting your line and reeling it in. Sooner or later you'll hook something nice.
* Go for a 30-60min walk every day
* Get off of social media. Do more things in the real world.
* Spend more time at work conversing with people you like. Invite them to lunch. Go for walks with them. Go for drinks occasionally.
* Don't be in a rush to quit. Keep earning your good money until you catch the big fish.
* Eliminate all stress-inducing things and people in your life with extreme prejudice.
* When you feel fatigued, rest.
* Reconnect with true friends and family who lift you up. Disconnect with those that bring you down.
* Pick a hobby that makes you happy and do it at least 2x per week.
* Push back on everything possible at work. Does someone REALLY need "all the work [you] have to do" or are you taking it on unnecessarily. Again, say "No".
* Talk to your boss about taking a break or reducing workload. Let them know you're feeling overwhelmed. Ask for help and/or possibly a change.
* Reconsider meds from your therapist unless you have been diagnosed with an actual condition. Meds fix one thing and break several other things. Self-medicate with sleep, food and exercise but commit to not missing your "medication".
Unfortunately, the shortest possible answer is really hand wavy and vague. That kind of knowledge tends to come fairly organically if you really listen to what people say and aren't afraid to share a little bit about yourself.
When you're in the early stages of a venture, ideally, you know a little bit about the person you're talking to, know a bit about the problem they're having and are genuinely interested in how they found you and if your solution is working for them. That gives you a ton of fertile ground. In this stage, I love to thank people for using my product, tell them that because my product is so new it's very important to me that all of my users are very happy, and then ask them for any feedback or advice they have. It sounds very corny and scripted (and honestly, it is), but most of the time, if my product is any good and if it solves a real problem, everyone I talk to will have something.
At that point, it's about always validating what the person says to you. It doesn't matter if you agree, if you plan to implement the feature, or if you think it is the most incredibly stupid thing you've ever heard. Someone cares enough about your product to give you some feedback! Hearing feedback is an honour and I think it should be treated as such.
If you get those two things down, you'll learn from almost everyone you talk to. Particularly those people who need a little extra help. And, when you're working with people who need a little extra help, it's good to validate them too. Maybe you have a user who has trouble with copying and pasting. That sucks, but it's also an unbelievable opportunity. As builders, we need people like that to help us escape our own little, highly technical echo chambers!
Aside from those things, it really just comes down to active listening. If you listen closely, you'll start to notice that lots of people leave little threads in their statements. They'll often leave these little threads when they're about to pause and let you talk. For example, if you ask "how are you?" someone who is really open to talking will reply, "I'm good, it's a beautiful day today." That little thread about a beautiful day opens up lots of questions. If you don't already know where they're from, you can ask. If you do know, you can confirm, "Ah, you're from Timbuktu, right?"
Also, it's important to note that this only really works if you're genuinely interested in what people are saying. A big part of the game is knowing when to stop playing. We live in a world where it's expected to be prosocial and interested in everyone around you. But honestly, there's nothing wrong with being selective in who interests you. I would caution you that if you aren't genuinely interested in what people are telling you, you need to either get genuinely interested, or you need to replace yourself with someone who is. But, there's no value judgement in that. We're all programmed differently and it's all good.
Definitely. 1054Z is a bargain for what it is. I’ve got a DG1022Z gen as well and you can use the two together to do protocol injection. Record with the DS1054Z and dump into DG1022Z arb memory then use the DS1054Z pattern trigger to trigger the DG1022Z.
Totally amazing bits of kit and together cost me less than a bottom end 100Mhz Tektronix scope. Both have Ethernet too so I do a lot of scripting with python and the two. You can add your own features then! So far I've written a simple distortion analyser similar to the one bob Pease described for ED magazine in around 2001. Basically it subtracts input and output and then applies arbitrary phase shift and gain and then subtracts that from the original signal to see where the distortion occurs in the cycle.
Only complaint is that the DG1022Z csv parser is a piece of shit if you want to load your own arb data. Works better over LXI.
That most of us struggle in a pointless daily grind, in the false belief that it gives our lives some sort of meaning. Most of us are wasting our lives doing stuff we don't really want to, instead of remembering to enjoy life. After all, we only get one shot at this.
That people should open their minds and be more accepting of new experiences that may challenge their own strongly held beliefs.
That we are much too terrified of drugs that are currently illegal, and not nearly terrified enough of drugs that are currently legal.
This paper is a pretty comprehensive take on Vipassana, so in case anyone's looking for something a bit more general, I'd like to offer a complementary summary based on my own experiences.
Vipassana is a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Silent in this case really means distraction-free, entertainment-free, or stimulation-free. Think of it as the diametric opposite of social news. No noise, no conversation, no instant gratification, no easy pleasures (not even reading, writing or music). You just eat, sleep and meditate, with occasional breaks in between.
During the course you see other students and listen to recorded meditation lessons, but you are, effectively, alone. It's a cultural trope that having nothing but your own mind for company sends you a bit mad, and in my experience that was basically true. Normally you can count on the distraction stream to save you from your own thoughts, and without it you can spend days stuck in ever-intensifying thought loops with nothing to break you out of them.
Which, to me, gets to the heart of Vipassana. It's not really about silence; it's a specific kind of meditation designed to change your relationship to sensation. I think of it like audio engineering: we have a gain control on what we feel, and when the sensations get too much we turn them down until we're comfortable again. The problem is that you turn down everything at once; distracting yourself from painful experiences also distracts you from pleasurable ones. Keep turning the gain down and you eventually end up with a featureless experience: no peaks or troughs, just a flat line.
The reason you start with silence is because you're going to turn the gain back up, and you don't want to blow out your speakers at the first loud noise. The technique focuses on bodily sensations, but since sensations are mental and physical everything kinda comes along for the ride. You spend hours focusing on the most minute feelings until they fill your entire mind and your whole world is an area of skin the size of a postage stamp. It can get pretty intense.
But what makes it too intense? You do. It's not like bad news is painful because it melts your auditory nerves. Rather, you react to the sound, then you react to your reaction, then you react to that reaction and so on until you've built this unbearable feedback loop. Then you turn down the gain because, damn, that was LOUD. But that's bad engineering; you gotta go fix the feedback at the source. And that means unlearning your reactions.
That was my core experience of Vipassana. Turn up the sensation, learn to accept the sensation. Feel more, react less, repeat. Everything I tried to avoid thinking about, I thought about. Everything I didn't want to feel, I felt. I was defenceless as my self-sabotaging thought patterns sabotaged me over and over until I realised I was the one doing it and I could just... stop.
It's easy to dwell on the hard parts, but it was often quite peaceful. I spent an hour watching a family of lizards (they hid until I'd been still for fifteen minutes), another watching the finches chase each other and listening to their tiny wings, and another just looking at trees. Have you ever noticed how green trees are? I don't think I'd seen anything that green since I was a child.
Three years ago, I was the sole employee/founder of my startup. Today, I'm CTO of a 21-person company with a 6-person dev team.
As an individual developer, my default loop is "Find something to do. Do it. Repeat."
As a CTO, my default loop is "First, cycle through all my employees and make sure that I have equipped them to be happy and productive in their jobs. Second, find something to do. If possible, delegate it; if not, do it. Repeat."
My personal recommendations, mostly stuff I've got:
Soldering iron: I like the Hakko FX-888D. $90-110 or so. They have better if you can afford it, but that one's very good. The FX-951 is the next step up, and can take micro-soldering handpieces and has the quick-change tips. It's about $240.
Get a chisel tip, eg Hakko T18-S3, a bevel tip (T18-S6), and a bent-conical tip (T18-BR02). The conical tip is perfect for lots of general purpose work, you can use the fine point or the sides of the bend. The back of the bend can be used for drag soldering, the inside of the bend makes soldering wires together easy. The chisel tip is good for soldering things with more thermal mass (PCB-mount heatsinks) and the bevel tip is pretty necessary for drag soldering on QFP and similar surface mount packages.
Hot air station: Probably something cheap from china, there aren't any particularly affordable name-brand ones that I know of. Weller has the WHA900 for around $600.
Magnification: Get at least one of the magnifying headsets ($8-10 on Amazon) and a desk magnifier with LED ring light. Better option is an AmScope stereo microscope, such as the SM-4NTP and a ring light for it like the LED-144W-ZK. $480 total.
PCB vise: I have an Aven 17010, it works pretty well. MUCH better than trying to hold a board in the helping hands.
Flux: Get liquid flux with a syringe. Amtech is the best, but there is a lot of counterfeit stuff out there, and Amtech doesn't sell it directly (bulk orders only). https://mailin.repair/amtech-nc-559-v2-30-cc-16160.html sells the real flux.
Tweezers. Any ESD safe set.
Fume extractor: VERY important for health. You do NOT want to be breathing in flux fumes. A high-volume HIPAA air purifier on the desk works, ($150 or so) or a dedicated device like the Hakko FA430 is even better ($625).
Oscilloscope: Rigol DS1054-Z. 50MHz, hackable to 100MHz bandwidth easily. $400. There's no better cheap scope at the moment (IMO).
Function generator: Siglent SDG805. $270. Needed to give you analog signal inputs. Part of the big-3 of 'scope, power supply, and function gen.
Power supply: Get a linear supply. The Tekpower TP3005D-3 is $200, and is an actual linear power supply. The knobs are coarse adjust only (it's analog), I replaced the control potentiometers with 10-turn versions which substantially improved the accuracy of the output. There's also the Siglent SPD3303X-E ($340) if you want a digital panel version. You definitely need arbitrary +- voltages for lots of very basic circuits, PC power supplies are very limiting and too noisy if you do any sensitive analog design.
Multimeter: Get a safe one (HRC fuses, proper transient voltage suppression, etc.) Can't go wrong with Fluke, of course, but Extech, Brymen, and some others have cheap and capable handheld meters. $100-300, depending on brand. Be sure it has a micro-amp range! The really cheap ones don't, and you WILL need it if designing embedded stuff.
Logic Analyzer: Get a LogicPort. pctestinstruments.com. They're $390, for a 34-channel 500MHz device, very nice for the money. Needed if doing much digital work. (Keysight's 34-channel standalone analyzer is $12165 base price. 5GHz, but still, twelve grand...)
Spectrum Analyzer: If you're doing RF work (radio design), you'll need one. Otherwise skip it. The Siglent SSA3021X with tracking generator add-on is $1764 (pretty cheap) and quite capable (9kHz to 2GHz). It's also hackable / software upgradeable into the 3.5GHz model. The Rigol DSA815-TG is $1550, but significantly worse (smaller display, worse resolution bandwidth, max 1.5GHz, etc).
Be sure to get a GFCI outlet and a GFCI adapter or two. The oscilloscope, function gen, spectrum analyzer, etc, all are mains earth referenced, and should each have their own GFCI plug. If you accidentally connect the ground lead of any of them to something other than ground the GFCI will trip and prevent the ground traces from being blown up inside the device. They're about $20 each, well worth it IMO.
You might want an anti-static mat and wrist-strap.
Get a bunch of small drawers, eg https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LDH3JC. Print labels for them, use them to store resistors, capacitors, and other types. You can fit two values of component in each drawer (though they don't come with enough dividers :/). You want at least 96 drawers for resistors and 32 for capacitors assuming you're buying 1% or 5% resistors and 10-20% capacitors (pretty normal). I bought a kit of resistors (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017L9GKGK) and (https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Knows-Electronics-Value-Capacitor...) for capacitors (Joe Knows Electronics kits are good for stocking up, they have more of the most common components in their kits.)
Get some desoldering wick and a solder sucker too. Also some tip tinner, and/or a sal ammoniac block. Make sure you have a roll of kapton tape to hold parts down while you solder them (it survives high temperatures). If you'll be doing a lot of surface mount you'll want a reflow oven and solder paste.
EDIT: One tip I forgot, very important: When you buy parts (on DigiKey/Mouser or similar) make sure you buy extras. At least the number needed for the first volume discount or 10, whichever you can afford. 3x the number needed for the project at the minimum. You WILL drop parts, burn them out, and otherwise damage them. It's much easier if you already have spares, don't have to wait for shipping, and don't have to pay for shipping. This will also help you develop a parts library, as you do more projects you'll be likely to re-use common parts and already have many left over from past work.
Quite possibly the best two best pieces of advice I have ever received were on how to receive, and how to give, feedback.
For the former, always take critical feedback at face value, and take the time to thank them for it. Assume that their feedback is true, and ask yourself what you could or should change to address it.
Even if the answer ends up being "nothing", it is a very useful mental exercise, and chance to learn and grow.
It sounds like you learned that lesson well. :)
The second is that all feedback you give should be actionable, specific, and kind.
It is shocking how much those two small pieces of wisdom have improved my life over the years.