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Why you should never be a startup girlfriend
For all of you ladies who may or may not be flirting with the idea of dating a startup programmer, you should know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.
- xlnt 18y agoWhy you should never be a girlfriend: relationships usually end painfully
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- alex_c 18y agoAh. Don't make me break out the Tennyson. "'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Sorry, I had to!
- xlnt 18y ago"'tis better to have loved and lost 5 times, than never to have loved at all." Is this version true too?
- mrtron 18y agoEverything is better in 5's! Serial entrepreneur, serial lover?
- xlnt 18y agoMost people frown on serial marriages for some reason. :)
- Prrometheus 18y agoBecause each one takes 50% of your assets.
- astrec 18y agoSerial monogamy is de rigueur these days, no?
- davidw 18y agoYeah, you need to iterate to refine the process.
- xlnt 18y agoIf every iteration hurts then is iterating a lot really a good plan? In each iteration one believes this is the final iteration that will last forever. If not, you're doing it wrong. How is that compatible with planning to iterate?
- gommm 18y agoIt's the same as creating a company... If the failure rate is high, trying more than one time bring the failure rate down... But when you are creating a company if you start by thinking that it's going to fail, you are already out of the game ;-)
- edb 18y agoyou need to watch a movie called "Les Poupees Russes" (Sorry, don't know how to do accents on my iPhone)
- aaronblohowiak 18y agoBelieving things will last forever is not a necessary attribute for love. All things are ephemeral.
- sophist 18y agoOnly people who haven't really lost someone say this kinda stuff. The pain of loss eclipses all the good parts of having loved by a large margin, in my experience.
- qwph 18y agoLosing someone (like most other things) gets easier the more times you do it...
- sophist 18y agoAgain, spoken like someone who hasn't lost someone. You may become progressively less likely to let any given person become that important to you over time, but losing someone truly important really doesn't get easier.
- qwph 18y agoI've lost more than one someone over the years. To be honest, the most important thing is being happy with yourself, whether you're in a relationship or not.
- aaronblohowiak 18y agoThen you're doing it [grieving|loving] wrong.
- jfarmer 18y agoWhy you should never start a company: most fail painfully.
- dmix 18y agoBuried for innaccurate title. She concludes that she actually enjoys being a startup girlfriend. Oh wait this isn't digg. Up arrowed.
- tlrobinson 18y agoAh yes, "the zone". Whenever I start living with / working with / dating someone I always make sure to warn them about "the zone". I've been known to completely tune out everything around me to the point that it takes someone waving their hands in front of my face to get my attention. I try to tell people it's nothing personal, and I'm not consciously ignoring them, but I don't know if they believe me. The worst is when I realize 5 minutes later that someone was trying to get my attention and gave up.
- vaksel 18y ago"~Own a Mac or be willing to admit that you should." Who codes on a Mac?
- IsaacSchlueter 18y agoI do.
- jfarmer 18y agoI'd say about 70-80% of the engineers I know in the Bay Area, including me.
- xlnt 18y agoMe.
- gaius 18y agoUhh, pretty much everyone these days, dude.
- izaidi 18y agoWhat do you code on?
- davidw 18y agoLinux or BSD is where it's at for hackers. MacOS is nice too, of course, it's simple enough that my mom can use it. Just that if you really want to be in control of things, you probably want Linux. If I had to do sales or something else where looking flashy was important, I guess that would be another place where Apple's very nice looking products would be a good pick, but Dell+Ubuntu is a much better price/performance bet for someone who just wants to hack, a lot, and enjoys the freedom and control that come with free software. Admittedly, not for everyone, but then again, this site is for hackers, right?.
- pavelludiq 18y agoI code on Kubuntu using vim. Macs are too expensive in my area + i don't really know of any advantages to kubuntu other than the prettier interface. My kde desktop is really fast and i can do my daily tasks really fast so i have no problem with it. Macs are probably cool too, but i enjoy flexibility more than pretty icons, and my crystal clear icons are pretty enough for me. ps. Fluxbox is pretty too.
- jfarmer 18y agoThere's something about lists like this that bother me. I know it shouldn't -- it's meant to be light and humorous. I think what bothers me is that the person she describes is really, godawful boring. The line that stands out for me: "If you want to understand your boyfriend, understand computers. It’s not that difficult." I...I just don't know. I'm an engineer at an early-stage startup and computers are a big part of my life, but I certainly hope they're not the best way for my girlfriend to understand me. I'm not ribbing the article. It's cute. But when I read it I cringe and maybe worry a little bit that I actually am like that. I'd also feel terrible if I treated my girlfriend like that.
- philh 18y agoI agree. I've never had a girlfriend or worked at a startup, but I hope I'd be mature enough not to care if she used Windows, had an obsolete/nonexistent gaget collection and was happy working in a cubicle. And that I'd understand her well enough to be able to show my affection in ways that meant something to her, rather than requiring her to understand that it means something to me.
- akd 18y agoHow many people have you teased for being technologically inferior, such as writing "u" instead of you or accidentally installing Gator? When you rip into other people for doing this, even if not directly towards your girlfriend, she sees that and probably starts feeling self-conscious if she is a technological dunce too.
- kimboslice 18y agoOr... "why you should never date someone who writes blog posts named 'why you should never be a startup girlfriend'"
- holygoat 18y ago+1, correct use of quotes.
- jamesjyu 18y agoMany of these points are nullified when you find a girlfriend that is also in the startup world. Share the pains and joys together!
- jyothi 18y agotrue and better you both read HN sitting opp each other sipping coffee :)
- silencio 18y agoI guess someone needs to write an article for the 1% of people who fall into the "startup boyfriend" category. I appreciate men who understand computers, use Macs (or, well, I'm platform agnostic but prefer !windows), know what twitter is, and will wait in line with me to get a new iPhone. :)
- tpiep 18y ago> "You will have to appreciate the time and effort it took to run a search engine optimization campaign on the website he made you for your birthday, and how important that is to him. He shows his affection differently than other guys do sometimes." That's funny.
- jmtame 18y agoFor those of us that are single... Does a single girl out there EXIST that could understand even a few of these items? Particularly the one about weekends? I've scoured my campus and I have yet to find one. If(oneExists) { letMeKnow(); } else { sigh++; }
- gecko 18y agoIn college, there may be some, but they're few and far between--largely because they, like you, are holed up in their dorms all day playing WoW. Once you graduate, and you both start having more normal lives, it gets much easier. Here in NYC, I've not had any trouble finding geek-compatible girls, and have been in several overall very pleasant relationships over the past couple of years. You just have to be willing to look.
- dgabriel 18y agoWe exist.
- jmtame 18y agowhere have you been all my life? =O
- a-priori 18y agoThey exist, unless I got the last one (which I doubt).
- maximilian 18y agogirls that do lots of sports understand the weekends. I spent most of my weekends in the spring at college at bike races. I tended to date girls who were athletic also.
- aspirant 18y agoAll I know is that Startup Girlfriend is going to be in the title of my next product.