I started on the cheapest £15/mo "Pro" plan and it was great for home use when I'd do a bit of coding in the evenings only, but it wasn't really that usable with Opus--you can burn through your session allowance in a few minutes, but was fine with Sonnet. I used the PAYG option to add more, but cost me £200 in December, so I opted for the £90/mo "Max" plan which is great. I've used Opus 4.5 continuously and it's done great work.
I think when you look at it from the perspective of how much you get out of it compared with paying a human to do the same (including yourself), it is still very good value for money whether you use it for work or for your own projects. I do both. But when I look what I can now do for my own projects including open-source stuff, I'm very time-limited, and some of the things I want to do would take multiple years. Some of these tools can take that down to weeks, do I can do more with less, and from that perspective the cost is worth it.
Consider that purely positive but otherwise unconstructive comments like "wow great project! clap" are – for good reason – not what the HN comment feature is intended for and are reliably downvoted to oblivion.
Contentious, challenging, or even slightly provocative reactions however – which are inherently somewhat negative in a wider sense – usually kick off fruitful debates and knowledge-proliferation.
And I probably speak for at least about ~65% of fellow HN's when I say that the latter is what I come here for.
Watch what people do rather than listen to what they say.
Marcus Aurelius likely quipped about pompous resorts during one of his many four day public holiday visits to Alsium (a pompous seaside resort town), although he was known to write at length about the work he did on holidays rather than the time he spent on the beach.
As for retirement .. not a thing for Marcus. He died* age 58 in his military quarters while on active tour of Roman provinces (in either Austria or Serbia apparently).
How do you fellow HN'ers separate their online with their corporate identity and day job?
I cannot rid myself of the suspicion that your average boss is going to have a prying eye on your online activities and may even use them against you one way or another e.g. if you offer services/work on side projects that may in any way may compete w/ your employer.
I only work for small companies that don’t have any business interest in areas where I want to maintain independent side projects.
When a startup I was working at made a successful exit and got acquired my a major corporation that did have business interests which overlapped with my side projects, I refused the bonus contract and froze my side project activity until leaving about a year later.
Don’t get cute. Avoid side projects that compete with your employer, and disclose unrelated side projects properly so that your employer is forced to acknowledge them. Do what it takes to avoid entanglement, making sacrifices if necessary.
IDK, your average boss is just a dude who has bills to pay and mouths to feed. They don't really care what happens as long as you're not doing something stupid, especially visibly and on their time.
My experience is that bosses read my blog, then when they or a fellow manager need to hire someone, have reached out to me asking me to apply. So it cuts both ways - maybe your shitty boss sees you blogging and sharing your experience, but a good boss will see that and go "I want this passionate and curious person to work for me".
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