The start-up from hell
Working as a co-op in a tool & die factory through college exposed me to the world of machining. If I didn’t take that position (I almost didn’t since it didn’t sound exciting to 18 year-old me), I can’t imagine how I ever would have been exposed to that world. I’m glad I did. CNC machining involves a whole set of processes and constraints that I find interesting.
This story by Jacques Mattheij is both a cautionary tale of working at a start-up and a behind the scenes look at how a company built a low-priced CNC lathe in the late 1980s.
I enjoyed this quote from the end of the article:
… in spite of the idiotic situations the lesson that I took home from it (besides the obvious business ones, they helped me a lot in later years) was that no matter how tricky a technical problem there is always a solution, even if you’re working on the wrong platform in a crazily constrained environment
(via Hacker News)
