[Balgair]

The original commenter's HN profile links to his LI account here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nomadicengineer/ . He states that he lives in Turkey currently, but spent a lot of time in the US. Most famously, the commenter was the only sysadmin for frickin' Napster! Wow! So, yeah, he's legit!

Mr. Halligan, how was Napster back in those days? Like, do you have a blog about that time period?

[expathacker]

> Mr. Halligan, how was Napster back in those days? Like, do you have a blog about that time period?

I was the "only" sysadmin when I was at Napster (We had 2 people in desktop support/it, one of whom actually died a few years later. The guy I replaced, Stephen Fountain, was actually shot to death by police). We hired 2 more a week or two before I left. It was a shit-show that I prefer to forget. (I'm also not at all proud of my work there. I was an unprofessional, somewhat incompetent 19 year-old workaholic who worked 100 hours a week and did a half-assed job at everything, which in the end actually was a huge net-negative to the organization, and myself!)

[expathacker]

Hrm, thinking through this more, one of those guys from IT, Ryan, a big-hearted (literally) lumberjack of a guy died of congestive heart failure. Then our CEO died on his bicycle a few years back, and there was also a suicide of one of the developers. It was a cursed company.

[Balgair]

Oh Jesus! I'm sorry for your losses. I just lost a good friend before his time, as well. It's never easy and the hole just stays there.

Thank you for the VERY frank responses, I appreciate the effort and the time. As a follow-up question, do you think the 100 hour weeks had diminishing returns after what point, if at all? Also, how is the work-life balance in Turkey in general?

Again, my condolences on your losses.