You should gain more experience in programming before quitting your job.
Instead, during your free time implement one of your ideas and break down the feature set into a simple MVP. Come with a timeline, implement, learn, and see if you can stick with the plan. Once you end up building the product, next you will have to work on finding users (sales, marketing) and convincing them to keep using your product and pay for it.
If you have persevered for this long and also maintained your job, you really have the passion and discipline needed to build on your vision. A lot of times I have noticed my friends (FAANG) talk about various idea, get excited for a day/week but never build it out.
PS: I quit (ex-FAANG) a few years ago to travel, relax, learn foreign languages and now currently working on some SAAS side projects. My 2 cents, you need to have a lot discipline along with tons of motivation, and inspiration to keep fueling the energy to work on your ideas.
Hi Adora, This is awesome. I just applied for it. How many hours of lectures will we have in a week? As it’s an online course - do you recommend being in one physical location/geography?
You should expect a minimum 3-hour commitment a week: roughly 2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of group office hours. Lectures you can watch at your own leisure.
As for location/geography, as long as you have a device with internet access you can be wherever works best for you. We'll do our best to align timezones so scheduling is easier for you and your group during the course.
I actually met a friend of mines recently and unfortunately due to a head injury lost his ability of smell. The doctor’s didn’t realize it and neither did he for quite while till one day he got sick eating fish from his refrigerator that was stale and he couldn’t figure out. So, it definitely plays an important role. On the positive side he doesn't detect any bad odors, but that means he wouldn’t know he is stinking either. He makes sure he is well cologned/deodorant-ized :) Also, he misses the smell of delicious food and other good things!
Andrew's comment was very eye opening for me as well.
Is it possible we as humans have a well performing optimized search/compute algorithm in our brains that we have not been able to discover and recreate in machines yet ? In essence are we just bio-robots and procreation is just a method to bootstrap the next iteration of the bio-machine ?
If you look at the Boston Dynamics quad-legged robot, it "almost" feels like a real dog. CPU instead of Brain. Wires instead of Blood. Steel frame vs bones. The major difference being it doesn't have a large data set of experiences to behave like a real dog. Behavior/Emotions can be bootstrapped and eventually collected as experiences to query for future reactions.
I went though the H1-B process myself in the past(2007). If USCIS gets more applications than their yearly quota, then their will be a lottery and your chances will be the same with either (startup or larger) employer filing.
Once the application is selected in the lottery, USCIS will start looking at the background of the company and if it's a legit corporation.
"Only" if you are going through one of the shady Indian consultancy(+) companies in the bay area, their is a chance they will want to probe more and might reject your application. But like you said it's a startup with a product, you should be fine with either choice, and I would not worry too much if I were you.
(+)These are basically companies that will apply for an H1B for a fee (H1B + their own commission) but they don't really have a product or a job for you. If the application is accepted, you can either find a job on your own and transfer your H1B AND/OR they will try to place you in some company and take a commission out of your salary.
