Offer the option to opt in. I prefer apps that ask you upfront if they can collect stats and analytics. I’d imagine a decent percentage of users will opt in giving you enough data for customer and product improvement.

Also avoid sharing too much information about your users if using a third party provider for analytics. It shouldn’t be more than an user ID

That means now they have to do everything twice.

And also deal with "they say they respect privacy but they collect data" complaints. Because people who talk about privacy are rarely a sound market segment for anything other than privacy tools...that are free.

The market segment for most products is people who don't care about privacy. Or at least people who don't find privacy a reason to spew moral outrage on the internet.

I mean there are endless HN threads where people are complaining about the privacy evils of products they don't use...e.g. Windows.

I’m not sure I understand why they need to do everything twice. But regarding your comment about most market segments not caring about privacy, I agree especially when it comes to B2C products.

Users will complain about it but it will rarely be a deal breaker. Will only matter if the product being offered holds really sensitive info

Either way if a company or Dev wants to respect privacy, that’s great and I applaud it. A product doesn’t need to collect every single piece of data on all their users to figure out their strategy...unless your product’s monetization strategy is all about selling user data

Implementation for people who don’t care.

A different implementation for the few people who both care and actually pay.

Your applause won’t put beans in the cookpot.

You looove beans.

Definitely a bit of extra work but can be minimal if event tracking is centralized in one area of the code.

But yeah, not saying I recommend you do it, just saying it’s possible and not something that should be seen as a waste of time, especially if you truly believe in creating privacy focused software.

Any software engineering job. You’ve probably gained a lot of experience at the startup as well as being a technical cofounder. You’d be surprised how many engineers out there who are great at algorithms have zero skills or experience building actual products. Find a company that doesn’t rely on algos as their measurement tool. Quite a few exist

If you are looking for a change from coding, product management or data science are relevant career paths where you can leverage your previous experience

I was also going to say any job, but for a different reason.

It seems like you've already done your fun/risky career adventures. I feel like most of the "day job" stuff will seem boring to you now, because, well, most of it is boring stuff. Just apply to postings you think will pay you well and might have some I teresting part of it (business problem, tech, culture, etc).

I remember interviewing with a startup that was an hour of casually chatting about previous works and technologies we used. Sane companies with sane interviews do exist.

I’d say it depends on the data being persisted. PII or any user data that is private in nature are good candidates for encryption regardless of session length. Other than that encryption is overkill.

Regarding keeping updated, I find small hobby projects to be a good outlet to try new technologies, architectures or processes. Often times I’d end up translating those to valuable additions to the code base at my day job.

As for being stuck in a position where learning opportunities are limited, try pushing for taking on tasks on other teams that are working on technologies you are interested in learning. If the company you are in frowns upon this sort of work then sounds like you should find a more open environment. They are companies out there that value this sort of curiosity.

Great idea. The ability to send to multiple destinations is convenient.

“But other apps are fairly easy to get people to pay for where privacy could be a key differentiator”

Yeah apps that collect super personal information (i.e security solutions, baby monitors) I can imagine privacy being key. But what about everyday apps like fitness trackers, journals, habit trackers and personal finance? From what I gather people complain about privacy of those apps but would rather go a manual route instead of paying for a private version of it.

I think the reason most people don't pay for privacy on the apps you listed is the value proposition isn't there. e.g they can do it manually cheaper, faster and easier then the app would allow them. So that could be bad app design, bad problem statement or low value to cost. With consumer apps you have to convince people the value of the app is more then what they spend, and consumers are picky. Not to mention you have to stand out in a crowded market, which is an even harder problem in many ways.

Makes sense for B2B services where data collection is the core product (i.e analysis, crash reporting). I can see businesses wanting to pay for a service that wouldn’t take their metrics and sell it. But what about B2C?

This is the way. Interfaces for modularity and leveraging nested packages within the monolith to keep code decoupled and organized.