Give it a year. Buffer looks good on paper and in blog posts but that's because they have a small, hand picked team that already bought into the culture. Try scaling that model to 500 people and watch the cracks form. Most of these "remote first" success stories are just companies that haven't had a major hiring slump or a bad quarter yet. When things get tight, the lack of face to face trust really shows up. The real test isn't how happy everyone is during the honeymoon phase.

Your ends probably weren't in great shape before the brush, that sounds like user error not product failure.

Yeah, I used to think losing work was always a disaster but you totally proved it can be a blessing in disguise!

Snapped a Park cable cutter on my second job because I was trying to cut housing at a slight angle. Switched to a $12 flush cutter from the hardware store and it's been two years without a single frayed end. Honestly makes me wonder why bike shops push those expensive tools when a basic flush cut does the same thing.

Jumped down a rabbit hole with this same logic last week. Realized the whole "specialized tool needs special grease" thing is just marketing fluff. Like when my buddy spent $40 on "ceramic chain lube" for his road bike and I just hit mine with triflow and it runs perfectly fine. People overthink this stuff. A little drop of light oil on the chain whip threads or just running it dry is plenty. The old guy was probably onto something with keeping things simple and not gunking up the works.