HN user
How are you storing and sharing these docs? Is it a common Sharepoint library or something similar? I've found the biggest problem is often getting people to look at the document resource / archive when they have a problem whose solution might already be documented.
Fantastic. Thanks very much for that.
Does anyone know if there's a decent, comprehensive library that handles all authentication / login for .Net Core apps? Bonus points if there's a SSO addition (even if that part is commercial).
Medium hate comes up again and again here, and I get it to a degree. But, Medium delivers an audience that hosting your own rarely does.
Fair enough if all you want to do is post to HN, but if posting to HN is only one delivery channel, you're giving up a huge audience just to placate techie UI sensibilities on this site.
Posting on my own blog gets me single digit views, because I don't have an audience of my own. Sure, I could and probably should work on that, but working on that is a long term plan. Posting to Medium via an established publication such as The Startup, HackerNoon or The Mission has delivered 5k to 50k reads (not views) for me in the past.
I think a sanity check is required here. Annoy a few techie users or have your work read by many thousands who would not otherwise read it. To me that's a no brainer.
What stopped you from moving to the UK? If it's Brexit, consider a move to Ireland instead. While PHP is not a strong language here, Python developers are in high demand.
Doesn't everyone know the answer to this question by now? How much have you paid for Chrome? If it's nothing, then why wouldn't they serve you ads?
Ask for a three month Sabbatical. If you've been working for a company for some time and have done well there, you might be surprised how eager they are for you not to leave outright. The reason for the Sabbatical? Have a couple of ideas in your head if you feel the need to explain yourself, but don't say burnout:
Trip around the world, meditation retreat, extra-tech study, family reasons, whatever.
And of course, have your mind made up in case the answer is no. Make it clear that you've decided to take the time off regardless, but would really like to return to work for them in three months.
I've done this very thing myself. 2-3 months off, going part-time, etc. The cost of losing your experience and abilities down the road usually out-weighs any short term difficulties it presents to the company.
Personal: Spotify, Netflix
Business: Hotjar, Medium, Statcounter, Beanstalk
Yearly recurring: Fastmail, DevExpress, Add-In-Express, Office 365
Look into charging per developer, with a site license option. Libraries / components, especially for enterprise development is big business. In the .Net space you have $100m+ companies like DevExpress and Telerik, and smaller, more specific and niche component providers (example: componentspace.com) selling successfully at a few grand a copy.
A few hundred bucks is way too low for any library of substance that saves the local developers a few weeks work.
Contracting at medium to high rates is great if you want to bootstrap your own startup. I use it for that purpose myself. A few of the best reasons.
1. It allows you to work for 6-12 months and save up enough to take 2-3 months off to work on your startup — something that’s often required to build a version 1 of your app.
2. Contracts tend not to include the usual clauses such as "We own the ip to everything you invent, even in your spare time." And if they do they can be removed without difficulty.
3. It’s extremely forgiving of job hopping and spending short amounts of time with a company before leaving to work on your startup.
4. Contractors are usually not expected to work overtime, eating into side-project time.
On a different note, your use of the term "side project" instead of product, app, startup or business suggests you don't see this side project as a business or potential business. Maybe that's why your focus is on the money and not the business you might build.
I've always felt that "side project" is a terrible phrase to describe the early stages of a new business, even if you're starting that business while working a day job.
Dublin, Ireland, senior developer with 15+ years
Very easy to jump jobs, though permie jobs have more hoops to jump through. Most jobs are big corporate, very few startups.
Working as a contract developer (rolling 6 months) at $11,500 per month (25 days holidays factored in). A similar permie role would pay about $8,500 a month + perks (health insurance, pernsion, etc.)
The work is generally not that challenging - a good dev with 5 years behind them could do it.
You're not James Altucher are you? Cause he talks about how he did that all the time.
Connecting a company looking to raise money with a person or company with money to invest is an entire industry. It often falls under terms like "private equity fundraiser" or "corporate finance", though corporate finance encompasses a lot more.
Typical rates of compensation for the middle man or company run from 1% to 8% -- it depends on the deal you strike with the company looking to raise money.
Of course, you need a contract laying out your cut. And... you need to be aware that you open yourself up to being sued down the road by the investor if his investment goes south and he loses money. This happens a lot -- especially when it's a private investor and not a company investing the money. For this you'd need Professional Indemnity insurance, and you'd need it for the next 10-20 years - the lifetime of the deal, basically.
Chargebacks, I think.
That's why most payment collectors don't allow payments for porn sites. Husband pays for XXX.com on his credit card, wife sees the charge, husband cries out "It wasn't me, my card details were stolen." He initiates a chargeback as his wife stands over his shoulder watching.
A 40 year old developer is as unlikely to have knowledge of Cobol or Fortran as a recent grad. Those technologies were as old school in 1998 as they are today.
More likely they started out working in C++, C, Java, etc. Back then more developers worked on desktop apps than web. C# first came out in 2000 (18 years ago), Python is 28 years old, Ruby 23 years old, so chances are their knowledge and experience is fairly modern apart from the current trendy web frameworks.
Every IT recruitment agency in Dublin places contractors as well as permanent. You'll find them all listed on IrishJobs.ie. Search for .net, c#, java, and filter for contract roles.
(Stay well clear of Computer Futures. They have a terrible rep in Ireland and in the UK.)
This is very true. Management roles tend to be kept in-house.
C#/.Net.
Dev jobs in Ireland are predominantly corporate enterprise software — very few start-ups. This means Java, .Net and front end Javascript roles are most common. I actually landed my first .Net contract after a 10 year career as a C++ developer and learned on the job.
There’s an idea out there that contractors need to be expert or top rung developers, but this is not true. You can learn on the job and usually end up doing so as most companies have unique ways of doing things.
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Contracting in Ireland and in the UK is an easy transition as most contracts are run through agencies, so you don’t have to network or go looking for clients like you might have to do in the US. A simple start point was to approach agencies who had active contract roles in the same way you would for permanent roles.
Starting a new contract is just like starting a new permanent job — hand in your one month’s notice and move on. Though, I tend to just quit, take a couple of months off, and then find the next contract, but most contractors move directly into other contracts with no down time.
Moving from permanent to contractor.
I made the jump 5 years ago and have worked for a number of companies since, on 6-12 month contracts. The money has jumped each time, such that I’m on what I consider to be silly money now for the job I do — Ireland, not US.
The work is always interesting for at least 6 months and I learn a ton of new stuff with every contract, much of which I use when building my own products (Downtime between contracts).
Every aspect of contracting is better than being permanent: the ability to jump ship quickly without affecting my hireability, the exposure to so many different technologies and different ways of doing things, the constant freshness of new things and new people, the ideas that come with seeing how different teams create and build different software, the ease with which you can step into new contracts (often one 30 minute interview as opposed to multipel interviews tests and take home projects for perm roles), and of course the money.
In terms of learning, each contract is like spending 3 years in a permie job, and I’ve had 7 in the past 5 years.
Coffee shops, preferably big brand shops like Starbucks where no one cares if you buy one drink and occupy a table for 2 hours. Do a little research into the various coffee shops in your city and you'll find that certain ones have secluded upstairs areas that are perfect for working.
There's a classic marketing book written a few decades ago called Positioning that is about just this topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/00...
It's a short read and well worth the time. I wish I'd read it before I'd built one of my products. If I had I wouldn't have wasted the development time.
The core message is that you shouldn't compete against an established market leader head on. It outlines a number of different approaches you can take.