61–70 of 154 posts
I grew up in a small town in Russia during 80s and early 90s. I found my first job as a developer building accounting software in Pascal when I was 15. I remember spending my first paycheck (about $100) buying winter boots. It wasn't enough, my mom ended up pitching in. :) As soon as I graduated, I moved to a larger city to work for a company doing offshore development in C++. I was paid $4 / hr, managing to put in a…
Looking back over my career, it seems to me that I mostly warm chairs and surf the web while in the offices of software companies. Occasionally they ask me to code something, and I do it. I'd say that accounts for less than 10% of the time I've spent in the office. This is across 4 companies and 15 years. I did the most work at the one that was a startup. As for your feeling about your situation, I think there is a p…
That said, this industry is rampant with ageism. Once you get beyond 40, it takes longer and longer to find a new job. The presumption is that, if you are older, your skills development stagnated somewhere around the turn of the century.
Currently contracting through oDesk. I tend to average about 25 billable hours per week, with the remainder of my time split between learning about technology trends and working on long term personal projects. This led to a six month stint last year as a contractor at a local business that is exploring startup approaches like Agile/Scrum, which was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I was also lucky enough to be…
My personal experience is this: writing software is easy, building a business is hard. I love writing code, I hate doing A/B testing / funnels, SEO blog posts, drip marketing, calculating LTV/UAC and all that, I'm not good at it + I don't like it. and I also hate getting delayed results, when I code at my day job, I see results immediately, although it's gradual, it's still a direct feedback to my actions, I put code…
This is good advice. A few years delayed, but slow, steady, stable growth or your mental self as well as your brand and of your team is a pretty good platform to launch something bigger.
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>My carrier was interrupted by unexpectedly getting stuck in remote mountains of east Tibet for almost two years. If you dont mind me asking, what happened ?
Short version :) Since I was deeply involved in Tibet issue I decided to visit Tibet and spend two months travelling there to see the situation with my own eyes. By chance I came to a small village called Ashuk in Kham (east Tibet, located in Sichuan province). The first impression was not good - everything was just mud. Mud houses standing next to the muddy road. The only nice place with decent food was the house of…
I think you have achieved a major life goal already that most in Silicon Valley do not. I don't know if HN is the place to praise such deeds, but you did your small part in hacking the world to make it better. Kudos to you, don't ever let it feel as a wasted effort. That's so wrong a way to think.
There are people who want to help others and their repeated attempts fail. You just went and did something that's working for 7 years.
That's a pretty successful startup in my book. It can't go viral for obvious reasons, but it's mature and stable. And you did it without HN :-)
Currently contracting through oDesk. I tend to average about 25 billable hours per week, with the remainder of my time split between learning about technology trends and working on long term personal projects. This led to a six month stint last year as a contractor at a local business that is exploring startup approaches like Agile/Scrum, which was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I was also lucky enough to be…
So, being an employee or not shouldn't matter if you do something interesting.
Now when you get in the mid 20ies, you might want a job that banks accept as credible, renting a house doesn't involve convincing that you're not a fraud, and the parents of your girlfriend aren't suspicious of your profession.
If you're a super successful founder that's no big deal, if your startup is surviving or you're a freelance consultant that might be more difficult while not impossible, but if you have a stable job as an employee no one will even ask questions. Depending on what you want (i.e. kids and a house in your late 20ies), that might be an important point.
Figure out what you want. Even if it's just in the short term, but ideas of what you want in the long term are best. Use that to decide what you do month to month and year to year. I've noticed that most happy developers are only mildly interested in what their company does: they enjoy their work because it presents challenges and lets them work with people they respect. For these people, it's less about the salary than it is about the opportunity. The salary is important more for keeping your position in the market than to make you rich.
Do you have your own dream? If so, then it might be worth looking into entrepreneurship. Starting a business is less about being able to code your MVP than it is about learning what's available in the current market and being able to sell. Is your dream crazy? Is it crazy in terms of ambition, or crazy in terms of feasibility? The former is fine; the latter should make you step back and reconsider.
Your dream doesn't have to involve some engineering department at a corporation, either. You can be a developer in other settings. They're less obvious, but if you dig into your other interests, you might be able to find opportunities where your programming skill can contribute something huge.
If you don't have such a dream, you still have to make a living. Is it so terrible to contribute to someone else's dream in that case? You'll want to learn how to drive a hard bargain so that you can get the most from them out of the contract. Building someone else's dream starts looking fairly peachy when you're pulling in enough to not have to worry about money anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Short version :) Since I was deeply involved in Tibet issue I decided to visit Tibet and spend two months travelling there to see the situation with my own eyes. By chance I came to a small village called Ashuk in Kham (east Tibet, located in Sichuan province). The first impression was not good - everything was just mud. Mud houses standing next to the muddy road. The only nice place with decent food was the house of…
Do you realise that although you "lost 2-4 years of your career" you created a few dozen higher quality lives? I think you have achieved a major life goal already that most in Silicon Valley do not. I don't know if HN is the place to praise such deeds, but you did your small part in hacking the world to make it better. Kudos to you, don't ever let it feel as a wasted effort. That's so wrong a way to think. There are…
Kudos
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can I ask you where you're from? There's plenty of work for good coders, you seem very delusional. Try to send some resume
Sorry, delusional about which part? In my experience, people are more likely to hire US/UK based workers for higher paying jobs than for example Indians or people from countries. Does that happen always ? No, of course not. I've had clients from a bunch of different countries. Hell, maybe I'm completely wrong - but that's how it seems to me. Maybe it's just me. I'm not excellent programmer, nor do I claim to be, mayb…