101–110 of 172 posts
Website does not load.
Unfortunately it's an SPA so it requires JS. I regret this decision...
If not then it might be due to an ad blocker issue (specifically triggered by social share buttons) I just discovered from this thread and need to look into.
My company recently started using this site and I’ve been pleased so far with the applicants for the positions I screen for.
Off topic: if you’re a private business owner - why share your revenues? It seems like more negative than good can come from it. (A) if you’re in enterprise software - potential customers might be scared away by how “little” your revenues are (b) you’re inadvertently begging for new competition when another solo developer thinks I can do better and cheaper. Etc.
Those who have a relevant set of skills (and it is a lot of skills from different disciplines required to run a business) - can easily estimate how much you can earn from website like this, so if they didn't do it before - they won't start now.
Those who didn't know how much businesses like this makes - lack a ton of other skills to compete. And you can't cheat a ton of time and money investment. If they didn't start a business like this, 99,99% they won't. And if they will, there must be a ton of stars aligned to make it into any viable competition.
"We're sorry but Japan Dev doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue." Nope. You want people to read your stuff? Don't force javascript onto them.
This seems to have been a real passion project, and seems to nearly be retirement money if the growth continues for just a few more years. Have you considered what an exit would look like? Such a lovely write-up. Congratulations.
I'm not really thinking too deeply about exiting yet. But I guess if I wanted to work on other things, the main options would be:
(1) Automate + delegate as much of the work as possible to decrease my time commitment and gain some freedom
(2) Try to sell the business
But for now I'm just focused on improving + growing the business!
Off topic: if you’re a private business owner - why share your revenues? It seems like more negative than good can come from it. (A) if you’re in enterprise software - potential customers might be scared away by how “little” your revenues are (b) you’re inadvertently begging for new competition when another solo developer thinks I can do better and cheaper. Etc.
Site looks really good. What tech stack did you use?
Thanks a lot! Here's the basic stack: • Rails API • Vue SPA w/ ViteJS • MySQL • K8s on Digital Ocean • Cloudflare worker + caching • Bento for emails • Algolia for search / filters I wouldn't recommend using a client-side rendered application for a project like this though... that was a mistake. Tons of headaches with SEO, social media sharing etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weird... I did recently switch to hosting through a Cloudflare Worker, so maybe it's a caching issue. Is it possible you've viewed the site before? If so maybe you have an old version of the index.html file in your browser cache that's linking to the wrong assets. Either way thanks for reporting — I'll look into it!
I've tracked down the root cause: I needed to disable two uBlock Filters in order to successfully load the page: Fanboy's Annoyance and Fanboy's Social. It seems that they block some JS related to social buttons ( https://japan-dev.com/assets/socialButton.9ddbb1cc.js ) and that makes the rest of JS responsible for the rest of the page to not execute (due to a failed request). Sorry for the false flag.
All of my native Japanese engineers who can speak modicum of English is leaving it to work abroad. I know many startups and companies have pulled out due to the inflexibility of the government (you need to be profitable with your highly failure prone venture by year 2 or you are booted from the country).
I don't know why any sane person would want to work and pay taxes there. Hell, even Japanese don't want it. Japan had 30+ years to recover from its economic slump and I don't see it improving anytime soon.
On the other hand, great place to visit, and on a different type of civilized citizens that you is tough to find in most Western countries these days.