How and why I built Japan Dev • Hacker News Board

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#121

Post by 3np » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

etdev wrote: post #29

yakubin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh wow thanks for checking, that's helpful to know. I should probably restructure things so that one component failing doesn't bring down the whole site if I can...

Yes, you definitely should. Adblockers is just one reason why networks requests don't always go through successfully expected.

I also get a sha512 mismatch on the CF script.

(Degrading gracefully so content is readable even without client-side JS is an even better idea but that obv takes more effort to sort out on an existing SPA)

Looking forward to reading your article but my reverse-engineering stops here for now (:

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#122

Post by ricktdotorg » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

Panther34543 wrote: post #118

Considering cost of living, what salary would someone need to maintain a similar lifestyle as a senior engineer making ~$170-230k while living in a major U.S. city? Some of the jobs on that site have salary ranges below 9 million Yen, which seems to equate to about $67k. Given that consumer goods are generally pricier in Japan, and that cost of living is generally quite high in Japan, that salary seems quite low.

my wife's parents live in Sangenjaya (Setagaya), i've had an eye on apartment rentals in that area for about 5 years, with a view to a perhaps/potential move over there. the prices (yen-usd translated) honestly look like ballpark NYC (Manhattan, not BK or Q etc) apartments from when i lived there 1997-2004. the prices are cheaper than NYC/SF/SEA/LA, but of course as you point out, the salaries are lower. i've not "lived" those expenses month-over-month as a local would do, but my gut feeling after several months "living" there [spread over a few years] in a local apartment is that food/eating costs are lower, but overall, other costs (perhaps not including than commuter travel) are higher. somehow, i think it balances out.

edit for clarity

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#123

Post by why_only_15 » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

godmode2019 wrote: post #117

Nice work! I honesty never would have considered a job board to be able to bring such a large amount. Especially in just a few years. Good job. I don't think you mentioned how many employees you have? Not very many I assume if your headquarters is your apartment. Good work keeping overheads low

I think he mentioned it was just him and his wife.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#124

Post by 6DM » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

trhoad wrote: post #6

> So we share your jobs on our site. A candidate applies. You interview them and decide to hire them. You notify us you hired them. We send you an invoice. You pay us a fee. I'm absolutely stunned that this works. > For one thing, our contract imposes a late fee for failing to notify us of a successful hire. And the fee increases every month that they don't tell us. This is a pretty good deterrent. Is it? It sounds l…

Companies pay recruiters an insane fee to hire us. $300 is a paltry sum and not worth fighting over. I doubt this is a big problem. It's not zero companies doing this, but I'd be surprised if it was 80% of the listings trying to avoid paying.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#125

Post by djitz » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

I created a physician employment company which operates on the same model. I think Japanese culture has been the unsung hero here, when considering the OP company relies on an honor code of sorts.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#126

Post by bad_good_guy » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

dzonga wrote: post #120

physicsguy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting. Here in the UK you can set up a limited company (i.e. if the company goes out of business, you are not personally liable for any debts) in about a day and there's no collateral requirement at all.

a lot of people overlook the UK - in terms of the simplicity of doing business. from favourable taxes etc. however the biggest con in the uk, is unmotivated people.

*chronically underpaid people

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#127

Post by lovetocode » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

I really enjoyed reading this and I hate reading.

How did you go from 12 months of no revenue to actually generating revenue? Did you provide your service for free w/o any payment options? I imagine job seekers were free to use the board but companies were required to pay to post on your board. Did it basically take 12 months to gain enough traction with job seekers to entice employers to post on your board instead of manually adding them for free yourself?

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#128

Post by RedditKon » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

What % of first year salary do you charge on average?

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#129

Post by etdev » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

kakujuyo wrote: post #112

hr has the authority to pay 30-35% yearly charge ?

Yeah they do.

Established companies will have at least one senior HR person who can OK that level of spend.

Small startups might need approval from from an exec like the CTO.

30-35% is pretty standard though so most companies will have a process for it.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#130

Post by etdev » Tue, Aug 16, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #107

etdev wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is so complex! Wouldn't just vercel next.js + prisma be simpler?

Yeah definitely.

I just used the stack I was used to, didn't really turn out to be the best stack for the job...

Kubernetes is completely unnecessary, although I do enjoy using it.

Having a separate API is kinda nice. I could easily spin up a different front-end like an iOS app and share the same API. And I can write all the server code in Ruby instead of JS, which I prefer to do.

But yeah overall, way over-engineered.