JoeMayoBot

This reminds me of when I started my first web site. Here are some of the things I did:

1. Back then, it was common for related web sites to share links. So I started a links page that grew over time as I organized it into categories, all related to my subject. Then, I contacted all the other people who I was linking to and let them know, asking if they would link back to me. Most of the time, it worked and that's how I got initial traffic.

2. I submitted my site to search engines - any I could find.

3. I learned about SEO and started doing things that helped people find my content during a search. e.g. here's Google's page and there are many more resources out there: https://developers.google.com/search/docs. They also have free web tools to evaluate your site and make SEO recommendations. High quality content gets good rankings, but there are things you can do to make sure your content matches keywords that people search for.

4. I visited discussion forums on my site's subject and answered a lot of questions for people. In doing so, I added a signature to my posts that contained a URL to my site. Some forums won't allow signatures, but you can still put the URL in your profile. If you're good, some people will seek out your site and content.

5. I joined several social media sites. Any time I publish content, I post it on my social media sites. Some people in my line of work even curate high quality daily/weekly link lists and newsletters that drive a lot of traffic. When you search and find other people with the same interests, follow them. Many will check out your timeline and follow you back. After a while, you'll see content being increasingly tweeted, liked, and/or reposted.

6. I stumbled upon the concept of personal branding. Essentially, some people might start thinking about you as the go-to person for your subject. That's where recommendations come in.

These things take time. One of the things you'll want to do is watch your stats. After you do something, watch the stats for a while to see if that made it better. e.g. new visitors, feedback contacts, or search page rank for a set of keywords.

A lot of times, there's much more going on in interviews than assessing technical competence. Some of the things interviewers might be looking for include the ability to communicate, ability to translate technical information into something other people can understand, how the candidate reacts under pressure, their thinking process, how they go about solving problems, their composure during the pay/benefit negotiating process, and more. It's incredibly disruptive and expensive to hire a bad candidate and increasingly common to encounter companies with a "no jerks" policy, regardless of how smart someone is.

I asked around for people who knew a good lawyer and went with the one my accountant recommended. He taught me how to read the clauses and what they meant. After a while, I got a good feel for what was fair and what wasn't and review my own contracts these days. On a related note, my accountant was helpful by letting me know that my initial rates were too low.

It has to be a lot better than what I'm using right now or give me a clear capability that nothing else has. There's that term, "There's no silver bullet" and that makes some people skeptical of the next best tool. It hurts if the learning curve is too long and good documentation/tutorials can help. Another consideration is if it comes out as a competitor to other tools in its class (e.g. UI Component libraries) during a version upgrade or when starting a new project, which is when I would evaluate which tools to use for the project.

I'm averaging every 2-3 years. With the growth of OS and application usage they tend to bog down over time. e.g. My previous laptop wasn't fully compatible with Windows 11 and my hard drive was filling up, so I bought one with a newer processor, more RAM, and a faster/larger drive. I have a couple of older machines for old software and usually keep the previous machine for testing.

I liked "Code" by Charles Petzold - https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

I look at what it will cost by paying for it. Then evaluate how much many hours it would take to do it and what my current hourly rate is. As the cost becomes cheaper, consider paying. As the cost becomes more expensive, consider doing it.

I liked Fundamentals of Software Architecture/O'Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-softwar....

I was in the same situation when I left a comfortable job to do a startup. What sounds different is that it's unimaginable to me that anyone would do this without their spouse being onboard. My wife and I talked about this and prepped for months, saving money and going the bootstrap route. We pivoted along the way in different directions that we thought were the right way to go, but always kept our heads above water because we did it together. After crashing and burning in 2008, I went into consulting and have been doing fine. I'll probably do it again before long, using lessons learned from earlier mistakes. The thing is, we have no regrets of saying "What if" because we gave it our best shot.

However you organize your team, it's important to have goal alignment. Some academics work for the sole purpose of research, learning, or expanding the world of knowledge. It's important for them to understand, up front when they are hired, that the business needs to create products that you can sell.

It's been a while since I've done a class diagram, but I still use sequence diagrams to coordinate non-trivial component interactions. Occasionally, I'll use a state diagram to describe workflow. More commonly, I've used ad-hoc network diagrams to describe the architecture of a system. I think flowcharts are still useful.

Here's GitHubs docs on finding projects:

https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/exploring-projects-on...

One of the things you can do is find people who are interested in certain topics. Then you can look at their project, what they've starred/followed/forked, and follow them to see what they're starring.

Here are some of the things you might see a consultant do for marketing: writing, speaking, teaching, social media, on-line forums, meetups, user groups, code camps, and anything else that sounds interesting. There are probably a never-ending list of creative ideas. Over time, these things add up and they can be a lot of fun.

Programming practices vary over time and depend on the preferences of those writing the code. There are some, myself included, who believe the naming conventions and organization of the code should be meaningful to make it easier for other developers to read the code. Typically, if code is complex, a comment might be justified, though it often indicates that the code needs to be simplified. Typically, if I write a comment, it will mostly be something along the lines of why we took this approach or any dependencies that aren't obvious. That said, documentation comments (e.g. classes and methods) are useful for automated tools that help developers see API specs or automated swagger/openid UIs.

I've felt overwhelmed too - multiple companies and community workspaces add up. Here are a few of the things I've done:

1. Disconnect the community workspaces that you don't really need or rarely, if ever, participate in. You can always reconnect periodically to get caught up. 2. Leave channels that you never participate in or waste time - like joke and water cooler channels. 3. Mute channels that you rarely participate in, but don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by leaving. 4. Stay out of most conversations that aren't directly related to your work. 5. Use threads and encourage others to use threads so no one has to scroll through conversations that don't pertain to them. 6. Mark yourself as away when you need to be heads down. 7. (Maybe better) Close Slack when you need to be heads down. 8. Don't respond to channel communication immediately, unless something really requires your immediate attention. 9. Don't respond immediately to every DM, unless it's important.

Essentially, do self care and set reasonable boundaries.

More recent information:

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fbi-direct...

Here are a few tips that might give you some ideas:

1. If you're doing a daily scrum (or standup) there are a few things that are common: What have you done? What are you working on? and What are you having problems with? Don't be shy with the what are you having problems with because someone might volunteer to point you in the right direction. 2. Be on Slack/Teams and in meetings and don't be afraid to ask questions. 3. Hopefully, your team is doing code reviews. Interact with feedback during your reviews and ask questions and get clarity. Read other people's reviews too. You'll learn who the best reviewers are and learn to tag them occasionally so you can get the high quality feedback. 4. If you get the chance to do on-sites or meet for team gatherings, be eager to go so that you meet in person. Relationships are important. 5. Be there for the other devs (especially the ones that are Jr like you). Everyone has to help each other - that's how this thing works. 6. Remember to find a balance that respects other people's time because they have work to get done too.

Web Deploy for Web apps:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/publish/using-web-depl...

Click Once for Desktop:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/deployment/cl...

I'm not sure where OP's question would lead anyone to decide they were disagreeable unless you know them. I also would never advise anyone to lie or mislead during an interview because the people who hired them will know they've been had and that can be harmful for future relationships. My best advice is to always be nice, polite, and kind; and for all we know, OP might be doing that already.

While it's definitely no fun for those who are laid off, it's also psychologically distressing for the people left behind. Those developers can be grateful for still having their jobs, but their friends/professional colleges are gone. You don't get the collaboration that you once had and a whole lot more work to do. The only benefit is if the office jerk gets laid off, but it generally is not a good situation for anyone.

Sucks because I can't complement someones cleverness anymore, saying "That's so meta!". Also can't use the word "meta-data" without sounding creepy.

Here are a few areas where I get inspiration:

1. What am I working on currently? Pro is that I can go into depth. Con is that I have to avoid something I can't talk about. 2. Something that I'm really interested in and want to dig into more (often new tech). 3. Something a lot of people are suddenly interested in and I might be able to contribute to the conversation.

In each case, look at what has already been said and put your perspective on it. This is where the creative side comes in because no matter how many people have discussed a certain topic, it's normal to have approached it a different way with a different mix of subjects. New tech is often easy because most folks have already just re-iterated the basic facts without much personal insight. I wouldn't feel bad about a non-boring title as long as you feel good about the quality of your content.

No surprise - there was no way for them to do proper planning within the short time they made the decision.

I believe that environment counts a lot and it sounds like that is what happened to you. I remember a long time ago, hearing about a study done in Math classrooms where the teachers expected the boys to do better than the girls and that is what happened. Simultaneously, they had a Math teacher who expected all of their students (boys and girls) to do well and that is what happened. Part of leadership is believing in the people who work with you. They need to create an environment where everyone can be successful. The people in that environment need to tolerate mistakes. Senior developers need to have an attitude that if other developers mess anything up, it's because of knowledge or skill and that the person is doing their best. Then do what is necessary to help that person overcome their weaknesses. That said, there are people beyond help for various reasons. However, the majority of people I ever worked with want to do a good job. I've been in that situation before too and learned that the best think to do is start a new job search right away.

Similar to my own thoughts - like the Warren Buffet rule to say "No" to almost everything so you can leave time for the opportunities that you really want.

Coincidentally, the current book I'm reading came from a recommendation by a lot of people on HN to the question of how to be a better sales person:

Fanatical Prospecting/Wiley by Jeb Blount

I'm half way through and it's a good read so far.

No one really knows what's going to happen until it happens. This is full of hyperbolic phrases, designed to leave the reader with a negative view of the acquisition. "deluged with Musk wisdom", "warnings about porn", "death of a Tesla driver", "baseless conspiracy theory", "feed the monster", "teetering on the brink of civil war", "twitter czar", "ignorant, manipulative, or deceitful", "hate speech", "orcs". I get it that some people have a low opinion of Elon Musk and might be skeptical of his motivations. I don't and think he's doing and will do a lot for humanity. That said, I'm sure there will be things I like and dislike about what he does at Twitter, just as it has always been. I do believe the article was quite extra.

SEEKING WORK | Remote

Technology Stack: Microsoft .NET

Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemayo/

The book, Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker makes the opposite argument that over time, life is getting better. It tracks various aspects of human life throughout history with research, statistics, and graphs that tell a different story.

A lot of HR and hiring managers do look at cover letters. Since you don't know which ones, it's best to always do it. The cover letter is an opportunity for you to move beyond the dry resume and explain why you believe you're a good fit for the position. The best approach is to read the job description and explain what it is about you the fulfills the role they're looking for. You want them to be able to imagine how you fit into that role. Also, tweaking the resume to highlight the parts of you experience that match the role is a good move. You want to use the cover letter to make them want to look closer. Plenty of people also want to hire people who are interested in working for the company and that personal touch can make a difference.