Project Manager and Software Developer for the state of West Virginia. I work on small to medium size web applications for higher education and k-12 schools.
This summer, I worked pretty hard on a vanilla PHP game engine for generating semi-random, text-based adventures. I haven't touched it in 6 months or so. I really should get back to it. I was having fun on that project.
I work from home one day a week, and honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to do more than a day or two each week. It's my most productive day by far, but the isolation feels unsustainable for me.
I spend a huge amount of time making sure that my users get to experience fully-functioning UI on desktop, while not being overly limited on mobile. It's a HUGE part of my workflow, but honestly it's the only way. I can't stand visiting an 'app' website on my desktop only to find that it's 600px wide because it IS the app.
I have one person I go to regularly... he's in DevOps, doesn't know my code at all, but he's good at testing and being blunt. Often, my workdays are spent working on whatever criticism he levelled to me the day before.
It's not that I don't have work. I have plenty of things I could be doing on a daily basis. It's that there is no direction. No plan. No priority. I just show up and do whatever I do and go home. Once a week, I send a report to my supervisor of my activities for the week. My projects are entirely separate from the other developers here, so it's not really an option for me to go sit with them and co-work because we don't know each other's codebase.
That'd be great. I'm actively searching, but a 40 year old junior dev isn't in high demand. I took my present job hoping for some mentor-ship to better develop my skills. My days are spent in my office, with no concrete understanding of what is expected of me. I have projects that are "mine"... and by that, I mean that no other developer has a clue what I do. There is no team. No goals. No targets. I just work on whatever I feel like working on, and it's slowly driving me crazy.
Location: Fairmont, WV, USA
Remote: Yes (preferred)
Willing to relocate: Unlikely
Technologies: PHP/Laravel - JavaScript - CSS/Bootstrap - SQL (MariaDB/MySQL) - HTML - I'll learn anything. I pick up things rather quickly and love expanding my technical knowledge.
I've been doing full-stack stuff for about 4 years now. I was a SysAdmin before that on Windows domains. I got into software because I had customers that needed specific solutions they weren't finding elsewhere. Decided I could do it myself, so I did. It's been great. I work in higher ed and K-12 delivering management and reporting systems to universities and school districts.
There are tech jobs in the northern part of the state. Lots of government contractor shops around. Pay is... well... government pay, but the cost of living is ridiculously cheap. My girlfriend is from Moundsville, and she thinks of the Morgantown area as urban... so I guess we could be more rural.
I've lived (nearly) my entire life in a small town in West Virginia. Like most kids from rural areas, I was looking for my first ticket out of here. I joined the Marines, explored the world and busy city life... and promptly returned to my small hometown.
I see no appeal in living in restrictive spaces for the chance at having something "special" to do in the rare moment where I have free time. There's more than enough for me in my surroundings and if needs be, I'm an hour drive from Pittsburgh, PA for some "culture" outings.
I'm in an odd place right now where everything is (mostly) okay. My needs are covered. My children don't hate me. I have an amazing girlfriend. I get to spend time with friends sometimes.
I have wants, mostly related to work, that are causing me discomfort at the moment, but that's on me. It's not that I'm overwhelmed, quite the opposite actually. My job is pathetically lax, and my career is stagnant. I'm hoping to change that soon. I'm looking for my next opportunity.
Technologies: PHP/Laravel - JavaScript - CSS/Bootstrap - SQL (MariaDB/MySQL) - HTML - I'll learn anything. I pick up things rather quickly and love expanding my technical knowledge.
I've been doing full-stack stuff for about 4 years now. I was a SysAdmin before that on Windows domains. I got into software because I had customers that needed specific solutions they weren't finding elsewhere. Decided I could do it myself, so I did. It's been great.
I work for a ... reseller/host/supporter... of various higher ed platforms (Banner/Blackboard) and those systems make me sad. Glad to see someone disrupting the space! Good luck going forward! As a dev, I can't imagine setting my sights on those targets. It seems overwhelming.
My backup option is splitting the audio and running it through Audacity. In fact, this option is better than what Premier Provides for sound control/filtering. The only reason I didn't do this instead of buying new audio gear is my upload schedule. Anything that gets in my way while editing is a step I can't afford to take.
I switched to OpenShot about 2 months ago after working exclusively in Premier Pro for 3 years. I made the change because the price I paid for Premier simply wasn't justified for my video needs. I had looked at many free editors in the past and never found one that could handle 1) variable framerate, and 2) .MOV with transparency. OpenShot does so with very little trouble. It took me a little while to adjust to the UI and shortcuts, but I'm doing daily videos with minimal editing, and my editing time is comparable to what I experienced with Premier Pro. The only thing I "miss" from Premier is the built-in audio de-noiser... but I was using it as a crutch for poorly captured in-camera auido and have since fixed my audio setup.
I have the same problem, so I spent a month of my free time writing a reporting tool that does this for me. It sorts my activities into tasks and updates, and I can generate reports based on dates/tasks/etc. It's been a life saver for those stupid reports.
I wrote a custom documentation tool that we use on all of our projects. It's a few input fields for heading/paragraph/images and a few buttons. You can add as many "sections" as you want. It exports HTML/CSS that you can stick in any <div> and it scales well, handles popups for images, and such. It's made our life much simpler when adding documentation to our sites.
I ghostwrite a decent amount for side money and as a ghostwriter, I can tell you that my clients LOVE me. I've heard many horror stories from them about "writers" who turn in articles that are primarily written in "txt spch" with emoji thrown in. I'm hyper-critical of my writing, and that seems to be an uncommon quality, especially if you are searching on common freelancer boards.
If you are looking for a ghostwriter, ask your writers to submit MULTIPLE examples of their work and give the most detailed guidelines you can. Honestly, hiring a ghostwriter for your project will be difficult. You're going to need to put in the work to make sure that the writer's voice matches your needs, and your needs are in-line with what your writer can deliver. Communication is super important. Ask for early draft reviews to make sure you are on target and cancel the relationship early. Getting a terrible manuscript that you will need to re-write is worse than paying someone for a few hours of their time and cutting your losses.
Coding? Add billing and invoice generation to https://pepahana.com - a simple activity reporting tool I started last year. If I get motivated enough, maybe start on team and organization tools for it.
Non-coding? I want to write more. Lots more. Maybe finish a novel this year. That would be nice.