Work on some open source projects, start your own, etc. They can be small, it doesn't really matter, but these are great for explaining gaps. I actually got a job where I spent a lot of time talking about an open source project I was working on (really just a personal project), one of the guys interviewing me seemed really interested in it so we spent our entire portion of the interview just talking about that.
I don't think I've ever done this, I've only been coding a few years so I think modern monitors have been good enough.. One thing I have noticed is I find a lot of devs leave their font at the default size, for a while now I've been making it a bit bigger and increased the line spacing a bit, I find it helps me stay focused better
Do you have any coworkers that you got along with at your previous jobs? If so, go on LinkedIn, look them up, ask them to connect, leave a positive review for them, ask them to do the same for you. If this process is completed successfully, send a personal message to them, "hey, I just figured I'd check in.. enjoyed working with you blah blah blah... hey, I'd be happy to give you a reference anytime, would you mind if I used you as a reference in the future, if so, could you give me your phone number just so I can keep it for when I may need it"?
That's all you need, I have used co-workers for references before and it works just fine most of the time, you don't necessarily have to have your superior give you a reference
Seriously.. I used to live in Phoenix, recently, and commuted probably 60 miles a day (roundtrip) and spent about that per week. Granted, SF to Palo Alto may be a bit further and gas is more expensive here but no way is it that much more to where its costing that much unless you have some huge gas guzzling truck, which he obviously doesn't, as you can see his car in the pic
I kind of agree, but, lets see, my current rental in the Bay Area is about $60 per day if you calculate it based on the monthly rent. I just checked and a room at a motel 6 can be had for $55.99 a night this weekend in Sunnyvale, CA (Palo Alto doesn't have any Motel 6's apparently), so if say, every 3rd night, you stayed at a Motel 6, you would be saving based on my rent situation, however I am not sure how cheap one could get a long-term rental (apartment), however, it would only cost about $600 a month to stay at motel 6's every third night and I don't think you can even get a room in an apartment, with roommates for that cost in Silicon Valley
During some of my crazier and younger moments I've been on some trips where I would sleep in the car one night and stay in a motel others, it seems saving money is the issue, so maybe he'd be better off "cycling" and sleeping the car a few nights but intermixing it with staying in a motel / hostel others
He seems to want to relocate to "silicon valley" (the Bay Area) and make it work long-term, from what I can tell, so while its a bit radical, it could work out for him, its hard to know when to make the jump. I think the case of a founder, who doesn't have a stable, solid income, it is even harder, personally I prefer the route of relocating for a job offer, putting in some time and then later, once some roots are put down, working on a startup, but since he already has one going, its probably not an option for him.
bring a rain jacket :) its been raining non-stop all week, having lived off and on in northern California for much of my life honestly I would recommend waiting another 2-3 weeks as thats usually when the "dry season" starts for sure so you don't have to worry about rain, etc when doing something like this
At first I thought "why JavaScript" (and not any of the other web programming languages) but I realized this does make some sense as nearly all web apps nowadays use JavaScript whereas the other backend languages are more fractured. Of course, its better to learn some other languages too, but some of the new JS frameworks are awesome and it looks like demand is only going to increase for dev's with this skill
Yeah, I have noticed this too, this is one reason why I think its important to get out in nature from time to time, whether its going hiking, camping or snowboarding, etc. Basically, our modern lives are usually fairly mundane. We commute, go to work, etc and have predictable routines to where we naturally get bored of this and crave stimulation and this manifests itself often in the form of the digital media you are talking about. By breaking from this routine and getting out occasionally in such a way that you can stimulate your senses.
I lost my brother a year ago tomorrow, he's also named steve so I found this a bit eerie.. In his case it was self inflicted after a long struggle with bipolar disorder. Thanks for sharing, its good sometimes to hear from others who have gone through an abrupt loss of a loved one too young. Its given me a new perspective on things, at least I hope. It can be hard to find meaning in a career after something like this but I feel one day I will hopefully do something to impact this world in a positive way
Just to clarify, you say its where they are... Is this also where you are, or would you be working remotely? You may need to consult a lawyer as I'm not 100% sure on this but my understanding is its based on where the employee lives, so if you live somewhere where its not enforceable it wouldn't matter if the company is based somewhere where it is enforceable
The problem with things like this is who is going to pay for it? Its a rather small market (software developers).. I'm not sure its a viable business model but more of an idea for an open source project
I agree, some recruiters are borderline scam artists so you can't just take it at face value that they have a job to offer and are interested in you, there can be more to it than that
ugh, yeah the jobspringpartners one I saw in there.. I actually met with them at their office once as I was in town from out of state for another interview so figured why not (I didn't know much about them and figured I should squeeze an extra interview in even if it was going to be a dud)... it was definitely a weird experience, they had me meet with this one girl first, then they send me out in the waiting room to have five different people each come out to meet with me individually and they each asked basically the same stupid questions... and these were really basic questions that were all answered on my resume. Its just odd that companies like this can stay in business. There was no succession of meeting with different levels of managers, etc, they were all just basic recruiters (salespeople), its as if they were either so inept at communicating that they couldn't share information among one another (or take the time to actually read my resume) or that they were so ultra competitive that they couldn't trust one employee to meet with me, they had to add go directly to the source.
If your company is that small then I agree you need to be more careful but you also need to find someone who basically wants to work at a startup, any company with just 2 dev's isn't a "normal job", even if its not technically considered a startup you would still need to approach hiring as if you are.
I just took a job in Calfornia and their noncomplete agreement specifically mentions that its not enforceable in California so I don't think they would have put this in there unless they basically had to
I hope you realize that you are exaggerating. Out of all of those, the only one that an employer has ever had any interest in was my GitHub account and I have gotten software dev jobs before I even had one
I agree with the author, people at my old job would have this setup and I found it odd, I do have an Android tablet but I use it very differently from my laptop, I use it for browsing, watching movies, etc and video skyping, if I ever have an urge to do "real work", I always fire up the laptop, I think some people fell a little to hard for all the marketing of these tablets as they really convinced themselves they no longer need a real laptop, IMO the two complement one another.. after a long day of work, some days I just don't want to touch a regular computer again but if I need to look something up real quick, or just read articles, the tab is great for that, it gives a different user experience which is a nice change.
lol at "change focus" :) I think the problem was I had no focus for too long, I was just kind of taking classes since 'its what you're supposed to do', it seems I was just taking the most general ones possible.. thanks for the advice on this though, definitely helps to hear from others to reinforce what I'm thinking
Thanks for the advice, well, I wouldn't be taking any time off work, I would have to continue as a part-time student as I currently work full-time. I think that it may be best to just get a general bachelor's so I can "check the box" on applications as it seems some companies just care about having a degree period and I'm not sure the return on investment for taking out more student loans, etc to get a CS bachelor's may be worth it as I could potentially later put that towards getting a Master's instead if I decide to continue with my formal education.
Its a convention vs configuration issue, some people seem to prefer configuration where they tinker around with every detail, this seems to be prevalent with Java as it has a background of "configuration over convention", it seems. Sure, its my opinion, but I prefer not to sit around debating about a problem where there is no real benefit of one over the other, where its really just a matter of personal preference, like in the case of code indenting.
I agree, the companies that highly value degrees may not be the kind you want to work for, you can make it without a degree but long term it's best to pick one up along the way even if it's just from doing part time classes while working
I don't have close to what you have as a background but I've been able to get interest in my resume and just landed a position in sf, I havev the fortune of having family out there so maybe that helped, but you should be able to get a lot of interest I would think... Have you been applying like crazy and networking on linkedin, etc, posting resumes?
Id be happy to help in any way I can, my email is rick_developer at gmx dot com
by this culture, do you mean a dysfunctional one? The braces / indentation formatting argument is one that has come up in a place I used to work (on many occasions) and generally it seems to be this is indicative of people focusing on the wrong things, I still don't understand why, when there are so many larger issues to address, that this comes up time and time again, in the case of the company I worked for, this was just the tip of the iceberg as seemingly every topic would devolve into a meandering, pointless "discussion" (argument) where if they would just stick with known conventions a lot of wasted time would be saved.
I had a phone interview a little while back where the interviewer asked various technical questions and then, if I struggled a bit, would help explain things, and if I got it wrong would give me an answer / explanation after each. The position was a bit outside my skill-set as it involved some technical areas that I don't have much experience with, so I found this helpful. I didn't end up moving forward with them, I don't think it was a fit on either side, but it was cool how he took the time to explain things and I actually felt like I walked away learning a bit more than I knew going in.
look at spring roo, its a more modern approach and uses active record rather than the service layers / repositories, it makes generating json api's really simple
If simple CRUD functionality in a web service is all you need, you are right that you shouldn't be writing this and you don't need to if you choose the right rapid application dev framework. I currently do Java dev and even for the bad rap it gets as far as rapid dev, I have used Spring Roo, which is sort of a Java-Spring knock off of Ruby on Rails and it can generate JSON web services for you for your model layer. You can then implement custom validators, etc but the boilerplate services, etc are all done for you. I believe other languages have similar frameworks that can do this as well
Cool, yeah I actually tried clicking on one of the screens without realizing it was just an image, would be cool to have a screen where you can start interacting with right away.. good luck with your endeavor