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djmillon Ask HN: How do you stay healthy?

I hike and backpack as much as I can.

It also helps that I built myself a side project to keep track of all of the trails I hike/camp, so this pushes me to find new places to explore and to add new trails to the site.

While hiking only works out certain muscles, it could be a nice way for you to change up your routine.

djmillon Whatruns: Identify technologies used on any website

Very weird, now it works after reading this and re-checking.

Oddly enough I restarted Chrome and Firefox twice before posting the comment in hopes that it was just my machine. Thanks for the sanity check!

djmillon Whatruns: Identify technologies used on any website

Edit: About 15 minutes after posting, this seems to work fine on my site now. Sorry for the confusion!

The spinner does not stop and it gives no results for my site (https://myhikes.org) - this is with both FireFox and Chrome extensions. Seems to work great for everything else though.

Just replying in case you're looking for new edge cases to debug!

djmillon Ventusky – Weather data visualization

This site is great - and it looks like there are others out there too.

I use this for backpacking and astrophotography to figure out precipitation and cloud patterns (as to not waste a drive out). Very helpful!

djmillon Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

Totally agree. It's great for fellow engineers to poke around on to make sure you aren't an idiot or aren't copying/pasting projects from the web, but you're right.. for the most part, no one cares about side projects when it comes to trying to snag a new job.

djmillon Ask HN: How do you develop a userbase for your side projects?

Good to know. Maybe I'll post again in a couple of months to see if I can snag more users.

djmillon Ask HN: How do you develop a userbase for your side projects?

Nice! Yeah definitely mixed results with Reddit, but it's great for free one-time advertising.

Another downside is you can't hit your audience more than once without being targeted a spammer, so I like to think of it as a free 'usertesting.com' outlet.

djmillon Ask HN: How do you develop a userbase for your side projects?

Yeah it's definitely mixed. Luckily I haven't had any negative feedback, it's been mostly positive and I've had some great suggestions as well. Downside is it takes a bit of time to post the same thing across subreddits, but it's free.

djmillon Ask HN: How do you develop a userbase for your side projects?

Reddit.

As an experiment I posted my side project in subreddits related to what the project's about. I went from ~15 registered users to 45 registered users in a couple of days. Google Analytics showed ~300 new users in 1 day and ~3000k page views within a couple of days.

Just by posting there and using Google Analytics for the most basic metrics, it boosted my site's ranking in google searches which helped. The numbers I got back are tiny, but it's fun to see new users still signing up and adding data to my project.

djmillon Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

Onsite engineers for UAT and rapid bug fix turnaround. Most bugs reported from customers, during UAT, are fixed by the next morning for another round of testing. This is not always the case, but for most issues, we turn them around in less than 12 hours and the customer is blown away.

This happens ~4 times/year for major releases.

djmillon Ask HN: What are the best personal project websites you've seen?

https://myhikes.org

This is a site I built for myself, friends, and the public; however, I haven't promoted it much... Trying to get more users, but it's been under construction for a while. Nothing fancy, but I wanted to build something that was free for users.

Also to the poster: side projects are great, showing off your pet project is awesome, but I can say that a lot of employers don't even care to look at them... I cannot speak for ALL employers, but a lot of the time interviewers and employers don't have the time to poke around in your side projects - they're very busy too. It's kind of a shame

djmillon Ask HN: No Profitability and Raises why the guilt?

Very true

djmillon Ask HN: No Profitability and Raises why the guilt?

Yeah I'm currently at the 'next big project' and asked for a fair raise. I got a bonus and was told salary reviews will happen within a few months. The company reviews everyone at the same time... maybe they should reconsider if I go and find what I'm looking for.

djmillon Ask HN: No Profitability and Raises why the guilt?

My equity is extremely small, if not negligible. The company continues to grow, but the engineering teams grow slower than other parts of the company. This puts more and more strain on engineering as work continues to pile on. The good news (and the bad news) is there's never a lack of work. I feel like slave labor for being a tech lead for bottom 35 percentile pay in the area.

djmillon Ask HN: No Profitability and Raises why the guilt?

Very good point!

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

I think I've decided to take a different approach...

I want to know what I can do to be inline with the rest of the industry. I think it makes sense to propose this as a question to my boss(es) after highlighting my accomplishments, etc.

At least, if they respond: "You'll never make that much money" - then I know where I stand. And this way, they know that I'm currently sizing myself up to the rest of the averages out there.

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

Great advice, this is really what I'd like to do... propose that I have an offer that I don't really want, but the money is better - hoping that they can match it, since the offer proves my worth

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

Gotcha that makes sense. Part of me feels like I'm being greedy and part of me actually feels like I'm being taken advantage of in certain ways, so I'm personally struggling with whether or not to ask for a raise anyway... you make very good points here, thanks!

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

Awesome, thanks for the feedback. I've literally never had anything negative come from my bosses, it's only been praise about how much I've grown and to keep up the good work. When I moved away to go remote, none of my bosses were worried and they all skipped my 1-on-1's with them for the entire first 6 weeks after I started working remote... to me I felt like they felt as if I was capable and there were no worries on either end.

I agree, market value in Boston is very high and thus why I feel like I'm being underpaid for my work and responsibilities - even if I'm living in an area where the average is slightly lower.

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

Okay, very interesting... I like the way you think. Luckily, I built various components and the entire CSS layer (which gets very complex) is really only understood by me... which is a nice monopoly from time to time. But yeah, if I leave I know I'll be forced to continue doing the same work but also forced to educate the entire team, etc. on my knowledge.

But you're right, I don't want to make anything personal, it's purely a business and career growth decision on my end. I love the company and what they stand for, but I don't like feeling like I'm being taken advantage of by being underpaid for my skill sets.

After working here for a while, I've noticed that the interviewees are lacking in skill sets and we can't seem to gain or retain top talent... which also leads me to think I have a leg-up on this as if I leave, they're screwed in certain areas.

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

Okay great, that makes sense. Thanks for the advice!

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

I feel as though I need a raise because my responsibilities have changed drastically since my last raise. I'm now managing people and leading a project.

On top of that, my pay has always been less than that of other folks in the industry doing the same work. These other folks that I've talked to also don't have to deal with the pain points of working with offshore folks in a timezone with a difference of 12 hours. I'm on meetings at 6AM and my day ends at 5PM if I'm lucky. Yet, I know people who do less work, for companies with 100% in-house teams that work 9 - 5.

djmillon Need a raise, how to ask?

Also, just stating that if Google throws me an offer, I'm obviously going to take it... but I'm not banking on that.

This pay raise demand would be the latter if/else in the Google offer edge-case!

djmillon 100% Burnt Out

Exactly, I totally agree. Thanks for the advice!

djmillon 100% Burnt Out

You make a really good point. The boss does know how shitty it is for people and he mentioned he hopes things will change by Q1 of next year.

2 mental break downs in 5 months, I don't think I can make it to Q1 of next year. The Principal engineer who left shortly after I joined, said the same thing about 'hoping things would get better'. He was always waiting for it to get less shitty, but that never happened. It feels like a bait and switch, but with a twist of insanity haha

djmillon Ask HN: How to train my students to be Unicorns

Maybe for a small backend project, you could use Ruby on Rails? RoR gives you easy JSON API capabilities, an app server, and an out-of-the-box sqlite3 db.

I figured I'd throw it out there because for a beginner, all of these things would be wrapped into one application and it might be easier for a beginner to maintain; however, you'd need to call out that not all frameworks have everything that RoR has.

And I'm not saying RoR is a 'best practice' backend approach, because I'd never use it as a real backend service, but it might fit in nicely with your bootcamp!

djmillon Ask HN: Moving, but want to keep my job

Great advice and thank you very much for posting. Luckily I've had the privilege of work from home since I started my career, so I've adapted a lot to not being in the office, but you're right - get a sweet office, separate space, and remind myself to take regular breaks.

Thanks again!

djmillon Ask HN: Moving, but want to keep my job

This definitely makes sense and thank you for sharing your experience. From what I've noticed, most people say to talk about this early on, so I think I'm going to bring it up very soon.

As you said, the more time I give, the more time I have to look for a new job, etc.

Thanks again!

djmillon Ask HN: Moving, but want to keep my job

Wow this is great and thanks for sharing. I had the same feeling that if I let them know too early, it might not work out in my favor; however, I won't know until I try.

As for moving and sticking to it, that's definitely my plan. This move is actually out of my control, so at least when I let them know I'm moving, there's nothing that'll change my mind and I'll make sure they know that.

Thanks again, this really helped.

djmillon Ask HN: Moving, but want to keep my job

Great feedback, thanks so much for the incite into your experience!