orware

Hi there! I know the Joomla project could definitely use some help like that...if you're interested I would send this same message you've written here to the CMS Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/joomla-dev-cms

Development is entirely community driven (which is both a pro and a con) but at the same time it would be nice to have a strong PM hand helping to guide things again (we had a great person from the Netherlands during some of the early years of the project, Wilco Jansen, but since he bowed out of the role several years back I feel we've been missing that direction he was able to provide).

I would definitely look forward to having you contribute to Joomla if it seems like something you would find interesting!

I'd definitely upvote this one as being a prime reason.

And it's not like the jobs we're talking about here are completely "dead-end" (I wouldn't call a well-paying job a dead end and I definitely have one of those).

As an example, I got an email this morning from Whitetruffle mentioning a company was interested in me (which is always a nice boost to hear) for a position. However, the position was in New York City, and I live in Southern California. Researching the company, I find the salaries offered are probably so-so. Work-wise, I have no idea how it might be (it could be great, it could be similar to my current place, it's hard to tell because of that "grass is greener on the other side" one starts to get after being in one position for a while and seeing all of the neat new companies that come up), but in general I tend to look at the big picture of how such a job would affect me and my family.

In my case, the reasons for staying in my current position are definitely a combination of stability (working for a public college provides certain benefits in that regard for pension/job security), my current pay (at this point I can't really move to any other local organization because none of them would pay similar to what I'm paying now...I would be forced to somewhere else), liking my small town commmunity, being able to be close to my parents, and having a small family (one 6-year old daughter with another on the way).

A few years back I took an opportunity to go up to the Bay Area and work for eBay, but I was uncertain about job security (combine the Glassdoor reviews mentioning mid-year staff cuts and my own impostor syndrome feelings made me feel like I could be one of those people), work-wise it actually wasn't more fulfilling than my current position (I had a lot more freedom to define my own projects and work at the college)...plus the salary wasn't really much more than I had already been making when I factored in cost of living changes...then to top it off my family was much further, and my wife (fiance at the time) and I weren't living together so that added additional stress.

So in the end, I ended up making the decision to come back to the college (and luckily it was to a slightly upgraded position).

It's not perfect, but overall, I definitely feel like I made the right choice.

Would I love to work for a startup? Definitely! I think there's a ton I still want to learn and can learn, but at the same time I don't want to place myself or my family in any sort of bad financial position because I don't know the future and which company out there would be even more perfect than my current job.

Thanks for sharing! Pretty interesting read :-).

I actually came across An Wang's book entitled "Lessons" earlier this year when I was checking out a small bookstore in San Diego. It's a pretty neat piece of history and he made some interesting contributions to the industry that I had never heard about: http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Autobiography-Eugene-Linden/dp...

That's actually exactly what I'd imagine he'd do (it would be even funnier if he was chucking potstickers at him...for those that don't know that's an inside joke from his Simply Scheme book...I can't remember if it was also mentioned in CS61A too :-).

Thanks for sharing!

Here's a link to Professor Harvey's papers page (the link is a little hard to notice on his main page): http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/papers.html (it has a couple of neat Logo essays in there)

I think they moved off of the older Realplayer-based sites and onto Youtube...they pretty much have every version of CS61A online from the past few years...here's a playlist of one of the last ones taught by Professor Harvey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l28HAzKy0N8&list=PL3E89002AA...

Overall, I would say folks may not have appreciated him as much in those lectures as you might expect (if you've watched the online versions of them, they were basically the same as those...unfortunately we probably weren't the most active class participants either with everything else going on in each student's day-to-day life).

I actually learned more about his personality by reading Simply Scheme for the precursor class to CS61A (CS3) since I was a complete noob to programming at the time...his book was really fun to read though and I learned a lot that semester.

I think I ended up reading a couple of Brian's essays on his UCB page as well, which helped me gain some additional appreciation for his background.

A few years later I picked up a copy of the book Hackers (by Steven Levy) and it was there (during the section about the early days of the MIT Hackers) that I saw his name mentioned and I thought it was so cool that I had had him as an instructor :-).

This brings back fond memories of my 1 year at UC Berkeley back in 2005-2006 and getting my start learning about Computer Science fundamentals with Professor Harvey and CS61A.

Afterwards I always told myself I'd jump in at some point and play around with Logo (since the books were freely available on his page since forever it seems) but I had forgotten about those thoughts until seeing this post right now.

To Professor Harvey :-)!

There's some pretty neat info on the Silicon Border site, but here's a quick report on there talking about "Five Reasons to Consider Mexico" that has some nice information: http://www.siliconborder.com/sites/default/files/documents/F...

I'm not sure if any of you have heard of it already, but there's also the Silicon Border project announced quite a few years back that was set to be located on the outskirts of Mexicali: http://www.siliconborder.com/

I remember being really excited when I saw that in the local Imperial Valley Press. So far though I think it'll be a project that'll still take a number of years to be fully developed but if it does come to pass will be a huge benefit to the local area.

*Haha, that's actually a pretty funny coincidence and made me imagine a little conversation like this: --- You: "Hi my name is TJ." Person: "Nice to meet you, do you live here in Sorrento Valley?" You: "I live in TJ." Person: "What?" ---

On a less silly note, the cost of living thing is actually quite interesting because we have the same situation over here between Mexicali and living in Imperial County.

A few of my coworkers in IT actually commute over daily (and use SENTRI) and I've always wondered how much they're able to save by living over there.

One of my staff members also commutes daily from Mexicali and she sometimes gets stuck at the line to cross over if there happens to be an incident (such as a person hiding inside a car the other week). I know for her she's mentioned quite a few advantages to living across the border, one primarily being childcare costs for her daughter (I'm trying to remember the exact figure but I want to say it was $300 for the entire month) compared to this side where it would cost about $500-$600 (and in San Diego it would probably be even higher).

Plus the rent / food costs are much lower in general in Mexicali too and the currency conversion is favorable for USD => Pesos.

Small world indeed :-).

It'd be interesting to find out how many of us have left the Valley and ended up in the tech industry somewhere and create a little network that could support each other ;-).

I went off to eBay for a short while before coming back to IVC, but tech opportunities are still few and far between down here so depending on how stagnant growth opportunities are in a few years it might force me to look for opportunities in the Bay Area or San Diego again.

Hi Rob,

I live in El Centro (and currently work at IVC as the Online Services Architect).

It's neat to see another person from the (Imperial) Valley on here ;-).

Your job listings page seems to be down at the moment (502 bad gateway, Nginx): http://www.shutterstock.com/jobs/listings

I thought it was really nice (but still surprising) to see this article appear on HN today, because I think the San Diego region doesn't get nearly as much attention as the Bay Area, though it has a lot of the same benefits (in terms of being a nice locale to live in).

The whole binational capability offered by being close to the border is also a pretty neat opportunity/advantage that I feel a lot of startup companies could utilize well if they wanted to, since there are a lot of highly educated and intelligent folks on the other side of the border.

For myself, living about two hours East of San Diego (in Imperial County) we have a lot of the same advantages from this perspective (since we share the border with Baja California's capital, Mexicali, where there's a strong manufacturing presence and lots of highly educated individuals) but we have 0 tech companies on the US side (and high unemployment to boot). Compared to San Diego, our locale isn't as desirable (we get high temperatures during the summer, hitting the 110+ degrees Fahrenheit mark, and the closest beaches are in San Diego) but we have plenty of sunny days and lots of open spaces (while I don't partake in it, there's lot of people that come down from San Diego and other places to go ride their dune buggies and stuff out in the desert and places like Glamis), less expensive housing and nice small schools/communities to raise a family.

It would be really cool to see some tech companies seek us out too, if they had employees that liked Imperial County's advantages, and setup shop down here (it would be great for the community and could start a greater influx of tech companies and/or an enhanced relationship with other tech hubs in San Diego/Bay Area).

Job hopping worked for me, the only time I've done so.

Back in 2011, a friend of mine offered an opportunity to switch from where I was working (a small community college in Southern California) to eBay in San Jose.

The jump in pay was pretty good (I believe I was making about $70K at the college at the time and the new job at eBay was starting me off at $90K, along with some RSUs and a bonus potential). (Sidebar: the pay was actually better initially when they first called me at $105K, but then they called me the next day and told me they had made a mistake and dropped it down to $90K...even though that really ticked me off, I ended up accepting anyway because it was still a pretty awesome opportunity for a small-town guy like myself to work for a big company like eBay).

I'm pretty risk averse so while I was there I was looking at a number of things, such as benefits (health / retirement), longevity / raise opportunities in the future, rent prices, work enjoyment etc. (looking at some of the comments people have made related to doing stuff in your 20's versus your 30's...I'm in my mid-20's but I probably act as risk-averse as a 40 year old). Even more so now that I'm married with a little one (and a bun in the oven).

Even though in $$ I was making considerably more, once I included the increased cost of rent in to live in San Jose (versus Imperial County, CA), I actually didn't seem to be making a whole lot more. Plus, I didn't quite feel like I had the same amount of responsibility / enjoyment out of the work I was doing compared to the projects I was able to direct / build at my old job.

So shortly after starting at eBay, when I found out my old job was getting upgraded into a management position (primarily due to the inability to upgrade a "regular" position to a higher salary) I opted to go back, even though my new salary would be a bit less than the eBay one ($80K) overall it'd be a decent jump since my overall costs were the same.

Since then, I've been able to complete all of those projects I came back to finish, along with a slew of new ones that have come up since then, but at the same time, I've had to start letting go of some of my development duties and replace them with management ones (mainly because my staff are non-developers...I'm really the only one handling online services and my other staff handle printing, publications/copying, and mail duties for the campus). It's been enjoyable, but at the same time I still want to become a better developer and it gets harder to do that at work now (and as someone else has mentioned, free time starts dwindling too).

Recently, after staying at the same salary for about two years, the management pay scale at the college was revamped, and as a newer manager I was able to receive a sizable increase because of it to my current salary of about $89K. For where I live that sort of salary is hard to find (i.e. it's damn near impossible).

Fast-forwarding to today, I like to keep my eye out for jobs (either in Craigslist or in the Who's Hiring threads each) in the Bay Area or closer, in San Diego, that would offer the "full package": a great location, environment / team, salary and while I've seen a few good options, it seems the most difficult thing to get across in an email or resume is demonstrating how much of an asset I could be as an employee.

I'm not really complaining (things are definitely in the good-great range currently) but I'm always looking for additional opportunities to continue learning and become better at writing software (and being able to focus on that full-time again would definitely be great, and I could still bring my additional skills as an entrepreneur/manager to the table).

In the meantime, I went ahead and scraped our local Chamber of Commerce websites and sent out some old-fashioned snail mail letters to local businesses asking if there were any pain points or tasks that take up a lot of employee time that could potentially be automated or solved with software. I figure if I can get some interesting projects out of that it would be worth it and give me an enjoyable coding project to work on that solved a problem. So far, I've only received one response from a local liquid fertilizer / trucking company so after finishing this message I'm going to go take a closer look at the info that business provided me on Friday to see what I can do for them :-).

P.S. I'm always willing to go and try out for a company...and luckily, I just happen to be on vacation for the next two weeks hint hint.

Good morning!

I'm not in a position to hire anyone, but from my experience reading the HN Hiring Threads and such it seems like sometimes like your particular expertise so far would be good to list on here as well (while not all employers are like this, I do see a trend of folks not really taking a closer look if you aren't already using the same technology they're using in their company).

Additionally, I don't know if you want folks to contact you using your Nota Facebook or Twitter account, but you may additionally want to list some sort of contact info in your profile so folks might be able to ping you directly (in case they aren't wanting to necessarily advertise directly in the thread).

Good luck and I hope you get some responses!

Points like this are the best to learn about early on (this article was the first one to mention it that I've read, so it's definitely something I'm going to try and keep in mind in case I need it down the road...though I'm far away from Silicon Valley and probably won't build a company that'll be acquired anytime soon).

Thanks for highlighting this point for others!

For gaming PCs that's true...I was referring to laptops though (on the road, less stuff to carry).

No offense against the Xbox One controller (which I do enjoy using), but I think for my casual on-the-road or in my room gaming on my laptop I'll just keep on using my PS4 Controller (I didn't get a PS4, but the $60 on the controller was well spent :-).

Instructions for PC setup can be found here: http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-DS4-To-XInput-Wrapper

It's really nice not to have to worry about extra wires :-).

It makes me wonder why there aren't more Bluetooth PC controllers out there (I really haven't seen too many, maybe like one from Logitech, but none of them are as good as the console ones anyway so it's a moot point for me).

> CS graduates are overqualified for 90% of current internet jobs. They are also underqualified...

This is 100% true for new CS grads I think.

It's even true for people like myself (who have been working in industry for over 5 years, but then don't know a particular tool that a new tech job is asking for...if I don't have to use it at my current job, and I can only program small things on the side using a particular language/tool, how does one get the needed experience that the startups want you to know if they won't hire you so you can learn it, firsthand?).

I just finished a 3-4 month stint having a past student volunteer with me so I could give him the additional direction and practical experience I knew he needed to actually get a job locally (and web developer positions are few and far between where I live). This is a few years AFTER he had already graduated from San Diego State's CS program.

Now with that additional training he was able to get a part-time position at a local web development firm (a foot in the door) and is also on his way to a 2nd interview for a web developer position at our local county office.

It hurts when you can see the potential in someone and know that it's not being developed properly because no one else (a.k.a. potential employers) can see it and make the jump to hire the person based on their potential and then give a bit of their time to train that person properly.

It's also awesome to know that my past student is going in the right direction now through my guidance (partially) but also through his hard work these past few months to acquire the needed skills :-).

P.S. I forgot to mention in our area, most of the graduates of our CS program can't find actual software development jobs (because there are hardly any available) so many of them end up in regular IT work, which makes them even more overqualified (and underqualified) since their schooling really didn't teach them about the IT stuff, per se, so they have to learn a whole lot on the job (once they are even able to get one).

I'd be interested in taking a look at it as well if you're willing to share :-)

Thanks for sharing the docracy.com link...that one has some really nice examples...and they're free :-).

Thanks for the reply...typically I'm a very positive/trusting guy so I don't think too much about the enforcing part, and like you said, once you've started to go down that route it's not good.

I typically haven't used any contracts in the past (only ones the group I was working with made me sign), but it seemed like it would be a good idea to see what I could be using to protect myself :-).

Thanks for sharing Terretta, this should be a good example for me to review.

Thanks, I'll contact you shortly!

Maybe my point was taken away because I didn't provide an insightful reply to the original comment?

In that case, one of the reasons why I switched to a day job (after spending about the years in-between, during and after college working on small business ideas) was because I didn't have a strong enough business to sustain myself with the lifestyle I wanted to have.

It was awesome at first, and I was able to direct my energies to really improving things here at my workplace, but in recent years, with the job morphing to such a degree that I'm no longer primarily a developer (more management at this point) the fun level is no longer as high as it used to be.

I completely separated from having my LLC for the first few years after I started my day job, but then a few years ago I started a side business selling software on my website (under the sole proprietor model, due to the $800 minimum tax I didn't want to have to pay again for LLCs in California) and so far that small business has been semi-profitable and keeps the hosting bills paid.

Recently though, with those changes I mentioned above with my day job no longer being quite as fun as it used to when I was more free to do development work, I've looked towards contacting local businesses via snail mail and seeing if they have any business problems they need solving (anything repetitive/time-consuming for their staff, which I feel would be ripe for some sort of software automation or process to be put in place) so that way I'll have some more interesting problems to solve and get some insight into what problems our local businesses have (the # of software developers in the area is close to nil).

I'd like to eventually build up something significant where I could hire a few people and maybe earn enough to maybe switch to being a full-time entrepreneur, but at the moment the day job pay is just too good to leave (all of my savings goes to long-term accounts I can't tap, such as a 403b, life insurance savings account, and Roth IRA, so I don't save too much each month...plus there's the credit card debt and personal line of credit I'm still paying off).

Now I feel lucky I was able to experiment much more (some with my money I earned through the business, but also with parental money, mainly my mom since she was awesome enough to believe in me and provide me that opportunity) while I was a late teen/early twenty-something and make mistakes I've learned from. Profitability is a big factor now whenever I'm trying something new.

> I've been contracting as W2 through a pimp

Haha, when I read that part I LOL'ed.

Congratulations! The premise behind the company sounded cool when I first heard about you a few months back, exciting :-).

Thanks for mentioning this one, I hadn't seen it yet, but it's more or less what I had been imagining for my own mini-project...I guess I don't have to build it anymore :-).