rhnoble

10% might be a good rule of thumb if the old adage that "9/10 startups fail" is somewhat accurate. Is $100M the average exit though? Anyone have that data?

I definitely don't want it to happen either. But from Facebook's standpoint it's not a bad space to start looking at. The reasons you listed above worry me as a consumer, but unfortunately the average user isn't as scrupulous. If FB made paying for things as easy and simple as "liking" something, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't successful.

Same here. I'll pay $5 for almost anything, and I'm certain that if it's half way decent I'll get a lot more than $5 worth of value out of it.

Jeez, good to know. As mfalcon mentioned, freelancing would be a good fallback, but you'd still have to talk about what kind of work you were doing etc.

Is that still a thing? It's not like you'll be applying to law firms. I've found making yourself less available only makes your demand higher.

Since when are most designers against "true" spec work? Anytime I hear something like "the possibility of future payment and work", I run away as fast as I can. That's the kind of "spec" work the design community could do without.

Crowd-sourced spec work is another matter altogether. If a potential client points to those sites as a way of driving down your price, they're not the kind of clients you want to work with.

There's nothing wrong with taking on a high profile job for the exposure and doing it for free if you treat it like an extraneous circumstance and a business decision. But compared to people in other fields, designers are a little soft on what are acceptable payment terms, and are often taken advantage of as a result. Free = free and paid = paid, but "spec work" is a grey area that is on the whole bad for the community.

I love Masonry so much. I want to marry it.

I use J/K to browse so much that I sometimes forget it's not built into all websites. "What do you mean I can't hit the letter "O" to open that link??"

Not to mention keyboard shortcuts! Navigating with my keyboard seriously saves me tons of time everyday.

I agree "Programmer" is a sufficient job title, but my favourite "alternate" title I've seen anyone use is "Technical Enabler". It says "I use technology to solve problems and create value", which I think is very apt most of the time. You might be programming or you might simply be sharing/applying knowledge about computers, software, the web etc. that most people don't have. At least that's what I feel it's like most days.

I didn't think much of the video, but I liked the "Interactive Transcript" widget on the right side of the video.