strongbond

slotted.io (available, as is slotted.com, but at a gouging price).

Mind you, public brainstorming like this might be liable to abuse from snipers!

Would expect some kind of demonstration of capability before parting with the moolah. Some kind of 'free trial' (even if limited) should be your headline feature.

Do you work for Databricks?

I agree. I'm turned off by the way everything is a subscription nowadays, even if you only use a service a discrete and specific number of times. Not your fault I know :-) everyone is doing it! But there are only so many annuities I'm happy to contribute to. I get the feeling that we're all being nickel and dimed to death right now.

It looks very nice, by the way.

Can you point to any resources that explain how to eradicate your surfing behavior from Facebook's tracking? I'm sure it's not as simple as clearing cookies and never visiting a Facebook property again.

A cold email is like a cold call. Among other things, they don't foster trust and the shared experience of acknowledging challenging problems. When a CxO has a problem, they're more likely to reach out to their own networks than they are to reach for unsolicited email in their inboxes.

Pricing starts at $299/mo - how does this stack up? No connection.

+1

This is quite a competitive space now. It's also price competitive - with orgs like Notion offering free use to individuals. Interesting to see a different spin though - I'm not sure any similar services offer spaced repetition, for example. Good luck.

I grew up in a steel town (Port Talbot, South Wales) in the shadow of a massive steel plant. It's very interesting to be able to decompose Bret's descriptions and align each stage of the process with its modern, automated equivalent (... give or take).

I also found it expensive for a poor kid to learn along with the Amiga. So expensive - plus in the UK expansion hardware was ridiculous. In fact, in later life, through a coincidence, I met the marketing person who decided a 1MB RAM upgrade should cost £800. Thank God times have changed. That whole Amiga sales channel was very sketchy though - and now that I'm older and more experienced, it is obvious.

To me, they look like how I imagined the main alien structure in Peter Watts' Blindsight.

I know it's a closed beta, but would be interested in (at least) reading it.

Maybe it's because I'm a cheap date, but those prices look rather upmarket.

Totally a fan of Udemy (at sale-price). I find their star points sytem a very reliable indicator of quality and have become a real fan of several of their featured instructors (among whom are Andrew Mead, Stephen Grider and Jonas Schmedtmann). Node.js stuff, React, Webpack, Mongo etc. More advanced stuff is a little sparse, to be fair.

Please tell us how much it costs. Why would anyone trial any software without knowing the potential cost?

Edit: The only reason I can think of is if they had no intention whatsoever of proceeding to purchase it.

I'd (seriously) like to see how it stacks up against Camtasia, which I've just discovered in my new job that I have no budget for.

You know, color me stupid, but at this time, I don't think we need this kind of languid, laconic writing. It reads like a retrospective of the situation, but it's hardly begun.

Agreed. The simple solution is an expenditure cap. Why can't Amazon implement one? The fear of it going wrong like this would make me keep away from AWS forever.

Yeah, I knew about Mr. Pirsig and I've always loved the book.

Depends how impatient you are - or perhaps more accurately, how your financial situation is. Because of my marketing background, I started off with a large company (CSC Computer Sciences as it was then) working with a team that was launching a large collection of 'service offerings' - so the writing, while it had to be accurate and truthful, focused on upbeat, marketing-style messaging. It took me 5 years - including some time as a freelancer - before I began to get regular gigs in my target zone - you know, bringing complex software to life for a readership that was largely composed of developers. If I was doing it again ... and to get into that zone a bit quicker ... I would definitely look at the open source world and offer to help with some projects that gave me some tingles. There are many, many wonderful open source projects that owe their success to great docs (e.g. DJango) and in the closed source world, orgs like Stripe are very well regarded.

I always took two sayings to heart:

1. You need to write a million words before you can call yourself a writer - both Ray Bradbury and Jerry Pournelle are cited as sources.

2. All writing is rewriting. That is, your first draft will be garbage but it's easier to improve on something that you have, than to start with a blank page.

Both quotes have been more often attributed to writing fiction, but the same goes in the tech writing world.

The other important thing to understand is that tech writing is much less glamorous than development, and so it's often harder to fill those slots, which gives you an edge if you can demonstrate a bit of ability.

One option you might consider is simply to apply for those jobs. If you know programming, that's a huge plus. If you don't have a portfolio - urge the hiring company to set you a tech writing task (that's what I did). You can only learn from the exercise. Sure, you might bomb a couple of times, but there will come a time when you don't.

You don't really get much from books until you're into the groove - tech writing is really just about 'doing it' while keeping an authentic picture of your reader in your mind.

Hit me up (I'll put my email in my profile) if you have any other questions.

[Edit]: for presentation and a typo

You could be me! I was in a similar position but could not afford the salary decrease (however temporary) from senior marketer to junior developer. So I segued into technical writing from marketing - my salary dropped a little but there were a fair number of transferrable skills, plus an enjoyment of programming, so it was reasonably smooth. Fast forward 15 years - I am now a senior technical writer but can't afford the salary drop to junior developer! Hey ho, I get my fair share of coding in my day job and the pleasure of helping people get intimate with software. Good luck!

I know several people who keep silent until they can say something clever, and frankly, in most group situations they stand out as being slightly weird. Keeping your intellectual powder dry is just not a socially 'giving' behaviour. What's wrong with saying something that's not clever? Within a group, it might send the conversation off in a delightfully unanticipated direction. There's more to it all than always being right. Or clever.

+1 for anything by Stephen Grider.

When I last looked, https://www.compose.com/ did 'blind hiring' - they judge you by a small, representative work task rather than the credentials you boast. OK, you'll spend quite some time if you want to nail it. But hey. Edit: I got quite far in their little puzzle-box of a recruitment process, but didn't quite make it.

"All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy." - Spike Milligan

Because it costs money to sustain the armies of talentless paper-pushers who work for these organisations.

Well, it could also be a reflection upon the poor judgment of someone who persisted in getting tattoos in the full knowledge that their (perhaps potential) employer frowned on them.

About $5 a loaf

Lower risk: No savings? Well, now you have some. Not the right place to advise what to do with your savings, but many would suggest index-linked funds with low management fees.

Higher risk: Eastern Europe sounds like a low cost of living kind of place. 25K Euros might be enough of a runway to build your MVP if you have one in mind.

I'm guessing that fences might also be a slight problem for the sewer system.