Github founder on how to become a famous^Wgood Rails developer | Hacker News Reader

Github founder on how to become a famous^Wgood Rails developer

gist.github.com

137 pointsaditya19 comments

Far from the most important point, but easily my favorite one-liner:

Would you pay $100 an hour for an untrained accountant? Because if your consulting rate is $100 an hour and you do your own accounting, that's exactly what's happening.

That ignores the tax implications. If you earn $100 as a freelancer, you might get $60 after tax, which means you'd have to work one hour and forty minutes to pay your accountant $100 (edit: no. As aaronblohowiak notes, you would have to work the same hour, because accountants are tax-deductible). And there are frictional costs -- I can hire myself as an accountant for free, but I have to at least get referrals, make phone calls, sign contracts, and write checks for my accountant.

So it's a little more complicated than that. Maybe "Would you pay an untrained accountant $60 (edit: $100) per hour, with zero transaction cost, no agent-principal conflicts, and instant availability?" Maybe not a good deal, but still a better deal.

For me, there are two qualities I look for when hiring an outside service provider like an accountant which go beyond the $/hour perspective.

1) I assume my time is essentially priceless. If I've ever had complex finances, for example, I hire an accountant because it's not worth me trying to decode some obscure tax law (which commonly changes year to year btw) for several hours just for the satisfaction of knowing I've DIY'ed the situation and maybe saved a couple of $ in the long run, while quite possibly also having had made mistakes.

2) Speaking of mistakes, the second reason is that often times hiring someone else comes with some kind of guarantee or warranty. Hire an accountant and if your taxes aren't right you're liable to make up the error, but you're not going to jail for tax fraud. Hire an electrician and (usually) they'll stand by their work and come fix errors within a given amount of time.

Not saying I disagree with your statement, just offering a perspective on why $/hour doesn't always evaluate so clearly as a meaningful metric.

"If you earn $100 as a freelancer, you might get $60 after tax, which means you'd have to work one hour and forty minutes to pay your accountant $100." - um, isn't the accountant a business expense and therefore a writeoff?

Yes, editing to reflect that.

I do my own accounting, for the same reason I rewired my own house. Because I'm interested in doing it.

I do my own because I wrote software to handle it. Whenever I discover a new piece of tax code/legislation or reporting requirements, I encode it in software so I don't have to do it manually ever again.

This only applies if you're turning down work at $100/hour because you don't have enough time.

The 2nd half of this talk is excellent. Ignore the first half.

> My work experience wasn't what got me the job. I'm sure my cover letter had something to do with it, but my short lived career in trucking logistics was less than glamorous. I really only had one thing to show GameSpot - Spyc. My code was freely available, had been used in production, and worked. They could download it and play with it, or check it out online. Regardless of whether or not they thought it was good, they could tell it was clean and well thought out. Well, maybe not, but I had a website and 70 downloads.

> Code talks.

If you don't have any projects going right now, you should spend some time here starting something new. Something you've been meaning to do but haven't got around to. An idea that's been floating around.

I liked the whole thing actually.

Exactly - I think the mega-sarcastic first half (which reminds me of "let's sell out and make a hit song"-type talk from jaded bands in the 90s) sets the stage for the more positive message in the second half which simply attempts to illustrate the value of practical participation as opposed to lip service. The verbosity and shameless github-vs-sourceforge examples toward the end are a little tiresome, but I think this is a perceptive narrative that drags us through interesting or at least minutia of software communities.

This advice is definitely applicable beyond code, the core point he's making seems to be: get known, and participate.

Whether you're a blogger or wannabe games designer, this is definitely the way to get ahead, and I totally regret the fact that some of the more fun projects I've done have had nowt to show for it. I should've got involved in open source earlier, and more obviously.

I found the whole article very very painful to read, with no leading thought. I prefer to read his code, nothing really interresting in his talk for me, except maybe the part about ruby rockstar attitude wich was fun

I guess it's the one liner style, it makes the whole thing sound so pointless ...

Ironically, that's the point of his talk.

uh, uh! A success story! I want to be like this guy. I bet if I do what he says I might actually come close.

But wait! We have different personalities...

Let's focus more on code and less on talk.

    bash-3.2$ wc -w ./rubyrant.txt
    4759 ./rubyrant.txt

http://github.com

That good enough for you?

It's a talk; that's what he's supposed to do. He also released a lot of code he wrote, so he isn't exactly being a hypocrite.

Upmodded for being a clever putdown. Still a putdown though...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com