Active-PHOENiX

Education : B.s in Software Engineering [With Distinction] MBA [One Year Program] Job Status : Currently unemployed My Goal and aim for the rest of my life : Building a profitable business

I want you to imagine the environment and conditions I am in so that you can understand the context so your opinions and ideas will resonate more.

I am now 32 years old , I live in a non-English language , third world country . I am single , living with my family, have nothing in my name currently.

I started programming at age 14 , DOS commands and BASIC language. I was 24 when I enrolled for Bachelor Degree , I was 28 when I finished it , I was among top students with cum laude honor which meant nothing after I wanted to start to get a job.

I started to learn .NET stack with preference to web development. After graduation 2 years passed till I found my first job , working for a software company in Netherlands, a remote job, It lasted for one year till every money transactions has been closed down for this place. You can not have any pay pal, eBay or any money related accounts , not even a credit card.

In my latest job my roles extended to Senior Software Developer, Project Manager and Scrum Master in which I implemented scrum process with customizing Team Foundation Server to our projects needs with salary worth of 500$ per month (1$ worth of 3470X). And this salary is considered nearly the ceiling for this profession here which is ridiculously low compared to life expenses …

Unfortunately we hit a recession and inflation rate of over 120% which was around 30% for every year, the company did not gave a raise which having it after a year is a natural thing after yearly inflations, this made my salary practically useless for my life, I refused and lost the job.

Job market is in very bad condition, people getting laid off , underpaid, age limitations for entries and rules that will make you overqualified.

there are no other advantages when you employed other than your negotiated salary , no 401K , no pension , no retirement plans …

From Technology point of view, Google code and many other useful sites has banned this country IP's. Millions of websites are blocked and filtered here from inside other than those that banned ips themselves.

There are no copyright law here, You can buy MS office , Adobe Systems products and 100 more software on a DVD worth of 1$. This means your software service is worth nothing much.

Technology wise , we are restricted , we still do not have cloud services and I think we would never have by their measure. I have to pay 1000x more to get what you pay 5$/month for a hosting plan.

You can not have your home business , you have to have your office with a legal license , you can not have your online business for some industries , you have to go through a long journey and hurdles , these play as roadblocks for entry … You can not protect your idea or intellectual property , there are no effective laws.

They will close your site down at any time they want with no warning if they think you are working against the law, be it a n ad*lt oriented word or something related to satellites . You can not do anything , no matter you lose how much business …

With above all which I know are not all the details , I have decided to build a business. I can not go out of this place currently as I do not have enough money and I do not know what to do , I do not know the culture or laws.

I have tried to keep my knowledge updated , although I know I am not a superstar developer , I have gathered some E-books on business and business related operations and skills I have to know about.

I am willing to work hard , learn from my mistakes and start over. Nothing is hard for me , I will put my effort in it to make it work. I want to build a business, I have some ideas , most of the people here do not use internet as a day by day basis , online commerce is not that popular here , technology here is very slow … sometimes I think I have chosen the wrong profession , but as long as I remember I wanted to be a good programmer and I loved working with computers.

For the current moment I am not able to get out of here, not enough money , keep in mind that It is very hard to get visa from other countries specially USA, Canada and Germany.

What would you do or decide , if you were me?

I would appreciate your thoughts, workflows and roadmaps if any.

Best Regards.

Education : B.s in Software Engineering [With Distinction] MBA [One Year Program] Job Status : Currently unemployed My Goal and aim for the rest of my life : Building a profitable business

I want you to imagine the environment and conditions I am in so that you can understand the context so your opinions and ideas will resonate more.

I am now 32 years old , I live in a non-English language , third world country . I am single , living with my family, have nothing in my name currently.

I started programming at age 14 , DOS commands and BASIC language. I was 24 when I enrolled for Bachelor Degree , I was 28 when I finished it , I was among top students with cum laude honor which meant nothing after I wanted to start to get a job.

I started to learn .NET stack with preference to web development. After graduation 2 years passed till I found my first job , working for a software company in Netherlands, a remote job, It lasted for one year till every money transactions has been closed down for this place. You can not have any pay pal, eBay or any money related accounts , not even a credit card.

In my latest job my roles extended to Senior Software Developer, Project Manager and Scrum Master in which I implemented scrum process with customizing Team Foundation Server to our projects needs with salary worth of 500$ per month (1$ worth of 3470X). And this salary is considered nearly the ceiling for this profession here which is ridiculously low compared to life expenses …

Unfortunately we hit a recession and inflation rate of over 120% which was around 30% for every year, the company did not gave a raise which having it after a year is a natural thing after yearly inflations, this made my salary practically useless for my life, I refused and lost the job.

Job market is in very bad condition, people getting laid off , underpaid, age limitations for entries and rules that will make you overqualified.

there are no other advantages when you employed other than your negotiated salary , no 401K , no pension , no retirement plans …

From Technology point of view, Google code and many other useful sites has banned this country IP's. Millions of websites are blocked and filtered here from inside other than those that banned ips themselves.

There are no copyright law here, You can buy MS office , Adobe Systems products and 100 more software on a DVD worth of 1$. This means your software service is worth nothing much.

Technology wise , we are restricted , we still do not have cloud services and I think we would never have by their measure. I have to pay 1000x more to get what you pay 5$/month for a hosting plan.

You can not have your home business , you have to have your office with a legal license , you can not have your online business for some industries , you have to go through a long journey and hurdles , these play as roadblocks for entry … You can not protect your idea or intellectual property , there are no effective laws.

They will close your site down at any time they want with no warning if they think you are working against the law, be it a n ad*lt oriented word or something related to satellites . You can not do anything , no matter you lose how much business …

With above all which I know are not all the details , I have decided to build a business. I can not go out of this place currently as I do not have enough money and I do not know what to do , I do not know the culture or laws.

I have tried to keep my knowledge updated , although I know I am not a superstar developer , I have gathered some E-books on business and business related operations and skills I have to know about.

I am willing to work hard , learn from my mistakes and start over. Nothing is hard for me , I will put my effort in it to make it work. I want to build a business, I have some ideas , most of the people here do not use internet as a day by day basis , online commerce is not that popular here , technology here is very slow … sometimes I think I have chosen the wrong profession , but as long as I remember I wanted to be a good programmer and I loved working with computers.

For the current moment I am not able to get out of here, not enough money , keep in mind that It is very hard to get visa from other countries specially USA, Canada and Germany.

What would you do or decide , if you were me?

I would appreciate your thoughts, workflows and roadmaps if any.

Best Regards.

Context :

Education : B.s in Software Engineering [With Distinction] MBA [One Year Program]

Job Status : Currently unemployed

My Goal and aim for the rest of my life : Building a profitable business

I want you to imagine the environment and conditions I am in so that you can understand the context so your opinions and ideas will resonate more.

I am now 32 years old , I live in a non-English language , third world country . I am single , living with my family, have nothing in my name currently.

I started programming at age 14 , DOS commands and BASIC language. I was 24 when I enrolled for Bachelor Degree , I was 28 when I finished it , I was among top students which meant nothing after I wanted to start to get a job., the gap you see is because of life hurdles I have to overcome before I can go to university. I started to learn .NET stack and C# with preference to web development.

After graduation 2 years passed till I found my first job , working for a software company in Netherlands, a remote job, It lasted for one year till every money transactions has been closed down for this place. You can not have any pay pal, eBay or any money related accounts , not even a credit card . I became jobless again. After sending my resume to job advertisements , I got a job doing web development work , soon I was in a position to give my opinions about technologies to choose or architectures to implement. After one year I literally became the project manager and taught ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework to other team members, I designed and implemented SCRUM with Team Foundation server as a process that the projects would use. Unfortunately we hit a recession and inflation rate of over 120% and while my employment agreement needed to get renews they told me there would be no raise for the coming year in salary , so I refused to stay there, worked 2 years for that company, there was no growth , no advance to upper levels.

Job market is like the same now, the amount of salary they are willing to pay is good for entry levels but not for more senior developers you can not live with those salaries and these prices. There is not much demand for experienced software developers because of level of projects being done. Script kiddies will do :) or you have to accept a low salary doing their job although you are much more experienced , there are no other advantages when you employed other tha your negotiated salary , no 401K , no pension , no retirement plans ...

Google code and many other useful sites has banned this country IP's. Millions of websites are blocked and filtered here from inside other than those that banned ips themselves.

Money wise , you have to pay 4000X for your 1$, 1 Euro here , this means you 1$ will worth like 4000X here. You will work with internet speed of 25Kbps in number but you know it is much slower because of all filtering it is under current via telecom system. This means watching tutorial videos are so much painful. There are no copyright law here, You can buy MS office , Adobe Systems products and 100 more software on a DVD worth of 1$. This means your software service is worth nothing much.

You have to get a visa to go to anywhere , and getting a visa is an expensive and took a lot of time if you manage to get one , you have to pay 4000x more to get US or Euro currencies , flight ticket is very expensive. literally for me to buy a one way ticket to US I have to give them my 2 month of salary to be able to buy one. Technology wise , we are restricted , we still do not have cloud services and I think we would never have by their measure. I have to pay 1000x more to get what you pay 5$/month for a hosting plan. You can not have your home business , you have to have your office , you can not have your online business for some industries , you have to go through a long journey and hurdles , these play as roadblocks for entry … You can not protect your idea or intellectual property , there are no effective laws.

They will close your site down at any time they want with no warning if they think you are working against the law, be it a n ad*lt oriented word or something related to satellites . You can not do anything , no matter you lose how much business ...

With above all which I know are not all the details , I have decided to build a business. I can not go out of this place currently as I do not have enough money and I do not know what to do , I do not know the culture or laws. I have tried to keep my knowledge updated , although I know I am not a superstar developer , I have gathered some Ebooks on business and business related operations and skills I have to know about.

I am willing to work hard , learn from my mistakes and start over. Nothing is hard for me , I will put my effort in it to make it work. I want to build a business, I have some ideas , most of the people here do not use internet as a day by day basis , online commerce is not that popular here , technology here is very slow … sometimes I think I have chosen the wrong profession , but as long as I remember I wanted to be a good programmer and I loved working with computers.

What would you do or decide , if you were me? I would appreciate your thoughts, workflows and roadmaps if any.

Best Regards.

Thank you , I have been heard of this web site, now I have bookmarked it. It seems very few people were interested to answer those questions I have asked , maybe I should post this somewhere else to get better input? I sincerely appreciate your time spent here typing comments for me.

I was totally unaware of such currency existence, Thank you for the information, It seems its market and exchange is still mostly in US and It seems it started to happen in 2009 , 4 years ago and I did not know anything about it, however, How can I find latest information like these new happenings in internet , from where can I get informed regularly? I should read TechCrunch regularly? any other place? thank you again.

I was trying all past years to search and read as many news as possible in Hacker News , StackExchange and some other forums ... any better place to get informed?

@victorhn You are right this is the exact situation I have here.

@manglav Thank you for your response , for your information I have to say that all money processing systems banned Iran and Iranians to work with the system , as I already mentioned I have worked with an Employer from Netherlands in 2010 and I was Just doing freelancing but because of sanctions he could not sent money to me in my bank account and redirected the amount to a bank account to Bank of America which one of my relatives lived there. I have tried to work with the options you mentioned but they have banned Iran already. And I do want to work and have a job but not in Iran.

Few background to start with: I am currently 32 years old – unmarried – with no relationship with opposite sex. I have been awarded B.S in Software engineering summa cum laude. I got one-year MBA degree. I am an Introvert – Typed INTJ in Myers Briggs test. My nationality is Iranian although I despise and hate it, because of its corrupted people and culture and its organizations. [No offense intended]

I am a .NET developer with 5+ years of exp and my last job position was a mix of senior developer, UX designer, team leader and scrum master. With regard to technology I read a lot on different aspects of our industry and try to keep my knowledge up to date. I read about business, management and leadership, I have tried to overcome my lack of self-esteem by the help of some psychology material and still working on that. I was employed by a company from Netherland to do development work as a junior developer few years ago before I join the company in my last job. By considering Iran situation and life conditions and limitations here for a guy like me here are some questions in my mind that I was unable to answer to myself although I have done my research: My Current Situation : - In my latest performance review , my boss told me I have done very well and have brought the company lots of benefits – but because of recession we are currently under they cannot increase my salary for the coming year I have to expect the same salary as last year but he will consider me for better positions at a later time – considering an inflation rate of at least 120% for the current year and remembering him putting me down and neglecting his promises for previous year I decided to leave the company – now I am unemployed currently.

o I am not eager to search for a job because I will undergo the same process and will be forced to go to another company after 2 to 3 years , this is a way around not letting you reaching upper level management – those positions are already occupied and/or is kept for someone else and keeping you from growing because if you grow they have to pay you more.This is widespread in software industry in Iran as well as no copy rights for software being built.

o I had some thought to start my own business until I have found out that: In Iran once you go to register an LLC you have to have business office – you are not allowed to work from home – you are not allowed to have an online business without a business office located elsewhere other than your home and some years of doing business under your belt [paradox] , It has to be in a trade center. And I do not have that amount of money to have one.

Some Questions :

- Is there any way that I can build a startup and do business with countries other than IRAN, from Iran , I am aware of sanctions? - Is there a way that I can get a work visa and get out of this place? I know ASP.NET MVC 3 , JQUERY , C#, T-SQL , SQL SERVER 2008 R2 ,Full Text search algorithms, Entity Framework, TFS 2012 , Scrum 2.0 Process and many other technologies related to .NET development. I have done projects in developing CMS’s and Line of Business applications. - I found myself useless after all of these years of work experience and schooling, I have very little money in savings account although I do not spend that much, I have no house or car. I feel no matter what and how much I work I will not be able to build a life that I can live in it at a sensible degree of comfort. I feel my mind is numb and unable to find ideas I should have, I feel I am inept and incapable of supporting myself and doing something to support my life. - Why some people who do not belong to the place they are, still can be there with not much effort, with not much integrity or merit and competency? I have seen a lot. - How come underperformers come up wealthy, happy and life come easy to them , although life was never easy or forgiving for me and I do not expect it that way anyway? - What is the meaning of life when you just run after goals and values that are deemed to be worthy of you r effort but very few were capable of achieving them and society standards see it as norm and you have to try to achieve them to have a comfortable life no matter how hard you try and how many times you fail? - I am willing to work for half amount of average salary for a software developer outside of Iran, Is there anybody willing to give me a job and be able to get me a work visa? - If you were me, what you would do, I do not see myself as I have all the answers, I just see and try to understand the situation and its limitations to come up with better decisions. What do you think?