SoggyMike

"charge low enough"

For a while I had the idea that I would only charge the rate that I actually required to cover my modest expenses.

I got no offers for any kind of work. Not perm, not contract.

Now that I charge obscene hourly rates I'm getting lots of work.

If you don't charge enough for contract coding potential clients will assume that you are so inexperienced that you are completely unaware of what other contractors are charging.

Use http://salary.com to guide your bid. If you _do_ choose to pursue contract programming, add one-half of your IRS 1040 Schedule SE Self Employment Tax to salary.com's salary then convert it to hourly rates.

But you will also want to pay for your own vacations, medical insurance and the like. Do some research on what kind of benefits your kind of coder receives than add at least that much to salary.com's salary and one-half of your self-employment tax.

(The self employment tax is equal to the sum of the employer and employee contributes to FICA - the social security tax.)

Also take into account the cost of providing your own software and equipment, your advertising and other legitimate business expenses.

All this has the result that contractors appear to be far better paid than are perm employees. If you only charge what I advise above then your take-home pay will be no more than that of the perms.

"Computer Employers" because I am listing hardware companies, not just software.

However I don't know where to go looking for hardware companies. You could really help a brother out where you to either reply with the names of some small- to medium-sized hardware companies, or email those names to incoming@soggy.jobs.

I am specifically looking for a list of all of Intel's fabs. Fabs are labor intensive so listing them would work really well for me but I don't really know where to go to find such a list. (I need such a list to state the city that each fab is located in.)

Intel's Fab 20 is in Hillsboro Oregon so there must have at least nineteen others. :-/

Write a software product whose binary will have some popular appeal.

It's doesn't have to be a Killer App - it's OK if that appeal is popular only among a certain demographic.

I got my break as a coder by applying for a QA job that expected me only to execute scripts that someone else wrote.

But one day my manager walked into my cube to find it completely wallpapered with what looked like flowcharts.

"Those are actually dataflow diagrams," I explained. "I can't quality MacTCP 1.0.1 because the test tool always crashes."

"I know how to code on the Macintosh. Any chance you could get approval to have me fix all the bugs in strm_echo?"

I knew and he knew and my manager's manager all knew that I was offering to do software engineering for the pay I received as a script monkey.

I fixed strm_echo, qualified 1.0.1, 1.1 and wrote a new tool and a test plan for 1.2. In the process I got really good at debugging with the MacsBug machine debugger.

My next job I was the Product Development Manager for a company whose flagship product was incompetently written by a con artists. I stayed at Working Software for 3 1/2 years, during which I learned everything else - other than MacsBug - that I needed to know to be a commercial Mac developer.

If you want a mobile app development job you have to have at least one app in either Apple's App Store or in Google Play.

If you want to be a web developer you need to create a useful website - not for other coders to look at your source, but for end-users to find useful and appealing.

I'd be quite stoked were Facebook to ban most but not all cryptocurrency ads.

What I find most disturbing are all the self-appointed "experts" who offer classes in which they will teach their "system" that they claim will guarantee the students collossal returns on very small investments.

However there are lots of ads that I'd like Facebook to keep. Many of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) ads are from legitimate startup companies who hope to finance their new businesses by selling tokens at a fixed price for a limited period of time.

But I only want just the _legitimate_ ICO ads to remain. Unfortunately there are plenty of ICO scams. It can be quite difficult for a newbie to determine the difference.

I had a good experience with my first ICO - I bought NAGA at $1.00 then after it was listed with an exchange, I sold it at $3.00.

I have three other ICOs that I plan to hold until the companies behind them become profitable.

Note: "sold". I have a special hatred for the word "HODL".

There are other kinds of crypto advertising that I feel should remain. I'm very happy with my Bitmain Antminer L3+ LiteCoin mining rig.

Even with mining rigs there are scams: Etherium and Monero are both "ASIC resistant" because mining them requires quite a lot of memory. They both require GPUs.

In principle ASIC ETH or Monero ASIC mining is _possible_. I expect someone will eventually make ASICs with the required memory integrated into the chip.

But there are _no_ ETH or Monero ASIC rigs _yet_. Despite this, scammers are endlessly posting on message boards that their "company" - perhaps "shell company" is a better term - has ASIC Etherium rigs for sale.

I now leave my laptop at home. I still do some Facebook on my iPhone, but not nearly as much as I did when I had my acer with me.

I heartily agree with the article's thesis.

If you agree with me, then you will also agree to copy and paste - do not just share - this post to your status.

With all the bravado of P.T. Barnum, I am building The Global Computer Employer Index.

It's organized geographically, with direct links to each company's own careers or jobs portal.

It's not just for engineers but for project, product and personnel managers, tech support, quality assurance and technical sales and marketing.