allenc

Like learning how to program, I think it's a mistake to look at a finished product, go "I want my project to look like that!" and then try to deconstruct the end result systematically.

I'd suggest forgetting the "oh pretty!" aspect of design, and just focus on simplicity, both on aesthetics (What's simpler than a line to separate? White space!) and usability (Simpler than two clicks: one click). The basic principles of fonts, spacing, and color theory always apply, so start with getting comfortable with these techniques. The gradients, subtle shading, and translucency effects can come later and build on top of the basics anyway.

Eh, I can't draw myself, so I probably can't comment on good logo design. I think as long as it's clean and distinctive - branding your app - it should work well. You can always hire a designer to redo it when you gain some traction.

Right. The general idea is: the bigger the font size, the more people will notice it, so make the irrelevant stuff small and the attention-grabbing stuff big. As to colors, I just saw something someone else posted that can help you develop a coherent color scheme:

http://www.techiemania.com/5-awesome-free-tools-to-help-you-...

And another article with good design pointers submitted to HN:

http://www.visualmess.com/

As to the logo, the same ideas apply: more whitespace between the title, tagline and "beta", vary the font faces to provide contrast, and try using contrasting primary colors to make it a bit more dynamic.

Some things just from a design and aesthetics standpoint:

- More white space. It's the easiest way to lose the "cluttered" feel of having giant blocks of explanatory text.

- Vary the fonts and font sizes. In particular, your nav. bar's font sizes are too big and distract from the section titles; you can lose the nav altogether for a landing page.

- Have a consistent coloring scheme. Pick 2-3 colors (maybe the ones from your logo) and stick with them: one color for the titles, one for links, one for text. E.g., using light purple for your secondary title text at the bottom makes them look like links.

- Make the "sign up" button stand out more. That's your call to action, and right now it blends in with the background.

Agreed, although some laxer languages - say, Javascript - will let you do it all the same. Like I said, it's not necessarily a rule to follow, but whenever I come across people who would do things slightly off (from common coding practices anyway) I notice the difference, and if it's something I recognize I put a little mark there in case they're really, really close. I come from a C++ background, so stuff like i++ and ++i really do make a diff.

Hm, I think Fermi problems are not as much in style, but certain interviewers still ask them from time to time.

I'm thinking more about just annoying puzzle problems with one right answer, that if you don't have an "aha!" moment you'd probably never get (and remember, this is in the context of a stressful interview). Stuff like the Two Glass Balls problem:

http://sites.google.com/site/mytechnicalcollection/puzzle/tw...

Well, you begin by not saying "you're out of touch". =p You begin by saying "According to my research, these are the market rates for someone in my position. What are your thoughts?"

If it's really that he just didn't know what the going market rates are, then showing him the numbers shouldn't be insulting to him or the company; they're not purposefully underpaying you. If they were aware, then this is probably the gentlest and most professional way of "calling them out".

You might want to check out this classic:

http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Make-Minute/dp...

Which goes into the strategies of salary negotiation, including raises and benefits and all that other good stuff.

Hm...does your boss and your company know what market rates are? Don't assume that your company is purposefully underpaying you; it may very well be that they don't know enough of the market. In that case, esp. if you're on good terms with your boss, it'd be a simple matter of educating them in your research.

Startups usually don't have a ton of cash, so if you feel like you're still being shortchanged and the company simply can't afford to pay you more (from the company's perspective, increasing your salary may mean increasing everybody else's as well), you can ask for other things: more options, more days off, better benefits, and as you mentioned working remotely.

You're in a good position, and have built up good will over the years, so I'm sure they wouldn't want to lose you. It might be just a simple matter of bringing it up, so do that first.

One of the most annoying forms of interview has to be the immediately technical phone screen. I remember talking with startups, and during the initial phone call they'd leap into a canned set of technical screening questions, which themselves are some set of factoids which are supposed to translate to how good of a programmer you are.

I understand the need for startups to screen out absolute idiots before they spend time talking with a candidate; it's easy enough, though, to look the guy up beforehand or send the guy a coding question he could work on in isolation. Just make it a policy to only talk to candidates that have something technical you can verify beforehand.

In our current tech job market, it makes sense for the company to convince you it makes sense to talk to them further; chances are, if you're any good and someone they want, you can and will get multiple offers anyway. Even if the company wastes "talk time" to candidates that wouldn't make the cut, it's worth not driving away the guys who got annoyed by its strong-hand "we need a strong code monkey" interviewing tactics.

The "professionals directory" app is....well, let's just say it looks like someone ported a Windows application from the 80's. Isn't it kind of ironic (and maybe insulting) that the people who'd implement modern interfaces would want to use something so archaic?

Wow, that sounds terrible - sorry that one of our guys (in this case, really sounds like a recruiter than an actual engineer) expected you to know a bunch of random technical facts.

If it makes you feel better, our technical phone interviews + onsites are better; the engineers who you'd talk to care more about you being a smart candidate than trying to get you to rank yourself lower. I'm sure there are some people who scoff at candidates who, say, don't have the CS Ph.D that they do, but we honestly do have an interviewer feedback system that tells those people to knock it off.

Sure. I'm operating under the assumption that life might throw you a curveball or two - maybe some company is offering you enough money and a chance to network with great people that you'll take them up, but get stuck in the interview process b/c you don't have enough CS. To me sticking w/ a pure CS curriculum is the least risky and what you miss in SE you can quickly make up after anyway.

I'm thinking of stuff like Flash preroll ads, which somehow the Firefox adblock is able to get to but Chrome's will let through.

On one hand, it's great that academia is finally starting to teach what people in the industry lament as a lack of engineering education in their new grads.

Then again, like what others have said here, you're probably better off doing the traditional CS education for now. As much as SE in school may teach you, having an industry job where you'll learn from system architects, QA teams and project managers is probably a better education anyway. Think of the CS material as more future proofing - if you ever decide to try to get a job at a place that values computer science (think Google), having CS will let you be on par with all the other candidates (seriously, I've seen some interviewers downgrade a candidate because they didn't have a CS background).

Firefox's ad blocker is still ahead of Chrome's; if I remember correctly the browser's API limits what Chrome's ad blocker can do.

I think you're quoting the salaries from the big firms who are only looking to hire the best people, and even then that might be a starting MS/Ph.D salary for a specific role (e.g., machine learning) as opposed to general dev. I can see the Googles, Amazons, Apples and Facebooks of the world paying that for newly-graduated grad students, but that's hardly the norm.

This may be an outlier, but Google's 10% raise last year + adjustments to base salary, in my case anyway, made them way more competitive and would easily match what switching a job would be.