garrettgillas

I have been programming since I was 13. But now that I'm in my late 20's, like a lot of developers, I've moved into the management side. It feels weird sometimes to ship a project that I have been working on for weeks but not actually contributed any code to, but at the end of the day there is a shortage of good project managers so somebody has to do it.

For me it's 1%.

I used to go on business trips and to trade shows with my Dad's electric vehicle startup in the 80s/90s. I was under 10 then. However, I'm putting down 24 since that is a little more realistic.

This sounds an awful lot like the movie 'The Antitrust'.

Uh oh, this could be a bad sign of things to come for grey/black hat SEOs. Providing invalid WHOIS information is common practice among SEOs because it can help boost rankings when it appears like all your interlinked sites don't look like they are owned by the same person. If this is the beginning of a crackdown, there will be more drama to come.

This really is the best writing on the current tech economy I've read all year.

Yes, there a growing financial problem in the tech community. No, it it not like the bubble of the late 90's and it's silly to call it such a thing.

I thought Michael conveyed the message about as clear as possible without taking this thing too seriously.

Quoted:

The bureau isn't offering any reward for assistance in solving the case at this time, but the FBI is asking people who believe they may have some insight into the notes write to the address below:

FBI Laboratory Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit 2501 Investigation Parkway Quantico, VA 22135 Attn: Ricky McCormick Case

Creatine, Ephedera, Caffeine, Morphine, Hydrocodine, Oxycotin...

The point of mainstream sites indicating that the page has ajax with the URL path is to tell search engines. I have a feeling that what the author doesn't get is that it is very hard for search engines to tell the difference between ajax pages, static pages, and spammy keyword stuffed pages.

To me, it seems that Google recommends indicating ajax content in the path in the same way that our government issues concealed weapon permits. Yes it okay to have concealed content that can loads on the fly as long as you are very clear of your intentions. Once again this is a usability issue that wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for spammers.

Wow, this really made me feel terrible. I had no idea that that's how the deal with the layoffs went down, but it all makes sense now after reading that.

Yeah, anyone who posts their degree in their byline is going to be less than objective when writing a piece like this. Nobody likes to feel like they've been ripped off. Maybe in the future the college degree will be thought of as the Thigh Master of our generation.

Eduardo Saverin made more money from being "screwed out" of Facebook than almost anyone on earth will ever make in their entire lives (About 2.3 billion). Yeah, I feel really bad for him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Saverin

The situation you are in sounds fixable but by no means easy. I agree with patio11 in that you need to start trying to make changes incrementally and try to presently in as positive manner to others as possible. Never try to start a conversation with the phrase "so there's this really messed up code that I'd like to fix".

The classic mistake that young, hungry developers make is wanting to come in and shake things up by pointing out everything wrong and then trying to come off as a savior by fixing everything. While this may actually be the possible, it's not likely how your PM or CTO will see it. More likely you will just be perceived as a "Dwight Schrute" and regarded similarly.

I would say go with your option #2 but make sure to:

A) Make changes in as small of increments as possible. Don't even call them changes. It's less recognition but will be easier to pull of in the long run.

B) Make sure you don't hold back on crediting yourself in the documentation though since that's what new hires will see first and should also be the first "change" that you make.

C) Make sure that you communicate any changes that you make in as positive of a manner as possible at all times. This is key for reducing resistance. You will probably basically find yourself having to regularly "sell" things such as new libraries, IDEs, ect...

D) If you consistently face ongoing frustration don't hesitate to send out resumes and job apps. Even if your not serious I find that getting "We'd like you stop by next week for an interview..." emails have been a great stress reducer when I've been frustrated with my job.

Anyway, that's probably more crappy advice than you need so I'll stop there. Honestly if I were in your situation, from what it sounds like, I would only give myself about a 20% chance of actually being able to stay there with my sanity.

The OEN is one thing but the Portland tech scene shouldn't be characterized by such an organization with what might be called "outdated" policies.

My feelings are that Portland has talent and what it needs is seed funding and mentoring. Something like an incubator... I believe that this imbalance is the "problem" with Portland.

By the way, I didn't know that Josh Friedman wanted to be in charge of the Portland Seed Fund. I thought I heard that the whole thing was originally his idea but I could be wrong. Either way, the fund would best be managed by a hands-on Paul Graham type and Josh is probably as good of a fit as we can get out here.

Yeah, this article really doesn't mention too many hard and fast promises but I am optimistic about the Portland seed fund. I got to talk to the two fund managers in charge and they seem to have the right idea about how to bet their chips. We'll see in another month or two if I'm right.

I generally consider that most advice that people give is either incomplete or fundamentally wrong.

I agree with #5 highly. I've found that doing charity/service work to be a great way to regain focus on who I want to be when I start slipping towards self-absorption. Genuinely helping other people out basically keeps you from becoming a douche bag.

What you said pretty accurately described my high school experience. I'm 28 now. After HS I bummed around 2 different colleges over 6 semesters and 4 different majors. I never liked what I was learning very much so eventually I just left because I had a full-time job as a sysadmin that had been doing while attending school.

Since then I've been doing web development at a couple different smaller agencies. Usually either the job is great and the pay sucks or vice versa. That's my experience at least. It sounds pretty ungrateful now that I'm saying it.

Anyway, a couple of moths ago the owners of my company said that they were going to move to out of state and that all (5) of us were going to work from home. At first I resisted, but then I realized that this could be an opportunity. Despite the monotony of working at home, I have been a lot more free to work on my side projects and the MVP for my startup eyeclash is launching this month. I can honestly say that I've never felt better about the work that I am doing.

So I guess my point is, don't expect the way you feel to change with the scenery. College really didn't help me much with my personal aspirations and neither did most of the jobs I've had. Working on my own stuff and collaborating with others on "side projects" (aka possible startups) is really the only thing that has been able to bring me the satisfaction that it sounds like you are looking for.

We are launching our private beta for http://eyeclash.com/ this month.

Eyeclash is a video-chat based social network where users can play games, watch videos, and run applications alongside video chat. It is 100% browser-based. The product is still really raw and buggy right now but we're pushing it no matter what.

More news to follow.

Voodoo Doughnuts Ground Control PDX Japanese Gardens OMSI

I would definitely like some link love. We're still working on our MVP so most of the on-site issues are up in the air. Sending an email now.

I could really use some help with the design of the user profile pages of the social network I'm working on. Sending an email...

Me too. I kind of went through a "buy domains like crazy" phase a couple years ago but have since kicked the habit. Now I won't let myself buy a domain unless I have some other work done for it first. Although it only costs me $7.50 a year, the cost adds up a lot after a while.

Yeah, using that hack in college might be a little more shady. I have always subscribed to the belief of "you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer" so my actions were usually fueled by my opinion that the writing assignments that my instructor was giving out were essentially "stupid". I know, that's a pretty crappy form of justification but that was also around the time that I was learning html and graphic design which I considered more worthwhile ways to spend my time.

Heck yes did I take them. At the time I had little interest in biology and I felt that it was interfering with my real education, which it was. Nothing against biology, but most of the things that I learned in college that I would call "valuable" (professionally and otherwise) I did not learn in class.

Ok, one more hack from college although it probably won't work these days.

All of the professors in the science department at my university would tape lists of their student's IDs and their test grades outside their office through out the semester including finals. When looking for classes for the following semester, I just had to look at which professors gave better grades on average and sign up for their classes. The difference was quites staggering.

Some professors consistently failed roughly half of their students while others would have over 3/4 the class with A's consistently. Granted, there were some variable to consider like which course was being taught and the fact that some groups of students are sometimes simply better performers than others. But there was no way I was going to see that kind of data displayed publicly and not take advantage of it.

When I was in 6th grade ('94) I scanned articles from our encyclopedias onto our 386 and then used OCR software to make it usable as a class research paper. You can imagine what happened the following year when I got dial up.

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I also had a computer hardware class in high school that the teacher would often leave for extended periods of time. The other students and I get enough systems running and scrounged a router so that we could play multiplayer Warcraft II during class (which was an old game even back then). We pulled this off for about a month before we got caught. It turned out the teacher really didn't care anyway.

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When I lived in rural Mexico, I used to tape pictures of Jesus to the outside of my packages that I sent home so that the shady people in the mail system wouldn't mess with them.

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My old boss used to add useless revisions every time that I sent him an email saying that part of a project was finished such as "Change the font up to 12px on that navigation please. What? It's already at 12? Can you make it 12 and a half? No, 13px is way too big but I want it bigger than 12 so just fix it OK?"...yeah, that guy. Anyway, I found that if I sent him emails at the end of the day, he would not read them until the following morning when he had the most emails to respond to. Therefore, sending him finished tasks at the end of the day meant fewer useless revisions. I found that outlook has a "delay delivery" setting so as I finished tasks through the day, I would que them to send at about 7:30 at night, when I could be sure that he wasn't working. Lo and behold, the endless revisions went down by about 90% and I got a lot more stuff done.

To questions 1 and 2 the answer is yes. The only real way for most people to fight back is to report them to google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1

This is a really old conversation and it has steadily become less and less relevant over the past 5 years. The most effective SEO practices these days involve off-page and off site linking and on-page optimization is gets slightly less and less effective every year. Tricks like keyword stuffing URLs, title attributing everything, and no-follow sculpting, which used to actually make a difference at one point in time, essentially make no difference these days. For most SEO aware web developers these days, SEO is more and more about accessibility and usability, as it should be.

The most effective tricks these days mostly involve passing as much link juice to the site as possible, and matching it to good content that is based on sound keyword research and user demand. In order to do this in such a way that actually makes a significant difference in ranking without being penalized is usually beyond the the average developer "dabbling" in SEO. The blackhat term for this is "link laundering" and it's really the only way to get the huge traffic gains in a reliable and sustained manner. Most SEO companies fit into one of the 3 following types:

1. Basic SEO is getting easier to execute with all the hand-holding that Google gives out to webmasters these days, however the benefits are minimal. Most of that realm is about making sure you're not screwing up your content, rather than optimizing it. The kinds of gains you get by doing this are maybe a 30% increase in traffic, assuming you site is not screwed up to begin with.

2. On the other hand, using link laundering/pyramids even less talented SEOs can see somewhere in the area of a 400% increase in traffic without much risk of a penalty. This is a lot trickier though because imitating a strong, natural, niche link graph is a lot harder than most people think.

3. The last strategy is commonly referred to as "turn and burn". This basically involves taking whatever content you have and link spamming the hell out of it which will cause it's traffic to spike briefly before being banned from Google's index. Ever seen all those spammy comments in you blogs that are pointing to a really crappy landing page? This is what they are doing.

Now granted I've made a lot of generalities here. Most of the time I see people discussing this topic they seem to not understand what SEO is compared to what it was 7 years ago which is why I'm taking the time here to explain this. The rules change a little when you start out with a valuable asset such as a large quantity of good content (such as any of the Q&A sites), or a set of very high quality links (anyone that's been covered by the major news outlets) because you can base your strategy on getting the most out of those assets.

Anyway, now that I've gone off on that tangent the easy answer is yes, good SEO is good for the web because it makes content more usable and accessible, and bad SEO is bad for the web because it means more spam.

Well, when you say link farm you can be talking about ones used for either positive or negative purposes. Link farms used to improve a sites results are always setup in a pyramid format so that any penalties that occur from the practice are not passed on to the "important" sites.

http://seoblackhat.com/2009/07/10/link-pyramids/

If you check the backlinks of many mainstream sites that compete for common keywords (anything pharmaceutical or related to gambling for example) you will see this sort of thing setup. However, as this is still a tricky practice, most sites will make sure that they are never getting more than about 1/5 of their incoming links from their pyramids.