goofygrin

Ya, I think that's actually the mark of a great manager... making sure he's got fodder for the inevitable wood chipper so to speak.

Doesn't 2012.2 and the web developer add on really improve intellisense for js libs (among many other things)?

I'm a C# dev... and it feels a lot like going back in time working with other toolchains sometimes (especially on the SQL side of things).

The point that drove it home is that businesses aren't in t business of "creating jobs." We're in it to make money. I hire when it hurts. I don't hire when I have an excess of cash.

If tax rates were higher I'd hire people, buy office space or equipment. Anything to keep me from having to just gift it to the idjits in Washington.

I got the axe at a job a few years ago at lunch on a Thursday. By 3pm I had a new gig lined up start the following Monday.

Networking and contacts (and I mean legitimate networking) really play a big part in your overall success.

I'm in a large city, but nothing like NYC or the Valley either.

One of my clients has a poorly designed access system (using, now, mssql as the backend). It's not access's fault that the system is shit, it's the developer's fault.

Bad devs write bad code. Beginner bad devs tend to write their bad code in Access (or Excel). It gets the job done --- until it doesn't.

Xamarin is wicked expensive...

cmd-F only shows "though" in there twice, both in the word "thought" - I'm not sure what you're asking.

I've got a client on a shoestring budget.

I told them... listen, we can get real expensive, really fast. So if you help me, I can help you. They build specs in powerpoint, excel, paper etc. We discuss them (in person typically at a scheduled meeting where we discuss these features as well as business consulting about where to take the business, how to grow it, what features have been requested, what to add, etc.). My team then develops what they want.

The customer then QAs the software to make sure it's good. This saves them a TON of money.

They're happy, I've got an easy client to work with and my devs enjoy working on the project because the requirements are well thought out. My client is happy because they're getting a good value (both in terms of less $ on dev and the money they spend on business consulting is put to better use since they've done their homework).

Contrast this with another of my clients (with a larger, but dwindling budget). They typically say "go develop x" with no real guidance. We develop X, but once they see it they say "that's not what we wanted." After a few cycles of this, and frustration from both sides, we simply now say "you've thought about X, why not tell us what you've got in mind so that we build the right thing first?" It's made things move a lot smoother... enough so that this client is now extremely aggressive in their release cycling (and it feels like a hamster wheel)... which we're working on... (including charging 2x for forced weekend work - "It's Friday at 3pm. If this must be deployed Monday, then we're going to have to work over the weekend and that is at $xxx rate." We've not worked weekends for them since :)

Your cleverness means it's slow in some instances... Getting a list if users with a diverse criteria set is a gnarly query...

We're quickly migrating to this model. You have to be (much) better about estimating work, but switching from cost+ to value added pricing really makes better sense (and your margins increase).

Almost all performance brakes have this easy drop in pads to make changes faster at the track (I'd change pads 2-3x a track day in my evo). They bought an off the shelf brake setup from brembo. Nothing special here for people in the know.

I cut my teeth as a professional developer in 1996 writing fortran77. We used it to test wire bundles on airplanes. Important stuff actually (unlike the Web apps most of us make today!)

My comparable in luxury and performance cts-v only gets 175 to 200 miles per tank of nearly $4 a gallon premium fuel. Electricity costs $0.08 per kwh here. The model s (a car I am seriously considering would save me about $260 a month in gas. Add that to my $700 a month lease payment and it's roughly equivalent to the cost of a model s with the caveat that I'm on likely to leave town (which is fine we rarely drive my car out of town opting to take my wife's equally thirsty jeep).

Tl; dr; never

Craplets in 2013?

I sent this around. This has always been one of my biggest issues with ssrs.

The benefit of b2b is that companies are used to spending money and have budgets. B2c tends to be "give it away for free and make money on volume" (aka collect underpants).

That said... B2b means you'll have to provide better support (contracts etc).

You have to compare them to some metric in your world. In my case if I make an estimate I have to quantify it as a "Sean" estimate. That means to need to effectively triple it for most of the team. We rate people as fractions of the Sean time continuum.

Of course that's subjective... And impossible to compare dev a using tech 1 vs dev b using tech2.

Although I agree with sentiment of your post, actually the publication date of a novel and the release date of new furniture lines are very important [the same with music, movies and just about anything where we have enough data to do trend analysis].

http://www.greenleafbookgroup.com/blog/2011/10/12/whats-the-...

(etc. etc. [seriously google it if you're interested])

WPF/Thick client is not sexy, but as you've found there is a large market for good POS systems.

I agree with shawn-butler -- I think the lack of English documentation/implementation is huge.

Google translate of the home page has this: SambaPOS free to download and can be used without any restrictions, and Touch Screen-assisted Restaurant Program Open Source project. I use the program as you wish, may make changes to the source code and share it with our community.

Dallas, TX

.NET web application developers

I've got a couple positions open for .NET devs. Full Microsoft stack. Working on public and internal facing applications.

We do a bit of mobile development as well.

Shoot me a resume/intro to sgoodpasture at thirdcorner.com

Small forms... Sure. Long forms... Not so much.

Note vitamin d3 doses are in iu not mg. It is very hard to overdose.

Any time I get to pick someone's brain to see how they got where they are I do it. Most people like to share, and I find that once I get them talking we'll talk for a fairly significant time. Last month I met with another vendor for one of my large clients and we mostly talked about how he got from 2-3 people to the size he is now and how he finds good talent. While he hires for different skills than me (internal guys for RoR vs. customer facing .NET [him, me]), it was good to learn the how and why of his business.

Lambdas are super useful in c#... regardless of the overhead they're fantastic for expressing what you want in a much more concise manner.

Location: Frisco Texas (Dallas suburb)

Company: Third Corner LLC www.ThirdCorner.com

Seeking: Designer

Duties: Designing web sites, web applications (public facing and intranet), mobile applications, marketing materials (the full gamut from logos to banners to letterhead) in both raster and vector. Ideally you can slice stuff and if need be get your hands dirty in the code. Human factors experience a great plus as we're very user centric.

Seeking: ASP.NET C# developer

Duties: Our typical project is a 1 to 2 month project with a lead developer and a junior developer. This is for the lead developer. You would be reposponsible for all aspects of the project (database design, architecture, front end experience , etc.). Designs will be provided by our design team, but they are the base and you have authority to make changes as needed. Of course you need to be able to write HTML, CSS and JavaScript. We have a core project template/libraries that helps accelerate development that you'd help enhance and maintain with the other lead developers.

You would also be responsible for investigating new tech and helping then company make decisions on its usage (mobile toolkits, data bases, reporting, payment gateways, etc.).

About us: we're a small consulting company with a track record of developing applications quickly and effectively. We pride ourselves in being able to use our business knowledge and user focused development ideal to build the right thing first even without traditional requirements (ie we're really good at taking the sketch on your napkin and making it happen quickly).

How to apply: email your resume and an into to info at ThirdCorner.com

err what?

No... we just can't afford to waste our time with people that would rather discuss esoterically the merits of x vs y than actually get work done.

I have seen it both ways unfortunately, so that's one of the reasons that I am somewhat cautious (I guess that's what happens with 13+ years of experience in the field).

One that sticks in my mind is one of the first "real" jobs I had. The company was a solid, well established company that was about 20 years old. Best place I ever worked. They had a piece of supporting software that was written in VB on Access. The software was basic, but it worked as a great support to the methodology and theory of the company.

One big (REALLY BIG) client came in and needed the software to be housed on central servers, with the ability to roll the data up for reporting purposes.

So the company went off in the weeds, building a huge (2.5meg!) java applet, basically tailored to this one client's specifications. The company had no java experience. Had to hire java guys. No Solaris experience (as required by the client). Had to buy hardware and hire people. They had no oracle experience. Again, more $$ and more people.

Within 3 years the company went through two acquisitions, one of which was a reverse buy out of a crappy company that had IPOed. A year later the company folded.

A 20 year company was destroyed by this choice to build a bespoke system for a huge client.

Another memory is making said 2.5meg craplet run under the IBM JVM for OS/2 Warp 3. On token ring. Banks got sold some horrible systems!

We've had "the talk" multiple times and have had paperwork for a while, just nothing signed (so I consider it worth nothing).

I renegotiated more equity with the last round of work.

I talked to him tonight and we're going to get the paperwork updated and get everything squared away now that things are picking up. He also got sold a key man policy, so there's some paperwork there that we have to do.

Thanks!

The one thing I guess I didn't highlight well enough was that we were lucky to be presented with a way to change our business that would allow us to shift into a better market space. We were even luckier to recognize it and jump on the opportunity.

I think that a lot of the time people go heads down and start rushing in and when presented with an opportunity to shift, they don't see it or are unwilling to make the change.

I guess "Be Flexible" is what I'm trying to say.