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ianpri

74 karma · joined January 17, 2012

Freelance UK/London based dev looking to move into SaaS type products. Currently working on a mobile e-learning product and email authoring system - my site is http://ianpridham.com / hello@ianpridham.com
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ianpri··on Ask HN: Where are the part-time remote coding jobs?
Based on your skillset I would start to reach out to smaller businesses using a similar stack asking if they would be interested in a retainer package for all those little tweaks, e.g some custom WP code, shopify tweaks etc.
ianpri··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2017)
OpenPlay | London | ONSITE OR REMOTE (UK only), https://www.openplay.co.uk

We're a sports/activity marketplace looking for a mid-level full stack PHP developer, daily activities include

- Add new features to our core booking system

- Improving https://www.openplay.co.uk for our 30,000+ users

- Developing new endpoints for our APIs

- Investigating new ares of interest for our business including mobile payments, keyless entry systems, iBeacons etc

- Looking into react native for some upcoming apps we're developing

Tech stack is:

- Laravel 5/Redis

- Bootstrap

- Ionic hybrid apps

- All hosted on AWS deployed via codeship with forge/envoyer.

see https://larajobs.com/job/758/midsenior-laravel-developer-lon... for more information

ianpri··on How to Develop an App Like Instagram
How did you find react native? Did you learn on the job? Wanting to take the dive but some articles seem to mention RN's teething pains
ianpri··on Ask HN: Developing a Skillset for Contracting in Europe
If you're going to be moving around Europe then having a "full stack" skillset is going to be the most advantageous - 3 month type gigs for devops are going to be much harder to find than MEAN stack roles, especially if you want to visit less startup centric countries/cities.
ianpri··on Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town
I agree that short breaks away from the "norm" is good, but this isn't really unique to startups - i'd wager that you could gain the same benefits by just taking a vacation than trying to relocate your startup + staff every X months.
ianpri··on Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town
Not sure I can really agree with much in this article, which seems to contradict itself (get more focused by not doing A and B, instead use your spare time for X and Y) and ignores that fact that getting close to your target audience and understanding their pain points isn't really going to happen if your sitting under an umbrella in Senegal.
ianpri··on Ask HN: Am I'm being unreasonable about NDAs?
Why not flip it and offer them your "standard NDA" with more reasonable terms? If they don't want to sign it due to having to incur legal expenses to check its all above board then they can't expect you to have to do the same with their NDA.
ianpri··on Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC
Although i'm unsure of the legality, you might want to add hackintosh/OSX86 setups in there as well, matching the right hardware combos is a big part of getting it all setup and the latest configs change often
ianpri··on One Week After Launching My Startup
Just tried to add a project and some of my thoughts

- you might want to mention more clearly that current posting projects is free

- Do you need to ask for address details just to post a project? I can understand when it comes to billing, but it initially put me off just to post a free project.

- You ask for a budget but i'm looking for someone for ongoing work, perhaps make this optional? I had to enter £0 to proceed

- the text boxes aren't resizable (FF mac) so its hard to re-read what you've just entered

Good luck and looking forward to some responses to my listing

ianpri··on Twitter have been surprisingly slow about /N?
due to the way the account was "handed over" to the attacker, it puts Twitter in a difficult position - they don't really want to open the floodgates of having to investigate every single request for intervention due to an alleged account hijack/ transfer made under duress etc.
ianpri··on Ask HN: Working as a web developer in SE Asia
I'd look to freelance yourself out to London agencies on the proviso that the majority of work is to be done remotely and that you'll be around for kick off meetings etc. Once they trust you you'll be able to switch this to pretty much 100% remote (possibly look to reduce your rate as a sweetener) and then just go to cheap SE asian country of your choice, doing visa runs every X months.

There is a large culture difference between different countries and you may as well spend some time in each to see how they fit before looking for a full time position

ianpri··on Ask HN: Contract or not to contract?
as others have said, earning 300-350 per day sounds great, but you need to factor in any "perks" your fulltime job has that contracting can't offer - pension contributions (start making your own) hardware (buy your own machine + software etc), training, paid holidays etc.

You will also find that some contracts are working on fucked projects where contractors are hired as a last resort/scapegoat and the work will be "get this done fast" rather than any quality product being delivered. Not saying it's all like that, but prepared to be jaded if you do this long term

ianpri··on Freelancer Accountability Service?
I don't think this is a problem that can be solved via a technical solution to be honest. Personal recommendation can go a some way, but being able to vet developers for a specific role is something only the prospective employer can do.

Someone may be good at bashing out CRUD rails apps day and night and so anyone who uses them for this task is going to highly rate them, but that doesn't mean they're a good fit for your company, especially if you don't actually know what you need them for at the point of hire (especially true for non-technical founders).

Couple that with the fact that there's no motivation for 'better' developers to sign up to these services (as good devs are normally stacked up with work and have an existing network to hook into) and all you're left with is something similar to an odesk clone.

ianpri··on Non-Technical Questions To Ask When Hiring A Development Firm
Some of this is awfully bad advice - why is it useful to work directly with multiple designers/developers rather than a single point of contact/project manager? isn't this pushing the project management onto the clients side?

As a developer do I really want the client being able to dominate all my time when I have multiple projects on the go at the same time?

ianpri··on Show HN: Survey Builder with Drag/Drop Logic Branching
Really nice an intuitive, the only thing I couldn't seem to do is assign multiple flags to one answer?
ianpri··on PHP Fog to be discontinued on December 21st
Just got the email:

Dear Fogger,

It is with a heavy heart that I let you know that the PHP Fog service will be discontinued in December in favor of AppFog, which is PHP Fog 2.0. I am incredibly sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Creating PHP Fog has been an amazing experience for us and it could not have happened without you––thank you for your support. With your help, we’ve built an amazing PaaS for PHP developers. And along the way, we’ve applied what we’ve learned to creating our new product, AppFog.

AppFog is the future of our business, and we very strongly believe it is also the future of PaaS. So, in order to focus our team and efforts on continuing to build a better solution for developers, we will be shutting down the PHP Fog platform this coming January and focusing solely on AppFog.

We have considered this change very, very carefully because we understand that this could present challenges for some of our users. But in the end, we are confident that moving to AppFog will give you additional flexibility, additional languages, additional infrastructures, and the ability to deploy your apps to private cloud infrastructure as well as leverage the strengths of the OpenStack and Cloud Foundry ecosystems.

To help in the migration, we will do be doing everything we can to help this be as easy and painless as possible: 2GB of RAM in our Free Plan We will be releasing a series of blog posts that walk you through the migration to AppFog. We will also be publishing documentation of the migration path as well as solutions for some of the edge-case differences between the platforms. To start with, we have created a migration FAQ that should help you begin the migration process.

I am committed to making AppFog a product that will make you look back at PHP Fog and think, “I’m really happy I switched.”

ianpri··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2012)
SEEKING WORK - Remote (based in London)

Full-time freelancer, working remotely (although able to make meetings in London) over 10 years of PHP experience, currently mainly working on Zend apps although have experience in wordpress, silverstripe etc. Previously worked with corporate clients (Lockheed Martin, Fujitsu Siemens, Barclays) as well as media one (one of the sites I was working on was featured on a Google Chrome TV advert). Lots of experience in eLearning.

Can handle frontend (CSS3/HTML5, JS templating etc) and so can quickly put together MVPs/prototypes for clients (currently doing this for a few other startups)

Contact details and portfolio in profile.

ianpri··on Ask HN: Review my startup, TeamDoList.com
Really nice execution. I think that the core feature that is apparent when using the app (simplicity) is going to be one of the downsides of using it in a team based environment:

1)How do I know if someone on my team has completed a task, if you send out email notifications,I might as well use email.

2)How do I make the lists private to just my team?

3)How do I assign a todo or know who ticked that a todo has been done?

Its these sort of things i'd be looking for, but then you're left with another generic (if nice looking) team based todo list.

ianpri··on Ask HN: Got unexpected feedback - where do I go from here?
Have you thought of approaching someone else at your work if side projects are allowed? Add me to the list of interested but not quite sure what it is, if you're looking for a hand, let me know - contact details in profile - just finished an MVP for a client and about to start another.
ianpri··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2012)
SEEKING WORK - Remote (based in London)

Full-time freelancer, working remotely (although able to make meetings in London) over 10 years of PHP experience, currently mainly working on Zend apps although have experience in wordpress, silverstripe etc. Previously worked with corporate clients (Lockheed Martin, Fujitsu Siemens, Barclays) as well as media one (one of the sites I was working on was featured on a Google Chrome TV advert). Lots of experience in eLearning.

Can handle frontend (CSS3/HTML5, JS templating etc) and so can quickly put together MVPs/prototypes for clients (currently doing this for a few other startups)

Contact details and portfolio in profile.

ianpri··on Chinese families' worldly goods in Huang Qinqjun's pictures
The antique dealer's TV is to the left of his Lexus in the background.
ianpri··on Ask HN: Enterprise Start-ups?
Based on previous comments people have posted on HN in the past:

1)Going from initial meeting to completed sale is a very long, drawn out process with a very large group of shareholders, be it IT, HR etc. Having runway to last this long is problematic and is almost the opposite of the "iterate quickly" model of most startups.

2)Enterprise support levels vary from what most startups can offer, you may need regional reps, on/offsite support, call centre staff etc. a few FAQ pages and a getsatisfaction account aren't going to cut it.

2)Politics can play a large part of the decision making process which is out of your control.

ianpri··on The Minimum Viable Rails Stack, Now Reddit Frontpage Approved
Interested in what you mean by annotating the page after caching it, do you have any more info on this?
ianpri··on Google Launches Free Tool To Let You Run Your Own Online Courses
I think they're getting at the way Google hiked their prices which resulted in some peoples bills rising by a factor of 100. GAE has every right to make money - it was the speed and direction of the change which caused 'controversy'.
ianpri··on Show HN: Properties to rent - No agent fees, no dead listings, no risk
Great site and as mentioned before, an industry ripe for the picking. One thing that would be great is if zooming out on the map increased the search distance on the results - searched for Leytonstone (no results) and scanned around/zoomed out looking for other properties.
ianpri··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (September 2012)
SEEKING WORK - Remote (based in London)

Full-time freelancer, working remotely (although able to make meetings in London) over 10 years of PHP experience, currently mainly working on Zend apps although have experience in wordpress, silverstripe etc. Previously worked with corporate clients (Lockheed Martin, Fujitsu Siemens, Barclays) as well as media one (one of the sites I was working on was featured on a Google Chrome TV advert)

Can handle frontend (CSS3/HTML5, JS templating etc) and am looking to move into phonegap based stuff. Lots of experience in eLearning.

Contact details and portfolio in profile.

ianpri··on Mailrox - a web app to quickly build bulletproof HTML emails
Its funny when you mention getting professional email designers on board, as after showing some early prototypes to some people whose job it is to make these 24/7 they scoffed at the idea - perhaps it was more a case of seeing their jobs at risk than anything else:)
ianpri··on Mailrox - a web app to quickly build bulletproof HTML emails
I've built something very similar - http://www.mailerforge.com/ athough it does allow text and images to be added to a resizable canvas and creates a 'mobile-friendly' version.

I've not had much luck getting traction though, the people I show it to either prefer to build their own inhouse or just use a mailchimp/campaign monitor template and adapt that.

ianpri··on Ask HN: How do freelance developers determine the scope of projects?
Just added my thoughts, i'd be interested to hear how you're looking to approach this differently from other lead generation companies - I regularly get mails from companies offering to hook me up with businesses who require xyz, but have always thought that the only thing they've really qualified is the budget, not the amount of work required.
ianpri··on All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry
But why launch even an MVP that is essentially no different to the vast majority of other portals (HN, stackoverflow careers, gumtree) etc? Would it not be more useful to launch with at least some of the innovative features you've hinted at? What value are you adding to direct employers or job seekers?
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