mzarate06

Would also love for IE 11 to be available on Windows 7.

Don't let a client, or anyone for that matter, corner you w/statements like that.

Regardless of whether they were right or wrong, in terms of the amount of work they're asking for being less than the previous, have something to show in regard to why it's not as simple as they perceive.

For example, consider adopting a thorough estimating strategy, broken down into small iterations of work. An estimate showing the amount of hours or calendar days the next iteration would take, accompanied by more realistic dev-hours-per-week (burn rate), would have been the right way to counter the client's statement. It's much harder to argue with with supported numbers.

My grand plan to under promise and over deliver had led to a disaster!

Any plan where you take on more work than you can handle in a given time frame will lead to disaster. Under promising and over delivering had little, if anything, to do here. This was entirely a management problem (dev schedule, client expectations, etc.).

I often share a similar sentiment with teams I work with: Don't throw solutions at undefined problems.

That commonly applies to performance and premature optimization.

I'll agree that there needs to be some thought as to what's being built before, and while, doing so, but spending time resolving as-of-yet-undefined problems means decision making based on high levels of uncertainty.

Get something working and let problems define themselves. Often times, they do so in a way that makes them easier to fix vs. relying on the speculative solution making I mentioned above.

Going back and forth to reach a higher price, only to have the client say No, is a waste of time.

Even if they do agree to a higher price, money can only reconcile so much. Based on bad experiences I've had with a couple clients in the past, they couldn't pay me enough to work for them again.

It's a technical view of the web platform, the problems attached to it (especially when we try to push its boundries), and questions why they're not being answered by the standards process and browser vendors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG66hIhUdEU

Looking back, it's amazing how far the web platform has come, but also in the problems that still plague it.

Question: does the aggregate repaint view indicate what caused the repaint? Determining that isn't always as easy or obvious as the margin-left vs. transform example in the video, so it'd be a huge benefit if that was included.

Thank you for listening!

In particular, page rendering and repaints appear noticeably faster in Chrome than in Firefox of Opera. However, I notice the difference more on Linux than I do on my Windows machine.

Plus, I think that'd offer caching benefits vs. having to send templates across the wire every time.

I can work well with any number of people, but few understand the importance of things like audience building, using the product on a daily basis, etc., and even the ones that do might not act on that stuff. Overall passion for execution and moving the product forward are critical.

Maybe this is what you meant, but I wanted to add my 2 cents to clarify.

Where did you advertise?

Are you willing to share your daily advertising burn?

Any insight as to why the first $5k in advertising was worth it, but everything after that wasn't?

Same here in Austin, though I do find I have to explain what it is on the rare occasion I meet someone that hasn't had Vietnamese food.

I'll admit to enjoying Vietnamese food much more if I have sriracha; it's not the same eating experience with out it.

1) an increasing love for JavaScript

2) a desire to build really fast web apps

3) I needed a tool for certain aspects of my freelance business

Given those, I decided to make an initial investment of 3 months and build an app to attack those head on. It's 2 years later and I still use the app every day; I even turned it into my company's first product.

So in my case, I fell upon my first idea after 7 years of professional experience. I didn't always love JavaScript, I didn't always care about how fast web apps are (or aren't), and it wasn't until I went freelance that I wanted to build the tool I mentioned.

An idea will come to you, but it may take time to fall upon a problem you decide is worthy to invest in. What I wouldn't do is pick any problem out of a hat and spend some of your life's hours on it. At a minimum, you should have some level of interest in the idea itself.

When I'm interviewed, I take it as a bad sign if I'm not allowed to meet other members of the team. Typically they're included in interviews, in which case it's a non-issue. In other cases, I make a friendly request to meet 2-3 members of the team for a short conversation. I've only had to do that once though.

...software I've written has helped people capture >tens of millions< of dollars of wealth. It's been run on >hundreds of millions< of computers.

... instead read ...

...software I've written has helped people capture >hundreds of dollars< of wealth. It's been run on >tens< of computers.

I don't think so - scale of accomplishment change how we feel about what we do and how we relate to the motivation of others. And I think that was the rationale in citing some of his biggest accomplishments. I didn't take his post as lacking modesty.

Point taken on the freelancing bit though (upvoted on that point ... I've been a consultant for 5 years).

They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do

... too literally. I believe the trouble of developing and offering a mobile app supplements their motivation to serve content, in a better way.

But your point was well stated, and it's clear you're not against a better mobile experience, but rather the manner in which it's advertised. In which case I agree ... shoving a full screen ad down a user's throat is frustrating.

They clearly have absolutely no interest in serving me content or helping me do what I want to do

... coming from the site owner side of things, I'll offer a friendly counter argument (which has been rephrased in light of down votes): site owners are interested in serving you content, or helping you do what you want to do ... just in a better way.

I agree ads or prompts can be annoying, but to say site owners go through the trouble of developing a mobile app and advertising it b/c they have no interest in serving content or helping the user experience doesn't quite fit. To me, a site that offers a mobile app says the exact opposite.

I lend an ear to freelancers and consultants quite a bit and a lot of the focus is on how hard they're having to work, and how surprising that is to them. The first thing I say is that yes, it's an incredible amount of work. You can ease the pain a bit here and there, but in general there are absolutely no short cuts.

To "make it" being self employed, or selling products, or both, takes an incredible amount of desire and persistence. So much that you really have to enjoy the process, otherwise most quit before they reach any reward simply b/c it's too much work combined with too much risk.

I believe some people are born with DNA that enables them to be great athletes, scholars, parents, etc. I always tell my friends and family that it's not in my DNA to have kids.

I honestly don't know the exact science behind DNA to know if my statement holds true or not, but figuratively speaking it delivers the point that I believe I lack the traits to be a good parent, including the motivation to become one.

There certainly are. It comes down to how you want to pursue your career.

I also get the point you're making with your list, but know that most of those aren't exclusive to 9-5 jobs, or don't hold true in some cases. Two points in particular:

- I wasn't able to cite work from my first year as a full time freelancer in my portfolio. The company I was contracting with at the time didn't allow it. However, I was able to include the side projects I had completed when I was a full time employee.

- Some consulting or freelance gigs have a 100% on-site requirement. A full time job I passed on last year was 100% telecommute.

The former implies a possibility. That what he describes didn't happen in your case, while worth applauding, doesn't make the possibility any less true, especially for those that actually experience what the OP describes.

What I find most often is that aspiring freelancers/consultants don't realize 1 important fact: Freelancing/consulting is harder than a 9-5 salary job, in every way. If it's one theme that rings constant among freelancers or consultants that I've lent an ear to, it's the "I thought it would be easier" sentiment.

And that supplements the point made in the article. So many developers think their craft is enough to succeed as a freelancer or consultant; the truth is quite the opposite. A business' success depends on marketing and selling their services, and that's what most (if not every) developer underestimates when they start a freelance or consulting business.

To help combat that, I also advocate the gradual approach. Take a full time job in the industry for a few years first, then build up your freelance/consulting business on the side until it becomes sustainable.

That's awesome that you vouched for the other guy. And I wonder what technical experience management or upper-level execs had at that company. I find that when there's very little to none at those levels in the company, they'll tend to be similar to what you described. Ultimately they view engineers as a commodity resource and try to get by with the "cheapest" deal they can.

I've found many of the same companies also suffer from high turnover, and turn a blind eye to the long term drag that imposes on their software. For companies that profit in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year (e.g. the company I mentioned previously), I think it's silly they resort to offering market, or below market, wages to save a few bucks (relatively speaking) vs. striving to have happier employees, and retaining them for a longer period of time.

I'm always happy to hear that a company values their employees, and takes a proactive approach to keep them happy. I'm also surprised how little some companies do on that same front, and only scramble to analyze pay, work conditions, etc. after an employee has announced they're leaving. By then it's too late.

One case that sticks out for me was a few years back when a brilliant lead dev I know left the company he was working for. I knew the company's work conditions weren't favorable, he didn't have a job title worthy of what he was doing day to day, and after hearing the salary he was being paid (about half a typical market-rate salary at the time), my only question was why he hadn't left earlier.

So I think a lot of companies encourage their employees to leave without even knowing it. Or even worse, they know they're shortchanging them on some level and gamble on fear or ignorance in hopes that said employees feel they're getting a fair deal. I believe this to be the case with the example I cited above, and am glad the lead dev has since found a company with much better work conditions across the board.

Excellent! Having researched what it'd be like to build a product before having done so, I found so much emphasis on the development side ... building, launching, iterating, etc. I didn't find a whole lot that covered marketing, sales, and conversion. W/my product launched and getting good reviews from those that use it, I have every intention of using 2013 to focus on it's growth and conversion.

So this turns out to be such a timely offering. Thank you for offering this up at a great price, and for recommending Hyperink (I have a deep interest in writing an ebook in 2013, I'll check them out).

Having built all my machines w/AMD cpu's I'll say that bent pins can be common, at least enough to justify taking care when installing the cpu on the mobo. To supplement, I've bent a couple myself, and have helped a couple friends straighten some of theirs out as well. They're not that hard to bend.

I believe in them so much I put up a quick article about them. For those that may be interested (one my recipes is included):

http://freelancefactor.net/index.php?/page/articles.html/_/a...

I'm a freelancer, and most of my work comes via referrals now. Not always, but it's been the case for the past few years.

Wasn't much different back when I was looking for full time work though. Even though I only worked for 2 companies, I use to get interviews through referrals, or through past colleagues that left and wanted me to come aboard.

It's a brand new community I'm trying to get off the ground. If it matters:

- it's completely free; no subscription fees or "premium" membership costs.

- Some of the starting content contains an article about one of my favorite ways to boost productivity, focus, and overall health: http://freelancefactor.net/index.php?/page/index.html/_/arti...

- while the immediate feature is a forum for freelancers and consultants, the site also has articles, which will be added weekly, if not more frequently.

With the community being brand new, I hope some of you feel compelled to join as early members. Just as good, any feedback anyone is willing to provide on how I can make things better will certainly contribute towards helping start and grow the community.

Thanks HN!