pixelmade

> If you co-found with a non-bestie, not only are you taking all that risk on yourself

I co-founded a company with my best friend in high school. He screwed me 6 months into the biz. As an individual, the fires of entrepreneurship completely changed him.

I spend 1-2 hrs in the morning reading industry news, research, and studies. The rest of the day (5 hrs) I refine the framework I would follow when/if I get a job.

I view it as an outstanding opportunity to learn and prepare. I did something similar 10 years ago during the dotcom crash. When biz was slow, I spent my time learning about strategic planning. It paid dividends for the next decade.

I've been searching for an opportunity for 1 year now, so the framework is quite robust.

The target position I've been looking for is Ecommerce Manager. I've been very close to landing a few jobs, and the reason I haven't been hired was because I'm "overqualified" or "too much horsepower".

For the most part, HR are a group that believes in data, but rarely uses it during evaluation and hiring decisions.

Not really.

I'm curious what the business case was for open sourcing the code. Maybe to create an ecosystem?

I use LinkedIn's news feed to build my personal brand among my connections, and to keep my face in front of some connections with the power to hire me. In general, the news feed is full of boring articles, but that's simply because the people posting them are trying to reinforce their brand image of "boring".

I've been sharing 1 article a day for the past 6 months, in addition to responding to group questions. Since my objective is branding, it's not easy to quantify results. But anecdotally, some contacts have mentioned to me that they enjoy what I've been sharing.

Why would you voluntarily give Amazon all of your sales data? They'll aggregate it, mine it, then use it to optimize their store / pricing / products. At least with PayPal, I know they won't be using my sales data against me.

Yes, but web development is a mature industry and becoming commoditized. It's very difficult to differentiate based on quality, as most clients choose based on price. Source: I've been a web developer since 1995.

It's not really an industry I would recommend to anyone.

The only area where there will be growth is front-end development. I would only work "in-house", as opposed to working for agencies.

Success is often the result of timing or luck. Any lessons learned here would probably be incorrect. With failure, it's easier to identify the correct causes.

Corporate sites usually have rigid branding guidelines that define the message and imaging the site should convey. Startup sites usually have much looser guidelines. It's a lot easier to design something awesome when you're not as constrained.