This happened on the last 4-5 flights for me, at least. If flying with family, can be a nice "optimization" to pack into carry-ons and check them all in for free, when offered (sometimes when checking into the flight, sometimes at the gate). Interestingly, I had one such full flight where the overhead bins clearly ended up with a ton of free space so perhaps others went with the same strategy.
First off, this is a rough time to be applying for jobs - recruiters and hiring managers are inundated with applications. It's a game of numbers these days, so half a dozen applications is just not a meaningful amount when every posting gets tons of well-qualified (and overqualified) candidates.
Second, I suspect the lack of a LinkedIn profile is much more likely to impact your chances compared to a GitHub profile. The latter has never been a particularly strong signal for hiring managers for reasons described elsewhere in comments here. Missing a LinkedIn page makes you stand out - and not in a positive way. Between the "overemployed" crowd and AI-generated profiles, there's something to be said for having some kind of social proof that you are who you say you are. Whether that's right or wrong is beside the point, just part of modern reality.
That said, your best bet is to just apply more. Looking for a job can be a truly full-time job in itself these days.
I fully agree with your last paragraph, but not sure what it has to do with cloud infrastructure specifically. AWS also leverages huge economies of scale into profit, it's not like you're going to realize equivalent margins by running your own little server in a colo somewhere. You certainly won't realize equivalent availability, scalability, security, support ecosystem, etc with it either. Cloud infra can make a lot of sense even with "pets" - you just gotta make sure to understand requirements, limitations, and use the right tools for the problem. For me personally, I'll reach for cloud infra these days as a reasonable default (similar to reaching for Postgres as a reasonable database default), especially if it's managed and affordable.
A dozen applications is not very much. Anecdotally, I've heard from a few folks that the funnel these days looks something like this: 100 applications -> 10 interviews -> 1 offer. Doesn't mean that you should be shotgunning your resume to every conceivable job (this happens a lot right now and hiring managers are overwhelmed), but it is a numbers game and you need to widen the top of the funnel.
I'm working on Rolepad (https://rolepad.com), a tool that brings together candidates (job application management) and hiring managers / recruiters (better candidate experience). The candidate side is pretty decent at this point, working on the employer side now. The first capability this will unlock is keeping the status of the application in sync between the two, for greater transparency and hopefully reduced ghosting. I'm sure I'll eventually start sprinkling some AI in the app, but for now it's much more important to get basic functionality, user experience, and market fit right.
I'm so old I first accessed World Wide Web through email :)
Back in '96 I was browsing a computer magazine and happened upon a listing of useful mailing lists, one of which returned the contents of web pages for a requested HTTP address. Same magazine had an install CD for the free Juno email service.
Being a teenager, the first web page I ever requested was www.idsoftware.com (Doom was big), which returned a gibberish of text to Juno's email client. It was an HTML file full of IMG tags (one of those "Click here to enter" gateway pages), but I had no idea what I was looking at at the time. Somehow figured out to open the file in IE2 and saw... a bunch of broken images :)
I still vividly remember the sense of wonder that the early Internet evoked.
It occurs to me that over time, reading comprehension will become significantly more important than the ability to write. Anyone will be able to write something smart-sounding with AI's help, but it'll take real skill to make sure the output is correct and appropriate.
The genie is out of the bottle, you can't just undo the last year of progress and knowledge. Even if the US took this drastic step, there will be other countries that will push forward. Or private interests. Or well-funded terrorist organizations. Etc, etc, you get the point. Much better, in my opinion, to stay ahead of the curve and tackle whatever issues head-on rather than burying your head in the sand, hoping for the best, and pulling out the surprised Pikachu face when someone else inevitably pushes state of the art forward.
Clouflare workers are a perfect use case for Node.js SSR apps - ultra fast, zero cold start, and pretty much free. I'm using it for an SSR app that's hitting a backend API hosted in AWS (.NET so not Cloudflare compatible) and it's just perfect.
This is neat, but it bugs me that it generates email addresses with real providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc). This can lead to accidental emails to real people during testing. I would recommend using @example.com for all emails.
Not quite. Slack's roots are in a video game called Glitch. The game never made it out of the gate, but its messaging system found new life as Slack. Fun fact - this was Stewart Butterfield's second attempt at making a game. The first one ended up pivoting to Flickr.
Start with a most basic model - 1-2 tables ideally. Build a basic backend to handle this data. Now build a basic frontend to display it. You now have version 0.0000..1 of your project! Now start adding complexity one bit at a time. Avoid the temptation to boil the ocean and come up with all the requirements upfront. Embrace the MVP life, and iterate, iterate, iterate.
I'm working on Rolepad (https://rolepad.com), a tool that brings together candidates (job application management) and hiring managers / recruiters (better candidate experience). The candidate side is pretty decent at this point, working on the employer side now. The first capability this will unlock is keeping the status of the application in sync between the two, for greater transparency and hopefully reduced ghosting.
Not only is it a very tough time to be looking for a job, junior positions are particularly difficult (this is generally the case when hiring slows down and companies can buy more experience for less). Doesn't mean you shouldn't look, but definitely set your expectations appropriately. Might be a while before things get better.
This is just your experience/maturity growing over time. Software development goes through cycles of hype, and it's all too easy to get swallowed by all the excitement. Over time you start realizing that there are no silver bullets, and it's all tradeoffs on top of tradeoffs. Solutions to most problems now start with "it depends", and you're slowly starting to resemble the gray-hairs whom you dismissed as cynical early on. The complexities have always been there, you're just getting wise to them. You're in good company, welcome :)
I remember all of these fondly. Though IMO the real hacks came with trying to get IE6 to comply when the rest of the world moved on. Basic things, like getting transparent PNGs to be, you know, transparent...
The big VCs typically will expect extreme growth, because the big wins are needed to make up for the losses they will incur on many of the their other portfolio companies. That said, there are smaller VCs and private equity firms who will be happy to fund companies with lesser aspirations. Just don't expect comparably big valuations and you'll likely need to cede more control for less money.
Great take. My project's tech stack is React on the frontend (without Next) and C# on the backend. For me this strikes the right balance of simplicity, performance, productivity and longevity.
It would be interesting to know how quickly an unprotected computer would succumb to a virus these days. The only sources I found are quite old - from 2005[0] (20 minutes) and 2007[1] (8 seconds!).