sciencewolf

How much did software.com cost?!

This is a collection of stories about folks who got their dream job. When I was looking to break into tech, I found it was really useful to talk to people who were in the field, and learn how they broke in. They usually had nuggets of advice that would help with the process-- whether it be about interviewing, searching, networking, or negotiating.

I remember https://www.linkdrop.co/ tried to do this and the Show HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19960313) appears to be this exact idea. However, it looks like they shifted to using an extension as opposed to a bookmark. Any idea why?

Also, curious how many pro subscribers you currently have? I imagine it's pretty difficult to get people on board with a $4/mo tool for personal consumption, unless you market it as a "productivity" tool.

How do I know the content creator knows anything about marketing? In fact, the presentation of this (and lack of sales copy, testimonials, previews) makes me wary of getting information from this resource.

Sensationalist headline.

1. Sample size was 130

2. Hasn't been peer-reviewed

3. "What this will mean to herd immunity will require more data from other parts of the world," Huang Jinghe, the leader of the research team behind the report.

Only interesting part: Interestingly, the levels of antibodies patients produced seemed to correlate with their ages: Middle-aged and elderly recovered patients had higher levels of antibodies. Nine of the 10 of the patients who did not develop detectable levels of coronavirus antibodies were 40 years old or younger.

Can you at least put screenshots?

This is certainly a useful lens through which to help you focus, but I've found that I'm now ONLY motivated to do things because of the possibility of financial upside. Have you encountered the same?

This is huge. It may be a months of jobless claims compacted into a week.

I'm seconding this. Love the product, hate the name.

This has been a fear for 30+ years now. And it seems like at the end of the day, for most companies, the decrease in cost of labor does not offset the increase in costs resulting from miscommunication, poor training, lack of care in quality of work, and increased times to delivery.

Fully loaded costs (health benefits, 401k matching, cost of computer, HR business partners, etc.) for an employee are roughly 2x what their salary is. So yeah, 200k is a good estimate.

Agree with this sentiment. With the exception of very specific topics that I've encountered in the wild but have no theoretical context on (e.g. Async JS), I have never been able to learn from a book. Tutorials/blog posts are great for this because you can stop and implement.

I really don't get the goal of reading X books a year. The impact of reading comes from DOING THE THINGS that the books recommend to do. Often I'll speak to folks who call themselves "prolific readers", and it'll be obvious that they've retained a bit here or there-- but few are actually practicing those things!

Warren Buffet is cited as an example in this article. Sure he reads a lot, but most it consists of SEC filings and balance sheets. If you examine his quotes, you'll find he cites ONE book (the Intelligent Investor) over and over again. He read that one book, and LIVED it for decades. In my opinion, that's a much better goal than reading a book a week.

This. It is unbelievable how much cutting down on caffeine helps with monkey-brain! I switched from coffee to tea with honey and have a much smoother energy than before.

As someone who interviews, you'd be shocked how many "senior engineers" can't write a function with two for-loops.

I think this is quite an oversimplification. If it was purely neurochemical, you wouldn't find any developers (or any other profession where performance is measured) who are productive during times of depression or grief. Yet sometimes those are the most prolific periods for folks (see many NBA stars this past week after Kobe's death, or the output of artists dealing with pain).

Off-topic, but Gregory - I was a participant in your C4Q Python workshop several years ago! So good to see that you're doing well in academia, and great article. Agree with many of the points you've made regarding writing-- as an example, one trick I've found for getting better at technical interviews was creating walk-throughs of problems I struggled with.

Thanks for the great read and for helping to kick off my software engineering career!

Why is https://github.com/kamranahmedse/roadmap.sh/blob/master/cont... blank?

Maybe I missed something-- how's this different than something like Intercom?

This is great! Only thing I'd ask is that if you're going to allow direct playing on the site, to enable 1.5-2x speed.

Totally fair, thanks for clarifying.

This is a great point. It's $400 in sales per month. I'm willing to bet hosting, domain, any paid ads, any fees from leanpub, etc. makes up at least $100-200 a month. Probably be better to just do freelance/consulting on the side and make an extra $100/hr in a day.

Just confirmed it, and that's super interesting. I wonder if it's due to the phrasing of the question though (how long since programming vs. how long coding professionally).

Eventually found your About page in the footer. So it sounds like better tagging of jobs?

Not to be mean, but the 437,650 monthly visitors claim is too much of an exaggeration-- I know you want to establish credibility early, but this seems to be a 3-day old website. If you're using that number to sell job listings, it can be seen as false advertising unless you can back that number up.

I have no idea what the AI-powered adds? It looks like any other job board for devs. Perhaps write a description or something for clarity.

> I was at my previous role for 6 years.

You're fine. Recruiters and hiring managers are scared of people who chronically leave after 6 months, not once a decade.

Echoing this sentiment of:

Motivated real world exposure > real world exposure > motivated self education > traditional education

As someone who mindlessly "self taught" through tutorials, then did half a bootcamp, then did a MSCS-- none of those things were anywhere near as transformational for me as a dev than my first year as a software engineer.

But of course, building AlgoDaily has probably taught me even more than the many years of work at this point, purely because there's been a strong impetus.

The "need to know" basis is huge. I think with a strong enough "need to know", any method works.

The visuals look great, will play it in a bit. And wow 5000 hours-- incredible!