sherm8n

I used to have that problem too. I forced myself to go on the street to start talking to potential customers. Many days I just wandered from gas station to gas station talking to people while they pumped their gas. It's just a mental hurdle. You can totally do it!

Here's my experience: http://blog.leanstartupcircle.com/want-to-do-customer-discov...

If you're working at a big company you're almost required to be busy. In fact you're looked down upon if you're not busy enough. How many times have you ran into co-workers only to do a little smalltalk? You talk about the projects you're working on and how slammed you are with work.

Being busy at the workplace is a way to seem important. You might run into someone at the cafe and say hey we should catch up. Well, why wouldn't you just catch up right then and there? That would be the most efficient route. You're both already together in the same place at the same time. Do you really need to rush back to your desk to do some more busy work?

The fees at agencies vary greatly. You tell them how much you want to get paid hourly. They charge clients as much as possible and keep the difference.

Wait, I have to bring in my own leads AND you take a 15% cut?

Something like GroupTalent.com provides deal flow, handles contracts/billing, and tacks on a 20% fee to the employer/client. Employers have no problem with it. They get great talent. Developers obviously don't care because they still get paid what they want and GroupTalent takes care of a ton of overhead.

I've probably been their happiest customer. They provide a super high quality leads channel. When I look at something like your service, it scares the crap out of me to give away 15%. Sure consulting agencies take an even bigger cut. But that's for freelancers who have no desire to do their own sales/marketing. The best freelancers I know would never go to them.

There are so many jobs and freelance projects available for Rails developers. The thing I find amazing is that anyone I talk to looking for Rails developers is that they can't find enough talented people.

Also, Rails is so easy that you can slide by being junior.

Customer development is really good. You gain a deep understanding of the problem you're trying to solve. You know what's even better though? Convincing those customers to pay you immediately. Now your bar is set high. You need to deliver a quality product or service. I find that when doing customer development for customers who aren't paying they tend to care less about what you're doing.

One way to look at getting into YC is like a marketing channel. They help you shape your startup into something that looks fundable. The press will get you eyeballs. But it's still up to you to successfully convert those eyeballs into paying customers. Your startup won't just magically become successful.

Yes, contributors please! I've been looking for a WP alternative for my blog but I need the ability to invite guest posters.

I was a developer at a company for a few years and decided I wanted to get into product management. The first thing I did was tell my boss who was somewhat supportive. He let some of the product managers in our department know. We had several conversations but that never led to anything.

So I started being a product manager on my own skunk work projects at work -- writing product requirements and prototyping demos of new ideas that fit in well with the business.

After a while of doing this it wasn't hard to find someone who sponsored the transition from developer to product manager. You just have to demonstrate your ability to execute. Someone will take a chance on you.

Your answer was perfect. I would be interested in learning more about how you manage to sustain your sanity. Where can I email you? Or you can just use my contact form - http://blog.goodsense.io/contact

Thanks for sharing that. Just curious, how hard do you have to work for that $16K?

It might not be the norm, but it's good to realize that it's absolutely achievable. Anything is possible if you really think you deserve it :) It's all about hacking the world.

There's lots of anecdotal evidence here in this thread that developers can command a high salary.

From the hiring side, of course I wouldn't want developers to know about this. If I've been given a certain hiring budget I have to convince devs that they aren't being underpaid.

Wow, you are underpaid. Do you have a CS degree? The smartest graduating students are starting their careers off at 100K at least.

It's not about cash, but you sure do make a lot of it. I don't think this is necessarily an outlier. It's just that other developers don't know it's possible.

The problem with the US work culture vs somewhere like Europe is that talking about your salary is so taboo. And it shouldn't be. What's wrong with compensating people who are comparable in skills and execution fairly?

From my experience hiring at large corporations, the degree you get is counted as "experience". So someone who completed a 2 year master's degree right after their bachelor's is considered to be equivalent to someone who has a few years of work experience.

In short, no it doesn't matter. Someone without a degree can earn as much as those with advanced ones.

How did you make a big jump from 115K to 185K? congrats!

You realize you have to pay for all that stuff as full time employee too right? Sure you might get free health insurance at a really good company. But most you have to pay a percentage of the premium. For freelancers, there are a lot of private health insurance plans they can sign up for that are comparable to the ones companies offer.

As a freelancer, you can also write off a lot of your expenses to reduce your taxable income. Bought a new Macbook Pro with retina display? Well, that's a business expense.

A lot of benefits at companies are just fluff to make you feel good about working there.

That's the whole point. Employers don't want you to know about the real numbers. They want to pay you as little as possible. Even your manager doesn't make that much money. So they don't want their direct reports to have a higher salary. If you've ever asked for a raise you clearly see signs that they're trying to manage a budget.

Is that decent living in South Africa though? The salaries referred to are in SF.

You're not underpaid, but you could be making A LOT more money. A lot of the suggestions seem to be learning how to do backend development or other skills. You could become a badass full stack developer, hone your skills and then apply for other positions. But why wait?

Talented developers are known for being able to pick up any skill they can on the fly. So you're not really at an advantage spending months or years becoming really good.

The problem is many developers aren't good at marketing themselves. You don't really need to be an expert at something like MongoDB, Backbone or any other technology to get paid more. You just need to clearly explain that it will be no problem picking them up because you've worked with dozens of other no-sql data stores or javascript frameworks.

You want to demonstrate the business value that you can provide to them -- like hiring you will finally allow them to work on that feature that will increase sales by 20%. If you can convince an employer of that, they'll pay you lots of money. An extra 15-30K salary is nothing for companies at that stage.

Scoot & Doodle (SF/Remote)

Raised $2.25M in funding and user engagement averages 30 minutes/session.

Looking for Rails, iOS, NodeJS devs.

Learn more - http://blog.goodsense.io/jobs-and-projects

If you want to talk about other projects contact me here - http://blog.goodsense.io/contact

SEEKING FREELANCER - SF/Remote

Scoot & Doodle needs Rails, iOS, NodeJS devs. Raised $2.25M in funding.

Learn more - http://blog.goodsense.io/jobs-and-projects

If you want to talk about other projects contact me here - http://blog.goodsense.io/contact

I hate to say it, but really good programmer doesn't make you a good business man. The best coders I know all have different results too.

The problem with books and online exercises is that when you get stuck you want to give up. It's hard to motivate yourself to push through. Unless you have awesome friends who have the patience to help, who will be your mentor?

The programs you mentioned are great. But it's still just like going to school.

I have friends that have gone through some of the programs. Feel free to contact me if you want to get into the details - http://blog.goodsense.io/contact/

When you first start you'll get compensated market rates for the value you provide. You're a junior programmer so the quality of code is lower and you will take more time to deliver.

In the long run however, you won't be paid for the business value you provide. Many experienced developers who work on projects that increase sales by 10% get paid dirt compared to the amount of money the business makes from it.

For making yourself more marketable are you talking in terms of getting a job as a developer? It may take up to a year of learning how to code before you can answer useless programming interview questions. If you start as a freelance developer you only need to convince the client that you're able to deliver the project. They won't ask you any programming questions.

What's preventing you from learning how to code right now and building your project?

It's only awful because I've been used to the way they've been doing compose for years. They only made very gradual changes so it didn't affect my flow too much.

With the new interface, it makes me pause for a second when I want to get something done quick. I imagine I'll get used to it and you all will too.

Can you get them to pay for your product now? Ask your customers to pre-pay right now for a few months of service (at a discounted rate).

If you have even 20 customers willing to prepay $49 a month for 6 months of service you'd have $5,880 in your pocket. You just validated your idea and you have money to build the MVP.

Feel free to email me to talk more: http://blog.goodsense.io/contact/