toobulkeh

Google Drive severely limits file download speed, and uploads aren't that great.

I've been spending the last 6 months starting a business in this space.

If you enjoy the client and the relationship, hang on to it! They are few and far between more often than not.

A few tools we use are: Xero, Toggl, Asana. Always try to optimize your own workflow, but structure it in such a way that it's not all in your head. Your process and hand off is just as valuable as the product itself.

We've had a lot more success tying hours to features instead of defined project scope. Let it creep and change, just be up front with costs and expectations. Realize that your time and work is not flexible, but the feature list is.

Let the client help define the product scope collaboratively with you. You already landed them, so you just need to focus on keeping them.

Since it's not your full time, set mental boundaries for yourself and try to keep the two jobs separate.

Bad URL

The entire lean concept is pretty simple, so if you've read a few posts or essays online, then you already have the meat of it.

If you want a good story book where he extrapolates lots of examples, go ahead and pick it up.

While I'm new to the rails scene, and can't speak for the 2.x -> 3.0 performance change, what surprises me is that this post is upgrading because of newer gem support.

It this purely a rails upgrade? Or is the OP upgrading other gems at the same time?

You're using newrelic. Use it, and figure out exactly where it's getting slower. Do an entire stack trace. You can figure out exactly where those pages have gotten longer responses. Then you can suggest to the rails community what's slow for your application.

The platform is only as good as the community makes it to be. Maybe it's missing your case's optimizations because you haven't given specific feedback?

best of luck. If you want to fall back on security, I personally have good connections in the stable large companies in the South East US. If you need a stable income for awhile and are willing, please let me know.

Sounds like a debate between opt-in and opt-out. Why not both? Do an AB test of a Bot vs. a Service. In some cases, opt-in is good (see: organ donors), in other cases it's bad (see: Internet Explorer).

What if there was a community-vote that turned a bot and a particular version of said bot from Opt-Out (app style) to Opt-In (bot style)?

I, for one, welcome our bot-coding overlords that clean up my code and optimize it on each commit. Might save me a lot of time and a lot of power and thought... if it's peer reviewed, like all open source software.

I'm pretty sure with a community like GitHub, those advertisements would turn around and hurt their service, instead of help it.

Even if it was the best build service in the world, as a hacker I wouldn't personally use it.

This diverse view is very good. It's always promising to pay attention outside of your generation and use-case. Family and friends are a great starter, but try different neighborhoods , cities, or even countries - there are a LOT more opportunities out there.

Sadly, one thing I've found with people's suggestions (and I've heard a lot of "next hot app" suggestions as I'm sure you have as well) already exist. They just don't know that they do. Maybe there's a job for bringing those apps to those people? How meta.

very good points. While I agree with your initial post's synopsis (stay away from consulting) I also heavily agree that you might NEED it for starters. Thanks for the tips!

Your great success is very encouraging! I'm not sure if I could write a book, but the results from consulting and programming are very impressive for a first attempt.

I'm in the middle of making the jump myself, and am currently paying that $4000/mo for our family of two. Did you simply save up enough to live on that for a few months to make more of it? How did that work?

Thanks for the inspiration and congratulations again on your successful year!