If we are talking front-end, then Javascript is already the dominant language for EVERYONE (for the web anyways.)
> Big brand names like GM, Yahoo, Dow Jones, Walmart and Dell have all deployed Node.js and are touting its merits.
It's as if the borg is chanting node while it slaves away on its corporate machine. I bet if I asked Michael Dell what he thinks about Node, he would probably tell me to F-off.
I googled LinkedIn and the first result talked about how they replaced their Rails app with a Node app. Right, when I see an article talking about how X huge corp replaced their Scala app with Node then I might be more convinced.
We don't need to be locked into any one tool though. As we learn how to build things better we find that we can route our pipes to different boxes which handed different things rather than having one huge box handling everything.
The bottom line is that there is an infinite number of things to build and while software won't build these things alone, it's still a big component. Software didn't build the Space X rocket or the Google self driving car, but there is a lot of code which is a big part of making those things possible. All of the things that we can imagine in 50 years needs to have the foundations laid in part by software developers today. A factory worker has limited contribution to this future because of the constraints of the job, but software development is wide open. We may not be able to build the deathstar right now, but we can start working on the code for it.
> When the most frequent complaint you hear is “I wish recruiters would stop spamming me with six-figure job offers,” life’s gotten pretty good.
As other have said many times here, a six figure job in some places is just enough to possibly be compared to a middle class lifestyle elsewhere in the U.S. Go look at the database of BART salaries, and as big as their pay appears, these guys went on strike.
> WordPress does in fifteen minutes what once kept a freelancer busy for two months.
And yet, you can still easily spend two months plus on a Wordpress project. Compare what people were building then compared to what people are building now. The great thing about web development is that we can continually move up the value chain. As some components get easier, that frees us up to work on something else, always pushing the boundaries outward. As those boundaries move, we are probably creating more work to do, not less.
> Maybe you don’t think a total n00b can walk out of a nine-week training program and do your job.
That noob better learn how to learn on his / her own. Really, who learns how to be a developer from a school? I don't have a computer science background, but does a computer science degree even teach this stuff? The bottom line is that it's a relentless grind to continue to learn and build on that knowledge. Not everyone has the drive to do that. It's far easier to pay for someone to feed you knowledge and pretend that you are getting somewhere.
> To upset the labor market, one of two things needs to happen: an increase in supply, or a decrease in demand.
I don't see supply outstripping demand happening anytime soon, if ever. I have been waiting for the hordes to come for years, but this hasn't happened. I would think it would have happened by now. And demand doesn't sit still either. As other markets emerge, they eat up their local talent.Sure, this local talent may work for far less than their U.S. equivalents, but for how long? When you have cost of living in certain regions of developing nations ratcheting up to be as high as any U.S. city and companies like Alibaba hitting huge numbers, then developers in these regions will get paid. They just have a bit of catching up to do, that's why we call them "developing."
> No profession stays on top forever… just ask your recently graduated lawyer friends.
Isn't that a crazy comparison though? This article mentions how low the friction is for getting into development, and then makes this comparison with a profession with a relatively huge friction. The development industry looks nothing like law. Part of the problem there is that the law profession built walls up that technology is tearing down. The development industry has no walls.
As others have commented, this is totally market, which is detached from the actual working conditions. Can 100K really be considered overpaid in the bay area? Or is everyone making much less than 100K just crazy to live there (I don't live there, so I don't know how much you really need to make to survive there.)
I think sometimes it's hard for us to see how much we really learn over time. It seems so easy, yet have someone who has never written a line of code try to get to the point where you are at.
I imagine this could also be applied to startups running out of cash. Not only do you have the stress of all the implications of running out of cash, but getting more cash becomes the number one priority, over things that you would otherwise be doing if you were flush. You might have to take on cash from sources you would otherwise decline. You might have to start thinking about doing client work. Fun stuff.
It's interesting to hear that hiring is cheaper in Boston than in Silicon Valley. I have always had the impression that Boston is also up there in the "crazy expensive" list of places to live. Maybe it's a savings from Silicon Valley, but Boston must still be somewhere among the top 10.
So what? After 20 minutes the robot just lays there and does nothing? If that's due to battery life, then some of the real life partners I have been with had a far shorter battery life than that.
Why would you need AI in a sex robot? People don't go to strip clubs for the great conversation. Though I suppose the AI is the difference between a sex robot and a sex doll. And I suppose any intelligence is better than faked or clever AI. Otherwise you might as well be having sex with a human look-alike Teddy Ruxbin.
The $9K price tag estimate isn't too bad. That's probably cheaper than than a lot of people spend on their significant others, not counting accessories so that you can feel like you are getting some "strange" every once in a while.
Maybe this could be Apple's next big thing. I don't mind Windows, but the idea of having sex with something which has a Microsoft logo makes me not want to have sex.
A handful of stories doesn't make much of a study. I wonder how much of this might be a case of X not getting a job and looking to age as being as an easy target for an excuse?
Did they do any networking? I'm a hired gun web developer working remotely with all my projects and nobody would ever know my age unless they asked directly and they almost never do. I could make a lot of progress with a potential employer before they even got the chance to shake my hand.
Also, why not do some work to get others to come to you? Build your personal brand my making yourself an authority.
For web developers, it's cheap to try building a product in the area of your expertise. If you are wearing all the hats and doing everything right in making that product a success, then you have much of the expertise that a start-up is trying to build. Sure, you may not know the nuts and bolts of the engineering of the product, but that tech won't go anywhere if the team doesn't know how to drive some traffic.
In tech, you really have to be busting your ass all the time. Building, learning, networking, contributing. Some people complain that you shouldn't have to put time into these things. Right or wrong, you have to do some hustling to get what you want. If you don't have to hustle, great. But you don't always have that choice.
I think this depends on who you are directing the question to. There are hundreds of millions (billions?) of people on this planet who can barely afford to put food on the table. For these people, entertainment is the same as it has been for hundreds of years. You sit around with friends and family, talk, eat, play music and generally keep things simple. If the middle class continues to decline in the U.S. then people in the U.S. may be doing the same in 20 years.
ExpressionEngine is sustaining a small team of developers. I assume Craft is profitable since Pixel and Tonic charges for certain add-ons and they also have a very small team. I assume Statamic is also profitable since the developers charge for it and I don't see how such a small operation could be running at a loss. There are probably a lot more examples that I don't know of.
Craft (Craft exited beta in 2013) and Statamic are relatively new and also have passionate communities. Sure, none of these examples are "blogging engines" by strict definition, but neither is Wordpress these days.
There is certainly a market for someone who sees a need for improvement and can sell that need to developers and end-users.
If you are referring strictly to an open source effort, this decision is personal. Everyone has their own motivations for what they do with their time. Not worth it for one person might be life changing for another.
I wouldn't bother. Have them handle their own hosting. There are multiple possible traps with offering any sort of hosting services.
1. Look at the business model. Web hosting providers make a seriously small margin on their sales and their profits come from high volumes. It's difficult to add any value there.
2. You can't offer the support that the hosting company can offer. The hosting company may or may not have good support, but they can provide it 24 / 7. You have your own life and it's not worth having to respond to emergencies when you are normally unavailable. Sure, you may be able to charge for that time, but the host can probably offer that same support for no extra charge.
3. Problems with hosting can pop up at the worst times. Imagine that you have overbooked yourself, you have multiple deadlines that are just around the corner and then all of a sudden you have to deal with a hosting problem. It's bad that you have to take time away from urgent and probably better paying work to deal with that issue, but it's even worse to have to do a mental switch away from one project, deal with the hosting issue and then have to do another mental switch to get back into the project you were distracted from.
4. You could be a world class developer but a hosting issue can reflect negatively on you from the perspective of the client. A bad hosting issue can sour the overall experience that the client has with your services. Again, it's just not worth it.
5. Many developers don't have the expertise to deal with hosting issues, which means you will probably provide a worse service than the hosting company can provide.
6. Hosting is a commitment that you may not want to make. If you decide to get out of client work, then you will have to deal with migrating your clients into different hosting situations. I have seen this turn out bad for the client.
As the application developer, offer to setup the application on their hosting and offer some sort of maintenance plan for the application, not the hosting. Set the expectation for the client that the hosting provider should be the point of contact for hosting issues and that maintenance issues with the application may have a 24 - 48 hour turn-around (or whatever you feel comfortable with.) Don't even recommend a provider, or if you do, then compile a short list of good providers and have the client make the decision on which one to choose.
It's difficult for me to comment on something that you saw while in this room when I wasn't in the room, but I'm guessing that much of that had to do with the fact that the kid had actually put in the work and did the experimentation to build this community.
How many of the people in that room could say the same? What communities (or anything else) had they built? If they had built something, did they do it on their own as opposed to being someone brought in after the company was already successful? The kid probably ran circles around everyone because he was an expert (on this subject) among managers / developers / designers and anyone else who could probably do anything but run a successful community / e-commerce site.
I think about this sort of thing as a web developer. How many web developers who build client sites have actually built a successful site? How many designers really know how to design something which can sell? If you haven't done it, then you probably have no clue. But if you have been there, then you probably wouldn't be working for someone else either.
An important item this article is missing is their definition of entrepreneur.
In the Philippines in the area I live I can reach a dozen stores within a 5 minute walk. These are stores people run out of their homes. They generally have a room with a barred window where people can walk up and buy basic goods.
Downtown, every parking area has numerous people who will park your scooter and they work off tips. Kids go from bar to bar selling peanuts. Vendors walk around selling fake viagra and cheap watches. People setup make-shift food carts in areas which are heavily trafficked.
Most of these people are working without any sort of license. They are hustlers doing what they need to do to get by. That's my definition of entrepreneur. If you were to survey these people using the same questions the article used, then they would get very different responses.
Start traveling now and then apply for work while you are abroad. Do freelance work while looking for employment to generate income to get you by while traveling. In some places, like S.E. Asia you can get by cheap enough that you may not have to do much work at all to stay even, depending on what your rates are, you truly could get by with a 4 hour work week. Freelancing is also great for generating leads which could turn into the sort of opportunity you are looking for.
Don't wait for the perfect situation. Start packing your bags and look for plane tickets today. My suggestion for a great place to start is the Philippines. You can buckle down in country for 16 months on a tourist visa before you need to do a visa run, English is an official language and flights to the surrounding countries are very cheap.
This is basically my story. I had plans on doing this, which I just kept pushing out farther and farther. I also barely had any savings, which is one of the reasons why I was pushing out my plans. Then one day my situation changed, I needed to find a new place to live and I received payment on a decent invoice. I really didn't want to find a new place to live in that city, so I used the invoice to buy a plane ticket, took care of the things I needed to take care of and left the country with just enough cash left over to take care of deposits for an apartment, utilities and probably less than a month (!) of regular expenses. As soon as I got into my apartment I went right to work and built up a bit of a cushion. I probably would never have made the jump if I didn't force myself to buy that ticket.
ETA: As a freelancer with a freelancer mindset, I never view any offer as true employment. With every long term gig I give myself a general milestone to achieve and then it's time to move on. I usually get a few offers for full time remote work every year without actively looking and then I uncover a few more with minimal ground work.If I set myself to seriously look then I would find a lot more. That's with agencies which do client work and the occasional start-up. So, the work is out there, you just have to plant the seeds.
If you were able to receive one offer without looking then surely you can get another offer if you were specifically looking for another job in SF.
Though it's good to love your job, it's also important that your time in your job is financially providing something more than just a paycheck. You should be able to put money away and enjoy the time that you aren't working as well. Getting paid just enough to cover your cost of living is no fun and stressful. What do you do if they go under? If they really recognize the value that you are bringing to the table, then they should be paying you enough to make this an easy question.
It sounds to me like this offer has perked your interest for moving on and that perhaps you haven't considered this before. Perhaps you should look around for other opportunities and at least get some competing offers. Maybe you could even do something as a remote developer (just don't apply to Yahoo!) somewhere.
ETA: If you want to scratch an itch, start a side project or find an open source project to contribute to.
The easiest way to go for everyone is to work for the remote company as a contractor. Then you take care of your own taxes as someone who is self employed. In the U.S. if you don't have another business structure setup for doing contract work, then you are automatically a sole proprietor. I imagine Germany has something similar.
Hire an accountant to figure out what extra tax hit you will take working as a contractor as opposed to an employee. Whatever you would normally charge the company to work work for them - add that extra tax hit, the costs of the accountant to handle your taxes and whatever overhead costs that you will take on by working remotely vs working in their office.
Otherwise, the company you are looking to work for will likely set other demands based on whatever works best in their system. Be flexible, but make sure to add the above mentioned costs.
I think another item to add to this is that some days that 4 hour day is going to be your ceiling and anything which creates yet more cognitive exhaustion is going to erode that further. For example, serious stress from having to hit a deadline or being overloaded could bust that 4 hours worth of reserves down to 2 or 3. If you try to force it, you might just end up sitting at your workstation all day idling at brainless tasks such as browsing the internet or half attempting to create some sort of structure out of the mess of the task list your clients have sent you.
It's interesting that we see so many articles posted on hacker news on how to be more productive, beat procrastination and be more motivated when really this article the OP posted explains it all. In most cases you probably don't have a problem with procrastination and motivation, it's simply that you are over-extending yourself. Cut back your commitments and you fix your problem.
I have been freelancing for most of my time as a developer, and I have worked remotely for all of it.
The one actual job I had as a web developer set the work week as 40 hours a week (8 hours a day.) This left me wondering if any developers actually work this long of a day and how they could possibly do it.
When I'm doing client work, I'm ON, all the circuit boards are lit up. I can't keep this going for more than 4 - 6 hours per day. If I work a long day, then the next day I'm drained and I have to pay off that debt.
It actually took me years to really figure this out after a life of being trained to the 40 hour work week (parents, my early work life.) The 40 hour model for work is broken.
> Big brand names like GM, Yahoo, Dow Jones, Walmart and Dell have all deployed Node.js and are touting its merits.
It's as if the borg is chanting node while it slaves away on its corporate machine. I bet if I asked Michael Dell what he thinks about Node, he would probably tell me to F-off.
I googled LinkedIn and the first result talked about how they replaced their Rails app with a Node app. Right, when I see an article talking about how X huge corp replaced their Scala app with Node then I might be more convinced.
We don't need to be locked into any one tool though. As we learn how to build things better we find that we can route our pipes to different boxes which handed different things rather than having one huge box handling everything.