Slashdot Mirror
If You Want To Code From Home, Learn JavaScript
itwbennett writes "Earlier this month, remote-work cheerleader and Basecamp developer 37signals launched a job board called WeWorkRemotely.com that is, you guessed it, devoted to telecommuting jobs. At present there are only a couple hundred jobs listed on the site, so you'll still have to use other job boards as well. (Dice, SimplyHired, and Craigslist all have filters for finding remote working jobs.) But here's another thing that will help you land a work-from-home gig: Learn JavaScript. ITworld's Phil Johnson looked at a number of job postings for software developers open to people wanting to work remotely and then compared the frequency with which a number of popular programming languages and technologies were mentioned by the postings to determine the top tech skills for telecommuting jobs. Not surprisingly, the ubiquitous JavaScript topped the list, being mentioned in just over 20% of these listings. Other languages and tools used for the web are high up the list as well: jQuery at #3 (12.5%), PHP at #5 (9.5%) in the fifth spot, iOS at #8 (5.6%)."
Get on those sites, and you are competing with 3rd world wages.
But you can work from home, for $2 an hour.
If I'm going to damn my soul, I'd rather find other ways
Its a job, that actually is paying quite well, during a poor economy. Don't knock it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Employers looking for JS coders to work from home more than any other language" is not the same as "Programming in JS gives you the best chance to work from home."
They look similar, but one does not imply the other.
Well no one is going to hire you for 120k a year because you read a LEARN C++ in 24 hours book.
You need many years of experience and a computer science degree or mathematics to back you up with 5 managerial references minimum! Those who want to reply back or mod me how they didn't need that? Fine, how much are you making? I bet it aint 120k without all if not 2 out of the 3 of these.
For 120k a better have all as I can hire 2 developers for the same price or more if I want to have someone inexperienced in India.
http://saveie6.com/
So, you've chosen Java as the way to damn your soul?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Because nothing damns your soul as much as assisting an organization that provides huge amounts of disaster relief in a catastrophe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some make 120k in Silcon Valley too.
It is over valued to the insane.
But DC is almost as expensive as silicon Valley. $120,000 a year might get you a 1200 square foot home in a crime infested neighborhood. Of course wherever there is a military base the price of homes always triples too due to these high prices job so it is a chicken and the egg scenario.
I feel sorry for those who must barista at Starbucks in either area. How do they survive? Seriously, some people just got down on their luck and become unemployable during the last recession and need such jobs. It doesn't matter when the landlord knows he can charge $5,000 a month and have renters all out bidding each other for that one bedroom in an attic.
http://saveie6.com/
"Job Postings" are not a good measure of actual jobs. Most of these postings are spammy fishing excercises done in bad faith. Hundreds apply, no one gets the job.
*turns entire countries into catastrophes
Harder for them to outsource you, if the job involves a security clearance. Harder for you to work from home, however.
It doesn't matter when the landlord knows he can charge $5,000 a month and have renters all out bidding each other for that one bedroom in an attic.
So get creative. Buy a used van conversion in decent condition, get a gym membership and live out of your van until you can get on your feet. Many in Silicon Valley have done this and even crazier things to make it. Always remember that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, so don't be a prisoner to rules that were created by landlords and others like them to keep you down. Your advantage over them is that you have less to loose and are willing to do things that they didn't believe you would or could to survive. As a young person, getting ahead these days requires cunning and deceit. Do not fail to use these methods when necessary.
Web programming jobs are highly remote-work oriented and a basic knowledge of javascript is required for just about all of them. If you're a purely client side developer, clearly it's important.
Outside of that though, saying "Javascript EXPERT! Eleventy-billion years experience!" does absolutely nothing for a server side developer unless that job happens to revolve specifically around Node.js (in which case the job will probably just say Node.js).
Know a server side language well, deeply. Know databases. Basic competence with Javascript is all that is required outside of that. If you don't know any Javascript, it will probably disqualify you for most web position but on the scale of determining factors it's probably around a 2 in terms of level of importance.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm a UNIX systems administrator with 30 years of continuous industrial-strength experience in Silicon Valley.
I've been living outside the San Francisco Bay Area since 2005 - when it became too expensive to raise a family with just two incomes.
I've been sleeping in my van and showering at a gym for EIGHT !@#$ years. And driving 300 miles, each way, every weekend, to see my kids ands wife and bask in the warmth of my family.
Recently I've been seeing hourly wages for contractors fall to a level I have not personally seen since the early to mid 1990s - twenty years ago.
- $35/hour for people with 3-5 years experience and multidisciplinary skills
- $50/hour for people with 5-10 years experience, etc
This, despite the cost of gas, food and rent having escalated dramatically - I would conservatively estimate the cost of everything *else* has doubled.
There is no question in my mind that the value of DOWNTIME has not decreased over the past twenty years. The value of the work I do is as valuable as it ever was - maybe moreso.
From this I infer that the compensation I should be receiving for the work I am doing should be substantially greater than it actually is.
Were I to be brutally honest with myself I would be forced to admit that I have saved my employers millions of dollars in cumulative downtime every year.
I'm tired of being cheated and I am angry at those whom are doing the stealing. They are criminals. Why am I being punished?
Lowering the price of gas will not dissuade my anger. It only increases my anger - because the control over gas prices only reaffirms the thievery, anew.
I speak for many.
"Recently I've been seeing hourly wages for contractors fall to a level I have not personally seen since the early to mid 1990s - twenty years ago."
"Recently I've been seeing hourly wages for contractors fall to a level I have not personally seen since the early to mid 1990s - twenty years ago.
apparently not. Value == money.
Not to say you are incompetent. Just that your employer doesn't value you or your contribution. Fuck them.
Time to update your resume and talk to your wife and move to Montana? If she were willing to start over or even retire you can get paid the same or even less and live like a fucking king based on the equity of your home if you bought it before the boom.
When your employer doesn't value you it means your relationship is in turmoil with yourself and the employer. Either the employer wants you out and doesn't give a shit about your needs or you do not give a damn your employers needs. Time to severe it.
Austin Texas, Boulder Colorado, and even Montana are having .coms start there due to the lower cost of living and people like yourself can live like human beings.
http://saveie6.com/
Most of those useless people got weeded out when the tech stock bubble collapsed, but I've noticed a new generation of them making their way back, now. Companies are lowering their standards and letting HR do the screening, interviewing and the hiring. HR departments seem to be mostly unable to distinguish between good programmers and bad ones and tend to take the view that one programmer is as good as another and they can be replaced with no impact to the company. My personal observations are that (in general) it takes a year for a new person to become familiar enough with a company's code base and processes to be able to be able to contribute at 100% productivity. One guy who knows your business at 120K is easily worth 3 or 4 contractors at 60K who need to be trained. On average one or two of those contractors will be completely useless and contribute at best nothing of value to your company, 3 or 4 of them will be gone in 6 months just as they're starting to get familiar with how your business works and all of them are going to impact the productivity of your other employees with their training needs.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
He took a list of 10 languages, added another list of languages, then looked for those ...
Ie, there could well be other languages that he didn't look for that are more in demand than the one he looked for.
I don't know exactly how he handled only 'programmer' jobs for Dice.com ... but they've got 31 jobs that match 'perl'. Add that to the 3 from the other site, and we're looking at 4.4% (behind Python, above, C++, VB, TSQL, etc.
Of course, this is always going to be a point-in-time study. (I found 63 'Ruby' jobs (out of 745), which would put it at 8.4%, above his 7.2%) You really need to look at long-term trends. (and you need to make sure to not count the same jobs from week after week ... although the fact that they can't find someone to fill a job might be a sign that's skill's in more demand, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's good to learn that language if employability is your goal)
The really sad thing is that ASP is above Python (33+10=5.8%), and SQL's not on his list but mentioned in 27.8% (155+52) of the jobs. And Postgres (which he didn't check) has more mentions than Hadoop (which he did)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Heh. Defense contracting is where old, out-of-date programmers go to hang on for dear life until retirement.
Sorry, what's wrong with it as a language?
Or were you just playing to a popular slashdot meme?
Required reading for internet skeptics
So true. There are plenty of places with a cost of living far below a place like DC or Silicon Valley which pay decently enough that you end up way ahead.
For comparison, CNN's site has a cost of living calculator, and the US census site has several pages about cost of living worth looking at.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I disagree.
The problem is IE. That is old IE which can not do HTML 5, CSS 3 animations, JIT JS, or any of the other things.
Google Chrome experiments? All these are advanced. Also google IETest Drive ? Even IE 11 is ok finally again. Corps and grannies using XP and IE 8 is why you need plugins as ther ei sno way to make something pixel perfect in Chome as well as IE 6.
Technology is progressing. Just on phones now and if enough people upgrade more often it will put pressure on Grandma and the corps to modernize so we all can have a better experience.
Then don't. You don't need your website to look exactly the same for every damn person and you shouldn't even be trying to. Different users have different preferences and needs. Some like bright colors, others need high contrast or large fonts, I presonally prefer a colored text on dark background. The more you web developers keep trying to make it look like a freaking picture, the more you piss off users that just want to read the text on your page.
For instance, many people find small black text on a white background fucking painful to read, but all of us slashdotters have to put up with it because their god damn javascript screws with everything.
Companies are lowering their standards and letting HR do the screening, interviewing and the hiring.
:-D Seriously though, it makes for a much better work environment because everyone is comparable in their level of competence (even the junior guys are damned sharp), and that tends to make it a lot easier for all of us to work together and get stuff done.
I'm very thankful to work at a place that not only offers pretty good pay, but an HR department that works very closely with us when dealing with new candidates. A dev manager does the initial phone screen, and he and our senior devs conduct the interview themselves after the candidate has a short meeting with HR. It's unfortunately kind of grueling for the candidate, but we get a much better idea of what kinds of skills the candidate *really* has and a feel for their personality and disposition. Consequently, we don't have any difficult prima donnas and every single one in the dev group knows that C strings are null-termed.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas