It's very unlikely a person will have the skills to both do low level engineering and create a sales and marketing strategy.
So find someone who compliments your skills and can do the things you can't.
I've co-founded two startups with my business partner - she is great at the outbound side and I work the technology side. Finding that key business partner is just as hard as a romantic partner - you need to "date" just as much before settling down....
And it's for that reason that I always discuss package during the initial phone call.
But you'd be surprised at the number of prospective employees that say "it depends". They may be prepared to waste their time, but I'm supposed to waste a couple of man days on their whim?
I even try to explain that it's just a mutual efficiency thing...
But it's like they think I'm just trick them... How does that benefit me? They start, they are unproductive while they learn stuff, then they get a better offer? I want to find people that want to work for me, not just those looking for a job...
I don't know about other hiring managers but I have a budget, I can't afford to build my team with only the most experienced, I need a balanced team with a mix of skills and seniority levels... Money is not free, salaries make up ~90% of my costs so there isn't a lot of room for making savings elsewhere...
i think it works like this... Engineer wants to work for us ( interesting product ) and the package we offer is smaller than they could get at a large company, but the work is more interesting and there is significant upside.... Partner of engineer prefers package size over interesting work because they don't have to do the work... We've even started having the CEO talk to the partner in some cases.
We use standalone Zephyr in conjunction with JIRA, Confluence (both hosted OnDemand) and Stash.
What I can't work out is the justification for their pricing.
I pay Atlasssian about $10 per user per month.
Zephyr wants $80 per user per month, others mentioned are $25 per user per month.
Is test management really worth 5-10times as much as I pay for bug and content management ? Or 1000 times as much as I pay for source code and code review ? (Stash is $10 for a year for 10 users)
No.
So we continue to use the Community Edition of Zephyr... I really like Atlasssian's pricing model and they will continue to be my vendor of choice until someone else can match their price/performance combination*
I try not to be an asshole, but I don't see why I should give someone a job who can't be bothered to look after their career.
If I have someone who's motivated to learn new things vs someone who should be able to predict the end was coming, why would I pick the person who's spent the last 3 years being complacent not improving himself? The fact that you are self taught but then couldn't be bothered to do it anymore is a double kicker.
We're so far beyond jobs for life that its upto the individual to look after themselves. If you don't do that who do you blame ?
Kids let this be a lesson to you - if you want to be able to retire you've got to keep an eye on the ball. Your 30s and 40s are when you need to be working to maximize your income (savings).
Your best option now ? Marry a rich person, start at the OpenUniversity.
Someone dies. A spouse, father and son, and everyone's reaction seems to be along the lines of "good riddance". Two children are going to grow up without a father and your best attempt at humanity is "ohh another 1%-er died - so what"
Is this news - no, but it is social interest. Its a reminder to live whatever life you have to the best you can, because you never know when you'll die.
So get out of your parent's basement and do something today that makes people proud to know you.
When we grew up (rural England in the early 70s) we had what would now be called a highly nutrious diet - we grew all our own "organic" vegetables (we got cow shit for free, pesticides cost money) and had chickens (fresh eggs daily). Ended up only buying meat and milk...
So did my cousins next door.
They were certainly richer than us - it seemed a lot, but it probably wasn't...
Only my sister and I went to university (the only people to have done in any generation), they took low level white collar jobs (bank teller/hairdresser)
Nature certainly has a hand in it, but I think its more likely nurture that has the bigger hand.
For taking one for the team. He single handedly managed to do what India, Argentina, Mexico, the British Labour party couldn't.
And all he had to do was be incompetent at his job - his job, quite simply is to get the best from the show.
Congratulations Oison.
Or should it be Judas ?
Seriously, I'm torn - I love the show, but obviously the BBC had to fire him. I'm hoping that the boys take their antics to a new channel where they have more freedom to give the viewers the show they want - not what the BBC allows them to do in its pitifully correct public broadcaster role. I don't think that would be ITV or even Sky.
I'd really like to see them move to Netflix - they have the money and "freedom" to do what they want with less political climate since its not a broadcaster in the traditional sense (public service requirements).
It might also be an interesting avenue for the the intellectual challenge of "can we do this"... Its never too late to do a start-up...
Since its not upgradable - get the most CPU/memory/disk you can afford.
I have the 15inch - but only because I wanted quad core (I expected to run VMs). In the end I don't run VMs - so the 13" would have been better for me with hindsight.
If I want to work on Linux (all my code runs on Linux) I just ssh into the build machine, MacVim runs local over SMB to the Linux host. Works well for me. I've ported the Linux code to Mac as an exercise - but still use the Linux version everyday.
Check the talking heads physicists on TV - you'll often see a Mac and I bet its not running Linux.
Anything that gets between you and your end-game (physics) is adding an inefficiency. If you're end-game is FOSS, then install Linux, if its leaning physics do you really want to waste time on in-efficienies - just run OS X.
Why don't we pick on the top 2% - not just the top 1%, that's fair, they almost as rich...
Hang on, we can get the top 10%, no - the top 49%.
That's it - those rich 49% bastards.... They're all morally bankrupt...make them pay...
Here's my rule - if you don't pay the tax/fine you don't get to vote on it.
How is it fair to vote on a tax that you don't have to pay ?
Everyone thinks that of course it will be different for them (everyone is of course above average morally) - bullshit it isn't. Just try writing a (extra) cheque to CA for $40k and see how you feel about it...its your hard-earned money that you have to hand over to the state because the majority thought it would be great to have a tax they don't have to pay... Obviously the issue isn't important enough that everyone should contribute towards it...
It' seems to be a lot cheaper and easier to renounce citizenship that to get it the hard way - h1b +5 years.
Taxes only become an issue when you have investments, if you just have employment income filing a 1040 is easy - no state taxes...
It's their life, the best you can do for them is to give them opportunities, I'd say that giving your kid the right to work in the US at any point in their life is is a worth a bit of paperwork...if they want to give up that right it's their call...
Richard - originally UK citizen, then added USA, married USA citizen, now living in UK but working in USA. Trying to coordinate UK and US taxes makes my accountants bill probably higher than most people's tax bill:-(
If you put something on your resume that you consider a "skill", we will ask questions on it. If the interviewee then doesn't know the answer on something that they have declared they think they are good at - what confidence would I have about things that I might assume I don't need to ask questions on (i.e. can you handle command line build systems)
One of the last people put HTTP as a skill and then didn't know/explain how one might architect handling a long running request with HTTP....
Part of me wonders if open source and now apps, while democracizing software development has harmed the profession.
After working for two years, I had a software engineer that didn't even know where in the system to start looking for a given filename.
20years ago with a couple of years experience I could recognize where I was in each of the files in the Motif source tree - just by its line indentation. Why ? because I was interested in all software - not just my little bit....
Socialize, find other people around you that have complementary skills and who also are interested in doing their own company (our first company had an general business person, a PhD and an engineer)
brainstorm, find gap in the market, find new product idea.
make big decision to quit current job
form company to hold IP and who owns what - this requires an initial set of capital - $20k. No IP - then what is your value ?
Develop prototype. I (engineer) started working on prototype full time (using my savings to pay expenses), business person started building product contacts/approaching customers...
As prototype develops consider external funding (VC) (until now we were self funded, CEO funded lawyers, I funded my own time - compensated in additional stock). Additional part-time developers were brought for stock. There should be people you know (and trust) - they will be the seed of the engineering organization. We had 2-3 - more and I would spend too much time managing.
Once we had funding, bring on existing developers full time, start looking for additional engineers.
Release initial product (4months after funding - 15 months after initial line of code written)
Key take away - a start-up is hard, you need to work with people you trust. If you're an engineer by inclination, stay in engineering, your start-up is not the time to be experimenting with new roles, you'll have enough to do just making sure your piece works since you're in charge... Remember that you're responsible for others giving up their secure jobs and committing to work for your idea, treat them with respect and share the wealth unequally but fairly (yes, unequally you've taken additional risk, they haven't).
Second followed a similar route
The actual tools are just details, you should be spending all your time working out how do we make this successful - not should we force highly motivated developers to use EMACS...or vi or
Its not important unless your product is EMACS....
Slashdot Mirror
Good advice.
It's very unlikely a person will have the skills to both do low level engineering and create a sales and marketing strategy.
So find someone who compliments your skills and can do the things you can't.
I've co-founded two startups with my business partner - she is great at the outbound side and I work the technology side. Finding that key business partner is just as hard as a romantic partner - you need to "date" just as much before settling down....
1) Make a series of movies titled "PowerPoint", "Flash", "SilverLight"
2) file DMCA take down notices.
3) all the crappy presentations and horrendous web sites disappear.
I could also do evil ( or more good depending on your point of view). My final movie will be called Stallman....
And it's for that reason that I always discuss package during the initial phone call.
But you'd be surprised at the number of prospective employees that say "it depends". They may be prepared to waste their time, but I'm supposed to waste a couple of man days on their whim?
I even try to explain that it's just a mutual efficiency thing...
But it's like they think I'm just trick them... How does that benefit me? They start, they are unproductive while they learn stuff, then they get a better offer? I want to find people that want to work for me, not just those looking for a job...
I don't know about other hiring managers but I have a budget, I can't afford to build my team with only the most experienced, I need a balanced team with a mix of skills and seniority levels... Money is not free, salaries make up ~90% of my costs so there isn't a lot of room for making savings elsewhere...
i think it works like this... Engineer wants to work for us ( interesting product ) and the package we offer is smaller than they could get at a large company, but the work is more interesting and there is significant upside.... Partner of engineer prefers package size over interesting work because they don't have to do the work... We've even started having the CEO talk to the partner in some cases.
Vanye.
We use standalone Zephyr in conjunction with JIRA, Confluence (both hosted OnDemand) and Stash.
What I can't work out is the justification for their pricing.
I pay Atlasssian about $10 per user per month.
Zephyr wants $80 per user per month, others mentioned are $25 per user per month.
Is test management really worth 5-10times as much as I pay for bug and content management ? Or 1000 times as much as I pay for source code and code review ? (Stash is $10 for a year for 10 users)
No.
So we continue to use the Community Edition of Zephyr... I really like Atlasssian's pricing model and they will continue to be my vendor of choice until someone else can match their price/performance combination*
*For more than 10users prices can get high...
We use JIRA and Confluence OnDemand and Stash on-premise (to replace their subversion hosting we initially used).
We evaluated gitlab before deciding to go with Stash - based largely on JIRA reputation.
I found stash to need way more memory than they claimed was needed
I think the VM is configured for 16GB - it was 2GB initially.
We are using the built in database - primarily because I can't be bothered to worry about getting a real one setup.
Our main repository is about 800MB - ~8000 commits
Yes, a touch of common sense.
I try not to be an asshole, but I don't see why I should give someone a job who can't be bothered to look after their career.
If I have someone who's motivated to learn new things vs someone who should be able to predict the end was coming, why would I pick the person who's spent the last 3 years being complacent not improving himself? The fact that you are self taught but then couldn't be bothered to do it anymore is a double kicker.
We're so far beyond jobs for life that its upto the individual to look after themselves. If you don't do that who do you blame ?
Kids let this be a lesson to you - if you want to be able to retire you've got to keep an eye on the ball. Your 30s and 40s are when you need to be working to maximize your income (savings).
Your best option now ? Marry a rich person, start at the OpenUniversity.
Sex worker.
While outsourcing sex workers will work for the vacation bonk, the daily bonk needs to be closer...
Pucker up, its working time...
What a bunch of assholes you all seem to be.
Someone dies. A spouse, father and son, and everyone's reaction seems to be along the lines of "good riddance". Two children are going to grow up without a father and your best attempt at humanity is "ohh another 1%-er died - so what"
Is this news - no, but it is social interest. Its a reminder to live whatever life you have to the best you can, because you never know when you'll die.
So get out of your parent's basement and do something today that makes people proud to know you.
richard - 48, overweight, stressed, 2%-er
Which part is cruel and which the unusual ?
Only one of those was in the valley.
I think there's probably more it it than that.
When we grew up (rural England in the early 70s) we had what would now be called a highly nutrious diet - we grew all our own "organic" vegetables (we got cow shit for free, pesticides cost money) and had chickens (fresh eggs daily). Ended up only buying meat and milk...
So did my cousins next door.
They were certainly richer than us - it seemed a lot, but it probably wasn't...
Only my sister and I went to university (the only people to have done in any generation), they took low level white collar jobs (bank teller/hairdresser)
Nature certainly has a hand in it, but I think its more likely nurture that has the bigger hand.
For taking one for the team. He single handedly managed to do what India, Argentina, Mexico, the British Labour party couldn't.
And all he had to do was be incompetent at his job - his job, quite simply is to get the best from the show.
Congratulations Oison.
Or should it be Judas ?
Seriously, I'm torn - I love the show, but obviously the BBC had to fire him. I'm hoping that the boys take their antics to a new channel where they have more freedom to give the viewers the show they want - not what the BBC allows them to do in its pitifully correct public broadcaster role. I don't think that would be ITV or even Sky.
I'd really like to see them move to Netflix - they have the money and "freedom" to do what they want with less political climate since its not a broadcaster in the traditional sense (public service requirements).
It might also be an interesting avenue for the the intellectual challenge of "can we do this"... Its never too late to do a start-up...
Yes its a two edged sword - you can leave, but you can also be fired for no reason.
I know prefer to work in a free environment than an English manufacturing company where the union was in control....
But that's me... others maybe are lazy/stupid and prefer to work somewhere that has no risks and no gains and expect others to look after them...
Third (with caveat) this.
I'd suggest a (retina) Mac Book Pro - not an Air.
Since its not upgradable - get the most CPU/memory/disk you can afford.
I have the 15inch - but only because I wanted quad core (I expected to run VMs). In the end I don't run VMs - so the 13" would have been better for me with hindsight.
If I want to work on Linux (all my code runs on Linux) I just ssh into the build machine, MacVim runs local over SMB to the Linux host. Works well for me. I've ported the Linux code to Mac as an exercise - but still use the Linux version everyday.
Check the talking heads physicists on TV - you'll often see a Mac and I bet its not running Linux.
Anything that gets between you and your end-game (physics) is adding an inefficiency. If you're end-game is FOSS, then install Linux, if its leaning physics do you really want to waste time on in-efficienies - just run OS X.
I agree. Who gets to decide - the majority.
Why don't we pick on the top 2% - not just the top 1%, that's fair, they almost as rich...
Hang on, we can get the top 10%, no - the top 49%.
That's it - those rich 49% bastards.... They're all morally bankrupt...make them pay...
Here's my rule - if you don't pay the tax/fine you don't get to vote on it.
How is it fair to vote on a tax that you don't have to pay ?
Everyone thinks that of course it will be different for them (everyone is of course above average morally) - bullshit it isn't. Just try writing a (extra) cheque to CA for $40k and see how you feel about it...its your hard-earned money that you have to hand over to the state because the majority thought it would be great to have a tax they don't have to pay... Obviously the issue isn't important enough that everyone should contribute towards it...
Punishment cup-cakes.
If you break the build you have to bring cake ( not necessarily cupcakes) for everyone the next day - "to say sorry for negitively impacting them"
Some buy, some bake... It's now a relaxed company joke
ObMontyPython: Being chased over a cliff by naked women...
I agree, it's what I'd do for my kids.
It' seems to be a lot cheaper and easier to renounce citizenship that to get it the hard way - h1b +5 years.
Taxes only become an issue when you have investments, if you just have employment income filing a 1040 is easy - no state taxes...
It's their life, the best you can do for them is to give them opportunities, I'd say that giving your kid the right to work in the US at any point in their life is is a worth a bit of paperwork...if they want to give up that right it's their call...
Richard - originally UK citizen, then added USA, married USA citizen, now living in UK but working in USA. Trying to coordinate UK and US taxes makes my accountants bill probably higher than most people's tax bill :-(
We use two E-Beam Edges, one in the US (with projector) and one in the UK (large TV).
I'm pretty happy with them - I'd recommend them.
Coupled with video-conferencing using TelyHD gives use an effective remote office presence in the UK.
It means I can still participate in interactive design meetings while I'm in the UK.
As a hiring manager I see this all the time.
If you put something on your resume that you consider a "skill", we will ask questions on it. If the interviewee then doesn't know the answer on something that they have declared they think they are good at - what confidence would I have about things that I might assume I don't need to ask questions on (i.e. can you handle command line build systems)
One of the last people put HTTP as a skill and then didn't know/explain how one might architect handling a long running request with HTTP....
Part of me wonders if open source and now apps, while democracizing software development has harmed the profession.
After working for two years, I had a software engineer that didn't even know where in the system to start looking for a given filename.
20years ago with a couple of years experience I could recognize where I was in each of the files in the Motif source tree - just by its line indentation. Why ? because I was interested in all software - not just my little bit....
And no - Motif isn't on my resume anymore :-(
And emacs is an editor trying to be an OS.
Make emacs the replacement for init. It would at least have support from 50% of the community and able to use it.
Fingers crossed I'll be dead before RHEL 6 is EOL...
Maybe the reason for only 30% of Philosophy PhDs being female is because it takes a bucket full of BS to do philosophy and women are too practical...
Or maybe they don't like wearing tweed and corduroy...
Maybe if everyone just stopped posting comments to stories by Bennett, he'd get bored and go somewhere else.
Active hostility doesn't seem to be working, maybe good old ignoring will.
Sounds like thats a consultancy company.
I've only ever founded product companies.
Here's how we did it.
Key take away - a start-up is hard, you need to work with people you trust. If you're an engineer by inclination, stay in engineering, your start-up is not the time to be experimenting with new roles, you'll have enough to do just making sure your piece works since you're in charge... Remember that you're responsible for others giving up their secure jobs and committing to work for your idea, treat them with respect and share the wealth unequally but fairly (yes, unequally you've taken additional risk, they haven't).
Second followed a similar route
The actual tools are just details, you should be spending all your time working out how do we make this successful - not should we force highly motivated developers to use EMACS...or vi or
Its not important unless your product is EMACS....
I would agree with that - but I probably wouldn't skip the lawyer part.
You'll want to ensure that you own any product that is written.