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As a self taught software developer, I struggle with the intellectual aspect of culture fit. On one hand, I have been told that all the stuff I have showcased o

As a self taught software developer, I struggle with the intellectual aspect of culture fit. On one hand, I have been told that all the stuff I have showcased on sdegutis.com is amazing. But on the other hand, I don't know many algorithms, can't comprehend math more advanced than high school algebra, and what I do know about software took me twice as long to learn it than it normally takes others. I have found that freelancing avoids even coming to the question of culture fit. Clients don't care what you know or what kind of books you read or where you went to school, they care what you can do. I have been turned down for jobs for not figuring out their algorithms, whereas the one client I have (I'm open to new clients btw) has told me that he's glad that he found me, because I get the job done fast and well and for cheap. The downside of this is that you're expected to do a perfect job 100% of the time and have to bite every minute that you lose to yak shaving or other problems, whereas if you work for an employer, they are more understanding if it takes a day to solve some stupid Java XML configuration issue.

zamfi 8y ago
> The downside of this is that you're expected to do a perfect job 100% of the time and have to bite every minute that you lose to yak shaving or other problems, whereas if you work for an employer, they are more understanding if it takes a day to solve some stupid Java XML configuration issue. The usual solution to this is to charge more. :)
- lylecubed 8y ago
  I thought the usual solution is to make it very clear to the client that yak shaving is billable time. I even have a section in my invoice that goes into detail about how much they're paying me for that yak shaving time. The yak shaving stops pretty damned fast after they get that first invoice.
  - hnzix 8y ago
    yak shaving is time the dev spends futzing around with tooling configuration, it has nothing to do with the client. Sometimes yak shaving is necessary for a project (Java build config funtimes), in other cases not so much (fiddling with autocompletion plugins in your .vimrc)
    - lylecubed 8y ago
      Oh, right. I always get yak shaving confused with bike shedding.
chrisbennet 8y ago
I bill the client if what I’m doing for them is either (a) keeping from working on another clients project (example: driving from my office to their site) or (b) if they wouldn’t expect to dock their own employees for doing the same thing (example: updating software). Even without knowing what you are charging I can tell you aren’t charging enough. :-)
abenedic 8y ago
> (I'm open to new clients btw) I am not meaning to be offensive, but I really wish I could master the art of sales. I have some trouble adding in a sales pitch in an informative or casual setting. So you have any resources you would recommend for learning how to sell yourself? [Sorry if this does not make much sense I am still learning English]
aavotins 8y ago
No offence, but googling your name yields some very questionable search results about events in Woodstock, IL. If it's true, then perhaps the true cause of cultural discrepancy comes from assumptions based on a Google search? Perhaps I am the odd one out, but whenever a potential new hire is presented to the team, I do a quick Google search and investigation about whom that person might be and whether I'd like working with that person, regardless of his/her skills and knowledge. Every day interactions make up for a very large portion of work agenda.
- yorwba 8y ago
  Doing the same search, it appears that there are at least three people named Steven Degutis with different middle names: https://www.instantcheckmate.com/people/steven-degutis/ https://www.instantcheckmate.com/people/steven-degutis/ Searching for someone's name can at best give you suspicions, but name collisions are so common that you can't know whether the person you found mentioned online is the same you wanted to find out about. Personally, I have almost no real-name presence on the internet, so the top result for my name is some other guy's Instagram account. You might spend a lot of time looking at his posts, but that won't help you learn anything about me.
  - aavotins 8y ago
    Some suspicions can be clarified. Especially ones with clear photos available. As per online presence - we do not hire people that we have never seen. We're a remote and distributed team, thus rarely any hires get to have a walk-in interview, but we do always see the person being interviewed. I wouldn't waste hours looking at posts of a person I can clearly see is not my potential colleague. Having no online presence is fine, most of us don't at my current job. However, if it's there, it is going to be examined. It's way harder to get to know to understand someone as a person if you've never had had a face-to-face interaction, therefore having a video call is a must.
    - sdegutis 8y ago
      Yes, that is the reason 99% of the jobs offered to me have been rescinded. I was originally talking about the other 1%, where I failed the whiteboard or algorithms tests. You're right. Ultimately, people are uncomfortable with the idea of being around me based on what I did. Even if you take the huge exaggerations out of those articles, what I did was still enough that people just don't want to be around me. There's no path for redemption for me. It doesn't matter how much I ever change, or how remorseful or sincerely sorry I was, or how hard I work to stay positive and struggle daily against letting the bitterness and pessimism in. But these are things I do for myself. I really thought that this would show through in my character, and that people would see the good that I strive to always have in me and try to always be, and that this would override in their minds what I've done in the past. But apparently that's not how life works.
Kagerjay 8y ago
I looked it your profile, your profile pic matches the question searchable results on the 3rd link regarding a police report There's nothing on yolur blog disputing any of the claims either. That's usually not a good sign either... its basically admitting that the story is the truth Also while I like the blog its just information overload. There's no use of white space, no space to "rest". It feels like your throwing everything at me when I didn't ask for all of it. I just want to know a little bit about you as a person, not all your thought processes. It needs a gentler introduction imo, its too brutalist. Also forces your brain to read left to right, most people naturally read straight downward / scroll down. The portfolio section is very well done though. There's benefits in not throwing a single page portfolio as well. I spread mine across several pages. You can choose to find out what you want to know about me. I use a barebones simple template so I can throw my own uniqueness into it The blog posts... they give me headaches reading it. The content is far too short and frequent, so I'm constantly seeing the footer move around too often. It gets really fatiguing. I get the general impression that the potential employer will feel you have too many random ideas tossed on the table. The rule of thumb is have a 5min read or 750-1500 word count. There are some rules to that exception though, just be aware people have short attention spans, myself included. ------------------------------------------------------------------ A blog represents you as a person. It gives the impression that you know how to build stuff efficiently, and can pickup any programming language quickly. However, your blog essentially states that you only love coding and not much else really. It also gives the impression that you like asserting yourself onto people, because there's no white space, the UX is too brutalist. The questionable 3rd google link fits the same persona (with photo verification), you don't dispute it either. This gives the impression while you might be great as a solo-developer, working in teams might have cultural fit issues. It might not even be you, you might work really well in a team. Or an interesting person that people enjoy having around. However it might just be employees at the company who might outright not want to work with you based on social media stigmas. I have been both on the hiring and interviewing side many times before. My impression is not unique, its probably what most recruiters assume as well. Some companies would rather have someone more rounded with interests across other spectrums. Your best interest would be hiring a firm specializing in SEO and pushing negative results downward. Something like this, I just googled around for you. https://www.abine.com/blog/2017/push-negative-search-results-down/ https://www.abine.com/blog/2017/push-negative-search-results... I have a generic firstName and lastName, in fact there's many more famous people with my name. I never have to worry about silly google searches, I get to control my branding however I like which is convenient. Your name on the other hand ... is very unique. This is both good and bad, if you become famous its easy for people to recognize your name. But for you its a bad thing.

zamfi 8y ago

> The downside of this is that you're expected to do a perfect job 100% of the time and have to bite every minute that you lose to yak shaving or other problems, whereas if you work for an employer, they are more understanding if it takes a day to solve some stupid Java XML configuration issue. The usual solution to this is to charge more. :)

lylecubed 8y ago
I thought the usual solution is to make it very clear to the client that yak shaving is billable time. I even have a section in my invoice that goes into detail about how much they're paying me for that yak shaving time. The yak shaving stops pretty damned fast after they get that first invoice.
- hnzix 8y ago
  yak shaving is time the dev spends futzing around with tooling configuration, it has nothing to do with the client. Sometimes yak shaving is necessary for a project (Java build config funtimes), in other cases not so much (fiddling with autocompletion plugins in your .vimrc)
  - lylecubed 8y ago
    Oh, right. I always get yak shaving confused with bike shedding.

chrisbennet 8y ago

I bill the client if what I’m doing for them is either (a) keeping from working on another clients project (example: driving from my office to their site) or (b) if they wouldn’t expect to dock their own employees for doing the same thing (example: updating software). Even without knowing what you are charging I can tell you aren’t charging enough. :-)

abenedic 8y ago

> (I'm open to new clients btw) I am not meaning to be offensive, but I really wish I could master the art of sales. I have some trouble adding in a sales pitch in an informative or casual setting. So you have any resources you would recommend for learning how to sell yourself? [Sorry if this does not make much sense I am still learning English]

aavotins 8y ago

No offence, but googling your name yields some very questionable search results about events in Woodstock, IL. If it's true, then perhaps the true cause of cultural discrepancy comes from assumptions based on a Google search? Perhaps I am the odd one out, but whenever a potential new hire is presented to the team, I do a quick Google search and investigation about whom that person might be and whether I'd like working with that person, regardless of his/her skills and knowledge. Every day interactions make up for a very large portion of work agenda.

yorwba 8y ago
Doing the same search, it appears that there are at least three people named Steven Degutis with different middle names: https://www.instantcheckmate.com/people/steven-degutis/ https://www.instantcheckmate.com/people/steven-degutis/ Searching for someone's name can at best give you suspicions, but name collisions are so common that you can't know whether the person you found mentioned online is the same you wanted to find out about. Personally, I have almost no real-name presence on the internet, so the top result for my name is some other guy's Instagram account. You might spend a lot of time looking at his posts, but that won't help you learn anything about me.
- aavotins 8y ago
  Some suspicions can be clarified. Especially ones with clear photos available. As per online presence - we do not hire people that we have never seen. We're a remote and distributed team, thus rarely any hires get to have a walk-in interview, but we do always see the person being interviewed. I wouldn't waste hours looking at posts of a person I can clearly see is not my potential colleague. Having no online presence is fine, most of us don't at my current job. However, if it's there, it is going to be examined. It's way harder to get to know to understand someone as a person if you've never had had a face-to-face interaction, therefore having a video call is a must.
  - sdegutis 8y ago
    Yes, that is the reason 99% of the jobs offered to me have been rescinded. I was originally talking about the other 1%, where I failed the whiteboard or algorithms tests. You're right. Ultimately, people are uncomfortable with the idea of being around me based on what I did. Even if you take the huge exaggerations out of those articles, what I did was still enough that people just don't want to be around me. There's no path for redemption for me. It doesn't matter how much I ever change, or how remorseful or sincerely sorry I was, or how hard I work to stay positive and struggle daily against letting the bitterness and pessimism in. But these are things I do for myself. I really thought that this would show through in my character, and that people would see the good that I strive to always have in me and try to always be, and that this would override in their minds what I've done in the past. But apparently that's not how life works.

Kagerjay 8y ago

I looked it your profile, your profile pic matches the question searchable results on the 3rd link regarding a police report There's nothing on yolur blog disputing any of the claims either. That's usually not a good sign either... its basically admitting that the story is the truth Also while I like the blog its just information overload. There's no use of white space, no space to "rest". It feels like your throwing everything at me when I didn't ask for all of it. I just want to know a little bit about you as a person, not all your thought processes. It needs a gentler introduction imo, its too brutalist. Also forces your brain to read left to right, most people naturally read straight downward / scroll down. The portfolio section is very well done though. There's benefits in not throwing a single page portfolio as well. I spread mine across several pages. You can choose to find out what you want to know about me. I use a barebones simple template so I can throw my own uniqueness into it The blog posts... they give me headaches reading it. The content is far too short and frequent, so I'm constantly seeing the footer move around too often. It gets really fatiguing. I get the general impression that the potential employer will feel you have too many random ideas tossed on the table. The rule of thumb is have a 5min read or 750-1500 word count. There are some rules to that exception though, just be aware people have short attention spans, myself included. ------------------------------------------------------------------ A blog represents you as a person. It gives the impression that you know how to build stuff efficiently, and can pickup any programming language quickly. However, your blog essentially states that you only love coding and not much else really. It also gives the impression that you like asserting yourself onto people, because there's no white space, the UX is too brutalist. The questionable 3rd google link fits the same persona (with photo verification), you don't dispute it either. This gives the impression while you might be great as a solo-developer, working in teams might have cultural fit issues. It might not even be you, you might work really well in a team. Or an interesting person that people enjoy having around. However it might just be employees at the company who might outright not want to work with you based on social media stigmas. I have been both on the hiring and interviewing side many times before. My impression is not unique, its probably what most recruiters assume as well. Some companies would rather have someone more rounded with interests across other spectrums. Your best interest would be hiring a firm specializing in SEO and pushing negative results downward. Something like this, I just googled around for you. https://www.abine.com/blog/2017/push-negative-search-results-down/ https://www.abine.com/blog/2017/push-negative-search-results... I have a generic firstName and lastName, in fact there's many more famous people with my name. I never have to worry about silly google searches, I get to control my branding however I like which is convenient. Your name on the other hand ... is very unique. This is both good and bad, if you become famous its easy for people to recognize your name. But for you its a bad thing.