6 ms·

That might be just the entry point for me, since I'm having a hard time at landing my 1st job as junior. I feel like I'll have a good time and lots of fun anywa

by Pmop 6y ago

That might be just the entry point for me, since I'm having a hard time at landing my 1st job as junior. I feel like I'll have a good time and lots of fun anyways. Any advice on how to approach clients? (I can do (full-stack) web development and solve problems/ optimize solutions with algorithms and meta-heuristics.)

CyberDildonics 6y ago
If you can't land a job as a junior programmer, you don't want to go around to businesses and end up responsible for promises you can't keep.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  What a lot of these businesses need is very simple stuff. Plenty of small businesses would have use for what would consider “toy” programs. A friend of mine built a text message to email system for this rural delivery guy for the purpose of letting his office assistant manage invoices, but also allowing him to fulfill orders on the go without talking on the phone as his customers can just text him. Charges him $500 a month for that. That kind of thing is trivial to do, but can still have a lot of value. Remember, the small businesses don’t automate anything. Excel is frequently beyond them.
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    I don't think that is often trivial and it wouldn't surprise me to see junior programmers struggle with things like that, but maybe the average junior programmer is better than I expect.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      V1 skimped on many of the things we might consider requirements such as preventing SQL injection. For a long time the username and password for this service consisted of hard coded if statements for each client. Plenty of plaintext passwords. Default admin logins. Even seen a frontend password checker with jQuery. So it isn't software we would consider production acceptable. The code quality is atrocious. None of these people I know who do this would ever get hired as a software engineer by any company that does a coding interview. But you pair their can-do attitude with a willingness to sell and tell them to use Django so they can get away with not knowing a lot about key software concepts, and you can make a living off selling niche atrocious software. Plus, 90% of what most small businesses need could be replicated in Wordpress with plugins.Plenty of money there too.
      - ge96 6y ago
        > in Wordpress with plugins My first dev job we just crapped out WordPress sites, I mean WP was just a "headless CMS" pretty much, since it has auth/users/routing/editor out of the box. So we just built pretty pages/uis. It was interesting, in that level, the owners of the company were making bank. There was something I made that cost $30K and I was like wow... I was not paid anywhere near that. This other thing a single person developed was over 6 figures... I think that's an example of selling value over quantified time(within reason). Oh and with WooCommerce you again had this "headless" shopping system and you could throw your own styles on it.
        MattGaiser 6y ago
        Oh yes. My aunt paid $8000 for nothing more than a Wordpress gallery for her business and paid $100 for every change she wanted to make. People who don't know tech will pay a lot for it.
        ge96 6y ago
        Man whoever sold that sounds like they made bank. I'm not sure what upkeep you have to deal with regarding Wordpress security but yeah. Sounds like it's low-risk enough generally eg. just show pictures.
        MattGaiser 6y ago
        You periodically need to update the PHP version to keep up. I have a dormant personal website and maybe 1-2 years I have to go update the PHP when I get an email about it.
        ge96 6y ago
        That sounds nice/convenient. I only recently started adding "down detectors" to some of my sites regarding the automated notification of any upkeep, cool stuff.
  - pascalxus 6y ago
    but how do you find these small businesses that need these types of things?
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Lots of cases really are obvious. One of my friends lives in a rural area where most businesses never got beyond the Church bulletin board and the phone book. Suddenly they became cottage country and none of the local businesses were getting any business as they wanted to see websites or at least written down phone numbers and they don't use phonebook. Take a walk through the small business section of your town and see who has a website. If they have a website, try to get them on Shopify. Lots of desperate closed businesses who will take a gamble on that right now. The reason tech has not arrived is that there is no person standing in front of them making it extremely basic for them.
      - gknoy 6y ago
        > If they have a website, try to get them on Shopify So ... they then pay you for helping them get on Shopify? I can see how one might be able to convince a business owner that they could benefit from using Shopify, but is there room in there for a third party to sell configuration services? Please forgive my being a noob with regard to Shopify. Their "getting started" page makes it seem like it's something the business owner just does on their own, so how does one come across as a _useful_ helper for that process?
        MattGaiser 6y ago
        > Their "getting started" page makes it seem like it's something the business owner just does on their own You are vastly overestimating their computer savvy in many cases. Lots of small businesses barely have email. So even with the self onboarding option, many businesses need help. But what I was thinking was more in line with this: https://developers.shopify.com/custom-development https://developers.shopify.com/custom-development I am admittedly not a Shopify developer. I just have friends who make decent coin doing it while not being very good coders in general.
  - ge96 6y ago
    > a text message to email system ... letting his office assistant manage invoices ... fulfill orders on the go without talking on the phone as his customers can just text him Oh man... that's what I'm after, problems like that. Would be so neat even if it's small to see it get used(users) and the analytics/small income.
- Pmop 6y ago
  It is due to the fact that I have no, at least professional, experience. Well, at least that's what recruiters have been saying to me in the end of the interviewing process, after I got their take-home projects done. Working for small business seems the way to make money, while getting the chance to leave some paper trail (if this, hopefully, counts as professional experience).
  - routerl 6y ago
    I'm only a couple of years down the road from where you are, currently looking for my third dev job, having started with a 5 month stint in testing, now doing full-stack web stuff. If you're having trouble getting your foot in the door, like I did, I'd recommend looking at software developer in test jobs. Depending on the company, you'll get a chance to touch a few different codebases (in my case, I got to learn Swift and Objective-C, and sharpen my Java), and you'll get to work on a team, using common tools you might not have been exposed to yet (e.g. Jira). It's a great, relatively low-stakes way to get into the industry.
  - ge96 6y ago
    It was hard for me to start too(no degree). I freelanced first online, it was not easy/I did not make enough to live on(had to wash plates), but that was "proof" of paid work at the time then I got into an agency doing front end work. Now I'm a contractor SWE at a "local" corp, got picked up by a recruiter through Linked In.

by Pmop 6y ago

CyberDildonics 6y ago

If you can't land a job as a junior programmer, you don't want to go around to businesses and end up responsible for promises you can't keep.

MattGaiser 6y ago
What a lot of these businesses need is very simple stuff. Plenty of small businesses would have use for what would consider “toy” programs. A friend of mine built a text message to email system for this rural delivery guy for the purpose of letting his office assistant manage invoices, but also allowing him to fulfill orders on the go without talking on the phone as his customers can just text him. Charges him $500 a month for that. That kind of thing is trivial to do, but can still have a lot of value. Remember, the small businesses don’t automate anything. Excel is frequently beyond them.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  I don't think that is often trivial and it wouldn't surprise me to see junior programmers struggle with things like that, but maybe the average junior programmer is better than I expect.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    V1 skimped on many of the things we might consider requirements such as preventing SQL injection. For a long time the username and password for this service consisted of hard coded if statements for each client. Plenty of plaintext passwords. Default admin logins. Even seen a frontend password checker with jQuery. So it isn't software we would consider production acceptable. The code quality is atrocious. None of these people I know who do this would ever get hired as a software engineer by any company that does a coding interview. But you pair their can-do attitude with a willingness to sell and tell them to use Django so they can get away with not knowing a lot about key software concepts, and you can make a living off selling niche atrocious software. Plus, 90% of what most small businesses need could be replicated in Wordpress with plugins.Plenty of money there too.
    - ge96 6y ago
      > in Wordpress with plugins My first dev job we just crapped out WordPress sites, I mean WP was just a "headless CMS" pretty much, since it has auth/users/routing/editor out of the box. So we just built pretty pages/uis. It was interesting, in that level, the owners of the company were making bank. There was something I made that cost $30K and I was like wow... I was not paid anywhere near that. This other thing a single person developed was over 6 figures... I think that's an example of selling value over quantified time(within reason). Oh and with WooCommerce you again had this "headless" shopping system and you could throw your own styles on it.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        Oh yes. My aunt paid $8000 for nothing more than a Wordpress gallery for her business and paid $100 for every change she wanted to make. People who don't know tech will pay a lot for it.
        ge96 6y ago
        Man whoever sold that sounds like they made bank. I'm not sure what upkeep you have to deal with regarding Wordpress security but yeah. Sounds like it's low-risk enough generally eg. just show pictures.
        MattGaiser 6y ago
        You periodically need to update the PHP version to keep up. I have a dormant personal website and maybe 1-2 years I have to go update the PHP when I get an email about it.
        ge96 6y ago
        That sounds nice/convenient. I only recently started adding "down detectors" to some of my sites regarding the automated notification of any upkeep, cool stuff.
- pascalxus 6y ago
  but how do you find these small businesses that need these types of things?
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Lots of cases really are obvious. One of my friends lives in a rural area where most businesses never got beyond the Church bulletin board and the phone book. Suddenly they became cottage country and none of the local businesses were getting any business as they wanted to see websites or at least written down phone numbers and they don't use phonebook. Take a walk through the small business section of your town and see who has a website. If they have a website, try to get them on Shopify. Lots of desperate closed businesses who will take a gamble on that right now. The reason tech has not arrived is that there is no person standing in front of them making it extremely basic for them.
    - gknoy 6y ago
      > If they have a website, try to get them on Shopify So ... they then pay you for helping them get on Shopify? I can see how one might be able to convince a business owner that they could benefit from using Shopify, but is there room in there for a third party to sell configuration services? Please forgive my being a noob with regard to Shopify. Their "getting started" page makes it seem like it's something the business owner just does on their own, so how does one come across as a _useful_ helper for that process?
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        > Their "getting started" page makes it seem like it's something the business owner just does on their own You are vastly overestimating their computer savvy in many cases. Lots of small businesses barely have email. So even with the self onboarding option, many businesses need help. But what I was thinking was more in line with this: https://developers.shopify.com/custom-development https://developers.shopify.com/custom-development I am admittedly not a Shopify developer. I just have friends who make decent coin doing it while not being very good coders in general.
- ge96 6y ago
  > a text message to email system ... letting his office assistant manage invoices ... fulfill orders on the go without talking on the phone as his customers can just text him Oh man... that's what I'm after, problems like that. Would be so neat even if it's small to see it get used(users) and the analytics/small income.
Pmop 6y ago
It is due to the fact that I have no, at least professional, experience. Well, at least that's what recruiters have been saying to me in the end of the interviewing process, after I got their take-home projects done. Working for small business seems the way to make money, while getting the chance to leave some paper trail (if this, hopefully, counts as professional experience).
- routerl 6y ago
  I'm only a couple of years down the road from where you are, currently looking for my third dev job, having started with a 5 month stint in testing, now doing full-stack web stuff. If you're having trouble getting your foot in the door, like I did, I'd recommend looking at software developer in test jobs. Depending on the company, you'll get a chance to touch a few different codebases (in my case, I got to learn Swift and Objective-C, and sharpen my Java), and you'll get to work on a team, using common tools you might not have been exposed to yet (e.g. Jira). It's a great, relatively low-stakes way to get into the industry.
- ge96 6y ago
  It was hard for me to start too(no degree). I freelanced first online, it was not easy/I did not make enough to live on(had to wash plates), but that was "proof" of paid work at the time then I got into an agency doing front end work. Now I'm a contractor SWE at a "local" corp, got picked up by a recruiter through Linked In.