5 ms·

Exactly. As a freelancer, every time a client decides for a cheaper alternative, I make very clear I would be delighted to work with them in the future anyway.

Exactly. As a freelancer, every time a client decides for a cheaper alternative, I make very clear I would be delighted to work with them in the future anyway. It rarely fails, one or more years later, the clients calls me back because their cheap alternative turned out to suck and be expensive eventually. Last month, a client from Luxembourg called after 6 years of total silence. They still had me in their listing. 3 years ago, one called me because 2 years prior, the 50k quote they rejected from me turned into a 400K bill from my competitor, and still no release yet. My rates have been steadily increasing for years thanks to this. Before, geeks were at a disadvantage because people didn't know better, and teams with a good marketing would destroy us. But now, they have been burned so many times. And it pays because more and more devs coming to the market are becoming dependent on their tooling. Now, more often than not, I work with teams that have been copy/pasting git commands not knowing what they do, that have never, ever looked the source code of their framework or don't know how to use a debugger. The HN bubbles tends to blind us to the reality of the corporate world. Yesterday I did a deployment, but was not allowed to touch the machine. Instead, they made me call a guy sharing a screen of a Vista machine, while he was sshing prod using cmd.exe, and I had to dictate him the instructions to debug the deployment on their custom linux setup. A near retired sysadmin that couldn't type with 10 fingers, pressing 30 times the up arrow to find a bash command in the history every time. He could click on WinSCP very well though. This 20 minutes job turned into an afternoon of billing. Though I suppose that's what I look like as a Python expert to an old timer from the 80s that can code in assembly, debug using strace and understand L1 cache :) People are scared we are going to get automatized by AI. I am preparing for the most lucrative decade I ever worked in.

darkwater 5y ago
> Near retired sysadmin that couldn't type with 10 fingers. Hey, I feel called out on this. I type with 2/3 fingers and I'm quite fast even if not like a full fledged 10 fingers typist. At my age I don't think I will ever learn typing with 10 fingers, but I think I don't need it either.
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  Have you ever taken the plunge though and really tried to go through with learning touch typing? You may not find it impossible after all. Then again typing isn’t really a huge bottleneck when it comes to coding.
  - the_af 5y ago
    I find touch typing with all fingers is overrated. I type with only two/three fingers. I don't hunt and peck, but I'm no touch typist either. I can type faster just with my index fingers than some people with all of their fingers. That said, typing speed is not critical. I mean, if you're really slow I guess it matters, but it's no measure of the quality of your work. The brain is the bottleneck here, and all the slowness happens in the design/troubleshoot/think space anyway.
    - lijogdfljk 5y ago
      I type in this weird hybrid .. thing. I find it much more comfortable, though more error prone, than traditional home-row on traditional keyboards. I use nearly all fingers, but where i really suffer is that i find key-combinations, notably alt+ to be really awkward because my hands are at a steep angle relative to the straight keyboard. I live in Kakoune (vim-like) so "touch typing" is my bread and butter, but home-row just feels so bad to me. I keep meaning to try a split keyboard with home-row. I suspect that's the root of my issue, and that my odd typing pattern is a result of trying to manually replicate a split keyboard. /shrug
      - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
        I can recommend a small split ortholinear keyboard. I built one as a weekend project and it was pretty fun, doable with basic microcontroller and solder skills (except for the ~50 SMD LEDs which I couldn’t be bothered to do). Pretty happy with it, it’s comfortable and I do feel that I type better than on a regular keyboard. You can buy kits containing everything you need, I got this one: https://mechboards.co.uk/shop/kits/helidox-corne-kit/#case https://mechboards.co.uk/shop/kits/helidox-corne-kit/#case With small keyboards, you’re trading off physical distance between keys for having to press more buttons simultaneously. Might fix your problems with reaching key combinations, but the combinations themselves do become more complicated as well.
hguant 5y ago
>Now, more often than not, I work with teams that have been copy/pasting git commands not knowing what they do, that have never, ever looked the source code of their framework or don't know how to use a debugger. Thank you for reminding me that it's about time for my yearly reread of Pro Git. It's amazing how many people look at you like you're a wizard when you just...read the documentation.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Or can enter the proper key words on Google. It feels like cheating, but I put my imposter syndrome in a trash bin years ago.
- edem 5y ago
  It is amazing to see how so many so-called programmers can make a living without even reading the freaking documentation. And when I cide the docs on some topic they look at me as if I was performing a magic trick.
  - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
    You did do a magic trick. You found docs complete enough to cite.
brainless 5y ago
This has also become my strategy lately. I got fed up with price wars by tons of cheaper software dev shops. I am Indian and have run them myself, but I am an engineer first - the really curious kind. I can not do price war, I do not like writing casual code just for bucks. So I started keeping just good relations with anyone who is attracted to "low cost development shop". Eventually I started seeing myself helping multiple founders with "low cost teams". I think gradually they will start billing me to guide these low cost teams. (Although that might not be happen since I am also planning to go into the founder mode).
frockington1 5y ago
Reminds me of the offshoring craze about a decade ago. Everyone was worried that there would be few software jobs left in America. Now it seems every company is trying to re-onshore development and desperately searching for people and driving up wages
k4c9x 5y ago
And it's a never ending cycle. I get older but the CTOs stay the same age. They kick out the old IT, hire some foreign Sales Force squad to rebuild everything. It ends up costing 5 years worth of salary of the old team in just 1 year. Nothing ever gets past the finish line and the existing software just stays in place. CTO moves on with millions in his pocket, owners are left with nothing and end up trying to get the old team back to maintain the existing software. A few years later, another hotshot shows up.
bastardoperator 5y ago
It sounds like your customer is dealing with low maturity staff and no amount of consultation is going to fix that even if they decided to pickup co-pilot which is also unlikely if they haven't picked up ctrl-r.

darkwater 5y ago

> Near retired sysadmin that couldn't type with 10 fingers. Hey, I feel called out on this. I type with 2/3 fingers and I'm quite fast even if not like a full fledged 10 fingers typist. At my age I don't think I will ever learn typing with 10 fingers, but I think I don't need it either.

read_if_gay_ 5y ago
Have you ever taken the plunge though and really tried to go through with learning touch typing? You may not find it impossible after all. Then again typing isn’t really a huge bottleneck when it comes to coding.
- the_af 5y ago
  I find touch typing with all fingers is overrated. I type with only two/three fingers. I don't hunt and peck, but I'm no touch typist either. I can type faster just with my index fingers than some people with all of their fingers. That said, typing speed is not critical. I mean, if you're really slow I guess it matters, but it's no measure of the quality of your work. The brain is the bottleneck here, and all the slowness happens in the design/troubleshoot/think space anyway.
  - lijogdfljk 5y ago
    I type in this weird hybrid .. thing. I find it much more comfortable, though more error prone, than traditional home-row on traditional keyboards. I use nearly all fingers, but where i really suffer is that i find key-combinations, notably alt+ to be really awkward because my hands are at a steep angle relative to the straight keyboard. I live in Kakoune (vim-like) so "touch typing" is my bread and butter, but home-row just feels so bad to me. I keep meaning to try a split keyboard with home-row. I suspect that's the root of my issue, and that my odd typing pattern is a result of trying to manually replicate a split keyboard. /shrug
    - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
      I can recommend a small split ortholinear keyboard. I built one as a weekend project and it was pretty fun, doable with basic microcontroller and solder skills (except for the ~50 SMD LEDs which I couldn’t be bothered to do). Pretty happy with it, it’s comfortable and I do feel that I type better than on a regular keyboard. You can buy kits containing everything you need, I got this one: https://mechboards.co.uk/shop/kits/helidox-corne-kit/#case https://mechboards.co.uk/shop/kits/helidox-corne-kit/#case With small keyboards, you’re trading off physical distance between keys for having to press more buttons simultaneously. Might fix your problems with reaching key combinations, but the combinations themselves do become more complicated as well.

hguant 5y ago

>Now, more often than not, I work with teams that have been copy/pasting git commands not knowing what they do, that have never, ever looked the source code of their framework or don't know how to use a debugger. Thank you for reminding me that it's about time for my yearly reread of Pro Git. It's amazing how many people look at you like you're a wizard when you just...read the documentation.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Or can enter the proper key words on Google. It feels like cheating, but I put my imposter syndrome in a trash bin years ago.
edem 5y ago
It is amazing to see how so many so-called programmers can make a living without even reading the freaking documentation. And when I cide the docs on some topic they look at me as if I was performing a magic trick.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  You did do a magic trick. You found docs complete enough to cite.

brainless 5y ago

This has also become my strategy lately. I got fed up with price wars by tons of cheaper software dev shops. I am Indian and have run them myself, but I am an engineer first - the really curious kind. I can not do price war, I do not like writing casual code just for bucks. So I started keeping just good relations with anyone who is attracted to "low cost development shop". Eventually I started seeing myself helping multiple founders with "low cost teams". I think gradually they will start billing me to guide these low cost teams. (Although that might not be happen since I am also planning to go into the founder mode).

frockington1 5y ago

Reminds me of the offshoring craze about a decade ago. Everyone was worried that there would be few software jobs left in America. Now it seems every company is trying to re-onshore development and desperately searching for people and driving up wages

k4c9x 5y ago

And it's a never ending cycle. I get older but the CTOs stay the same age. They kick out the old IT, hire some foreign Sales Force squad to rebuild everything. It ends up costing 5 years worth of salary of the old team in just 1 year. Nothing ever gets past the finish line and the existing software just stays in place. CTO moves on with millions in his pocket, owners are left with nothing and end up trying to get the old team back to maintain the existing software. A few years later, another hotshot shows up.

bastardoperator 5y ago

It sounds like your customer is dealing with low maturity staff and no amount of consultation is going to fix that even if they decided to pickup co-pilot which is also unlikely if they haven't picked up ctrl-r.