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chidevguy

Re:Ask HN: Moving, but want to keep my job on Thursday March 19, 2015 @12:59PM (#9233221)
I actually just did this. Started a new job in June last year, ended up moving across the country in Dec, but really liked my job and wanted to keep it and work remote full time.

Here's what I did:

1) In the months leading up to my move I worked my ass off and always volunteered to help out wherever my boss needed me most. This gave me experience on a lot of our different projects and made me less replaceable.

2) I told my employer one month before my move, and made sure they knew how much I enjoyed working for the company and how I really wanted to continue working for them remotely. However, I also made it clear that I was fully committed to moving with or without my job (in fact the following weekend I was flying out to find an apt).

It seems somewhat selfish and counter intuitive, but I believe that it's better to give less notice time than more. This creates more of a sense of urgency for your employer. A friend of mine tried the same thing but gave five months notice and was told that he couldn't work remote, but "come talk to us in five months before doing anything drastic (aka quitting)".

However, regardless of when you tell your employer, the most important thing is that you must be 100% committed to your move and willing to lose your job and start over in your new location.

To answer your other two questions: Working remotely has it's pros and cons, which I won't go into detail on, since this post is already getting rather long :) But you can find lots of info in other places about this. Overall though, it has worked out very well for both me and my employer.

So far in four months of working remote I haven't been back to the office yet (it's a four hour flight). But from what we've discussed I'll probably be back in the office for one week per year.

Best of luck to you!

Re:Elevator Saga – An elevator programming game on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:18PM (#8933377)
Here's a fairly simple strategy for beating challenges 1 - 5. Basically drop off people in the elevator according to whoever's floor is closest. Then once the elevator is empty go to the closest floor that has people waiting to be picked up.

https://gist.github.com/cspags/93f18a2fe505bf4f1686

Ask HN: Advice on turning your employer into a client?

Due to life events, I will be moving across the US in a couple of months. Currently employed as a web developer, and planning on approaching my employer about working remotely.However, I eventually want to make the move into freelancing. So I'm thinking this is a good opportunity to pitch them to let me leave fulltime employment, but continuing working with them as a freelancer.Anyone have...

( Read More... | 3 comments | 4 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Space exploration book recommendations? on Monday August 11, 2014 @11:02AM (#8163532)
I found Apollo, by Catherine Bly Cox and Charles Murray, quite interesting and entertaining.

http://www.amazon.com/Apollo-Catherine-Bly-Cox-ebook/dp/B003...

Neat idea thanks for sharing. Much better than my current method of emailing myself links when I want to quickly swap between devices.
Failure Before Success - http://youtu.be/PJKz0JbEZcw

I find this motivating, especially when I'm feeling down.

My jaw dropped reading that the rocket could be re-used the next day. That seems like an enormous leap forward for space flight.
Re:2048 on Monday March 10, 2014 @03:22PM (#7375104)
I was able to get 2048 building off of your solution. As you said, always keep your highest number in the top right corner. Try to build the next highest numbers up along the right edge, so that you have say, 256, 128, 64, 32 along the right edge. Always keep 4 numbers there, and only use up/down/right. Then just focus on building whatever number you need next to double the bottom right number, so that you can "chain up" numbers along the right edge and double your highest number in the top right.

Kind of hard to explain in words, but hopefully that helps!

Re:Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor on Thursday February 20, 2014 @10:54AM (#7271400)
The only reason I still use Google over DuckDuckGo is the keyword suggestions as I'm typing. I find that to be very useful when I'm searching for something but not quite sure how to phrase it. I would for sure switch over if DDG added that!

Ask HN: What to do if you see your coworker job searching?

At work today I was remotely pair programming with a fellow dev on my team. During his screen share, he accidentally pulled up a browser window that had various tabs showing open developer positions. It happened quite quickly so I didn't say anything at the time, but now I'm wondering what to do.He's a very likable guy and I consider him to be one of the top devs on our team and in our company,...

( Read More... | 14 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Ask HN: Question about caching and HN error page

Yesterday I was still seeing the HN error page on all of my devices, but checking Twitter it didn't seem like HN was still down. It wasn't until I hit Ctrl+F5 in Firefox that HN loaded properly for me.I'm assuming that this was due to a caching issue but I'm not sure. Is there anything HN could have done to prevent this?Thanks!

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )

Ask HN: Biggest pet peeves with job posts?

What are your biggest pet peeves with job posts? For example, one of mine regarding programming jobs is when they list a bunch of technologies that you "need to know", but in reality the company only uses half of them.On the flip side, what makes a good job post? How do you make your company stand out to potential employees?Thanks!

( Read More... | 6 comments | 4 points | on HN )
Re:AngularJS from an Ember.js perspective on Thursday November 21, 2013 @05:36PM (#6778017)
One thing that I like about Knockout is that you can easily drop it into a legacy site, allowing you to have some pages that use it and others that don't. Forgive my naivete, but is this something that is easy to do with Ember or Angular as well?
01 - Found it a bit confusing as to which link I should click first. Add fuel to your business? Let's get started?

Current - Interesting idea but I found it difficult to mouseover a particular portfolio site due to the small hitbox for each covered one. Also don't like how the navigation seems crammed in an odd spot.

02 - This one isn't bad but I didn't like the home page. Not sure if it was just broken in my browser or if I was supposed to see just one sentence until I clicked on it.

04 - By far my favorite. Although I wish the navigation was at the top instead of the bottom.

Re:Things that suck in AngularJS on Tuesday October 29, 2013 @06:42AM (#6633101)
Check out KnockoutJS, I've found their documentation to be quite good and it's a pretty easy framework to learn.
Re:How do I follow through on my projects?? on Friday October 18, 2013 @02:27PM (#6573100)
I've dealt with this same problem for many years as well. Recently I just completed a side project (http://www.randolunch.com) for the first time ever.

Three things really helped me get it to the finish line:

1) I listed out all the possible features of the project, then marked only the features I absolutely couldn't launch without as MVP. I used https://workflowy.com/ to do this because I liked the hierarchical structure and the ability to cross off features as I implemented them. Whenever I worked on my project I'd have workflowy open in one of the browser tabs.

2) If I didn't feel like working on the project I'd open up the feature list, pick one of the simplest items, and implement it. I found that if I started writing even just a few lines of code it was enough to motivate me to keep at it for hours. This was especially helpful as I got closer and closer to the finish line.

3) As others have mentioned here, launch your project as early as you can, even when you still feel "embarrassed" by it, and tell people about it! Looking on Google Analytics and seeing even just a handful of people using my site was incredibly motivating! It made me want to continue improving the site just so that those few people would have a better experience.

I'd love to hear your reasons for this, as I've been looking at moving away from the Microsoft stack. Thanks!
Re: on Sunday September 15, 2013 @06:21PM (#6390541)
Hi all, Randolunch finds random restaurants for you to try based on your location. I'm a .NET dev, but I began learning Rails a few months ago and this is my first Rails site, so I'd love to hear any feedback. Thanks!
Great suggestions! I'd also add Octopress (http://octopress.org/), which is built on Jekyll and works well with Amazon CloudFront (haven't tried CloudFlare, but I'd imagine that works just as well).
Re:Programmer's Dilemma on Thursday August 15, 2013 @08:31PM (#6221492)
Completely agree. The other problem I've seen with getting stuck on the same project for X years is that you'll have a very limited portfolio to show for it, unless you're working on side projects as well.
I've been dealing with similar issues for a couple of years now. At the worst point I was unable to talk in groups of unfamiliar people without my heart rapidly pounding and face flushing. Not sure if it's quite that bad for you, but I'd recommend googling social anxiety. After learning about that I ended up working with a therapist and taking a year of improv classes. This was by far the best thing I've ever done and really helped my conversation skills. It'll also help with your confidence, which will in turn reduce your nervousness.

Feel free to message me if you'd like to talk more.