gaelow
On top of that you only have to work like 4-6 hours a week, without commuting. You can travel as much as you want. You can stay at home if you want. Stay at home mums and wives and dads and husbands are elegible too, no matter how busy they are taking care of their families! There are no gender, age, religion, race or country of origin requirements. It doesn't matter how you look either. You can be thin or fat, big or small, cute or ugly or totally average. You can be shy or outspoken. No prior education, formal or informal, of any kind is required. It doesn't matter if you speak English as a second language and not too well. You don't need an expensive diploma from a fancy and prestigious University and waste years of your life to get it so you can be accepted and maybe over the years recognized and respected after you spend at least a few years as an intern or entrepreneur or start-up founder or a mix of them in the corporate world. And, by the way, the business model is hand fed to you; you don't really need to come up with it by yourself, although if you have any business ideas you can ensure they'll succeed by themselves and make you rich in days by following this method. If you are a little suspicious don't be. Believe it or not, it's all legit.
So, now you know. You can follow the hard way of making money off the Internet or simply contact [email protected] and we'll get you all set up and started on these few simple tricks right away!!
But,
- They are a tiny fraction of the collective. Pretty much everyone else sucks at programming.
- Coding is like working out. Even if you are not elite, you can improve a lot if you persevere. All the way through your entire career, no matter how long.
- It is not all about coding skills. Maybe for those 40k LOC one-man app guys it is, but that's not even the most common scenario anymore. You can compensate with other skills such as being inspirational, having good insights, ability to QA a product/design and identify its weak spots and potential on the early stages, ability to break down a problem into smaller ones and prioritize your tasks, ability to evaluate, understand and communicate with team mates and clients (social skills with coding skills is always a winning combination)... The list goes on and on. Even though it's not all related to programming, it is stuff you'll eventually have to deal with as a professional programmer, specially in the startup world.
Code is reusable. You don't have to be a genius coder to put together a slick and successful app. Even for the most innovative software, the code of every part is most likely already there, written by experts in a clean, efficient, robust and well-documented module you can use free of charge, even commercially. So go on and use it. (I know it's actually not that easy, but mostly piles of crap until you find something useful and learn to use it properly. You get better at that too).
Wow, some psychology professor who read Ender's Game (Probably watched it since, come on, psychology is science at its laziest and the timeframes match) decided to make a quick buck by publishing an online paywalled paper on the "discovery" "for the first time" that people give up signs of their intelligence when observed performing an activity that requires them to use it (which matches the description of an infinite number of activities...).
Hey, I can reliably measure your intelligence by reading your comments on Hacker News. May I have your cash-money bucks, please? $_$ I have been working hard with hundreds of my students to prove it! For the first time ever! $_$
The fact is that you need specifically designed games for an accurate test. Most video games just won't make the cut. Even a combination of them: take the top 10 from steam. I dare anyone to accurately measure the IQ of their players just by looking at them them play in whatever lab environment they want. An those would be pretty boring. They would be in fact, tests.
Mine is a very common and uninteresting story. It is not even a cautionary tale, but I'll write it anyway to remind myself of the choices that I made and why I made them, because I think it will help me and because maybe it will help somebody else.
I used to drink when I partied with my friends, mostly on weekends and vacations. I kept it like this for almost 12 years.
5 years ago I started living with my girlfriend and drinking frequently with her and when we met our relatives; then I started to drink alone from time to time when my girlfriend was not around; then I started to get drunk every night because it helped me unwind, numb myself, forget about all my problems, release stress and fall asleep after 11-12 straight hours in front of the screen trying to meet deadlines. I had perfectly adjusted the amount of alcohol that wouldn't get me hung over or impact my performance the next day at work so I wouldn't get in trouble, and wouldn't drink a drop less nor a drop more. I even managed to stuck to that amount most weekends in order to avoid building up tolerance, and because I hated wasting my free time suffering from hang overs. I went like this for more than a year. Then I broke up with my 5-year girlfriend after a few months of maintaining a long distance relationship and realizing our life goals were not compatible any more.
I decided to stop drinking because I knew without her I'd soon find myself overdoing it (even more). I thought it wasn't going to be an easy choice to maintain, feeling depressed most of the time and still feeling at the lowest point of my life so far with not much hope of it getting much better; but, surprisingly, feeling bad about myself has been very helpful: I got drunk with about half a bottle of wine 5 times in the last 3 months (I am a little guy), only 3 of those alone, and that was all the drinking I have done since.
I do not believe in a higher power, self labeling yourself an alcoholic and get a chronic disease diagnose from anything other than a doctor, a specialized one, with enough data to produce an informed diagnostic. I don't think I can talk or think myself out of alcoholism; only action and persistence can help. I find motivation in all the things I love to do and in all the people I love and I love spending my time with. I even find motivation in my dull work because I have plenty of room and opportunity to improve and get better conditions.
I respect the 12 step program and its effectiveness as a generic solution for a significant number of people dealing with addiction. It is probably the best there is right now, but it doesn't work for everyone, not even the majority of people. I think I have a basic understanding on how addiction works and how it works differently on different kinds of people. I knew that I was in a very dangerous track of self destruction and I decided not to let the situation escalate any more when I was still in control. It took no effort at all, just the proper motivation and realizing I was only going to find misery and self hatred at the end of that road. I know I may find myself in the same situation again, and that I might not be able to get out so easily next time, if there is one. I do enjoy drinking, and I enjoy drinking alone to take the edge off; but right now I feel pretty confident about my self-discipline, and there are enough safe ways to find the comfort and relaxation I need that work for me. Healthy and non dangerous ways that make me feel better about myself instead of the opposite. I do believe in moderation and a reasonable amount of self control, and I am committed to drink even less than what I am drinking now. Like I wrote, mine is a very common story that I hope will have a common ending too, but a good one: "And he kept the drinking social and moderated, and never again used it as a crouch". Or, perhaps: "And he stopped drinking, and nobody batted an eye".
TL;DR: The drinking is not the problem, is the addiction you need to avoid. Even if you are not an addict or are in the first stages towards heavy addiction, drinking is easily replaceable with many things that can improve your life and how you feel about yourself. Do not procrastinate that decision. It is not tomorrow. It is not after the next drink, or this one. It is now. Keeping the drinking social and with moderation or not doing it at all, combined with a slight effort to find healthier enjoyable activities to occupy yourself with is a very good thing to do for yourself and to give as a present to your future self for enduring the consequences of all the mistakes you are going to keep making.
And that's my story, at least up to this point. I haven't talked to anybody about it, I know it is a drag to read or hear people talking about boring stuff like this. But still, it feels good to let it out in the open.
Also, it depends on your destination(s) and your connections along the way.
If you don't mind traveling cheap and light to cheap countries and live off a traveling bag on student dorms and the like, you'll be ok.
It was a really nice experience for me but it was more of a working vacation and by the end of the second year I was already tired of the working part: uncomfortable hours, environment and gigs. I was glad I finally got back home, earning the good bucks on a regular schedule again.
P.S: The "wifi drama" is true, and no better way to express it.
A few years from now it might be very different, so if I intend to switch I should better do it ASAP.
The only problem is: What do I do to avoid ending up in the same situation? I did my research on this company before and during the interview, and it's almost impossible to know what happens inside the office beforehand (Even people you might know already working there usually won't tell you anything about what's going wrong, because it can damage the company image...)
That's why I want to know if that's something every company has to deal with, and what are the chances of finding one where it doesn't happen.
I enjoy what I do and I am learning a lot. I see many things I like and many other I would do on a very different way, such as:
- There is no automated testing at all,
- No separation of duties either,
- The version control system is ridiculously outdated, misused and underused,
- The deployment strategy is practically non-existent,
- The upper management constantly tries to push technical decisions that sell great to the client but make little to no sense on the project context, adding many man hours to achieve the same results.
Fortunately everybody identifies this issues and they do what they can to fix them (except for the automated testing, it seems like they all think it's worthless), but the company is growing and external image is all they can care about for most of the time...