Goal: Create an easy way for people to offer regular or irregular office hours to anyone who wants to drop in.
Features:
integration with calendars – outlook, gcal, etc
Sign up through the site
Find office hours nearby you
Find office hours by subject
Find office hours by company
Find office hours by name
Sign up for a time slot with this person, communication method
Communication methods: Phone, ghangout, Skype, in person
Set office hours for a specific event – ex: Startup Week
I talk to many junior level developers and junior level people who are just out of school. It is literally driving me nuts not being able to help them out. These are smart and seemingly motivated people, seeing as how they are applying for jobs or finding me and asking me about jobs – which is more than I can say about some of your senior level people…
I have been thinking about this for a while and talking to people who want to help solve the problem. I even proposed an idea that could help. Frankly, I don’t care if you take this idea and make it your own. Just get out there and do something! I also just today found out about InternMatch, which looks very promising for getting started (it is NOT your full solution… keep reading)
My background
I graduated college with a CS and an IT degree, thinking that would help me get a job. Two degrees man! Yeah, not so much. These were great to have on a piece of paper, but they were not the differentiator on any jobs that I have had.
What did make the difference? I managed to talk my way into a job while I was a Sophomore. I worked at a local startup who had a big web system and needed smaller sites built frequently. It was a great learning experience because I was able to take on any projects that I wanted and eventually redesigned their main system. Some time after I left, they made it on the Inc., 500 list of fastest growing companies when they topped out at $10MM per year. This job got me to graduation, which was great. However, it didn’t work out for me to continue working there. So, I went looking for something new.
I ended up finding work at a contract dev shop as a mid level developer. This job helped me to learn more about my skills, because we were delivering web properties to clients and it had to be PERFECT. Every. Single. Time. I got my ass kicked, which is what I needed. I came from the worlds of academia (theory) and startup (get it done yesterday). I learned about front-end-pixel-perfection because I worked 30ft from our designer and I learned more about business logic and optimization because my boss was a developer who demanded that every time you worked on something, that it was better than last time. We didn’t ship unless it worked and the guys above me had approved it. We also had weekly meetings that allowed me to learn about what the other projects were doing, give thoughts, get shot down, and learn about why. It was great, because there was feedback. (even though sometimes it was a little rough, but always with a smile).
All along the way, I would build things in my spare time. I thought I was building “businesses” but what I realize now about what I was doing was that I was learning my craft. I was trying to do things that I envisioned in my head and that were well outside what I thought were my abilities. I built databases that were way too big with queries that took too long, so I learned about optimizing and indexing (better than I did in school). I had to figure out how to compare lists of 100′s of thousands of people together and implement an algorithm from code that I didn’t write. That taught me how to use someone else’s code, notes, and instructions as well as think outside the box. Then I read the code so I could figure out what it did and how.
This was my start. Learning. Doing.
If you are being told you are too Junior, then it is a problem that YOU have to solve for yourself. Get your fingers dancing on your keyboard and figure this out. I did it and I was anxious and depressed half the time I was doing it – long story, involved meds, but I still practiced, made mistakes, and I learned. I also earned some awesome jobs as a result.
If I hear a Junior person complain or groan about not being able to get a job, I am going to send them to this article or tell this story or just say, “This is a problem that you have to solve, because no one else will do it for you”.
Go and do it. Right now.
These are my notes about a system that could potentially help junior people get more experience, make a little money, build their github profiles, and help businesses to get help with the tasks they have.
Take this idea, run with it, PLEASE make it available to other people! And, if you’re a senior dev, bring Junior people in to help you. There are plenty of hungry people out there who will help.
Note: these are pretty rough notes.
Problem: Junior devs aren’t finding jobs
Internship registry
Junior dev database – with skills, profile page
How to get you in the door with other companies
Allow a company to register and propose problems that they need solved. Usually smaller things, or problems that are broken down into smaller parts. data + description
Developers can sign up and solve problems as they come in. 3-5 per problem can work on it and submit it. The solution that is chosen gets paid.
Developer profile page has # of projects worked on, # of times their solution was selected, github profile link, linkedin link.
Projects
Made up of different tasks. Someone can take on a whole project or individual tasks.
Tasks:
- Can be open source or not – if not, then you pay – if yes, you have the option not to pay
- If open source, the system will create the github location and fork it to the developer’s account automagically – link that to the project – when committed with finished.txt it will be submitted
- on boarding with test projects to prove the model
Questions:
- who owns the code? Does it matter? do you just make it open source?
- how to determine difficulty of the project? (user voted?)
- if user voted, compare estimate to real delivery time
Jobs
Allow companies to post their jobs
Compare candidates from the system who are marked as “actively seeking a job” with the JD – list them out – use sliders
Provide a total score which is avg: ”fit score” + “code score” + “experience score” – pay to see the individual scores
Let’s be REAL honest for a second.
Look, it’s hard to get your first/second/third job right out of school. It doesn’t matter if you have gone to college or a Developer school. It can be REALLY hard.
The reason is because many companies don’t feel like they have the time to train you in production level environments.
You’ve got skills. You know it and I know it.
Let’s prove it.
Come to Hub Boulder today, May 16 2012, at 6pm and let’s talk about a freaking solution to this problem.
I probably drink too much caffeine.
Mornings consist of one to two cups of coffee, afternoons are sometimes sugar coated with a cherry coke, and evenings often bring iced tea. It’s a delicious and thirsty world I live in.
Next week I will be participating in Boulder Startup Week. Last year was a marathon and I just generally felt “behind the curve” the whole week. A little of that was from running around, a little from not sleeping all that well, and a little from eating/drinking irregularly all week.
This year, I want to experiment a bit on myself and attempt to do two things:
Now, there’s not a ton I can do about late nights, early mornings, and trying to keep up with work stuff along with Startup Week stuff. What I can do is treat myself a little better so that I am more alert, actually awake, but not necessarily because of caffeine.
Please make suggestions!!
Note: This came from a conversation on Facebook with my high school friend Chris. We were talking about the gun debate, but this conversation applies to so many places so I have made it a bit more generic for the blog.
All the people taking an extreme position in any situation are ridiculous and will always be seen that way by the other side or outsiders. Any social/government/personal concern that is exactly black and white is an outlier. Treating these issues as strictly one way or another makes no strides towards a solution.
People are always going to argue and point fingers at the other side to say, “I disagree because your solution is so far to one side” Whether these are the actual words they use or not, they are arguing opinions and not the actual problem.
So, lets take the high road and rather than look to the people who want to waste time for something to talk about while simultaneously wasting more time, lets look for a real solution. <gun specific stuff>It neither makes sense logistically or realistically to get rid of all guns. We know that much. Also, background checks and psychological tests only work for people who attain guns legally. The “prohibitive” model was proven not to work with alcohol in the 20′s and with drugs today.</gun specific stuff>
What is the solution? I don’t have a clue, but what I can say is that I don’t know if it’s worth the time (or effort) to sit here and continue the same conversation as everyone else by debating the craziness that is going on at the extremes if I can’t provide a better solution.
I think our conversations and our world would be better served not in reiterating what other people are already saying but rather in trying to find a way to improve the world, even if only marginally. If a marginal solution makes even a small direction towards the positive, it seems that’s better than no solution or an extreme solution.
We should look back at historical references to see where people have worked through solutions to big social problems and have successfully made a positive change. I just so happened to be listening to episoide 76 of 99% invisible about an hour after I sent my original message on Facebook. This episode was about how automobiles got past the stigma of “the great killers” to being an everyday part of city life. It seemed very topical to the gun debate.
I was listening to The Morning Stream yesterday where they were, as per usual, talking about video games. This episode, they mentioned a newer model of video games where people are active while playing.
We have seen this with the Wii, Xbox, Dance Dance Revolution, and tons of movies with Virtual Reality. I don’t count PlayStations blue dildo thing as an activity based video game, because it falls more into the “hilarious people waving blue and purple dildos around the room” category.
Sidenote: VR should come back, think of the things we could do with it now!
The concept that was presented on their radio show was something along the lines of: “It would be awesome if there was a video game where how well you do is based on your level of fitness and actual ability”.
I love this idea.
It would be awesome if there was some sort of MMO where you play online with others and had to be physically fit or very skilled. Even if this was a FPS. It would be fantastic. Think something along the lines of a physically interactive game that gives you the feel of the Modern Warfare commercials.’;
Last thing, I know that the first implementation would probably be some sort of sports game. This is a terrible first move. Get the FPS or MMO people into this idea first, because you will always be able to sell this idea to sporting game fans.
If I ever have a restaurant it will be called “bowl of tots” and sell a variety of tater tot preperations
— Matt Bernier (@mbernier) April 23, 2013
This was a fun thing I thought of and tweeted, but people are really responding to this idea!
So, here’s the recipe for tots that I made this morning:
Put 2 tbsp of water and 1 tbsp of oil in a pan, cover and heat it up to where there’s steam on the inside of your lid. Put in frozen disc-tots so they lay flat and cover for about 5 minutes until they aren’t frozen anymore – you may want to shake the pan to make sure they don’t stick to the bottom. Take off the lid and sprinkle on your favorite rub, seasoning, or whatever. Cook for another couple of minutes until the underside is a golden brown and then flip. Once the second side is golden brown, pull them from the heat and eat them. Delicious!
Other ideas that have been brought up:
This article at Wired sparked an idea for me, especially so with Boulder Startup Weekend on the way this weekend! I don’t have the time or inclination to build this system, but it would be pretty straightforward – so you should build it at your next hackathon.
My basic idea is to use the Twitter API to track down and reach out to the people who RTd a twitter post that you need to retract.
The process I see:
Go to the system (or in a browser plugin) and identify the tweet from your own timeline that needs to be retracted and basic information about why
Embed the tweet – following twitter TOS to a page – on this system’s website in a private link that you can only get to if you have the URL. Hint: if you could make this into an image that shows up through twitpic or yfrog, then it will show in the details pane on twitter.
- this next part is a bit iffy, but you’re a smart idea person, so you can find a better way -
Send out a new tweet to each of the RTers (probably through the user’s account) that says “Retracted Tweet <insert basic info> http://privateurlhere”, please RT to your friends
Update: The action of one user retracting the tweet would cause the cascade effect of all RTs being retracted or giving the option to those users to have their retracted.
Anyways, I hope that someone takes this low hanging fruit and makes an awesome app that allows people to retract silly things they say on Twitter. It could be really useful and you could monetize this through Facebook with promoted messages or just make a wall of shame for the fun of it.
Update: You could find other tweets who are similar to the factual innacuracy and embed them with the original tweet on the wall of shame.
Update: You make your money by charging people to keep themselves and give the option to their RT-ers off the wall of shame 
This whole adventure started with my getting much more organized, looking for a way to streamline my workflow, and using Evernote to do all of this for me. This went pretty well for a while until I realized that my efforts in Evernote wasn’t going to work. I created a “perfect world” scenerio for what I think todo list software I needed. Then I went looking and foudn that todo lists were missing quite a few things. I settled on Doit.im and have been using it for a couple weeks with great jubilation. However, I have recently found the main limitation of doit.im: shared lists.
In fact, I was on the verge of dropping $20 to them to extend my pro account for 1 year.
Doit.im has a feature where you “send a task” to someone. This allows them to see the task title and description. It does not allow them to see the subtasks, priority, or list. Then, when your friend/spouse/whatever completes the task, you get a notification instead of the task being marked as complete and then have to find your task in the “waiting” queue and complete it yourself. Which in turn means that things are duplicated and quite confusing as to whether the task actually gets done. This is not going to work for me. So, I’m moving to something else.
Doit.im taught me quite a bit about how advanced todo list software works and I will be greatful to them for that lesson. Wunderlist is looking really good right now and so I have revisited them and am considering switching everything over to them. It will take me a while to move all 300+ todo items, recurring items, projects, contexts, and tags but to be able to actually share a todo list with my wife is worth that extra effort.
Yes, this update is happening on the first of April. This is not a prank or April Fool’s day joke. If it was it would be a piss poor one and worth getting slapped for it I was seriously running around saying “Hahaha April Fool’s Day! I didn’t change my to do list software! Fooled you!”