It would be interesting to see the tags compared to each other by their relative bucket. As in IOS/iPhone/Android or web frameworks Django/RoR/Play/etc compared.
Also I'd be interested in knowing how the java popularity is without android (postings without the android tag).
Agreed with buckets. The iPhone tag drops to next to nothing, but iOS rises. I suspect this is due to people programming more for the iPhone/iPad family rather than just the phone. I wish that they were all grouped.
2. "you want passive options but more active options, like selling consulting, are things that might well fit"
You're doing a great job at it looking at your year in review, but don't you need an established name with years of blog/material to get these sorts of rates?
The very first data set is health insurance estimates broken down by zip code. There's a super-lucrative market for you, but that one might be a bit competitive for you trying to crack it in 2013. Let's see, scroll down a few results...
That's a full listing of government programs which are designed to give people money. You could transform that opaque, disorganized CSV file into an easier-to-consume .org site to educate people on how to apply for government grants, right? And you could run ads on that site, right? (I think it is likely that the type of ads you'll get on that specific site would be scummy as heck, but there's another 75,000 CSV files listed on data.gov, so do a bit more searching and find a better one.)
1b) Assuming you have picked good questions to answer, you monetize by connecting people who have demonstrable interest in spending money to people they can spend that money with. That could be directly with you, if you have a product which answers their needs. It could be with other folks, via selling leads. It could just be with Big Daddy G, by putting AdSense on the site, bankrolled by people who have the business model that you haven't implemented yet.
2) I actually wound down the consulting business. Long story, but short version is that I want to focus more on my own stuff. Having years of material and successes I could point to certainly helped me land gigs, but way back in the day, the only thing I had going for me was that BCC appeared to work and I could explain why. If you hypothetically had a successful side project, that can probably be parlayed into "I could do something like this for you, where it will be substantially more effective because it will take advantage of the X, Y, and Z advantages your business has that mine didn't."
If you hypothetically had a successful side project, that can probably be parlayed into "I could do something like this for you, where it will be substantially more effective because it will take advantage of the X, Y, and Z advantages your business has that mine didn't."
This.
If you have a side project that's bringing in, say, $5000/year, and you do a few things to it such that it's now bringing in $5250/year, you've boosted revenue by 5%.
Now, go find a prospective client with a business bringing in $5MM/year, and explain to them how what you will do for them has the potential to increase revenue by $250k/year. Sure, it might not scale 1:1, but boosting it by even $100k/year should justify paying you, oh, $50k for the engagement.
As a guy in his 30's it would be interesting to read more on how you did this. Were you laid off at any point? Did you learn Scala on your own or through a previous employer, or a class? And finally, how hard was it for you to make your transition & land this job?
I find myself having to learn new skills with things changing every ~5yrs. Its scary, but also quite interesting to see things fork SO MUCH so fast lately. I feel its exponential...I'm basing this on only 2+ iterations, lets see how my 3rd ends up.
I've been in IT for ~20 years. I started in Unix systems programming, in C. in 2002, I shifted into Java/J2EE. Another decade later and I find myself shifting again, this time to modern lightweight systems (Rails, Node) and NoSQL (Neo4J). They're just languages, not that big a deal. What's more important is my ability to put problems in perspective.
It is controversial because it is complex. You actually need to be able to take in what you see which is in my opinion not true for the majority of movies out there.
There's a fundamental difference between investors and customers.
Users are customers, they pay if they feel the value of the product is worth XYZ.
Investors are banking on the idea/product to be worth more in the future than what it is now. They also have an appetite for risk, mainly because they understand investing and diversify.
It would be interesting to see the tags compared to each other by their relative bucket. As in IOS/iPhone/Android or web frameworks Django/RoR/Play/etc compared.
Also I'd be interested in knowing how the java popularity is without android (postings without the android tag).