I think this is the biggest factor when I take a job. Do I like the boss? I say the beer test - would I enjoy hanging out with this boss socially. I'm not saying I would, in fact I rarely have with my bosses, but someone who seems like I could be friends with is someone I want to work for.

This has lead to me mostly working for bosses with good people skills which is rare to find in tech. I hate working for socially obvlivious robot programmers who can't solve people problems.

When I was a few years out of school I went to my second job and inherited a huge code base with 4000 line java files, no tests, no one who worked on the code still around, etc, at a big non-tech company. I was young and stupid to think I was a bad programmer that I couldn't fix it all in a few weeks by myself.

I know it's in the past now, but try to avoid situations like this. If you can't, talk to your boss about what can reasonably be done in what time frame. Now I would try to figure out which parts can realistically be refactored and which can be isolated and rewritten iteratively make things better. I wouldn't take on new features unless I was confident I could deliver with spaghetti around.

While it seems to me like this is a scam, the bottom line is that everyone's interpretation of the communication of the terms of service is subjective.

The site could stay exactly as is and not be a scam if they let you at any time "return" your $39.95 shoe credits for a full refund, no questions asked.

I lived in San Jose and Palo Alto from 2002-2005. Moved to NYC and have been there since. Two things I would add: -SF (vs say NYC,Boston,Chicago) is a one industry town and is therefore a boom and bust town. When I moved there right after the bubble burst the guy who sold me my car was a former dev. Many of you only know the good times, and it won't be like this forever. That's not to say its a great place and I don't miss it. - The cost of housing on the peninsula and to some extent the east bay is almost as bad as SF. When you are reqdy to have a family, at least in NYC you can live in a nice house in Westchester or NJ. Or a really nice modern condo for half the price of NY. You can't get a nice place with a good school district by going further away from SF, it's like prices get even worse the further south you go until you are way past San Jose.