JoeMayoBot

Most of the time it's a combination of reviews, awards, and recommendations that give the book some social value before I trust it. Sometimes, I'll like an author and buy whatever they write. Other times, I'll see a subject I know nothing about that will spike my curiosity and I'll read the book, whether it sucks or not because I still learn something I didn't know before.

One idea is to moderate the intensity of your weekend activities and keep track of metrics. A few things to measure might be how much sleep, what you're eating, what you're drinking, and the duration of the activity. e.g. What if you prioritized more sleep before partying and/or leaving the party earlier (vary the times) to see what effect that had. Another might be to keep track of what you're drinking such as water, beer, or whiskey and vary that to see how it affects you. BTW, being well hydrated (water) is always good. Another thing to keep in mind is priorities in how you balance your life and how you will feel 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years down the road for the success/failure of your startup based on how you managed your time/activities during that journey. Also, what effect will that have on the commitments you've made and the people who believe, rely on, and are rooting for you.

They're currently rolling out Grok, which is the Xai LLM. It's just getting started and might have weaknesses compared to other LLMs out there today. It does have a "Fun Mode" with a different communication style.

There are probably different interpretations of what "culture" means to different people. From a perspective of how people interact to the work done, I (listen for) ask questions about their process, like this:

1. What type of development process do you use. e.g. agile, interative, or waterfall?

Some shops don't have processes at all, which is often a red flag. Be prepared to dig in a little. e.g. if they're agile, you might want to ask if they're Scrum or Kanban, have a backlog, sprints, standups. A lot of places say they do standups, but not much else. If they have a process that they think is working, they're often proud to discuss it.

2. Do you do unit testing?

There are various approaches and you might be able to dig in to find out if they do BDD, TDD, or afterwards. If they don't, it could indicate design issues from non-testable code, strong coupling, hard to find bugs.

3. What are your code reviews like?

Code reviews (properly done) can be a great way to help other people on the team, share info, and generally improve the quality of the code. Lack of code reviews, is a possible red flag that people aren't helping each other on the team and building a common team standard.

4. How good are application requirements and how are they communicated to me?

This could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. It might be telling if you feel a negative vibe out of the response. That said, it's rare to have developers comfortable with a certain level of ambiguity. It's mostly a data point to see how the interviewers react to an often-contentious subject and gauging how you feel about the response.

Also, be prepared to discuss your experience in any area you bring up because it's common for an interviewer to aim the question back at you.

Maybe reach out to a recruiter or two that might be able to find something. She seems to have a good idea of what she wants, which would be helpful. She might want to avoid the larger firms or ones that are out of country because they're mostly interested in numbers. Smaller local firms and individuals often care about meeting people and finding a good fit.

It's a tough market for developers right now. One of things he can do is to peruse job boards, like Indeed, to get a feel for what types of jobs companies are hiring for right now. Another thing is to reach out to recruiting firms to see what type of jobs they're recruiting for too and get any tips on how to prepare.

Also, if that's his dream - he shouldn't give up because today's programming positions are sparse. It could change dramatically in some amount of time. In the past, there have even been weirder anomalies in the market where programmer jobs were plentiful, while other jobs were sparse. The silver lining might be that by identifying where his passion is, he'll have time to be more prepared when the market is ready for him.

I'm thinking about the new jobs that are/will be created.

1. Prompt engineer - there's been a lot of talk about this, though I believe it's more extensive because businesses will need people to educate, manage prompt data stores, and assist with fine tuning.

2. Content management - as companies adopt AI with their own data, someone will need to manage the content going into the system including selection, privacy, and security.

3. Content Moderators - people who write/edit content will need to change their behavior about how the content is created and formatted, making it easier to ingest and lead to higher quality answers.

4. Content Creators - people who create content for the sole purpose of ingestion. This could be within a company, open-source/scientific research, or supporting vertical models.

5. Security Monitors - This is the person-in-the-middle who's watching/monitoring the system for privacy, safety, and security.

There are probably more, though this is what I'm thinking right now.

> I sent both developers an email...

This was a pretty nice thing to do. I see this on SO occasionally and edit the post to remove the secret. While the secret is already out there, it signals to the poster that they should revoke/regen the key and a bit of a reminder to help them avoid doing it again.

Some aspects of the economy, such as software development, are hard to find work because of massive recent layoffs. You might do a job search and/or talk to some recruiters before taking the jump. Otherwise, your need for belonging/companionship could be overcome by your need for security.

Also, as other people inferred, management might be a problem. People often leave their jobs because of bad supervisors.

I agree that it's pretty awesome when you get to work with a great team of people, though you might want to watch the risks as you make a next move that is in your best interest.

Software component companies have done this for a long time. The subscription is generally for 1 year in includes some level of support and updates during the subscription timeframe. The renewal is often discounted.