MalcolmDiggs

I'd recommend Stripe. Braintree is also popular.

In no particular order, I'd recommend reading:

* Introduction to Algorithms, by Cormen et al (aka "CLRS")

* Any of Robert Sedgewick's books on Algorithms ("Algorithms is C++", "Algorithms in Java", etc)

* The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth.

* If you want a more math-focused approach, Knuth has another book called "Concrete Mathematics" which might be worth your time.

* If you want something fun and accessible check out "9 Algorithms that Changed the Future" by MacCormick

The more you do it, the less nervous you'll feel. I'd suggest lining up a series of low-stakes 'practice' interviews (10 or more of them). Real jobs at real companies, but the kind of jobs you don't particularly want, and the kind of companies you wouldn't normally apply to. That way you won't feel any pressure to perform well; and you'll get practice interviewing. And who knows, you might luck into the perfect position just by chance.

A list of things that DONT annoy developers will probably be shorter.

1. Twitter for Dolphins

2. Square for Triangles

3. Tinder for Forests

4. Uber for Poop

If you need time, take time; there's really nothing wrong with that. That being said, you could always line-up your next gig, and push the start-date out 2 months; just to cover your bases.

Ad-tech is such an odd-space. Every glimpse I get of it is fascinating: huge scale at minuscule latency, hard engineering problems, super-high valuations and exits: and yet, if you told me the top 10 names in ad-tech, I probably wouldn't recognize any of them. And I think most people are the same way. It's just a weird black-box sector of tech that almost nobody talks about. Not sure why though...

How about both? I worked full-time through most of my college years, as did many of my classmates. It's rough, but not impossible. Night classes, early morning classes, online classes, etc.

I did the first half of my career in the Bay Area (>10 years) and am finishing it in NYC. Been in startups in both places. Here are the biggest differences I've noticed since moving to NY:

1. Old money. In California, the VCs and Angels I met were mostly self-made; they had cashed-out of the dotcom boom, or recently been apart of an IPO. They were all 20 - 40 somethings. NY is very different. I had never been exposed to the "country club" / "summer house in Nantucket" / "trust fund" scene before. It definitely feels like a different planet sometimes. So if you're raising money, be prepared to have conversations with the type of people you might have thought didn't exist anymore.

2. No echo-chamber. For the best and brightest in NYC, tech is often NOT the obvious choice. In many circles, going to the tech scene, (let alone the startup scene), is seen as odd. ("Why didn't you go into finance?" "Why didn't you go into law?" "Why aren't you a doctor yet?"). The greatest minds of the generation are becoming MOTUs (Masters of the Universe) at hedge funds and big banks. They're making a ridiculous amount of money, and really have no interest in this little tech thing we're doing. Talking about your startup in NYC feels odd sometimes. You're not praised or catered-to like you are in SF. Nobody really cares what you're doing, and nobody takes you that seriously until your run-rate is the hundreds of millions per year. It's a nice change in context actually. The SV echo chamber is gone.

Besides that (and NYC's insane weather), things are pretty much the same. Lots of talent, but it's expensive to hire. Lots of businesses, some good, some bad. Lots of VCs and Angels. Terrible rent, good food, etc.

Is it worth the move? Yes. Simply because when you move to NYC you may be seated at a cramped restaurant shoulder-to-shoulder with your next investor; and in SF you might see @sama walking down Market street. That kind of "right place at the right time" moments are more rare outside of those cities. Which coast you choose is entirely up to you; either way you're making a good move.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any single-provider that allays all concerns. Redundancy is the name of game. Any single-point-of-failure (in this case, a hosting company) is a bad idea.

Pick 2 hosting solutions you like (I'd recommend checking out AWS, Linode, Rackspace, and GCP), and build your systems redundantly on both. If they don't share infrastructure/datacenters, the odds of them both failing at the same time are small enough that it's not worth worrying about.

Sure, I get that. But even at 25 hours, you're grossing over 10k per month, no?

If it's an issue of finding clients, that, in my experience, has little to do with the technology choice. I freelanced in PHP for over 5 years, and I rarely (if ever) talked "tech" with clients. I kept discussions much more high-level than that. They didn't care how exactly I was building their projects.

Definitely check out RFP's (requests for proposals). Government agencies, universities, etc put them out. Start replying to them, and you should find plenty of work.