MehdiEG

By "cents", you really mean "minor currency unit" I assume?

In British Pounds, it would be pennies for example.

The doc doesn't explain how the library deals with the various different minor units out there (I've been bitten too many times by code that assumes that all currencies have a minor unit and that 100 minor units = 1 major unit so I'm careful these days).

For example, what about currencies that have a minor unit that's not effectively used in practice or that don't have a minor unit at all (e.g. JPY)? Are the amount supposed to be expressed in this unused / non-existent minor unit?

What happens with currencies that use a subdivision other than 100 for their minor unit (e.g. KWD)? Will the calculations and formatting be correct?

Relevant piece of trivia: I went to a meetup at Facebook's London offices a few months back and heard a presentation from the FB @ Work lead. This may surprise some but FB @ Work was entirely built by their London team in London.

As you can imagine, they had to touch just about every part of the Facebook code base to make it happen. They still managed to pull it off despite being a "remote" team and unknown entity at first. Great to see some major engineering projects being owned here in the UK.

No - I've never worked with Xamarin (although I'll be looking at it in the coming days / weeks for a personal project - it looks quite sweet now). But I've got loads of experience with both .NET and Objective-C / Cocoa.

Most of my experience has been on the .NET platform and primarily on the backend / distributed systems side of things.

However, between 2010 and 2013, I was co-founder and CTO of a tech startup where our main product was a fairly sophisticated native iOS app. Being a bootstrapped startup, I had to do all the tech work myself. So I got a lot of experience with Objective-C / Cocoa that way. On the back of that, I got a contract to develop a native iPad app for the BBC, providing me with some additional experience building an app for an external client.

When I landed on the job market in January last year, I was therefore happy to take either an iOS contract or a .NET one.

I ended up taking a .NET contract. And to be completely honest, large-scale software systems / distributed systems is really where my heart lies. So I'm now pitching myself as a .NET developer only as this is the type of role I'm most keen on.

I'd actually be really happy to take on a role that uses another stack as well. But as a contractor, it's not really realistic to expect a client to pay you to learn a new language / stack :)

This is the sort of "startup" that I've seen commonly done by self-proclaimed "serial entrepreneurs".

Hire a developer for next-to-nothing / hour in the Philipines, India or China. Get them to build a quick-and-dirty scraping tool that's focused on a specific industry. Then try to flog it to slightly shady businesses. Try to stay under the radar for as long as you can and make as much money as you can while you're there. Sooner or later, you'll get busted and shut down - no big loss to you.

The people I've seen do that typically have a dozen or so of such "startup" going at any one time and they just keep shutting one down to start another.

This is not the sort of startup that will get you the fame and respect of the tech startup world. But it can certainly make you money if you have the "right" mindset. Just don't bet the farm on it.

I was on the other side of this equation a couple of years ago - co-founder of a London-based tech startup that had just finished an accelerator and raised a £100k round of seed funding (we didn't make it in the end in case you're wondering). Here are a few tips from what we learned.

1) The valuation is completely and utterly meaningless at this stage of the company. Unless the company is already generating a profit, it's currently worth exactly $0. So forget about the valuation when making this decision.

In addition, as you mentioned in your description, this valuation is literally a completely random number they pulled out of thin air.

Just for your reference, London-based startups that raise a seed round after having completed an accelerator are typically valued in the region of £1m. They would have to be quite exceptional to be valued at $3-4m (and maybe they are - up to you to find out).

2) I'm no expert on what's a reasonably equity share for a first employee. 2% sounds OK. But in any case, those 2% are worth exactly nothing right now. And at the stage they're at, their chances of success are close to non-existant (just like every other startup at this stage). So those 2% will most likely never be worth anything. Take those 2% as the icing on the cake, not as a main decision factor.

3) The £1.4k / month salary figure is a bit odd. Salaries in the UK are usually expressed as a gross annual figure, not as a monthly figure (or at least that how I've always seen them expressed). So do they mean a salary of £16.8k gross or £20.3k gross?

In any case, since it's a remote position, you're the only one who knows whether this is a reasonable offer or not. In the UK, that would be far, far too low for an intermediate-senior level developer. Even in the parts of the UK that have the lowest salaries (e.g. Northern Ireland), £17k would be borderline taking the piss for a graduate-level position, let alone senior.

But then again, only you knows what you could expect to earn where you live.

4) What accelerator did they go through? The purpose of an accelerator is mainly to "get the badge", i.e. get the credibility associated with the accelerator and get accepted into the "inner circle" of entrepreneurs and investors in the region. This is what makes a huge difference to the startup's ability to raise future funding and get the right introductions.

As a result, the only accelerators that are worth going through and provide real value are the top-ones, namely: YC, 500 Startups and TechStars. So are they part of the inner circle or did they just go through a small, fairly unknown local accelerator?

5) Since they haven't yet raised seed round, they probably don't yet have a formal board of directors. So failing this, who are their "official" advisors? Do they have any high-profile, successful entrepreneur helping them out (i.e. someone who's been there before)? Ask to have a chat with one of them. If their advisors are really willing to help them and are not just advisors on paper, they'll be very happy to have a chat with a prospective employee #1. Be blunt with them - ask them what they think of the company, of the founders and of their future prospects.

6) Finally, I realise that the above might come across as quite negative but this isn't my intention. There's plenty of upside with being employee #1 at a tech startup, even when the salary is questionable.

- It's common in early stage startups to be very relaxed and flexible when it comes to working hours, days off, etc. especially given the very low salary they're offering. Have a honest chat with them about this.

- If you're genuinely interested in startups, there's not better way to learn the ropes than to be employee #1 at a tech startups. You'll learn almost as much as you would being a founder and you'll be paid for it!

- Although your 2% will probably never be worth anything, there is a good chance that the company will grow enough to see its team reach a sizeable size. As employee #1, you'll be first in line to move up the chain of command and to be given a lot of responsibilities. You'll probably learn more in two years in a startup than you would have in 10 years at a large corporation. That certainly won't hurt your CV.

All of the above however is conditional on the founders being completely open and honest with you and on you having an excellent relationship with them. So up to you to see whether you and the founders "clicked" and whether they're going to be open with you or keep you at arm's length.

I'd be interested to hear about this as well. The £40k - £60k range is indeed what you can expect to get as an intermediate to senior software developer in London (add maybe another £10k to £20k in the financial industry at a push). Which I find ridiculously low given the cost of living in London. And you haven't got a hope of being able to buy any decent family home in London on this salary.

Contracting rates, at £400 - £600 / day are more in line with the living costs.

But it's quite sad to see that living and property costs in London have become so insane that even senior software developers either have to contract or end up earning just about enough to pay the rent but not much more.

On the other side, a good seed round for an early stage startup in London is £200k. Maybe £300k if you're the hottest startup in town and work incredibly hard on your round. You're not going to be able to pay your employees very much at all with so little funding.

To me, the numbers just don't add up. I don't see how London can build a sustainable startup community. Or even tech community to be honest.

You can certainly ask these questions. In fact, as a startup co-founder myself, I would find a prospective employee asking these questions to be a very good sign as it demonstrates that:

1) You understand what a startup is and how it works. Most people don't. It's easy to forget it when you've been in the startup world for a while but tech startups are a very strange type of business that most people simply don't understand. Angel / VC funding, valuation, runway and exits are completely foreign concepts to most people. If you demonstrate that you understand what a startup is and yet still want to work for one, then you're more likely to be the type of person who will stick around even when times are rough.

2) You're actually interested.

And if I was to apply for a job at a startup, I would expect the founders to be completely transparent about these things. Something's fishy if they try to change the subject.

Same problem here and I know quite a few people who've had these issues as well.

iMessage is a huge mess - even if you're still using your iPhone. Back in December, when I was still on iPhone, I went in a month-long trip abroad. Since data roaming still costs a fortune, I had data switched off most of the time. I'd just connect on wifi whenever possible and occasionally switched on the data connection when I really needed to get online while on the go.

Yet, despite the fact that I was roaming and that I had my data connection switched off, most of the text messages that my iOS-using contacts sent me were sent via iMessage instead of plain SMS. Which meant that I'd only get their message when I went back online, hours and sometimes days later.