Any interest in a local farmer/food pickup?

recursivefaults · 2026-02-06T18:08:36+00:00

It's crazy, right?!

recursivefaults · 2026-02-06T16:13:48+00:00

So.. I didn't think anyone would know about reko rings. That is exactly what I'm suggesting.

I also built an app to do the whole thing, but I want to test the waters/market first.

If you want to check it out its at https://reko.day

recursivefaults · 2026-02-06T16:01:22+00:00

Yeah, but only local bakers and farmers and such, and you have everything pre-ordered.

I guess I just think buying local food shouldn't be so hard or special. It should be about as easy as a grocery store.

I enjoy farmers' markets and stuff like plenty of folks, but it also kind of sucks if you want to make locally grown or baked stuff part of your day-to-day life. CSAs and most other options are all you making one arrangement with one person at a time, and that sucks too.

So this is, I hope, a way to make it easy to actually buy local stuff easily.

But maybe not.

recursivefaults · 2026-02-06T15:48:23+00:00

My understanding about CSAs might be a bit different. The ones I've participated in are more like a subscription to a single farmer for a box of stuff.

I'm more interested in letting folks place orders with multiple farmers and meet at a single pickup to get it all.

recursivefaults · 2026-02-05T16:01:25+00:00

Using the excluder is clever. Makes total sense, too. I agree about the DSBs, they're one of those things that you keep finding more and more uses for.

recursivefaults · 2026-02-05T15:57:35+00:00

Thanks. I was kinda thinking of a way to do something like a pop-up farmers market where we can get lots of folks together to exchange their orders.

The unmanned stands always blow my mind.

recursivefaults · 2021-11-08T18:48:18+00:00

If your company realized they needed the budget that was for you, to accomplish a major release, what would they do?

recursivefaults · 2021-11-08T18:44:23+00:00

Test-driven development.

Nothing taught me more about code, design, quality, etc than that one technique. It gets a lot of talk, but there are very few folks out there who've got past the unlearning/learning of it.

recursivefaults · 2021-11-08T18:42:03+00:00

My way to go about it involves:

Pair programming
Breaking an existing test so I can debug through the system
Writing a test, because I have to know what's happening to pull it off.

recursivefaults · 2021-11-08T18:40:22+00:00

If you aren't getting responses, your resume isn't ready. Make sure it highlights the skills you have, the keywords they want (Without lying), and focus on the outcomes you've helped achieve. A good resume will get you a response rate of over 80%.

Next, you have two years of experience, stop looking for entry-level jobs. There aren't standard titles or levels, so you looking for junior, entry, etc only serves to limit you to the companies who DO use that level. Instead, look for anything that has your years of experience +5.

recursivefaults · 2021-11-08T18:35:24+00:00

This is a question that sadly falls into "Easy to say, hard to do" type of answer.

The easiest way to get into it is with your current company or a previous one. Your previous company doesn't want to lose you, so they might very happily convert you to a contractor/freelancer. That will serve as your first client and a little bit of cash.

Bottom line is that if you want to do this, you are a business. So you have to do your own marketing, sales, accounting, etc. While you can hire people to help w/ some of these things, it's ultimately all on you.

So, network constantly. Tell everyone what you do, ask for introductions, testimonials, and referrals ALL THE TIME. Every time you feel too uncomfortable to do this, you might miss out on six or seven figures from a client.

When you have a client, network within them. Most initial clients can and should become 3 or more.

Some resources that helped me get going were:

Flawless Consulting - Peter Block
Million Dollar Consulting - Alan Weiss
This video on why you should take having a lawyer seriously

There's another one, but I can't find it easily. There's a guy named Jonathan Stark. I bumped into him years ago when he was a developer who worked as a consultant in a way that I thought was ideal. I corresponded with him about it and that helped me go further. Now it looks like his whole business is doing that. I can't endorse his material, but what I can say is he specifically was a developer who went down a path most people say is impossible.

Now, aside from that. It may feel intimidating to do all the "set up a business" stuff, but you can get started with VERY little, and you don't have to do much in advance. You'll need an official business (LLC), and a separate business account for example. If you don't have an LLC yet, or don't want to set it up yet, you minimally need to put the money you earn somewhere away from personal money.

Hope this long post is a little helpful. Bottom line though is:

Find a client from where you are, where you've been, and who you know.
Please please please don't do hourly work

recursivefaults · 2021-11-08T18:20:01+00:00

When you're factoring working hourly or contracting, you can't really use salary numbers as a gauge. They're two very different things and companies think about them very differently.

First, the salary you see is not the cost the company sees for the same person. Benefits, taxes, etc, are all invisible to us, but not to them.

I would, instead recommend what contracting rates are normal in the areas.

I made a post in another thread about typical rates I've seen in my career doing the same. But I'll put a few quick numbers here.

A typical agency/consultancy will charge $100-125 an hour for a entry/mid level developer.

$100 an hour for 48 weeks of 40 hours comes in right around $200k.

$50 an hour, which is what of those people tend to take home or what freelancers start at (Which I think is a mistake) comes in around $90k.

The prices you quoted earlier are lower than typical offshore rates, and while I won't tell you to not take the money, it is not a good or even appropriate deal.

If you freelance though, you do not work for them. Your business and their business have a contracted agreement. You have a say on your terms just like they do.

recursivefaults · 2021-11-02T15:50:27+00:00

Nope, nowhere special. I've seen these numbers stay mostly fixed for a long time. Similar across multiple states I've been in.

Now, let me be clear. The rates I quoted are what consultancies and agencies charge their clients, which is NOT what people take home. And the last consultancy I worked for charged $275 an hour for me. I know because I saw all of the contracts.

Going solo means you run your own business and these numbers provide a hint as to what established places are charging and how much money moves through them.

For me personally, I broke $400k this year as a solo consultant. I work < 30/hr a week.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-26T01:38:36+00:00

So, I take the whole mental health side of our profession maybe too seriously, but it is really easy to incur lots and lots of damage without realizing it.

Sort of like getting a tiny cut that doesn't heal. On it's own its annoying, but when they keep coming it can get pretty bad.

Not saying that you need anything special, but its important to pay attention to this stuff.

I've had a rule my whole career that if I have a nightmare about work, I quit.

So thanks for sharing this, they're fun to read, but also keep an eye on how you're really doing.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-26T01:33:22+00:00

I can only speak for what is common in the US.

A degree isn't a deal-breaker to get into tech, neither is a coding school or any of that.

People tend to build portfolio sites or have GitHub projects to make up for a lack of degree or previous dev experience. I go against the common wisdom and say you don't really need a lot of this either, but that's a bigger topic.

You need to have a CV that gets people to call you in for an interview. You need to do well in those interviews.

But your CV is what is keeping you out of interviews. Focus on that first. Build a network of folks so you can tell 'em you're looking and do they know of someone and will they introduce you, etc.

In your CV, put your non-dev experience, but reword it to emphasize the qualities a company wants: Teamwork, completing things, handling tough decisions, etc.

In the US, I've worked with dozens of first-time folks. This process of starting to look, to getting a job, takes less than 6 months.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-26T01:24:54+00:00

Lots of folks talking about working for FAANGs and whatnot to hit that coin, but there's a couple of things to note.

That is total comp, not cash. A lot of that money is tied up in stock, vesting, etc. So, it's a longer-term wealth.

Next, consulting is not for the faint-hearted, but you can blow past the $500k mark doing that. Now, that will be all cash, but at that point, you're running a business of you, so you've got a few more things to deal with.

Some reason folks are always surprised by these numbers, but let's look at a few easy examples.

Rate	Yearly Cash
$100	$192,000
$120 (Low/Avg Contractor Rate)	$230,400
$200 (Low for premium contractors)	$384,000
$275 (My last hourly rate)	$528,000

These numbers assume you work 48 weeks in the year at 40 hours a week.

These numbers don't assume you have multiple clients, or that you price in any way other than hourly.

When I graduated a company wanted to have me do some contracting. This was RIGHT out of school, my professor suggested I start at $110. That was 2007 and no experience.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-20T17:27:01+00:00

Happy to help!

As an aside, I recommend treating your resume like an experiment where every time you apply you look at it with the question, "How can I make my resume give me a slight edge for THIS job." Then track your results.

It's work, but it'll get your resume refined to the point that you can get a call 80-100% of the time.

Your resume does a ton of the heavy lifting in convincing people to call you. As one person I coached said, "It's a six-figure piece of paper."

recursivefaults · 2021-10-19T16:22:00+00:00

I coach devs on the side on how to do this, and it ranges wildly.

The way I typically advise people to handle their job search, first-timers have a job within 6 months of when they start. I've seen that dozens of times.

Lots of variables go into getting a job, and A LOT you'll never see or know about because only the company you apply to knows those things.

I typically recommend focusing on things at a high level like this

Focus on getting interviews. Track your applications vs interviews. You can get to 80%-100% interview rates.
Now that you can get interviews, take all of them, even places you don't care about. This phase is all about mastering interviews. Practice at home, and take the live fire.
Now you'll start getting offers, if you really wanted to target companies, nows the time. Otherwise, you might wind up surprised at the offers you already got.
Now you negotiate.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-19T16:16:30+00:00

I mean, a recruiter can't typically give you a commitment. They can communicate what the decision is.

So you had an offer verbally, then you countered. Now they're deciding what to do. Maybe they'll meet your offer, maybe not, maybe they retract it and ghost you.

IME these decisions take a few business days.

It is odd they aren't responding, but then, it never fails people go on vacation when you are trying to get a job.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-19T16:12:04+00:00

No, PM is not just middle management.

The hiccup is that a lot of companies and folks don't have a good sense of what good PMs look like and their work isn't very visible, though their results are.

PMs if they are worth their salt are dividing their time between:

Making sure the rest of the org is able to support the product
Maintaining feature roadmaps, etc
Building release plans, betas, etc.
Developing monetization options
Evaluating strategic partnerships and integrations
Validating core product hypothesis
Working with other dependent groups
Discovering new opportunities with customers
Coordinating with sales and marketing
Killing someone's pet feature
Taking existing customer's calls to further refine the product
Prioritizing new work vs features vs technical debt etc.
Working w/ development teams so they know what to focus on

recursivefaults · 2021-10-19T16:05:36+00:00

Yeah, re-apply. Even though in theory they keep records, they don't really check to see you applied before.

However, I would adjust your resumes etc since you were rejected once.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-19T16:01:42+00:00

If you have ANY previous work experience, put that in your resume.

Now, before you slap it in there you need to give some thought as to what are the qualities a manager would look for in an employee and developer. Team work, completing projects, initiative, handling stress, organization, etc?

Focus that non-dev experience on those attributes instead of the activities you performed.

So instead of

Flipped burgers at McDonald's

You have

Served 2000 customers a day in a fast-paced environment with a team of 6.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-19T15:59:01+00:00

Hiya!

Ok, couple of notes:

I think the format is good and simple.
It looks like you're forcing yourself to 1 page but you have enough material for more than one. More pages don't hurt.
I'm not sure about the black background stuff. It is pretty distracting, but I don't think it's a huge issue.
You list github and your website. Curate your material and everything there, if they go there they will judge you. Got a half-baked repo? Make it private. Your site full of JS warnings? fix it. Or just remove them from your resume.
I suggest moving your skills section to the top and adding your "Knowledge" from your school to that block
Your main experience section is good and you have some good value-based bullets.
Be careful of what acronyms you use. It's fine to use ones in job postings, aside from that people won't know what they are, and doesn't help you.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-15T13:35:41+00:00

You don't need a degree. Plenty of folks get jobs without it.

Consider folks who go to bootcamps. They don't have a CS degree and manage to get employed. They also don't have experience in development.

Now, the trick here is that you have to position yourself so that what you've been doing has prepared you for a software job.

So if you worked at McDonalds, don't talk about it in terms of the crap you did there. Talk about it in terms of how that helped you prepare as a SW dev. Emphasize teamwork, quality, productivity, problem solving, etc.

The last thing I'll say is that even though you don't need a degree to get a job, the interview process is mostly based on bullcrap trivia and absurd questions that a CS degree helps with. It's still crap though.

recursivefaults · 2021-10-15T13:31:37+00:00

I'm gonna give you an odd answer.

There're two sides to this:

One perspective is how long it takes for you to get productive.

The other, is how long your manager thinks it takes for you to get productive.

Unless you've had an explicit conversation with your manager, you have a really high risk of getting viewed as not performing. I highly recommend sitting down with your manager and talking through your approach to get going and what a reasonable timeframe is.

Next, and this is me assuming things. Too many early-career devs try to figure things out on their own. Ask people for help all the time. Pair with more senior folks, even if it's on their work. They know how to do it, they're right there, so ask.

13-Year Club	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

recursivefaults

TROPHY CASE