James F's New Direction in Life

[James Fake]

Hey Fastlaners,
Just needed to release something that was heavy on my mind about a new direction I'm taking.

I had to choose either between:

1) Taking a full-time job (had 1 job offer so far) to pay my living expenses as I wait for my programmer to finish up Freelanceful (which is another problem story in itself - progress thread), then run Freelanceful on the side after work.

or..

2) Use last of savings, fund 2 months of living until end of January, and learn Ruby on Rails full-time, 8 hours a day.

I ultimately decided to go with #2 and learn Rails. I turned down my job offer today and have outlined my journey and objectives for the next 2 months. This is what I am hoping happens..

- Hack away and create a couple web apps to add to my portfolio.
- Make a good personal website & oDesk/Elance/Freelanceful profiles.
- Pick up either a junior level Rails job, or freelance work by end of January.
- Finish up Freelanceful myself.

I also forgot to mention one of the best (and respected) Rails developer here in Nashville is going to help me and mentor me twice a week with my progress. All in all; by going this route, I can get Freelanceful finished up and launched & during that time Freelanceful picks up traction, I can do Rails work and make $30/hour. Which being a Rails programmer has ALOT more opportunity than a designer.

And if Freelanceful doesn't do well, Rails developers commonly make $60-70K salaries with 1 year of experience, so I can actually have a nice career possibly. I'm also hoping to pick up some freelance design projects here and there to supplement income as well.

Anyways, just thought I'd share how my professional progress is going.

Thanks for listening,
James F.

 

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[Rickson9]

Good luck!

 

[hrishikesh]

Good luck. But remember what Michael Gerber said in e-myth. Do not put yourself in technician mentality.

 

[buckmajor]

Hey dude, best of luck for you. I only work part time 2days a week but its enough to pay expenses and to get by the week with some deserts . I'm in the same boat of studying myself. I have the time to do it so learning is a great challenge for me in programming and as well as doing BJJ/MMA training at nite to break the ice and not go crazy in my solitary room lol.

 

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[Illusion]

Good job man, the more I read your posts, the more I think you will be successful.

Just dont give up!

 

[wade1mil]

2) Use last of savings, fund 2 months of living until end of January, and learn Ruby on Rails full-time, 8 hours a day.

Congratulations on making a tough decision James. Since this is really what you want and if you can stand staring at computer screen full of code, why not spend 12 hours a day learning code? With only 2 months of expenses, this could speed up your learning curve by 50%. Imagine yourself two months in the future looking back on the extra work you put into learning Ruby. Was it worth it?

Food for thought...

 

[James Fake]

Thanks everybody for the support... It means ALOT!

 

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[smmirza]

James,
I respect you man! I recently applied for a job and was debating if I would accept the offer if it ever came. I knew in the back of my mind I would. Luckily (Unluckily?) the offer never came and I breathed a sigh of relief. I respect you not compromising on your dream...that is key!

 

[Icy]

How come you're determined to learn RoR during this time James? I remember your last project, Fendza, you did in php, right? If you know php and time is of the essence you should really get it done, and then worry about learning RoR if that's the direction you want to go. Not like it *really* matters what you backend is anyway

 

[Vigilante]

Gutsy move, man. Make sure as you press forward that your goal is BIGGER than you... that you don't get into a corner where you write code as your sole income. Programmers are a dime a dozen... but entrepreneurs are one in a million. Charge forward full speed... but make sure you are putting in building blocks to scale your business to millions. Good luck!

 

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[sharky]

Stay hungry my friend.

 

[Anon3587x]

James you need to listen to what Snowbank said.

If you can't make money knowing how to program is useless. Figure out how to make money before you do all this!

 

[kwerner]

You have big balls. You're going to be a big success, I just know it.

 

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[FastNAwesome]

2) Use last of savings, fund 2 months of living until end of January, and learn Ruby on Rails full-time, 8 hours a day.

I ultimately decided to go with #2 and learn Rails. I turned down my job offer today and have outlined my journey and objectives for the next 2 months. This is what I am hoping happens..

- Hack away and create a couple web apps to add to my portfolio.
- Make a good personal website & oDesk/Elance/Freelanceful profiles.
- Pick up either a junior level Rails job, or freelance work by end of January.
- Finish up Freelanceful myself.

Way to go man! I was sorry to hear developer disappointed you, but in the end it may turn out to be a biggest favor he did to you.

This is EXACTLY how I became a developer, I got fed up with paying and praying, and always getting excuses, semi-optimal work and depending on someone I never saw.

I also forgot to mention one of the best (and respected) Rails developer here in Nashville is going to help me and mentor me twice a week with my progress

This is a HUGE wind in your back.

Formal education is nice but not nearly enough and often takes too long.

Self tought developers are reality ready but it takes long as they have to make all the mistakes themselves,
and not all the tutorials on net are good too (in fact most of them suck, and is not quality code).

You have the best of both worlds, a chance to have a mentor, but who prepares you for real life, and for
actual best practices in RoR, for how things are done right now.

Your 2 months will easily equal a year of formal/self taught education.

One little advice: start making apps right away. Practice means a lot in this. Make that apps. Yes, they will work, but will likely be full of flaws.

Many developers look back at their first few gigs with "I can't believe how bad that code is" thought. So don't let Freelanceful be your bad code application. Start programming some junk right now, that's how you get better

Which being a Rails programmer has ALOT more opportunity than a designer.

Probably, but don't underestimate the designer side, I still can't believe how awesome Freelanceful and some others sites you did, I think there is a LACK of WEB designers, people know how to draw fancy stuff but have no clue about UX. Not a clue.

But yes, the supply of designers is definitely high, so I think marketing skill plays a lot in it. I'm confident I'd be able to easily market your designer skills (which I don't have myself) so if you're ever on for such gigs maybe we can work together.


Anyway, way to go and best of luck.

 

[Icy]

Many developers look back at their first few gigs with "I can't believe how bad that code is" thought. So don't let Freelanceful be your bad code application. Start programming some junk right now, that's how you get better

First few? I've been programming (although only slightly during teenage years) for around 10 years now, and anything I do there is always the thought of how things could have been done better. It comes with a familiarity of the task at hand, just as much as understanding how to program.

 

[James Fake]

@smmirza @Sharky @bateati - Thanks!

@Icy - Yup Fendza was php, but Freelanceful is in Ruby on Rails. I decided to learn Rails because I think there's a higher demand for them at the moment and the next 5 years. Not to say PHP doesn't, but I think there's less quality supply of Rails guys versus PHP.

@Vigilante - Yes, definitely. I will always work towards something fastlane, hopefully this is a good safety net and way to pay the bills and debt if things don't work out/or as fast.

@Kwerner - Thank you! I hope so..

@FastNAwesome - Wow, thanks.. yeah I thought the same about the situation as you. I guess in a sense this problem had to happen to open my eyes up finally to 'just go out and learn how to do it (code)' instead of relying on others. I'm hoping 7-8 hour days, 6 days a week. And I agree; I'll follow a few tutorials at first, but by second week; I'm going to hack away at actual apps and trying to make em work. And when I get stuck, Google my way to a fix, and repeat, repeat, repeat.

 

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[biophase]

Sorry James, but I need to call you out on this one.

Doesn't anyone else here find it ironic that a person starting a website that helps you "Find and Hire freelance web designers and developers through Q&A discussion and bids. Pay only as work gets done through escrow." is having trouble getting the actual business own website done with a freelance web developer?

This is a classic case that MJ writes about. Do gurus make money following their own advice or do they do something completely different?

Did you follow your own advice when hiring this person?

Did you go through your own 6 step process (How Freelanceful Works | Freelanceful.com) when hiring this guy?

Did you follow your own payment process of "You'll setup a draft of milestones and a payment schedule for the project's progress. Once both parties agree on the deadlines and expectations, the work then begins." Why would you need to file chargebacks to re-coup your money.

I really don't understand how this could have happened.

How does someone have confidence in this site once it is complete if the founder couldn't successfully complete a project?

 

[77startup]

Biophase have you ever outsourced work before? I only ask because JamesF's situation is fairly common when using freelancers. I don't see the need to "call him out".

 

[Jcapuano]

Yeah Good Luck with your endeavors

 

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[Darkside]

Biophase have you ever outsourced work before? I only ask because JamesF's situation is fairly common when using freelancers. I don't see the need to "call him out".

Yes, especially when dealing with foreign programmers. I've used Freelancer before and the foreign programmers on there are extremely hard to work with. They almost always demand milestone payments throughout the way even for doing minor work. I don't want to pay someone for doing 1/3rd of the work, I want to pay them for doing 100% of the work, because 1/3rd of a web app is useless to me if the programmer can't finish the other 2/3rds of the work.

They will take a project knowing that they can't complete everything that's required of them due to lack of technical skills and demand milestone payments for the part of the project that they know they can do. That's why I've stopped using foreign programmers. They're cheaper, but American programmers are much less likely to scam you and with American programmers, you have legal recourse if they do.

You can't do anything to some jackass in China or India who scams you out of your money. I've also found that American programmers are much more knowledgeable and technically capable of finishing a project. Foreign programmers on the other hand, and I mean mainly Chinese and Indian ones, tend to know only the basics and try to bullshit you into believing that they're capable of finishing a complicated project.

 

[biophase]

Biophase have you ever outsourced work before? I only ask because JamesF's situation is fairly common when using freelancers. I don't see the need to "call him out".

Yes, I have used elance several times and I understand that it's a very common situation. They low bid, ask for change orders, want to get paid for milestones before they finish, etc...

I think that if you are running a business that is basically helping you connect with other freelancers to avoid these specific situations that you shouldn't run into these problems.

The biggest issue in my mind was his need for possibly claiming a chargeback, because his site has the payment process spelled out.

"Each project milestone has it's own escrow payment. Before the work on that milestone is started, escrow is funded by you. When work is done, you release that escrow once you verify the work is satisfactory and complete."

"If the work is not done to your satisfaction or accordingly to the milestone agreement, then you do not have to release that milestone. The messages between you and freelancer are all recorded for dispute purposes."

Now, I know that his site was not built at the time of hiring this freelancer. But he had the knowledge to put these payment guidelines into his site. So the question is, did he use an escrow account? Why did he release the funds before milestones?

MJ doesn't tell you that you should self-publish your own book and then use a publisher. He went through the self-publishing so he could confirm that what he was writing was indeed correct. If he went through self publishing and it did not offer the control or profits that he thought it would, he would probably not be recommending it.

To me, if you are lucky enough to be able to go through you business step by step in a case study, you need to do it. James should be following each step listed on his site as he went through building his site so he could confirm his step by step method.

 

[deepestblue]

I have found working with Freelancers to be one of the very best experiences of my life. Feel them out up front with a PM or Skype interview, let them know your terms, no milestone payments, treat them well, cut if off quick if the first deliverable isn't in fact delivered. There are absolutely wonderful people out there who want to do great work for you. See the good in them and give them bonuses for jobs well done.

Run a trial project at 1/100th or 1/10th of your project budget first. If they can't deliver on that you know what to do. On the other hand if they do deliver.....

 

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[DeletedUser2]

James you need to listen to what Snowbank said.

If you can't make money knowing how to program is useless. Figure out how to make money before you do all this!

james! I agree, Backward thinking. Learning how to program is secondary to learning how to make money.

 

[Talisman]

Bio's made a good point James. Im sure you will take it as the excellent feedback it is.

I haven't followed your website dev closely, so I dont know what's been going on, but surprised to hear it's not done yet. Best to do something simple, and have it up, rather than cover the other 5% and take 95% of the time? Prove and move.

Ohh, Prove And Move. Is that (tm) anywhere, I might make it the title of my next book (and by next, I mean, first, haha).

Anyway, best of luck Jimmy. May I call you Jimmy.

 

[Brander]

Anyone who has ever hired anyone for programming work will know that 95% of coders are complete flakes or complete fakes. Especially on freelance sites.

The problem I am having right now myself is that if I outsource it gets done, but I need to SPELL IT OUT for them to even get a half-decent result out of them and I lose a lot of time, if I do it myself, then it gets done even slower as I don't enjoy coding. It's a cluster F*ck.

I am trying to enlist students locally ATM and will report back to you guys how it goes. You just simply HAVE TO have someone in the office that you can oversee, otherwise they slack off.

But remember - where people are bitching, there's opportunity

 

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[James Fake]

@biophase - great questions there. although I don't have the time to really dig into each; I opted to go with a local freelancer that I met with several times in person and sat in front of a laptop together for hours. So this puts Freelanceful's development into a different situation then people would be doing actually using it a.k.a. outsourcing online.

No matter how many checks and balances you place into any system; there's one element you will never be able to control: The human element, particularly human behavior.
Yes, we setup a contract with milestones and sprints, etc. etc. but (without me typing a ten page report) the details of this situation's problem is bigger than what you have read from any of my posts.

As to answer your question about me being in an industry I know thoroughly about; I would have to say that with a confident big YES.

@Jcapuano - thanks!

@77startup @darkside @roark - Yes, I full heartedly agree about the problem of flakes, etc.! Something that Elance/oDesk doesn't put in enough filters, checks/balances, and education (to project posters to give them the real deal about what to look out for) [in my opinion, I feel like they are more worried about doing numbers and even if projects failed to get done, they still get some money from whatever the initial down payment was, etc.]

@Tailsman @zen******* @deepestblue - Thanks, definitely got your advice.