I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp
this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.
My app Twitter Archive Eraser (https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-Eraser) used to be free, then I added a donation button and people, while barely donated, used to say that this is something they would have paid for!
I worked on a paid tier (learnt a tremendous amount about actually selling an app, integration with payment processors, licensing, more legal stuff than I wanted to etc.)
Almost from the get go, it started making +$3k/mo. With more changes and offering a Mac version along a Windows version, it averages around +$7k/mo of revenue consistently. I'm the only person on it and have a full time job. Barely need to make code changes and it requires minimal effort for customer support.
Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!):
You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation.
First (as already mentioned), existing solutions prove your idea — their existence proves that you’re trying to solve a real problem that people might pay to have solved. And it proves that you’re heading in a direction that makes sense to others, too.
Second, and this is the biggie: The moment you see someone else’s solution, you mar and limit your ideas. It suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to think outside the box because before, you were exploring totally new territory. Your mind was pioneering in a frontier that had no paths. But now, you’ve seen someone else’s path. It becomes much harder to see any other potential paths. It becomes much harder to be freely creative.
Next time you come up with that great idea, don’t Google it for a week. Let your mind fester on the idea, allow it to grow like many branches from a trunk. Jot down all of the tangentially related but equally exciting ideas that inevitably follow. Allow your mind to take the idea far into new places. No, you won’t build 90% of them, but give yourself the time to enjoy exploring the idea totally.
When I do this, once I do Google for existing solutions, I usually find that all the other things I came up with in the ensuing week are far better than what’s already out there. I have more innovative ideas for where it could go next; I have a unique value proposition that the other folks haven’t figured out yet. But had I searched for them first, I never would have come up with those better ideas at all.
Finally, I’ll say this: if you see your idea has already been done and you no longer care about it, then it probably wasn’t something you were passionate enough about in the first place; it was just a neat idea to you.
In other words, can percussion on the back of your head somehow reset/affect the nerves deep inside your head that send signals from your ear to your brain? For tinnitus, it's the audio signal. For motion-sickness, it's the balance signal.
I have direct experience with the companies you have listed, which I don't see elsewhere in this thread; I'll give you a timeline of my career so you can get a feel for what you're up against. In 2007, I was convicted of Interference with or Disruption of an Educational Institution, a class 6 felony in the state of Arizona. Since then I have had a steady career, with its share of bumps, but it is possible.
In 2009, I found work at Linode. The founder of Linode is an understanding guy and I was up front about my situation. It was also more unique because my career up to that point had been broadcast television and radio; when I was convicted, I was an on-air technical director at a Phoenix news/talk station. So I had no demonstrable work experience in computing. I was given a unique interview and passed, so I spent the next two years and change working at Linode. My situation was not a secret to anybody at Linode.
Once I had that experience on my resume, I translated that to Foursquare, where I worked for a year and a half. Again, same story: I was completely up front with everybody I spoke to about the situation, and my immediate manager only wanted to know the details out of curiosity. I do not keep my conviction a secret, even from my colleagues and those around me. It is a part of me and I am no longer embarrassed by it.
After Foursquare is where the tragedy begins, and the salient part of what you're asking about.
Earlier this year, I courted and finally accepted an offer to work at Google. I disclosed the conviction to Google right at the beginning of the process. The recruiter assured me it shouldn't be an issue[1], but they do something sneaky: they offer you employment then perform the background check, and write their offer so that the offer hinges upon the results of the background check. Everybody else I've worked at has had this reversed (including my current employer), so this was a first for me. They let you see the Google offer and get excited, then begin the background check.
The results of the background check arrived very soon. I want to say by the following Monday. I followed up with another e-mail, and Dan said the results go directly to company leadership. I heard nothing for two months, even after I began work. To reiterate that, I worked for two months at Google while Google had the results of the background check in hand. After two months, Google scheduled a meeting half an hour in the future on my calendar and terminated my employment. Ben Treynor and Ben Lutch, two higher-ups in the SRE organization, fired me having never met me. My immediate manager appealed but Ben Lutch refused to reconsider or even speak with me.
Considering I know of some very public felons that work at Google, I can't help but feel shafted, but it taught me a valuable lesson about how to negotiate during the offer process regarding a felony. From Google, I courted three companies:
- Facebook was honest and said with a felony it was unlikely. The recruiter did everything possible to basically talk me out of continuing the process once I disclosed it.
- LinkedIn suddenly filled the position once I disclosed it, even though the position remains open on the Web site and it is a general position.
- Apple resulted in a closed offer. I was up front with Apple as I was Google, and I requested that we put all the horses in order before we move forward. They were understanding of that, given my Google experience, and I am happy to report that I am far better off at Apple than I was Google. I'm not going anywhere; Google is an extraordinarily passive aggressive culture and I could tell I wasn't going to be happy there anyway. Apple also compensates me better than Google did. The side benefit of my long-term goal at Apple is that by the time I'm considering moving elsewhere (if I am at all) the felony will have long passed the seven-year mark. I'll probably have long since set it aside in Arizona (Arizona has no "sealed", just "set aside").
Two other highlights of my career to show you mistreatment of felons by companies:
- Rackspace booked a flight for me to San Francisco when I still worked at Linode, then I took time off from work to fly out and they cancelled the flight the evening before with about 12 hours to go once I disclosed the felony conviction. They pointed to their terms of service with their customers.
- 1010data, a competitor to the Foursquare offer, called me in for a meeting during my offer process. They were vague as to what the meeting was about. When I was brought into the room I discovered most of the board of the company as well as various senior leadership, and I was grilled about my 'prank' felony for better than a half hour by investment banking types in their upper forties and fifties. I wish I would have known that was coming. To their credit, they did the research and still extended an offer, but that meeting left a bad taste in my mouth.
Your best advice, which I received in the thread when I discussed this before[2], is just to be up front and explain it and own your felony. I promise.
