JFitzDela

Howdy! I keep hearing this damned buzzword, "DevOps," everywhere I turn, and it happens to come at a time in which I'm looking to refocus my career anyway, so I'm looking for some feedback and advice.

I own a very small software firm (1 subcontractor, a few clients, $120k-ish revenue), but I've quickly fallen "behind the curve" on the latest and greatest languages, platforms, and standards - I got busy with existing code bases, then spent more and more time on the business relationship side of things, then realized I was way behind when I started looking for more work.

It's okay, though, because I don't like contract software development anyway. I want to move to a two-fold situation. I want:

1) A "productized" service offering or two to build sustainable revenue and, 2) To develop and sell my expertise as a pure consultant in some field.

I have thoughts on how to approach #1, but I'm looking for that field in which I can shine for #2.

I love people, and I enjoy process, but I am an absolute neophyte when it comes to CI, testing, etc. (I know what Jenkins is... does that count?).

Where do I start? Any thoughts from people already working in the field?

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Way TL;DR:

I am a contract software developer looking to move into DevOps consulting, but I have no experience at all in CI or testing, much less automated testing. Where do I start?

Thanks!

Hello!

I've finally gotten my business to the point that I NEED to hire on at least one subcontractor to take over some of the development work on my plate.

My first thought was to hire out of the Philippines, as I'd heard from a couple of online business bloggers I know that there are a lot of very capable folk willing to work for what amounts to a large sum for them but a small one for me.

I'm just concerned, I guess, about hiring anyone, much less a foreign worker, for no other reason than I'm scared to "let go" as it were and trust ANYONE.

To that end, I need to find someone capable in PHP -- most of my projects are currently built on a "custom" codebase (all my spaghetti code from 10 years of work) as I'd gotten too busy to keep up with the latest frameworks and such. I would LIKE, however, to get someone who can work with me to transition to Laravel/Symfony (I'm not ready to go to Rails/Node, I don't think).

Anyone have advice for where/how to find quality developers that fit the bill? I can't quite afford to hire at American full-time rates, but I need full-time work. May be crappy of me, but there it is -- I'm in that weird limbo that I MUST get out of.

Thanks a million!

I'm taking a break from launching endless waves of apparently useless apps/services (no complaints), and I figure in my downtime I might as well begin picking up a new platform/language to tack onto the ole resume' if nothing else. Rails seems to be sticking around for the moment, so I think I'll look that way.

I've got both broad and deep experience in PHP/MySQL development built over the course of 8 years of client, professional, and personal projects. I've also dabbled for the last year in ColdFusion (bleh) and .Net development for my day job. I'm also familiar, or at least was once, with the basic tenets of MVC development and the Rails platform (most of my PHP work is built on a custom skeleton I've cobbled together over the years).

What I'm after, then, is not so much a "this is Ruby on Rails, this is scaffolding, this is xxxxx..." tutorial, but rather any resources that folks in a similar position have used to pick up the platform with professional development.

I've done the basic "let's see how easy it is to build a blog" type tutorial (and will again), but what's a good "next step" towards professional, polished Rails development?

Thanks for the advice!

- John

Following feedback from a Show HN yesterday, I've added "standard" sign up/sign in (as opposed to requiring Facebook) and thought I'd ask for reviews again.

MsgMe.at is meant to be an ultra-simple, no frills reminder email (and SMS as soon as I can afford it) service -- let me know what you think!

http://msgme.at (clickable below)

Okie dokie -- Monitor For Me as a home alarm monitoring service was an utter flop, so I let it stagnate while I moved on to other things.

The other day a critical server of mine went down and I only discovered it by chance. "Shazam," I thought, "a pivot is in order!" I reoriented the service, got it live, and then I discovered Pingdom, UptimeRobot, and the several other options (that I somehow missed in my single cursory Google search) that already provide monitoring and notifications.

Not to worry, though, because I still believe I can carve out a piece of the market.

Monitor For Me checks up to 10 websites (or any hostname/IP and port that can be opened) every minute per user for $15/month. It'll also capture and show you response times from (currently) three cities around the US, and I plan to add a 4th in the US and one in London before too long.

Obviously there are a tremendous number of reporting, connection types, and options in general that can be added for value, but I want to start with the MVP -- a simple service to let you know (by SMS or email) when your server goes down.

Any hackers around here mind signing up and trying it out and letting me know what you think? Am I wasting my time (because the product needs more oomph or because there just isn't market share available)?

Edit: Also, if you've used other services like this, what was missing? What was unnecessary?

If you don't mind taking a look, visit http://monitorfor.me (clicky below), and use the access code HNFTW (limited to 15 users, I'll update if it fills up) for a free month of access.

Thanks a million!

- John