This never ends. I am a lot more privileged than many in my 40s and I still feel like a loser because i didn't hit the goals I had for 40. You have to realize and accept that there always will be someone doing better than you not because they are but because you "think" so. It is human nature.

Btw, most people in America are living on credit. The fancy cars you see ? Most of them are leased or financed. Big houses ? A lot of people are house poor i.e. living paycheck to paycheck to keep up with the fancy house. And the real rich/wealthy people you see ? Those are built over generations, not in 1 lifetime.

So stop thinking about how everyone has got it bt you haven't. There are plenty of people worst than you and there always be people in better situation than you. It is called Life.

The only thing that matters is how you are living YOUR life, not others'. FOcus on doing what you want to do and go for it. Spend time on things and people you care about and who care about you.

Go on Linkedin and search for small companies with less than 50 employees that have been in business for 3-5 years minimum. Figure out what they do, what they sell and if you would be interested in their company. Don't worry about whether they have a job listing or not.

Approach their founder(s) directly and sell yourself.

Is this the new version of "just walk in and ask for a job" of our parent's time?

Yes and it can work if you do it the right way. I have done it at least twice in my career.

Is being unwilling to dig deep, find direct contacts (to avoid being grouped with LinkedIn or Indeed mass-appliers) and actually understand the place you're applying (and their mission statement) before writing your note/cover letter

the new version of not being willing to go into a place and ask for a job?

Yeah. I'd say so.

There's no intrinsic value in a high effort action that has no chance of success.

Tell me. How many times did this strategy work for you?

Every time.

Why else would I recommend it?

There's no intrinsic value in hiring someone that couldn't be bothered to fudge that they were Mad Libs-ing their cover letter.

Not yet and won't be 100% but I am working on an AI agent to build a custom support workflow and replace at least half of Level 1 support team with that. The reason is not just cost but efficiency.

You know it is going to shit when even Inuit Quickbooks now has "AI". Not sure for what.

"I don’t want to be invited by companies which prioritize appearances over merit"

Easy to say when you may be employed and have a good job. Tell that to OP who is looking for every possible way to get an interview with an employer.

Appearances absolutely matter in a professional setting and even though it should not be the 1st criteria to select someone, it is important.

So that’s literally the first thing I “opined” here on - I wouldn’t prioritize the photo unless it’s something god awful.

I recently had to endure a job search and did not have a “good job” for longer than I would like. So I’m speaking from recent experience of thinking about the appearances I give off.

"since when does that matter in software related work."

It matters for people like OP who are already at a disadvantage. Yes this may not matter to many who are privileged to have a great job and do great work and their employer may not care. But when you are asking to be hired by another company and they don't know how great you are, you need to be presentable in a professional setting.

Overall, we need to stop normalizing being too casual in professional setting. Yes, even as Software Engineers. If all things are equal, I will always pick someone who cares about looking professional for work than not.

I think Laravel copied/inspired heavily from Ruby on Rails initially.

Some rules for backups that you must follow:

1. Backups must be taken offsite on a separate server (obvious but surprisingly some people miss this)

2. Backups must be tested frequently. If you cannot test a backup, you don't have a backup.

3. Frequency depends on your criticality of data, your contract/SLA with your customer etc. Ideally, you should be able to have Point-in-time-Restore (PTR) going back to certain number of hours/days/weeks

4. Make sure to have notifications for backup failures. If a backup failed, you must be notified to correct it manually.

5. Bonus: Have a backup reconciliation script that runs additionally to recon all backups for a certain period.

> Backups must be taken offsite on a separate server (obvious but surprisingly some people miss this)

Yea, you can't call it a back up if it's still in the same place. Lol

Tell me you have never built a real world production application without telling me you have never built a real world production application.

Doing this on 2 apps

200k users a month, not huge but not nothing

Why do you think it's a bad schema?

Most VCs (YC included) makes it clear that they invest in people/teams, not ideas or the product. Picking people to fund is mostly a gamble anyway. So a lot of VCs or funds try to maximize their changes of success by looking at indicators like Ivy league schools. It is an indicator if all else is equal. Think of it this way. Would you be more inclined to fund either:

Team A: Ivy leaguers with an unknown idea/product

OR

Team B: No name people with an unknown idea/product or even a reasonable idea but too early to prove scale for VC funding.

So even though YC (and other VCs) doesn't reject people that not Ivy Leaguers (many have been funded), the bar is much higher for those people. It is the unfortunate reality. I personally don't see anything wrong with that. Every VC wants to maximize their chance of success in investing in startups which is already a gamble.