Yes! Readerly (readerly.com) delivers on what Goodreads doesn't - it doesn't rely on the 5-star rating system and learns what you like to give you better recommendations. This means it's a social network that improves for users as it grows, it doesn't weaken as Goodreads does.
Yes, and although I won't say to always trust that "feeling you get".. there is a feeling that you get when you organically come to that realization and it's very different from sitting in a brainstorming session and thinking of 20 ideas in a row. Can't replace first-hand experience in a space.
Plenty of projects just need to be built to test. My apps would never be built and then rev'd if they were built to be "rock solid" in their first iteration. It's important to have frameworks that get apps off the ground quicker.
Start with a really good spec. I started ProjectPulse.io by clearly defining the problem, and what the solution would look like. Then I dove into defining the needs of all the MVP features. From there, it wasn't hard for me to make wireframes and get awesome designs from a designer. Then, I also made a list of features I'm going to want to add, but not for the MVP, so they felt like they were on paper, but not the same as MVP features.
Once you have a list down of things that need to be built because you know the sum of those things is an MVP, put your head down and work until it's done. Don't question anything until you have an MVP. Stop second guessing the product or the market and just build it.
I'm leaving out the whole "research and learn from potential users" - that comes first, but that's not what we're talking about here.
TL;DR: Write a detailed spec for an MVP, then put your head down in code until you have an MVP.
Maybe, but this isn't the issue at hand. The issue is that it's easy for employers to take advantage of employees. Just because you're in a startup doesn't mean you MUST be taken advantage of since that's the cross to bear for engineers. That's not sustainable and it's a bummer so many people in the industry think that being abused is the only way to make it to the end zone.
This is absolutely true. Without a solid vacation policy you can't lean on anything when push comes to shove.
At the end of the day, I believe that if an employer wants to be fair to employees, it doesn't matter if they have unlimited vacations or register PTO, it's going to come down to the message the employer sends to the employees about how to use vacation, when there are special situations (servers go down at 1am), and when the right time to indulge is (you overworked a bit this week - take the 2nd half of Friday off because you earned it).
I'm a product-focused front-end developer with some available time as a consultant for new interesting projects. I say I'm product-focused because I care deeply about UI/UX, and although I'm not a designer, I obviously know my way around Photoshop. I have a keen product sense, strong opinions on how interfaces should be built, eye for element weights on a site, and I care deeply that the projects I work on meet their product goals, not just that I code what I promised to code.
Looking to contribute to a meaningful product!
The technologies I've spent the most time with are HTML/Sass/CSS/jQuery/JS/PHP/WP.. and recently spent a little time in Rails, CoffeeScript, and Backbone environments.
