hjay's comments

SEEKING WORK - Vancouver/Remote

Struggling to find a web developer who understands your business?

I am Jay Huang, a full stack web developer and consultant based in Vancouver, B.C. Having co-founded of 2 of the largest communities on the internet dedicated to Windows, Windows7Center.com and Windows8Center.com (2008~2011) — I have experience taking projects from conception to a thriving business. This experience allows me to better understand your business and solve your most important problems.

What I can do for you:

* General technical consulting

* Web security consulting

* Frontend/backend Development (PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, etc)

* Wordpress themes and modifications

* Search Engine Optimization

* API development

* Responsive design (RWD)

http://jayhuang.org

Linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/huangjay

Hmm, since the demand is > 0 now, I guess I will! Not too sure how to get reply notifications on HN though, I always lose track of responses.

Wow, I could never write this well in a million years, but as I was reading, I couldn't help but feel that this was a blog post that I've been wanting to write for a while.

Without going on a rant and hi-jacking this thread, replacing "Participation Rank" with "consumption of beer/alcohol", "gathering" with "late night beer party", "Dad had a seizure" with "Mom was very sick", "kayak" with "badminton", "profile" with "LinkedIn", and you have 100% of my story give and take a few breaks in flow and sentence structure errors that are bound to happen with simple string replacement.

Guess it's time to finally go write that blog post.

Seems like I ended up with the opposite experience with Amazon from not having completed college.

First, a bit about my background. I got my first computer 6 years ago, and within a year, I was obsessed with learning to build for the web. Shortly after, this obsession took me to a few online forums dedicated to development and other similar works. I built a crappy content management system for a game that I played occasionally, which was given to people who ran servers for that same game. Shortly after, I myself started a private server for that game, and developed a lot of interesting game mechanics and interactions that did not exist in the official game. This private server grew to be very popular and had about 3000 players online simultaneously at any given time of day. Soon after, this private server received a cease and desist order by the company that owned the game, and I pulled the plug.

During that time, I met my (future) co-founder through one of our players. We went on to co-found Windows7Center and Windows8Center.com (offline as of 2012), and over 3 years, gained quite a bit of success and popularity. During those few years, between these efforts and school, I took on freelance web development work to satisfy both my passion and my family's monetary needs.

I then decided against taking my full scholarship to law school, and attended a local technical college for Computer Science. After finishing my 1st year in Computer Science, I left school to pursue full-time opportunities because of financial difficulties that arose. Up till now, I've been working full-time for close to 2 years.

When I found out Amazon was hiring in Vancouver, B.C, I applied. I was interested but I was not yet prepared to leave my job in the case of an offer. A few months later, I left the company I was in, and around the same time, was asked to participate in Amazon's phone interviews. Throughout the process, they were aware that I had only completed 1 year of college.

My interview was with a senior engineer working in the same area I was applying for over in Seattle, and went quite well. Subsequently, I was flown down to Seattle for a full day of on-site interviews (for a Vancouver position). Long story short, the interviews went well, and after going through the 7 interviewers, my last interview was with the lead recruiter from Vancouver, who had flown down to interview me.

He then proceeded to spend the remaining 35~40 minutes drawing on the whiteboard the compensation details of the position, including signing bonus, equity options, performance bonus, how I could choose between more options or cash for the bonus, the benefits of choosing one over the other, the base salary, etc. He said "when I send you the offer on Wednesday, you will see _______" on a couple occasions. Then he walked out with me and explained that the team in Vancouver was very diverse and full of cool people, how it was much like a startup, and that I would love it. (I guess he was "selling" me the opportunity) He then said "once you accept the offer, we will fly you back down around 3 weeks later to do the training here, because the Vancouver offices are still quite small and we don't have that many hires that week".

Fast forward a month, and after 3 emails from me checking back with them, I received nothing. No offer, no email, nothing.

It's been a while since that whole experience, and after reaching out to a few employees at Amazon to help me gather some information about what happened, a recruiter told me "All of Amazon’s development roles require a bachelor’s degree". Of course this is not entirely true, as they do have engineers without degrees, but apparently I was rejected without notice because of my lack of a degree.

SEEKING WORK - Vancouver/Remote

Struggling to find a web developer who understands your business?

I am Jay Huang, a full stack web developer and consultant based in Vancouver, B.C. Having co-founded of 2 of the largest communities on the internet dedicated to Windows, Windows7Center.com and Windows8Center.com (2008~2011) — I have experience taking projects from conception to a thriving business. This experience allows me to better understand your business and solve your most important problems.

What I can do for you:

* General technical consulting

* Web security consulting

* Frontend/backend Development (PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, etc)

* Wordpress themes and modifications

* Search Engine Optimization

* API development

* Responsive design (RWD)

http://jayhuang.org

Linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/huangjay

SEEKING WORK - Vancouver/Remote

Struggling to find a web developer who understands your business?

I am Jay Huang, a full stack web developer and consultant based in Vancouver, B.C. Having co-founded of 2 of the largest communities on the internet dedicated to Windows, Windows7Center.com and Windows8Center.com (2008~2011) — I have experience taking projects from conception to a thriving business. This experience allows me to better understand your business and solve your most important problems.

What I can do for you:

* General technical consulting

* Web security consulting

* Frontend/backend Development (PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, etc)

* Wordpress themes and modifications

* Search Engine Optimization

* API development

* Responsive design (RWD)

http://jayhuang.org

Linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/huangjay

I'm in the exact same situation. Except in my case, in Canada, and (only) after 1 year of full-time courses.

I also did a paid internship, for $18 an hour at a major software company in Vancouver, B.C. Now the Canadian government has decided that I have more than enough (assuming a cost of living of 0 for a 20 year old that has to support an elderly mother).

So basically, I have an income of 0 (aside from my freelance work), costs running at ~$1600 CAN per month for basic shelter + food for 2 people, AND the Canadian government is constantly on my back for student loan repayment. I did not choose to dropout of college, I was (essentially) forced to by the government.

Best part is, now any employer I talk to asks about the 1 year I spent in college. I'm sure they assume that as a 20 year old, I am either lazy, stupid, or irresponsible. But that couldn't be further from the truth. I've worked 18~22 hour days everyday of my life since I was 16, and I'm tired. Not tired of a (somewhat) difficult life, but tired of the assumptions people make. People in the government, people who have power of employment, people around me who judge a book by its cover.

SEEKING WORK - Vancouver/Remote

Struggling to find a web developer who understands your business?

I am Jay Huang, a full stack web developer and consultant based in Vancouver, B.C. Having co-founded of 2 of the largest communities on the internet dedicated to Windows, Windows7Center.com and Windows8Center.com (2008~2011) — I have experience taking projects from conception to a thriving business. This experience allows me to better understand your business and solve your most important problems.

What I can do for you:

* General technical consulting

* Web security consulting

* Frontend/backend Development (PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, etc)

* Wordpress themes and modifications

* Search Engine Optimization

* API development

* Responsive design (RWD)

http://jayhuang.org

Linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/huangjay

I live in Vancouver. There are quite a few startups in the Gastown area, and a few small offices for large companies like Microsoft, SAP (not that small), and Amazon, and recently, Facebook and Twitter (to come?).

In terms of the work, I've been seeing a lot of Java, and C#/.NET work in Vancouver. Which for me as someone whose experience has been full-stack web development (LAMP/WAMP, PHP, SQL/no-sql DBs, HTML/CSS, JS frameworks), it's quite hard to find a suitable positions.

Also a few Ruby positions opening up lately, but very few.

All I know about Toronto is Google has an office there while they don't in Vancouver. It'd be best if a local Toronto or Montreal dev could provide some insight.

SEEKING WORK - Vancouver/Remote

Struggling to find a web developer who understands your business?

I am Jay Huang, a full stack web developer and consultant based in Vancouver, B.C. Having co-founded of 2 of the largest communities on the internet dedicated to Windows, Windows7Center.com and Windows8Center.com (2008~2011) — I have experience taking projects from conception to a thriving business. This experience allows me to better understand your business and solve your most important problems.

What I can do for you:

* General technical consulting

* Web security consulting

* Frontend/backend Development (PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, etc)

* Wordpress themes and modifications

* Search Engine Optimization

* API development

* Responsive design (RWD)

http://jayhuang.org

Linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/huangjay

I think one of the most common misconceptions people have about freelancers, is that we know everything about every project we throw ourselves into. That couldn't be further from the truth (at least for me).

As a freelancer, the most important skill is NOT coding. Yes, writing code gets you to the end-goal, but what the client really wants, is results and growth for their business. As a freelancer, you will often have to work on something that you don't know 100%, and maybe even having barriers to accomplish the project. However, hiring a freelancer is very much looking at their past successes, and using that to gauge the result of their current project, along with the value this freelancer can bring. As long as you get it done and bring results, and maintain an amiable relationship with the client, not much else matters.

So in on that note, I would say which language you choose hardly matters. But that's not true. You want to choose a language you are familiar with, and one that seems to be brought up in whichever areas you are looking for clients.

As many have already said, and I kind of hinted at above, learn as you build. This is the best and fastest way to gain the knowledge and skills you need. Much like building a startup, have something early on to put out into the world, and build on top of that.

Any projects can prove to someone you are worth hiring. As a freelancer, part of your job is to instill confidence into this potential client, and demonstrate to the the VALUE you add to their business. Not the algorithmic complexity, not the pretty code, not how many lines of code you've written, but the VALUE (increase in revenue, lower costs, higher conversions, putting their product on the forefront, etc) you bring to them.

I wrote a blog post[1] recently about things you should know about freelancing, it's not too in depth as it's targetted towards people who have not begun freelancing and are curious about it.

Keep improving yourself, and good luck!

[1] http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/things-you-should-know-about-fr...

I also had a problem with being "overly ambitious" early on in my life. Any satisfaction gained from being first in anything quickly died off, while placing 2nd gave me nightmares constantly and made me hate myself for it. I recently wrote a blog post about it [1].

Luckily, I was thrown into a foreign country where I was able to feel failure every single day at school until I was no longer overly resistant to it.

[1]: http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/the-cost-of-underselling/

I saw the picture of Susan Cain (the author) on that page and I thought she was awfully familiar. It was then that I realized she was the lady who gave this talk http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.... a while back.

Enjoyed the talk, I will be looking to buy this book once I'm done with my current reading schedule.

"The strange thing is, if you see me in the street and engage in contemplation I will probably freeze into polite fear and smile inanely until I can get away to be on my lonely ownsome."

This is me. I feel lonely all the time, yet when people approach me for conversation, I smile and respond with the least amount of words possible, and long for the moment I can be on my own again.

A great example of how important it is for us as developers to recognize the value we provide to businesses/users instead of measuring it all solely in terms of algorithmic complexity and LOC.

Side note: Tatung makes some pretty amazing rice cookers. My family has used the same one for over 40 years now, and it still cooks as well as ever.

Ha, this reminds me of an interview I had recently. After 3 hours of interviewing with 4 different people from the company, they sat me down to complete a technical test for 30 minutes.

Something I really liked about it was that they were fine with me searching up things I did not know (IMO, Googling is a skill and asking candidates to answer trivia questions solely from memory is quite unreasonable).

What was a bit inconsiderate was that they made me do this on a Mac. Now I understand most people have used a Mac before, and I certainly have worked with people who used Macs. Unfortunately though, prior to this, I had never actually used a Mac (let alone write code on it). I thought this could have been done better, but I do realize being someone who has never had the opportunity to use a Mac, I am part of an extremely small demographic.

SEEKING WORK - Vancouver/Remote

Struggling to find a web developer who understands your business?

I am Jay Huang, a full stack web developer and consultant based in Vancouver, B.C. Having co-founded of 2 of the largest communities on the internet dedicated to Windows, Windows7Center.com and Windows8Center.com (2008~2011) — I have experience taking projects from conception to a thriving business. This experience allows me to better understand your business and solve your most important problems.

What I can do for you:

* General technical consulting

* Web security consulting

* Frontend/backend Development (PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, etc)

* Wordpress themes and modifications

* Search Engine Optimization

* API development

* Responsive design (RWD)

http://jayhuang.org

Linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/huangjay

A bit of an addition to the note on not starting a long-term relationship on the wrong foot with your future employer.

I do think negotiating a job offer is very important. It doesn't benefit anyone if you are feeling undervalued/underpaid at a job. Work performance will take a hit, team dynamic will slowly shift, you will wake up every morning dreading to go to work.

However, I do think there is a need to resist the urge to treat negotiation like a game. Sure you may have gotten the best offer possible for your skills/experience, but how much do you need to be satisfied and do your best work? If you get hired having massively oversold yourself and the value you bring to the team, are you sure that would be a good start for your new job?

I recently negotiated a 7.4% increase on my base pay for a new job. I could have easily negotiated a 16% increase but I didn't. I want both parties to start the relationship happy. If either side feels like "did I just get cheated out of X?", that is a loss for me. Sure, any relationship may go bad, but why start a relationship if it's not going to be sweet to begin with?

Yes, definitely not Vancouver. Any house here is $1M starting even if it's small and crappy. An apartment with 700 square feet or so will set you back $400k.

On top of that, there isn't really a tech scene here. Many small startups, but mostly ones you don't really hear about. A few large companies are here, but with fairly small offices.

Apple seems to appeal to consumers by the appearance and experience more than anything. When they do mention numbers, it's always "x% faster, x% smaller!", which is really all anyone cares about -- "How much better is this compared to what I already have?"