iposbeforehoes's comments

This is going to sound sad, but I can't figure out how to install Python 3 and run a script with a single package.

Seriously. I've programmed for 5 years, studied CS, and I really don't understand how to do it.

I have a Mac Book Pro Retina, so it ships with 2.7. I write Ruby in various versions via RVM, and I have no idea what version of Node I use, but I use it a lot.

Over the Holiday I decided to try to port some Node services to Python (mainly because they are analytics projects and I'd like to start using Python for analytics and "data science" ). And I struck out. Bad. Using Homebrew to install Python 3[.3] and no success with virtualenv and Pip. At best I get a pip-3.3 to install and crash anytime I try to install a package.

I would love to convert these services to Python 3. In fact, I'll regret not doing so. But at this point, it really isn't worth my time trying to figure it out. Once I accepted installing my packages via 2.7, I was able to convert the services (with tests!) over a long weekend.

I did a fair amount of research through Google and Stack Overflow, and each confirmed my suspicion that this process is shit.

I just saw a tweet by @holman where he described a friend saying 'how can ruby be such an easy language but be so hard to install?' And asserted that our industry still sucks (and in my opinion Ruby in any incarnation is infinitely easier than Python).

He is so right.

My business partner and I I just opened a startup using nothing but our own research time and a few hundred dollars. We filed for a corporation in Delaware, simply because we were accepting institutional investing. We paid , maybe, 200 for the incorporation fees, and another 400 for a lawyer to fill in our stock purchase agreement and vesting schedules (which was, in retrospect, probably unncessary, because It will be restructured when we accept the capital infusion, but it suffices for now. as always, seek your own legal advice. But the basics are openly available.

I think it varies depending on a lot of factors (current market, type of position, timeline, etc). My company works with 3 recruiters (NYC) and they all either take one month salary or thereabouts - so about 7 to 10%. I doubt many recruiters go below that rate, but I've heard of startups in NYC paying up to 50% fee.

The most obvious advice is to choose from the infinite careers that leverage a technical background: project manager, business analyst, business development, sales, and anything else further in the leadership side of a technology company.

That is actually a natural progression for a lot of people in our field. I, personally, don't want to be a developer when I am 35, and I am already being tasked with more and more of the duties of the roles I mentioned above, and I like it. Have you been tasked with of the duties of other roles that are less development-oriented? Did you like it?

If your sole reason for wanting to switch really is your health issues, find out what professions leverage your previous technical knowledge, and further refine that list depending on which roles will work with your health issues. On a side note, it seems that most professional careers these days require that you sit a computer for long periods of times: lawyers, engineers of all fields, accountants, and finance professionals, etc. So keep that in mind.

Ultimately, you get one body, so make your health your first priority. And you only get one life so make sure you're doing what you want to do. Good luck.

I currently live in Manhattan, and work for a start up in Manhattan, and I can assure you that it is very possible to live in NYC on a "typical" start up salary.

While I don't know what the true "typical" start up salary in NYC, I'll give you my experience: I interviewed with 7 start ups, and 6 of the 7 were offering a nice chunk of equity and salaries over $100,000. If you can't live in NYC on 100k, you're doing something very wrong.

And, great article!