

Ask HN: Today I got laid off, tomorrow I want to hack - messel

hack 4 hire<p>My goal is to build a fantastic web business. Until I can construct a core concept and refined pitch I want nothing more than to bury myself in the web stack from top to bottom. If you or a friends startup is hiring shoot me an email at messel at gmail dot com. Or contact me if you think you can help me refine my pitch.<p>If you'd care to see some humble projects I've worked:<p>My github:http://github.com/victusfate
(I've forked a few repos to learn from)<p>my first rails app (collaborative project)
http://imagebrowser.heroku.com<p>same concept ported to sinatra/datamapper http://knowsinatra.heroku.com<p>our startup homepage
http://victusmedia.com<p>other skills: 14 years simulations/modeling + algorithm development in c++, walk-a-holic, blog-aria, diehard dreamer.
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jasonjei
Take some time off, collect unemployment, because you need to find a scratch
to itch. I like the positive attitude from your layoff, and that's a very good
start. Look for problems that you have, and then look at problems others have.
I'll be looking forward to the products you make. Most importantly, you're on
your own now--you control your destiny. It'll be a very important distinction
because you will be the one who motivates yourself.

~~~
jeffclark
I was laid off 18-ish months ago from a GREAT job. Had about 5k saved and
received about 5k in severance. Buddy and I were working on a wedding-themed
startup and in the final interview stages with TechStars.

What I SHOULD have done is collect unemployment and worked my ass off on this
wedding project.

What I did INSTEAD was accept another job 3 weeks later working for a music
company and blew that 10k on a car to get there. Figured the insurance and
paycheck stability was worth working again.

Terrible idea. Not that our wedding-startup idea would have "taken off", but I
should have tried harder than I did.

The moral of the story:

Let the government subsidize your startup as long as you can afford to
(financially and mentally).

~~~
anamax
In the US you're legally obligated to look for suitable employment as a
condition of collecting unemployment. The form even asks if you're looking for
employment and if you've turned down paying-now work.

Working on your startup doesn't qualify.

~~~
damoncali
Ethically, I would argue that working on a startup is every bit as useful to
society as looking for a job. Perhaps even more so.

~~~
damoncali
At risk of further downvoting, let me explain. Unemployment checks are there
to provide a cushion for people who are not working, but want to be soon. I
fail to see the distinction between looking for a job at bigco and ramping up
for your own self-employment. Both cases satisfy the spirit of the law (which
is to help people get through tough periods on the way to working and
generally aid society as a whole).

Obviously, violating the letter of the law can get you in trouble, but in my
view, the morality police can rest easy on this one.

~~~
anamax
> I fail to see the distinction between looking for a job at bigco and ramping
> up for your own self-employment.

Applying for a job at several bigcos and smallcos can get you off unemployment
much faster than a startup.

~~~
damoncali
Most of the time, I suppose. But check this out:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03unemployed.html>

People complaining after losing benefits after _99 weeks_ of looking for a
job. As a tax payer, I feel way better about someone trying to start a
business than someone sitting on the couch "looking" for a job.

But I concede the point - bigco is probably more efficient for most folks.

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rayval
If you want to hack tomorrow (literally), there is the iOS Dev Camp at
EBay/Paypal HQ in San Jose starting tomorrow evening. This is an independent
not-for-profit all-volunteer event around the iPhone/iPad platform, but there
likely will be teams looking for devs that can do server-side programming
(Ruby on Rails is a popular choice), some HTML5, graphics, etc. Cost is modest
($50) for an entire weekend of pizza and code.

I am not one of the organizers, but have attended the past couple of events
and had a great time, learned a lot, won some cool prizes.

<http://www.iosdevcamp.org/>

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Travis
messel,

Best of luck to you. Don't love your drive or passion just b/c of your recent
layoff. That's more important than any paycheck. And I've found that working
even in the best environments can strip that passion from you.

Good luck. I hope you're the next success story I read about here on HN.

~~~
messel
That makes 2 of us.

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SingAlong
"Hack 4 hire" sounds like a nice term. I think we should make #hack4hire as a
Twitter hashtag.

I'll be out of college in a few months. And all I had in my credit list was
one small neat opensource library and 2 web apps (both unknown quantities)

So in order to prettify my resume. I'm working on an android app and a web app
and more as I think of ideas. I realized too late that the freelance work I
was doing was not something I wanted to decorate my resume with. It was just
Wordpress themes and plugins and some other php stuff.

After this post I'm going to be tagging all my tweets announcing code or apps
as #hack4hire

Here is what I'm working on right now: 1.) Ruby gem to make html
presentations. Coz I need it to give demo-like presentat ions when I teach
html/css to my classmates.

2.) 2 android apps. One of them for github.

3.) Going to make tweet4invite. To allow startup to setup pages where they can
serve invites to their app in return for a tweet about their startup.
(criticism welcome)

EDIT: I had 2 web app ideas. Just put one of them on top of another.

~~~
messel
That's good stuff sing. My githubbing really on started late last year early
this year when I had something I wanted to share.

Now I could spend all day learning tricks, api formats, and standards
implementation there. Brilliant startup idea by the founders.

~~~
SingAlong
If you are planning to work on something opensource mail me. My ideas might
not be cool like yours. But you've found someone to collaborate. I'm ok with
using any language (if I dont know it, I'll learn it quickly).

Does anyone know a site where people have ideas for opensource projects but
need collaborators? I just don't want to work on another web framework.
Anything crazy is fine. If I have to define crazy... I have an idea to make a
90min stickman movie with Processing. I'm planning to start next month.

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sp332
The Hackety Hack project ("_why's masterpiece" as the current maintainer,
steveklabnik put it), could use a hand. I just thought of it because Hackety
Hack 1.0-pre was just released today. <http://hackety-
hack.com/posts/happy_whyday>

~~~
steveklabnik
Hey, my Google Alerts just picked this up. I know it's three days late, I just
wanted to say thanks for mentioning Hackety. :) It's much appreciated.

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bconway
It can't be said enough: regardless of whether your next step is to job search
or to build a business, take a week off and let your brain unwind. Do it.
You'll thank us later.

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jonpaul
Wow, I just realized that your blog is on my RSS reader. Keep you head up
high. You'll make it eventually.

~~~
messel
Thanks for subscribing, that means a lot.

My blog isn't founded on multi-million dollar exits, massive investment pools,
or hacking bliss. Just one guys daily thoughts and experiences. The smallest
success will bring credibility to what is now only words.

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jacquesm
Check out the reddit is hiring thingy, nothing to lose.

Also: <http://jobs.github.com/positions>

Not exactly start-up stuff but it may help to make ends meet.

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messel
My location is Long Island, NY. Willing to relocate for the right opportunity.

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joshu
you should add your location.

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aresant
Where are u based?

