Standup
Yesterday I implemented enough HTML templating and rendering to display an entire site (the business site) + markdown driven blog and a HTML contact form that saves a user's name and email into a CSV file if it's not already in the CSV file.
I spent some time fighting some abstractions over FastAPI that I had previously written. Those abstractions were written too early and didn’t properly model how I thought about building software, so I ended up removing most of them and just going with how FastAPI wants things done.
I didn't get around to doing any significant styling beyond picking a typeface and implementing some UX on the contact form.
Today I need to focus on branding and copying my business site code into the prototype lander/marketing/platform API project and start to develop that too. My goal is to get something publishable to both sites by the end of day.
After today, I have 2 days to integrate a payment processor1 and push both landing sites live. I feel a little behind schedule - probably 2 to 3 hours behind. I should have been able to copy the structure for the business website over to the product website, however I got bogged down fighting some of my own previously implemented abstractions around FastAPI. I ended up either writing around or sacrificing those abstractions to the altar of time and removed them. My attempts to be clever were slowing the progress down too much.
When you're in the weeds working your plan, especially when it's a tight plan, you need to be ruthless about maintaining focus and forward momentum. When you've been doing time-constrained work for a while, you get a feeling for the pace of progress you should be experiencing. I get a pang of anxiety whenever I get the sense that progress is slowing down too much, and over the years I've learned to listen to it. Whenever I feel that anxiety, I take a step back and re-assess what I'm doing.
I ask myself:
1. Is this actually what I need to be working on, or have I fallen into a rabbit hole?
2. If yes, is this the best way to solve the problem? Is there a different, faster way?
3. If this is the best way, am I trying to be too clever? Am I fighting someone else's design?
4. If no, and I'm still stuck, what am I missing? What don't I know?
I find this framework tends to unstick me from most problems and ensure I'm focused on the right thing. The first three questions ensure you're working on what you really need to work on, and how you need to work on it. The last question gets you through the real work of what you're building, which is where most of your effort should be anyway.
So far, I’ve been exclusively writing on the entrepreneurial side of my daily toils and I haven’t mentioned much about the other, arguably bigger and primary goal - finding a new job.
The last time I was unemployed was in May, 2023. I wrote a little a little about the market back then after I was unemployed for 4 months, and it’s way worse now. Back then it felt like the shedding was at the bottom end of the experience pool. Tech companies over-hired during the pandemic, drunk on the new access to a talent pool that had to be remote. The years following were a correction of sorts and unfortunately it hit those with fewer than 4 years experience the hardest. Everyone else underwent title inflation, and people with 6 years of experience out of coding bootcamp were calling themselves seniors.
In 2025, the robots are finally coming for our jobs. Actually, a bruised and beaten economy and dark economic future forecasts are causing all sorts of companies to re-examine their bottom lines, and start cutting the more non-essential costs. Highly experienced engineers who recently negotiated a raise, as a random totally-not-related example, suddenly go on the chopping block. Now the cuts are economic, and the talent market is full of smart, experienced people of all levels from all kinds of tech companies - from your mom and pop boutique dev shops to Meta and Amazon.
Everybody is competing with everybody, and “senior engineers” with 8-10 years of experience are interviewing against “senior engineers” with 15+ years of experience. I’ve personally heard that companies are able to snap up highly skilled engineers that they didn’t have access to before - both because they’re available, and because market pressures mean they’re also suddenly in budget. It doesn’t matter if you think you deserve $30k more when the bank is calling about their missing mortgage payment.
I’ve always kept a relatively warm network. I try to be as polite as possible with recruiters and reply to every one that reaches out. I connect with almost all recruiters who contact me, and I also never delete email. Lately, even though the market is tough I have been seeing activity on the recruitment side. Over the last few months I’ve had probably 4-6 recruiter contacts per month, so there’s an inbound flow trickling in that gives me some relief.
With that said, as soon as I was laid off, I
replied to every recently replied to or pending recruiter messages to set up a call
started replying to every in-bound recruiter to set up a call ASAP
found contacts in my LinkedIn network, checked their employers for roles, and hit up a few for referrals
cold applied to the "dream" jobs that I know I'll never get
I cannot stress how important your network is during an economy like this. Those “dream” jobs I applied to? For the last few days I’ve had a steady stream of flat out rejection emails from those “dream jobs”. My resume likely never made it through their ATS screening systems. That LinkedIn contact I hit up? Within a few hours they agreed to refer me to a role available at their company. Employee referrals are generally fast-tracked to the head of the interviewing pipeline assuming there’s a good fit on paper.
It's a tough market out there in April2, 2025 and the push for return-to-office makes finding a job challenging when you're planning on moving to rural Washington. Many of the in-bound recruiters are recruiting for local Austin, TX roles - a total non-starter for me unfortunately. A few have said they're open to changing the role to remote for the right candidate, but nothing has come out of that yet.
To date, I have a screening call set up with “AICo” today, and I'm in the very early stages of setting up screens for two other companies, “InsuranceCo” and “HealthCo”. Given the market conditions however, I'm placing very little faith in opportunities where I haven't spoken to anyone at least by voice. Many of these will just evaporate before I can get anyone on the phone (and one did while I was working with the recruiter to schedule the phone screen).
Stripe, mostly due to familiarity with the platform
April at the time of writing - this series is delayed somewhat