Jovan Cicmil's Blog - Web Development

Let’s perform an experiment. For this experiment, you will need an account with a freelance platform, but the results will be universally applicable. I’ll take Upwork here as an example. Go to Upwork. Find 10 projects with a maximum budget of $5,000 (on Upwork, this is a common budget because it’s one of the default options for fixed-price projects). Make sure you ...

Is freelancing the end goal? Or is it an intermediary step on the path to something else? To me, the answer is: both. I’ve been a freelancer for 11 years and I’ve never found it boring. I have, however, leveraged it to do other things: write a book, start a couple of companies (and sell one), and write this blog. What I haven’t done is incidentally the most popular way to scale a ...

A lot is written about how to find cutting-edge work in software development. “Learn this tech over that tech.” “Take this bootcamp.” “Buy my ebook.” You know the drill. Even more is written about how to make a certain amount of money in tech. Apply to this company. Jump through hoops. Silicon Valley. Buy my other ebook. Not nearly enough is written about finding work that is ...

If you asked a random person the question “are software developers rational as a whole”, you would very likely get an affirmative response. That response would show ignorance of the periodic pseudo-religious movements within the industry. One of the current religions is test-driven development. If you write tests after you write the actual code that performs the task at hand, you are now ...

Recently, I came across my notes from a technical interview I did back in 2017 with a funded tech startup. The interview consisted of a 30-minute video call, followed by a coding assignment that took about 2 hours, and a 30-minute feedback session the following day. Despite doing well on the call and having a stimulating discussion with their CTO, I did a pretty mediocre job of the coding ...

Back in 2011, I was a university graduate with a very foggy look at the future. The field of study that I had chosen at age 18 now seemed like a foolish choice. Even though it was an engineering degree, in my country it resigned me to office work in one of maybe a dozen telecommunications companies. This is not what I had envisioned when I left high school. I was lucky enough, however, to ...

If somebody wants to pay you to build a wooden cottage for them, what do you do? Do you: Name a price for building a wooden cottage. Offer to build them a mansion with a swimming pool, solar panels, garage, alarm system, and an exotic garden, then try to bill them for that. Common sense says that everyone should choose the former option. Yet, web development agencies routinely choose ...