Help planning my career path to build businesses and apps on Maidsafe

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Hi everyone, I’m a 25-year entrepreneur with a small lawncare business. I’m an anarcho-capitalist as well and I see the future of the world heading to decentralized networks like maidsafe and etherium. I want to solve problems, start businesses, and create a more free world. I see maidsafe as part of that.
So Iv decided to become a programmer. I’m going to be doing a coding boot camp. I want to be able to contribute and start companies in these new areas of tech like etherium, block chains, stock.it, and distributed systems, etc. I’m getting rid of my current business to pursue this. I am trying to get a feel for what my career roadmap might look like so that I have the skills and knowledge to enter into this area and make an impact on the world.

I would really appreciate if I could receive advice from experienced people in this industry. If you could include you current project/work position and career background information with any relevant advice I would extremely grateful.
Thank you all!

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Welcome to the forum!

If you are looking for advice on the future of the internet and the best way to get involved, I can not think of a better place to start than here!!!

There are dozens of highly qualified, motivated and very intelligent members, all with different views and from all places and walks of life who will be happy to guide you in your new career path.

Best of luck! :slight_smile:

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Thanks! all the advice i can get the better I can get a skeleton idea of the next few years of my life to get to my goals!

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Awesome to see people taking charge of their futures. Love seeing this kind of thing. I taught myself programming back in the day. Please check out the Crowd Found Hub and see if it interests you. You sound like a potential Maker in the wings.

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Is there a certain type of product or coding language you are most interested in?

The first questions you will most likely be asked is what kind of products do you want to make and are you interested in design, data storage, front end, web sites…etc… this will help determine the most relevant coding avenue to pursue initially…which I am sure will be hotly debated as many coders have their own personal favorite…lol.

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You need to make your goal(s) a bit more specific.

Chardrickm’s link is as good a place to start as any.

In your position I would focus on getting an entry-level job as a programmer, doing anything. Only then think about developing for SAFE.

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I am not a MAIDsafe core developer. But I am a developer by profession.

In my opinion all it it takes to develop code is dedication and focus.
I’ve seen brilliant friends fail in their career path because they had no focus.

I definitely think a coding camp is the way to go.
University in my opinion is an antiquated form of learning. There is no proper substitute for being an auto-didactic.

I wouldn’t quit your small business just yet. One of my biggest regrets was closing down my business.

One final piece of advise learn by doing, and start small.

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yes it deffintily does, in fact i have a special little idea that is going to change politics forever, the same way cryptocurrancies will end central banks. It can only work if its on a fully scaled network like the SAFE NETWORK. -devious grin- lol

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well, i want to make the world free, human freedom is my number one passion. And as far as I can tell over the next 5 to 10 years there is going to be an explosion in these distributed systems technologies like maidsafe, etherium, bitcoin, blockchain in general, open bazaar, Tor network, etc. These technologies I think are going to end the state and I have to be apart of that in one form or another. Im very intelligent, hard working, open minded, and driven towards that goal. I also want to make more than a good living. So this brings me to being a tech entreprenuer and a software engineer and programmer. I allready have a special idea that will change the political landscape forever but a scaled up maidsafe network is a requirement.

roadmap
*I dont know really any programming.
So my first step i think is learn java and do a bootcamp, looking at Hack reactor or Devbootcamp
then a job at… dont know…
There is so much I dont know, that i need to know to plan my path. which is why im on here.

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Hi Josh,

I love your focus and dynamism. I admire that because I was never very career goal driven or a long term thinker. It didn’t do me any harm though :slight_smile:

We’re at opposite ends of our careers, and I think share that passion and enthusiasm for a technology that it’s just irresistible to something in us. By rights I should be spending more time relaxing, but, well you know what this project is (or I expect, soon will :slight_smile: ).

I don’t have much advice for you yet, except to say I think you are doing fine. Follow that, it seems to be taking you where you need to go. And if you stick around here I’ll be happy to chip in with suggestions or help you with questions etc.

I’m not sure if you need this suggestion or not, but it is something I could have done with more of much earlier: get to know yourself, if you don’t already know what I mean by that.

You asked for info about us. I wrote a lot in the “Introduce yourself” topic of you want more, but here’s a summary… physics degree, home built computer, self taught digital design, build & assembler level programming of a disk interface for that computer (5.25" floppy that is). The physics degree didn’t get me my dream job, but that plus the self taught design & computer stuff did. I think you can do the same here, though with different end goals in mind.

That job got me into a place where I did that self teaching, design, build programming stuff for ten years on all kinds of projects across multiple industries, with a bunch of people (Cambridge Consultants) who have collectively changed the world (ink jet printing, Bluetooth, blah blah). Wild! It got boring in the end :slight_smile: so then I got another dream job for another ten years (software startup that also changed the world - and taught me a lot about investigating, analysis, visualisation, but about databases, all sorts again). All the time I also had my own side projects and ran my own business (software, hardware, consulting etc) because I like dabbling, and had an eye for a chance to make money, but it remained just a hobby/sideline that paid for itself, while teaching me about accounting, tax, etc.

Later I got to know myself :slight_smile:

I’m curious why you think Java? Maybe we can talk a bit about directions, options etc, to help you explore the landscape? Having had a few years out (before finding David turned my best laid plans around) I’m having to re learn the landscape anew myself because it had changed. So maybe we can help each other understand it better. When I started there were a handful of languages, and very few options to choose from in terms of software tools. Lots of time was spent writing stuff to help write stuff etc (which I enjoyed). These days it’s all, what’s this and what does it do, because so many people have created so many languages and helpful tools which are all there at the click of a download link! It can be overwhelming, but you just have to get stuck in and learn as you go.

I hope there something useful to you in my response because I’m enjoying hearing your enthusiasm and it makes me want to help.

One other bit of advice - best advice really: enjoy what you do. I was always lucky in finding that, and it’s why I am involved in this project. It’s a lot of fun! :slight_smile:

I’m offline for a couple of days so may not be able to respond further for a few days though. Good luck!

Mark

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Hey Lucas,

Im 29 atm and in the same situation as you are i wanna be a fulltime developer/entrepreneur just the Road is pretty hard and slow cause i cant switch my fulltime job.

I think there are many ways to make your own path just by beeing dedicated to what you wanna do, now im learning Javascript and Nodejs, so i can handle frontend and backend Applications myself. Also im the Dutch Ambassador for Lisk and I enjoy crypto every day from trading to Reading forums like this one. I hope one day to make Crypto my full time job.

With Maid your on the right track i love what they do and i def. wanna support them by deploying some own idead on their platform.

Good luck, Let us know your steps and what you started learning and where.

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Lucas, hi, good luck with your career change. Re politics, I wondered if you’d heard of a project we have going in Australia, https://voteflux.org/? It might give you some ideas, you might be able to contribute, and it will be the first experiment of its kind, so one to watch.

Cheers

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Cool,

Lucas,

Keep your biz. Lotsa smart folks here to help you with your goals.

Good luck.

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Very interesting. But the problem is taxation is theft and voting on a law through the government is immoral. It wont solve the fundamental problem of coercion. Coercion is coercion wether done by a dictator, king, republic, or a democeracy. Government is based upon coersion.

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thanks for the support though : )

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Regarding to the lack of “focus”, maybe you should ask them if they were passionate about it.
Passion, bordering obsession, and love for what you do is the key to be persistent and focused on what you endeavor.

Without passion and love, there is no way you will be able to focus unless you are taking Ritalin.
Most ADD cases are misdiagnosed, it is not lack of focus, it is lack of interest.

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Yep, that is a view shared by many. My view is that a line drawn between where we are now and our ideal will pass through many intermediate points. An interim goal can be that the institutions that define our freedoms can be called to actually be what they purport to be, not an unaccountable theatrical deceit. Also, the Voteflux application and thinking can apply to more that keeping our senators accountable during their terms, it can be thought of as a powerful and generalisable collaboration platform. In any case, I’ll be very interested to hear what you have in mind, and thank you for your thoughts.

Cheers

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This is not new. The same theme comes up again and again in representative democracies, along with the rhetoric of making the political process “rational” and “modern” (words used on that website), and so often the process of enacting it politically itself eventually becomes an obvious theatrical deceit.

Name one historical example ever where taxation was done away with by the democratic process.

On topic: You aren’t doing Lucas any favors by presenting that stuff. He wants to learn computer programming and use it to help create his ancap world. I’m not sure that that is entirely possible but I am confident that 90% of it is. You can’t get rid of coercion (IMO) but you surely can spread it around…

I have no idea what his proposed political project might be but I would hazard a wild guess that it is less like Flux and closer in tone to what people such as Tim May and Jim Bell wrote about.

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Hi Lucas

I think it’s great you want to pursue a career in Computer Science. The most important thing is to get a good foundation in Computer Science principles, and build from there. By all means concurrently explore the areas you are really interested in, like crypto.

##BRICK AND MORTAR SCHOOLS

Getting a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science is the most optimal for getting a solid base, and for job employment. Going to a community college is an excellent way to get started, and its cheaper. To get a BS in Computer Science, you will also have to bone up in your math. Ask a councilor at a community college about what classes to take to transfer as a junior to a four year program at a university. In California, we have something called IGETC. If you meet all the class requirements in IGETC, you can transfer to any UC school with junior status, have all your lower division course work already completed, and start on your upper division course work. Your community college may not offer all of the lower division classes required for a specific university. If you live close to a university you would like to attend, make an appointment with a councilor in the Computer Science Department at the University to find out what classes are required to transfer as a junior and what equivalent classes are accepted from the community college you will attend. FYI, acceptance rates transferring with junior status is very high.

MOOCs (MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE CLASSES)

But MOOCs (Massive Open Online Classes) are totally fantastic for getting exposed to lots of great stuff. And you can get really valuable certificates of achievement on subjects related to whats going in the working world. Check out Coursera.org, edX.org, Udemy.com, Udacity.com.

I think Coursera.org is the best resource for learning your programming foundation from a MOOC in my opinion. You can get your programming basics, and learn object-oriented programming, data structures, and algorithms from this MOOC.

An intro programming class taught in Java or python would be the easiest way to get started. (C++ is also very good, but it does have a higher learning curve. You will most likely use C++ in University for your upper division coursework. The syntax is very similar to Java, but you do your own memory management using pointers.)

CRITICAL SKILLS

You want to train your mind like a software engineer, and not just a programmer.

Learning Object-Oriented Programming, Data Structures, and Algorithms is a must. For job interviews, you will be tested on your knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms. They are your bread and butter in Computer Science. But first learn the programming basics and take an intro class to computer programming.

There is a disjunct between academia and industry. In pursuing a BS computer science degree, you will have a very well trained mind for solving problems, but will lack practical experience. So it’s a great idea to pursue your own thing on your own time, as well as shooting for the university degree. The MOOCs are great for this. Check out Computer Science Specializations that have capstone projects on Coursera.

A very strong candidate for employment would be someone who has a degree in Computer Science, and also has a nanodegree from Udacity or a Specialization from Coursera.

##ENTREPRENEURSHIP

You may find that you prefer the business and entrepreneurial angle in the tech world. A business degree with a focus on entrepreneurship and tech startups might be more your forte. Pepperdine University for instance, has an MBA program related to Entrepreneurship. You need to have a bachelors degree as a prerequisite, but it gives you an idea what’s out there.

Knowing how to put together a Business Plan is critical to get funding and have structure for your business. Creating a business plan is actually a really involved process. You can get help on creating one for free from SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives). Here is a fantastic book on how to do a business plan: Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures (5th Edition). It’s a really expensive book, but you can get the 4th edition for really cheap used.

Good luck and have fun.

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That “advice” is totally insane. He said nothing about computer science. As someone who took computer science as part of my undergraduate degree, I can attest that it had little benefit in gaining employment.

@cl0ck3d had the most pertinent things to say.

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