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Advice you can put into action immediately, guaranteed.

• Having a hard time getting a job as a developer?
• Looking to level up as a developer?
• Feel like you’re not progressing at your current job?
• New to coding and feel like you don’t really understand what you’re doing?
• Copying and pasting code and hoping it works?
• Have a project in mind but don’t know where to start, or feeling stuck?
• Want to start your own business or improve your current business?

I can help close the gaps that most tutorials leave open. I’m available for 1 on 1 coaching on a wide variety of coding subjects and soft skills. I have 24 years of development and QA experience (web and mobile), and have focused on Ruby, Rails, static sites, and automation for the past 12 years.

Here is my track record so far as a developer:

• 2012: Got accepted into the Code for America Fellowship. 550 people applied. Only 26 were accepted. I took a pay cut from $100K at my previous job at AOL to $35K for this opportunity.

• 2013: Received a $210K grant from The Knight Foundation to continue working on the project I started during the Code for America Fellowship. 686 teams applied. Only 7 were accepted.

• 2015: Applied to the two Civic Tech jobs that I wanted (USDS and 18F), and got offers from both of them as a senior engineer for $150K.

• 2018: Applied to the 1 job I wanted at Truss, and got an offer for $180K.

During my time as a senior engineer, I helped those companies save over $100K per year through automation, speeding up test suites, and improving code quality, maintainability, and developer happiness.

I also started my own successful business after quitting my job in 2021, and have learned a ton. If you’ve been thinking about entrepreneurship, or you’re getting started, I can save you a lot of time.

For more details about my experience and qualifications, read my story and what others say about my work.

Below are some of the topics we can cover during our session. If you need help with a specific area that isn’t listed here, feel free to email me and I’ll let you know if it’s within my expertise.

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Mastering the basics for beginners

• Troubleshooting and looking things up
• Asking for help
• Command line/terminal
• Books and tutorials to read
• Recommended online courses and books
• Git/GitHub

Leveling up faster than your peers

• Focusing on high impact work
• How to read to retain what you learn
• What to read
• Keeping a brag doc
• Learning and using mental models
• Using Behavioral Science to improve collaboration and code quality
• Effective communication

Finding a meaningful job

• Writing an effective résumé that focuses on your impact
• Questions to ask during the interview
• What to look for in an employer
• Advancing quickly in your career
• Recommended sites for finding people-first companies
• How to stand out from other applicants
• Negotiating a raise or a shorter work week

GitHub

• Contributing to open-source projects (forks, pull requests, issues)
• Maintaining your own project
• Following best practices for writing Readmes, opening issues, submitting pull requests
• Integrating with services such as Code Climate and Circle CI

Development Best Practices

• Using and enforcing style guides and static analysis tools
• Writing meaningful commit messages
• Reviewing and giving feedback on code
• Working in small chunks to make pull requests easy for others to review
• Pair programming

Ruby/Rails

• How Bundler and Gemfiles work
• How to update older projects
• How to troubleshoot gem and Ruby installation issues
• Using RuboCop to improve your code
• Learning when and how to use Rails concerns
• Extracting functionality into services or POROs (Object-Oriented design)
• Refactoring
• Benchmarking code to see which solution is the fastest
• Tools to check memory usage and leaks
• Recommended gems
• Implementing full-text search in Rails with Postgres
• Using Docker for development
• Customizing Devise
• Background workers with Active Job and Sidekiq
• Deploying to Heroku
• Implementing analytics to help troubleshoot production issues
• Querying analytics data with ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
• Implementing two-factor authentication via one-time passwords, SMS, security keys, backup codes

Testing

• TDD
• RSpec
• The difference between controller, model, request, view, and feature tests
• Capybara
• FactoryBot
• Best practices
• Tools to check test coverage and automate tests
• Keeping tests fast by avoiding database calls
• Stubbing and mocking

Mac

• Essentials every Mac user should know
• My favorite keyboard shortcuts
• Customizing your Terminal or iTerm2
• Terminal/iTerm2 shortcuts
• Sublime Text tips and tricks, useful plugins
• Setting up your own private VPN with Algo
• Protecting your privacy and securing your Mac

Creating a website

• Where to buy a domain name and how to set it up
• How to choose where to host your website

Static Sites

• Setting up a static site with Jekyll or Bridgetown
• Hosting a static site on Netlify, GitHub Pages, or S3 with Cloudfront
• Converting a Wordpress site to a static site

Automation

• Mastering automation with Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, and macOS/iOS Shorcuts
• Writing Bash and Ruby scripts to speed up common workflows
• When to use Zapier and when to write your own automation

Running a Digital Products Business

• How the 30x500 course helped me with customer research, building an audience, and writing to convert
• Recommended tools for building and documenting your business
• Recommended books
• Why I chose Paddle over other payment solutions like Stripe or Gumroad (a lot of people don’t realize the tax implications, and how popular PayPal is)
• How to price your products and avoid the mistakes I made
• The pricing change I made that increased revenue by $1k/month
• How to attract customers with well-researched blog posts
• How to handle customer support requests
• How to embrace flintstoning and build the simplest thing at first
• How to automate your business

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Don’t waste another day feeling like you’re barely making progress.

Book your 1-on-1 coaching call now

My 100% Money-Back Guarantee: If at the end of the call you feel that you have not gotten your money’s worth, let me know and I’ll refund your payment in full.

Availability is limited

I’m only available for a few live 1-on-1 coaching calls per month. Scheduling is first come, first served so the sooner you book your call, the sooner you’ll have the answers you need to take your career or business to the next level.