Someone asked me what a full stack dev is... I replied:

"A highly sought after programmer with the world of opportunities and no time to pursue them."

I think I nailed it.

guide to make successful software house company for future me:

1.find shortest domain name with code / star / best / it / super / ai / - whatever banger word you find
2. parse companies work board / linkedin jobs
3. parse people profiles
4. setup email server and create fake linkedin profiles that match jobs and candidates so company looks big
5. fake c-level management so company looks big
6. spam likes and create posts generated by ai from multiple profiles
7. spam invitations to people that match job descriptions and to people working within companies posting jobs
8. offer fake candidates that match job description
9. find real but less promising candidates and offer them the job
10. tell that fake candidate is no longer available but you have someone better

success

Best:
Seeing ALL the members of my team finally coming into their own. One person tackled our entire not-at-all-simple CI/CD setup from scratch knowing nothing about any of it and, while not without bumps in the road, did an excellent job overall (and then did the same for some other projects since he found himself being the SME). Two of my more junior people took on some difficult tasks that required them to design and build some tricky features from the ground-up, rather than me giving them a ton of guidance, design and even a start on the basic code early on (I just gave them some general descriptions of what I was looking for and then let them run with it). Again, not without some hiccups, but they ultimately delivered and learned a lot in the process and, I think, gained a new sense of self-confidence, which to me is the real win. And my other person handled some tricky high-level stuff that got him deep in the weeds of all the corporate procedures I'd normally shield them all from and did very well with it (and like the other person, wound up being an SME and doing it for some other projects after that). It took a while to get here, but I finally feel like I don't need to do all the really difficult stuff myself, I can count on them now, and they, I think, no longer feel like they're in over their heads if I throw something difficult at them.

Worst:
A few critical bugs slipped into production this year, with a few requiring some after-hours heroics to deal with (and, unfortunately, due to the timing, it all fell on me). Of course, that just tells us that next year we really need to focus on more robust automated testing (though, in reality, at least one of the issues almost certainly would not - COULD NOT - have been caught before-hand anyway, and that's probably true for more than just one of them). We had avoided major issues the previous three years we've been live, so this was unusual. Then again, it's in a way a symptom of success because with more users and more usage, both of which exploded this year, typically does come more issues discovered, so I guess it tempers the bad just a little bit.

For everybody who's had to start job hunting for their first real programming job, I have a few questions.

Is starting to apply for jobs 4-5 months ahead a good idea or is it better to wait it out with a 2-3 month time frame? I'm graduating in June 2019.

Is it better to apply for jobs with a search field of "junior developer" or to be more specific like "Jr Java web dev/Jr node.js"?

I know a lot of job descriptions are just company wishlists and not real indicators of skill. I have enough job experience to know how that part of the world works.

My aim is to try for Chicago(go Cubs) or New England, maybe Boston or NYC. I'd say I have a better shot with Chicago being just a 4 hour drive from home base. But, you never know. This is my first real shot at a job in this field so I'm trying to keep my expectations in check.

Hopefully I can get something to work before rumblings of the 2020 election start in my home state. 🙄