New Project: Q&A with Developers
Currently, I'm a technical recruiter and my friend Adam is a software developer. We wanted to launch a site around Q&As of senior developers and their career path. We noticed that their are many resources around technical topics, but not much related to career-development.
Ultimately, we want to build a site that helps developers build out their soft-skills. Either a social network, consulting site, etc. I'm not sure what format it would take. To start off, it would just be interviews with senior developers, CTOs etc.
Thoughts?
It seems like the sort of thing that you could build a community around and get into info products. I'm not a fan of that route personally but I recognize it as the method that lots of people use to get started. Advertising may work also. Software devs are a lucrative market for recruiters.
Career advice for developers seems to build reputation and audience relatively well, Brennan Dunn, Joel Spolsky and Patrick McKenzie all built reputation around it. Would require a lot of content and dedication though.
We are starting with newsletter. As a recruiter I see firsthand the lucrativeness of industry, but misaligned incentives. We can definitely monetize in unique ways such as developer coaching. I don't want to get into product side, but stick with developers and advice on jobs. It's my expertise so want to stick within that.
If we have developers that trust us, we can use that to consult or create some network for developers.
I like this idea. I am a senior dev at a Fortune50 tech company. I'd be willing to contribute.
Email me: me@arilewis.com
I think a community around this sounds awesome. I've taught 4 of my friends to code from scratch (3 of whom got full-time jobs in the Bay Area), and there's a lot of confusion and uncertainty with regard to career paths.
If I were in your shoes, my MVP would be putting out helpful content and trying to promoting it. What topics do you think people care about? What valuable information can you share that your target audience is hungry to devour? If you can figure that out and people respond well to the content you produce, then you at least know you have a decent market for this niche. (And more than anything, a community needs lots of people!)
Also, take a look at thehustle.co. They're a simple daily newsletter, but they grew their subscriber base astronomically fast by producing a small amount of good relevant content. It's a great model for starting a community.
(Of course, it's important to recognize their unique advantages. For one, they get to piggyback off of existing content – tech news – instead of having to create content from scratch. This is similar to Indie Hackers: I do interviews instead of writing from scratch.)
I planned on doing interviews to generate content to start combined with very small, simple newsletter. Template of newsletter would be:
Q&A: Once a week where we talk with a developer (preferably senior) about their career path, interesting projects, career advice, and trends in industry.
Career Advice of the Week: One Article of Interest with our take.
Distractions: 3 fun, interesting links
Anything else?
That sounds amazing to me! 👍