There is a girl I know who I saw as an up and coming web talent. She worked for a friend of mine in his electrical business and pimped his website (I did version 1.0) in wordpress. It looked fantastic. I was so full of praise.
So I asked her to do mine. When asked how much, she got all shy and said she'd do it for nothing, and my friend had bought her an iPhone for doing his site. I ignored her, got the prevailing rate from the industry average and worked out a fair whack, and paid it. She said she felt lifted by it, and I felt I had done a good thing. A fair days pay and all that. The end result was fantastic. She is by far a more talented web dev than I am, and was always going to be.
So tonight she calls me (about 6 months after we last spoke) carrying on with an air of superiority. She wants my help on a project, not to do the theming, but to cut some php. Easy enough. Then the conversation took a turn. I felt like I was being interviewed. What projects have you worked on recently, what languages do you feel the most comfortable with etc etc. Not just innocent questions, and you could tell she was unimpressed when I said I hadn't really done that much in the past year and had not looked at HTML 5.
I am now long enough in the tooth to know that new fads come and go, but the ability to program never leaves you. And all those hard fought and won scars on your back are not for nothing. I have not written anything in about 12 months, as I have moved on from coding into other areas, but I am still taking on other programming projects as I can, will and will invoice.
Her tone has left me somewhat gobsmacked. She is obviously going places, and I have just wet the bed again, but I just wondered if anyone on here has coaxed the next generation of programmers only for them to gain expertise and then look at you like you are yesterday's news.
Not nice.
So I asked her to do mine. When asked how much, she got all shy and said she'd do it for nothing, and my friend had bought her an iPhone for doing his site. I ignored her, got the prevailing rate from the industry average and worked out a fair whack, and paid it. She said she felt lifted by it, and I felt I had done a good thing. A fair days pay and all that. The end result was fantastic. She is by far a more talented web dev than I am, and was always going to be.
So tonight she calls me (about 6 months after we last spoke) carrying on with an air of superiority. She wants my help on a project, not to do the theming, but to cut some php. Easy enough. Then the conversation took a turn. I felt like I was being interviewed. What projects have you worked on recently, what languages do you feel the most comfortable with etc etc. Not just innocent questions, and you could tell she was unimpressed when I said I hadn't really done that much in the past year and had not looked at HTML 5.
I am now long enough in the tooth to know that new fads come and go, but the ability to program never leaves you. And all those hard fought and won scars on your back are not for nothing. I have not written anything in about 12 months, as I have moved on from coding into other areas, but I am still taking on other programming projects as I can, will and will invoice.
Her tone has left me somewhat gobsmacked. She is obviously going places, and I have just wet the bed again, but I just wondered if anyone on here has coaxed the next generation of programmers only for them to gain expertise and then look at you like you are yesterday's news.
Not nice.
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