Issue 6

Today’s Issue: How building in public can advance your career, what I’m building, and some cool jobs to check out

Welcome to #6.

First Up - Building in Public

We’ve all seen creators on Twitter (X) use the hashtag #buildinpubic and go viral for some cool SaaS project they are working on and how they are building it. The idea behind building in public is to openly share the process of building a product or company, rather than keeping everything behind closed doors until launch.

Some of the benefits of taking this approach include:

• Faster feedback and validation

  • By sharing your work, you can get feedback from potential users which would allow you to validate your ideas and make adjustments.

• Increased visibility and opportunities

  • Building in public can help you build an audience or personal brand which you can then convert to users later down the road once your product is ready.

• Accountability and motivation

  • Staying motivated can be challenging, but with others eagerly waiting for an update, it’s much easier to stay motivated.

• Learning and skill development

  • Everyone says you truly know something when you can teach it. Building in public allows you to teach your process which in turn helps you to deepen your own understanding.

One big challenge many developers face with this approach is fear of criticism. Don’t let this hold you back, because at the end of the day who cares what others think! No one is perfect and everyone is in a constant state of learning so don’t be nervous.

Second Topic - What I’m Building

I myself have recently hopped on the build-in public trend and I’ve decided to relaunch and rebuild SpotMe from the ground up. For those who don’t know, earlier this year I built a financial management application for a hackathon. The goal of the app was to help users save more money each month and also be able to see a month-to-month and year-to-year metric of how much they are saving.

I ended up winning the hackathon, but I never got around to implementing all of the features I wanted or making it look how I’d like. I only had about 4 days to work on it, so I was moving pretty fast. Over the next few months, I’ll be slowly building this product and documenting my efforts on Twitter, so check that out if you’d like!

Interesting Plugs

• Hono has been taking over recently as an alternative to express.js

  • I haven’t personally used it just yet, but I’ll be trying it out soon and seeing what all the hype is about

• New iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS updates launched this week so make sure to upgrade your devices

• For those of you who use Weblfow, checkout Relume

  • It’s a component library for Webflow and they recently launched their components as React components as well

Job Board

• Junior Web Developer with SmartRecruiters

  • Salary: $75,000 - $80,000

  • Experience: 2-4 years

  • Tech Stack: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and experience with frameworks like Bootstrap. They also would like you to have some experience with using CMSs and APIs

• Frontend Software Engineer with Coinbase

  • Salary: $140,250 - $165,000 😳

  • Experience: At least 2+ years

  • Tech Stack: React.js

    • This would be a great job to apply for. Working for a big name like Coinbase would be big on your resume, and they are using React so it’s a win-win!

Till Next Time

Next week I’ll have a few more job postings for ya’ll so stay tuned! In the meantime take a look at the ones I posted and think about what you could be building in public to help yourself stand out and potentially grow an audience.

Also, if anyone is interested in using SpotMe once I have a working product, shoot me a message and I’ll make sure to put you on the sign-up list. You’ll get to help shape the product by providing feedback on any improvements or features you’d like to see added!

Have a great weekend and as always, happy coding!