Short clips related to life as a developer, as well tips for companies that are hiring/retaining developers, and thoughts on the Magento ecosystem. Commerce Hero is a better way to find a Magento developer for your next project or full-time hire.
In this episode, I get a chance to sit down with Gavin Ballard, the CEO of Disco Labs. Gavin works exclusively with Shopify Plus stores doing backend development and integration work. He's done some really interesting work in the past, including building subscriptions in the native Shopify checkout 2 years ago before any of the recent APIs were released using a custom payment gateway. One of the tools that he uses frequently is Shopify Flow. In this episode, we dive into some use cases for Shopify Flow that any Shopify Plus stores can use. Some of the use cases that we look at are: - Low Stock Notification - Auto-Capture Low Risk Orders: Leave higher risk orders uncaptured to reduce chargeback risk - Flag Special Orders: Identify special orders (eg expedited shipping) and tag those orders + notify warehouse - Basic Loyalty System: Detect customer spend after order and apply a loyalty tag - More Advanced Loyalty System (demonstrates Flow connection with custom app) - Send payment reminder if Net 30 order not paid on time (requires Trickle) - Pay Deposit for Item, Add Balance and Send Invoice (requires Trickle): Neat little implementation using Shopify's new order editing functionality You can find Gavin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinballard
Encouraging Certifications For Employees
Everybody Should Be Looking Into VueJS
10X Devs Exist (And That's A Good Thing)
Leveling Up From Shopify With React To Magento
Should You Hire Developers Outside Of The US
Set Expectations For Client Communication
Higher Demand For US based Developers
Remote conferences are not conferences
If burned out on legacy Magento codebase consider working with more modern codebase with better tooling.
Review Pomodus - death by 1000 notifications
Making connections before a conference
Approaching people at conferences https://twitter.com/thescottsb/status/1196228004625686531
Prepay. Shouldn't be in business of financing.
How to socialize at conferences - ask questions, follow a system
Most devs aren't working async. Especially remote. Follow up to yesterday's thing on notifications
Conditioning and boundaries for async work / flow state
"For all-remote companies, leaders should not expect informal communication to happen naturally" https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/informal-communication/
When it comes to determining salaries when hiring remote workers, one thing that people struggle with is romanticizing the past. Gary Vaynerchuk brings up this idea in a different context—advertising costs on social media. People romanticize the past when ad costs were lower. I think there's a similar dynamic when it comes to hiring remotely. Five years ago a company could find a great developer in Latin America or Eastern Europe for $25-$30,000. Now, you'll need to pay more in the $50-$70,000 range to secure the best talent. It's easy to think of that salary as insane, especially if you found someone in that lower range just a few years ago. But you have to keep in mind that everything changes; salaries increase over time, and what was true five years ago isn't true today. If you're you're struggling with the quality of work in your remote team, it might be that your salaries are too low to attract and keep the highest quality developers. The best talent has leveled up, partially because there has been more hiring in areas with higher costs of living. The salaries are rising to meet that standard. The companies that I see that are attracting the best talent are those that are hiring in that $50-70 range or above. It's something to consider as you grow your company.
As your company grows, it's important to have one on ones with your team. Growth is a great thing, but you need to work to keep open lines of communication. Checking in with your team members to see how they are doing and to make sure that they are growing the way they want to be growing helps keep employees engaged and invested. A traditional annual review is probably not frequent enough. In this industry, you see people leaving jobs quickly, often after only about two years. A lot can happen in a year and you don't want to miss out on chances to interact and guide your employees. I recently saw an app tweeted out by the CEO of Shopify called fellow.app that they use to organize one on ones. It helps you organize and schedule one on ones, suggest topics for discussion during meetings, let your team request feedback, and easily follow up on action items. If you are looking for a tool to make the process more seamless, it might be worth trying. As your company grows, you want to make sure you are growing well while holding onto what makes you unique. Companies can struggle to maintain the connectedness between employees that they have when they start out as they scale up. You want to be cognizant of that and preserve the bonds between team members as you continue to grow.
A common question I see related to Magento 1 reaching End of Life is whether a store that stays on M1 will automatically fail PCI compliance. I'm not a PCI expert, and don't take any of this as official guidance, but generally the answer is, it depends. Security issues within the Magento world are unacceptably high. The credit agencies that officially look at PCI compliance are undoubtedly aware of that problem. At the end of the day, though, with hundreds of thousands of stores on M1, if it's passed EOL but the rate of hacks is acceptable, I believe they will continue to accept that business. One of the simplest ways to approach this is to keep the software out of scope for PCI compliance by handling payment processing through a third party. (Honestly you should probably be doing that anyway in most cases, even if you are on an officially supported version of Magento.) Even in-scope software that's past EOL can be supported. Other parties such as Nexcess can provide official support for M1. To stay on the conservative side, you might not want to be on a software that's past EOL. But the idea that if you are on M1, you are automatically out of PCI compliance isn't necessarily true. It's more nuanced than that. We'll have to see what happens as we hit EOL. Questions will be answered and new precedents will be set.
Autonomous developers are happy developers by Kalen Jordan
For agencies in the Magento space, getting in front of the Magento sales team is important. I often hear Solutions Partners say that just being in the program isn't enough to get the leads you want. You really want to get in front of the sales team so that you are top on their minds when leads are coming through, and so they know what your specialties are, and when a referral to you makes sense. A marketing tip I heard from Gary Vaynerchuk lead me to a strategy that can help agencies get in front of the sales team. He suggests running ads targeting employees of a specific company. If you are trying to get a client at a specific company you can use Facebook or LinkedIn to target ads at employees of that company. If you are a Solutions Partner wanting to get in front of the Magento sales team, you can apply this strategy. Run ads targeting the Magento sales team. This gives them the chance to see you and understand what makes you unique so that you come to mind when leads come in. This is a potentially powerful strategy to get yourself out there in the partner program and get more leads.
Firing is BRUTAL...but it's critical by Kalen Jordan
How to connect with people on LinkedIn effectively (without spamming!) by Kalen Jordan
One of the hardest things about undertaking a new challenge is not seeing improvement as fast as you want to. This applies to everything — from losing weight to creating an app to starting a business. We're all naturally gifted in different areas. A personal goal for me right now is losing weight.. But I'm not naturally gifted in fitness the way I am with software, where I can power through and succeed quickly. Even when I'm working hard, I don't see fast results on the scale. When you start to start to stall out in any challenge, you might have to adjust your expectations to be more realistic and change your mindset about progress. In my early days of starting a business, I had only two customers for a year. Seeing the growth was hard in that situation. When we can't see progress in a broad scale, we get frustrated. But if you could zoom in and see the minute amount of progress you make you could stay more positive. For example, if you create a new app, you might want thousands of new users in a week. But maybe you need to set a goal of one new user a week, realizing that you can still reach long term success even if your progress is slow. Focus on recognizing the tiny improvements and being encouraged with that. This will let you persevere longer in your challenges.
Long term Magento 1 support from Nexcess? by Kalen Jordan
Why clients lose trust in developers by Kalen Jordan
It can be hard to talk about changing jobs by Kalen Jordan
Not Being Challenged Enough At Work? by Kalen Jordan
Interview Nerves: Calm Your Anxiety by Kalen Jordan
How To Deal With Imposter Syndrome by Kalen Jordan
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