I've been back at work for a week. Had an off-site thing with a client and potentially caught something, so we'll see how that pans out. Might very well kill today's attempt at a video recording at the very least.

Getting back into things the response from the universe has been quite good. Video collaborations, content collaborations, podcast guests. They are all coming calling in this moment. I hope that holds, super convenient if so. I'm quite hopeful that one of these things might turn into doing some kind of data center tour or similar. It seems very likely I'll be making more self-hosting videos at the very least.

I'm still looking to talk to companies that want to hire in Elixir. If you are in this situation you can schedule a call here or just respond to this email.

I'm currently helping West Arete whom I've mentioned in the past. They are currently looking for a Ruby dev but we expect them to need more Elixir devs again in a bit. They are also looking for a DevOps engineer if the right one shows up. Read the linked description for more details on what kind of company they are. I find them a delight to work with.

I'm also helping a mystery startup with a practical AI/ML application

A video is in the pipeline and probably arrives next week, 2 BEAM Radio episodes are scheduled with interesting guests. I expect to resume Regular Programming shortly. Good to be back.

Underjord 101

It is useful to clarify what one wants to achieve. That's the first thing I want to do here. The second thing is separate the different ways in which I try to move in that direction.

Help people enjoy software development.

That's what I want to do and what I see as a north star of Underjord. There are many additional facets and those are reflected in the numerous things I try to do. All of these are really subjective in the way they serve this larger purpose.

Produce fun educational things that help people explore what's possible with tech.
This is typically the blog posts and videos.

Promote tools and tech that minimizes the bad parts of software development.
This is a through-line with my enthusiasm for Elixir and other software tools and it comes up heavily here in the newsletter, heavily feature in my podcast work, also on the blog and in videos.

Help people get their first job in programming.
This comes up in recruitment, community networking and has featured heavily in how I built up my accidental consultancy. It can be a very hard step to get the first job, it was luck that solved it for me and I try to provide that luck for others where I can.

Find work that does not suck for engaged developers.
This is the core of my recruitment effort. I try to find companies that I see offer something good to their developers. I prefer a varied spread since the developers I speak to want a variety of things.

Advice and coach people into freelancing.
I get asked about going indie a fair bit and for some devs I think that's a very powerful way to enjoy your work more. It is not what everyone wants. I try to be helpful to those that show an interest.

Connect people with other developers.
It can be a lonely practice and it can be hard to make your first inroads into a community. I try to help those that reach out in general and many times what I can offer is connections and introductions.

Build cool software.
I really enjoy this but it also serves to show people what can be done, how I personally do it and feeds the production of blog posts, videos, etc.

Humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, humans and some software development for good measure. That's the contents of the business and how I execute on my mission apparently. If you do consulting and want to go beyond hired keyboard-fingers I really recommend you try to drill down on a mission. I find it clarifying.

Did you know about this stuff already? Do you need the 102 class? Let me know at lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate it.

- Lars Wikman