Brown PHP

I finished reading Crush It: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion about a week ago. Although I wasn’t overly impressed, it did inspire and re-ignite my passion. The book did certainly have the potential to be better though.

The book primarily focuses on going after your passion so that your job no longer is considered work. It only touches on the strategy to do this with a soft bristled brush however.

Throughout the book, Gary explains that if you follow his methods taught in the book and work hard, you can achieve what he has. What he has is wealth and a job that he enjoys waking up to. He explains how he took his father’s small liquor store and transformed it into a multi-million dollar business. However he never really goes into the methods in detail other than using social networks to assist in branding himself.

I am not by any means a millionaire or consider myself an internet entrepreneurial success as Gary is, but I think that the angle he took in the wine market had more to do with his success than his social networking. If my passion were rodents, I don’t feel I could gather a large following as Mr. Vaynerchuk can reach with a “wine for middle class” approach.

Gary’s points in the book come across arrogant in most cases, but he makes it a point to mention that is just how he is and by trying to fake another personality would be portrayed just as that, fake. Knowing that, I didn’t really mind the name dropping and “I don’t care what anyone thinks” comments. Even though these statements and others like are proudly exclaimed, overall I felt he was sincere and trustworthy throughout the read.

Conclusion:

All in all, the book did inspire me. A couple times throughout my reading, I put the book down and grabbed my laptop to put some work into a few of my sites. Crush it! helped me take a step back and look at the big picture. One could say, I stepped out of the now and into the future. If you feel you are in a rut right now and need something to get you going again this could be the book you need. If you are already all inspired, you may just want to save this book for a rainy day.

I’m be happy to give 3 out of 5 PHP elephants to this book for its ability to inspire creative thinking and emphasis on branding yourself with social media.

Visit Gary Vaynerchuk’s Website to learn more about this author.

As a functioning member of society, I feel it is important to make yourself a well rounded human being. Being able to see and understand the other side of an argument is an important quality in anyone.

To help yourself better yourself you need to intrigue your mental palate. Reading has always been a great way to inspire creative thinking. Speaking from an engineering stand point, my creative thinking could use some inspiration.

What’s on your bookshelf? Do you have a bookshelf? If you would take a look at my bookshelf you would find a number of PHP books. PHP books cover all sorts of topics; frameworks, database design and PHP integration, PHP design patterns, etc…

I don’t have any books cover really anything else! Looking back on all of this, I’m a bit disappointed in myself. I don’t have any great novels. Why? They bore the hell out of me. Not joking. Big popular books I was instructed to read throughout high school and college only taught me to dread the thought of reading books like that.

What is my point of all this? There has got to be more things that grab my interest rather than just PHP. Well, I have never thought to reach out and look for other topics until now.

I’m redoing the Books section of the site to start a “book club” I suppose you could call it for us PHP developers that want to better ourselves and reach passed reading only PHP books. Don’t worry though; I plan on reading some PHP books as well. Some books that have caught my eye are ones that have strong ties to internet topics. So if you are a geek with a blog or know one, you are going to want to keep up with these books.

So when I’m done with a book, I’ll give my personal review in a blog post from which you can comment your own thoughts on the book.

If any of you have any ideas on some good books to read/review just let me know and I’ll add it to my personal list if I find it fascinating.

It has been a while since I last posted to Brown PHP.  My life has been going through a large transition recently.  I just landed a new job (more on that later), and moved because my wife also accepted a new position in a different location.  If that were enough of a stressful environment, I have been re-factoring the Informative Post over the last month trying to get it ready before I begin my new job.

Enough about my own struggles, lets focus on the topic at hand.  Michael Kimsal’s new book,  PHP Job Hunter’s Handbook.  I pre-ordered this book a few months ago, and read the PDF version all the way through before I received my hard copy.  Not a big deal, but makes me regret ordering both.  I guess I can just add it to my collection of PHP temples of knowledge!  In this post, I, Douglas Brown, will be reviewing the PHP Job Hunter’s Handbook and giving a fairly detailed review of my own experiences.

First, let me begin by talking about the author, Michael Kimsal.  I am a subscriber and active listener to his podcast at WebDevRadio.com, from which he discusses current events in the web community, and not just PHP.  He is a well respected PHP contributer with a wide array of knowledge with many different languages.  I find him always willing to help another PHP member in need , and he recently started his own PHP job listings board to also help the PHP community.

What the book covers:

• Finding a Full Time Job
• Training and Certification
• Contracting and Freelancing
• Applicable Technologies You Should Know
• Interviewing Tips and Tricks
• Advice from Those Doing the Hiring
• Advice from Fellow PHP Developers

It wouldn’t be extreme to go as far as saying that the book covers too much territory, but for it only being 106 pages, it’s a fair conclusion.  He mentions that this book is not meant for advanced PHP programmers who have been around the block a time or two, but more targeted towards beginners, to help them get started.  The book fits the bill for that purpose.

Does it contain any useful information?

It doesn’t give to much information that could overwhelm a “noobie” PHP programmer, but it does give just enough to help them get started.  I for example, have never had a professional PHP programming position.  I do this for my hobby.  What I do professionally is C and C++ programming.  So you can understand why I love PHP so much.  I did get quite a few nuggets of information from the PHP Job Hunter’s Handbook.  I got a few PHP job listing sites that I have never heard of to add to my bookmarks.  Also what types of information that the HRs look for when going through PHP cover letters and resumes.

So like I said above, I was able to absorb a lot of information from this book that I had no knowledge of previously.  However, there is also a lot of knowledge in here that can be picked off the web faster than opening a book.  It’s nice that it has been grouped together for a quick reference if needed.

What is missing?

The only two things that I would have liked to see in this book would be a whole encyclopedia of example PHP cover letters and resumes.  Don’t get me wrong, with all the information that he provides in the book, you can easily make these out for yourself.  This is a Job Hunting Handbook however, and I found it lacking that it didn’t contain any of these in the appendix or somewhere.  If added in the next Rev, 2 or 3 of each would improve the book to give new PHP programmers something to go off of when they are compiling their own.

Would I recommend this book?

If you are new to PHP and don’t know where to find all the great places to find jobs, and information, absolutely.  If you are not new with PHP and you already know where to look for PHP jobs, and what employers are looking for when in search of an experienced PHP programmer, probably not.  Like I mention before though, Mr. Kimsal did not write this book for that audience.

Did it help my job search?

It did and it didn’t.   I did find a new job, but not in a PHP position.  I also never really had that much time to do all the different techniques that Michael Kimsal recommended to help the search.  The new job I did find was a Software Engineering position working with C and C++, which are my bread and butter.  I’m sure that I learned something from this book that helped me land this new job though.

I hope you got a better understanding about what to expect if you yourself are looking into a PHP career and would like a little help finding that first job. Maybe sometime in the future, I’ll be approached by a company offering a PHP postion that is too good to pass up, but until then, it’s still my hobby! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave comments. Take care!