Great story, quite inspiring and a testament to new media being useful for professionals and innovators alike (e.g. his use of Twitter & HN connecting his work to how it was being used / viewed).<p>For all of those who are now offering to hire the guy, could you be any more stereotypical? It's just like in music - every record label or tech company wants somebody to show up on their door already famous and/or already with a reputation of success - you know, basically the total package. Invest and develop new talent? Well, that's what unpaid internships are for - slave labor, and then we pick the best of the bunch...maybe! Same old song and dance. "Come back when you're famous."<p>This example is truly good for him, because he invested in himself when big-time names and others wouldn't bother at first, and now I hope he takes his time to pick and choose his opportunities now that he's earned his industry status.
> I tried (again) to study Computer Science at the local technical university, but my joy of programming was (and still is) sadly not accompanied by a joy for converting numbers from the binary to the decimal system and back (much to the dismay of my parents).<p>As a teacher on a local technical university, I completely understand what you're talking about here. However, the purpose of technical universities is to teach broads concepts on computer science (or computer engineering). Therefore, we have to start somewhere, building from basic concepts such as the need for digital "codification" up to the dozens or hundreds of concepts which will provide students with a better understanding of the field.<p>In your case, you pretty much decided that you would want to do frontend web development, so you made a choice. Where I teach, students only have one course which they will ever learn about html/css/js, and on a very basic level (there's a lot of information to fit into 3 years!). Assuming that most technical universities are like this, I think you made a good choice for you. However, if someday you decide to switch to backend development, making your way down the stack for DBs, or eventually up the stack for higher-level things, such as data analysis, ML, etc., you may probably find difficulties related to the lack of breadth on your understanding of the field.<p>All in all, just to say that you made a good choice for you, but that technical universities can provide students with a breadth of information which allows students someday, after some years of experience, to grok the similarities between most CS subfields..
Max has turned out to be a prolific contributor to the React community and an expert on the subject of React component styling approaches. He's also a pretty good speaker :)<p>I had a sorta-similar path to getting involved with Redux over the last year and a half, which I wrote about at <a href="http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2016/09/how-i-got-here-my-journey-into-the-world-of-redux-and-open-source/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2016/09/how-i-got-here-my-j...</a> . I'm also pleased to note that Max has been one of the biggest supporters of my efforts to improve Redux's documentation and provide help to people learning React and Redux, and I really appreciate his encouragement.
<i>>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me. </i><p>If you happen to be in a position of authority in a tech company in the bay area, I would personally contact this guy and ask if one of these companies was yours. If it was, you have some serious work to do because your hiring practices are costing you more than you can easily imagine.
Congratulations Max.<p>Max worked with us to create an interactive course on React/Redux[1]. Just wanted to say that he's an awesome guy to work with. Always willing to help and giving constructive feedback.<p>Keep doing the good work Max. Congratulations again. Looking forward to 2017 and beyond.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.educative.io/collection/5642398931615744/5741031244955648" rel="nofollow">https://www.educative.io/collection/5642398931615744/5741031...</a>
mxstbr, I just want to sound one comment: the seamless way that 'max stoiber' transitions to the "<mxstbr>" "logo" when scrolling down, the smoothness of the metamorphosis, is really impressive. Lots of sites do this type of thing, but for some reason they all suck. Yours doesn't. Great job.
While I am happy for his success, a part of me can't help but wonder: "Is being popular on twitter a big part of front end development these days?: JS, CSS, HTML and Twitter Followers"
Congratulations ! It seems you built something people needed and loved :) .<p>Your story is an inspiration to people who think they're too "green" or "new" to contribute :)
What a great story! As a fellow React developer (amongs other things) I really appreciate the stuff you have given back to the ecosystem (and in a really short time to boot!) Keep up the good work!
Does anybody know the font used in the screenshot [1]? It looks like a pretty typical monospace coding font but has fantastic pseudo-cursive italics. I can't figure out what it is, but I want it!<p><a href="https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/786478628829814784/photo/1" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/786478628829814784/photo/1</a>
>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me.<p>@mxstbr - Contact me at jim@techleads.io and send me your resume/cover letter/cold email that you used to approach these companies.. You probably just need a few tweaks with your personal pitch.