Joe M.

“Generate a react app without scaffolding” instructed the Master. The student could not. The old man told the young: “Python has seen 3 versions in my day”. The young man responded: “Node has 12.” “Teacher”, the student inquired, “What’s the best Javascript MVC?” The teacher replied. “It’s not JQuery.” A Junior Developer wanted the best Javascript framework for his side project, so he evaluated every option before deciding. He starved to death.

Seven weeks ago, a friend and I started writing a newsletter for junior devs and strategizing about stuff like open rates and content strategies. But if you’ve followed any of this before now - or seen those link titles, you’ll notice we go from 100 subscribers in two weeks to 250 in three all the way up to… 300 users after almost two months. What happened? Why We Hit a Plateau There are a few reasons growth slowed.

At three-weeks, the ongoing experiement in writing a newsletter for junior devs and open strategizing is in full swing. Quick recap: Three weeks ago a friend and I launched jobletter a job newsletter targeted early career devs looking for quality listings and career information. Writing about this experience provides an opportunity to chronicle our efforts. If it grows this will be a fun account of why, if not, then we learned a lot, and these posts will teach us more.

Three weeks ago we launched jobletter. Since then, we’ve been promoting the site, collecting feedback from friends, and experimenting with with a more open approach to writing about our process. All that culminated in us reaching a milestone this past Friday - our first email. Over the past week we’d worked with a freelancer to deliver an email template, as well as winnow down the jobs we’d been collecting. We wanted a good mix of industries, company sizes and technology stacks - emphasizing location-independent postings like businesses hiring in multiple locations, or startups open to hiring remote junior workers (harder to find, but they exist).

Recently my business partner and I launched a new service, jobletter.io with a simple premise: We deliver Junior Developer jobs to your inbox. Breaking into development to get those all-important first two years of production experience is long, exhausting work, filled with pouring through a lot of “Software Developer - 5+ years req” posts and keyword salads where your prospective employer’s stack includes Every Goddamn Thing™. It makes the idea of a short list of quality, curated, 0 years of experience-and-up jobs, delivered to you, pretty appealing.

A few days ago, David Broadlick and I launched Jobletter into beta, as a way for developers at the beginning of their careers to get a concentrated dose of high-quality jobs targeting their skillset and experience level. Right now we’re still building out some of our customization features: We’d like to add location and specific skill targeting, more customized sending schedules, and more content options, but we’re excited to start sharing a service very much borne out of our own experiences.