About

It started as a spreadsheet

My son was looking for work, and I did what a lot of parents do: I tried to help by making a spreadsheet. Companies worth watching. Roles that looked plausible. A column for whether anyone had checked lately.

It got to a hundred rows and then it quietly stopped working. Not because it was disorganized — because a spreadsheet can only ever show you the present. It couldn't tell us what was new this week or what had closed. It couldn't remember that certain kinds of roles were a waste of his time, so I kept re-reading the same listings and re-deciding the same thing. And the whole thing only moved forward when I happened to open my laptop.

None of those are spreadsheet problems. They're the problems of running a search alone, which is how nearly everyone does it.

What I built instead

GigDisco is that spreadsheet with the three missing pieces added: memory, so it knows what changed since yesterday; learning, so a preference you express once stops coming back; and a cadence that doesn't depend on me remembering to open a laptop.

The part I care most about is that it shows up on its own. A job search is long, and the hard week isn't the first one — it's the ninth, when the early energy is gone and the results haven't arrived yet. That's the week a system earns its keep, and it's the week most people quietly stop.

What I believe about this

That the tool should be honest about what it can't do. It can't get you a job. It can't promise interviews. It can't read every company's job board — so it tells you which ones, and you check those yourself.

That you should never be filtered in secret. Any rule that narrows your search is written in plain language, shown to you, and only takes effect if you approve it. Even the requirements from that very first search live on a Rules page now, where they can be seen and switched off.

That effort is the part you control. Not whether anyone writes back, not the market, not timing — just whether you showed up this week. So that's what GigDisco measures, and that's what it nudges.

And that the goal is to end. This is a service you should stop needing. When you land somewhere and cancel, I'll count it as the best review I get.

Who’s behind it

I'm Michael Pinkowski, and GigDisco is made in Seattle under Go Be Strong LLC — a small Washington company. Small enough that when you email support, the person who reads it is the person who built the thing you're emailing about.

This is new, and I'd rather say so than pretend there's a support department behind me. If something is broken or wrong or just annoying, tell me. That's genuinely how it gets better.