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Build Personal Moats

eriktorenberg.substack.com

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Re: Build Personal Moats

#51

Post by DonHopkins »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

I found this article difficult since "personal moat" is used as a target rather than as the side effect of a behavior. My experience here is limited of course to engineers and academics, generally technical people I've known over the years as they have grown professionally. The ones who have "moats" are the same people whose career choices have been deliberate rather than opportunistic. When I meet people who are del…

I remember when it seemed like a PostScript Email to FAX gateway was going to be a revolutionary way of ordering pizza!

Then I got in trouble for accidentally revealing Sun’s secret multimedia “Email-to-Pizza” strategy to the internet.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...

It turned out that fax machines have a horrible time transmitting graphics with halftone gray scale patterns:

https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/1*EvKv1m2UbxuPJ1Mg9oGUqQ.pn...

>As it turns out, it takes a hell of a long time to fax a picture of a PostScript pizza, because the PostScript halftone scales and jaggies turn on and off and on and off so quickly and unpredictably that it’s extremely inefficient for the fax algorithms to compress, and very susceptible to line noise. Fax was just not designed for that kind of computer generated imagery!

Re: Build Personal Moats

#52

Post by tralarpa »

WJW wrote: post #44
mettamage wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get financial freedom How? In The Netherlands, I don't know how to do this other than working in the HFT industry.

I know you just want to bitch about the vermogensbelasting, but: - Go work in the HFT industry. :P - A good freelance dev can pull in about 80-100 euro/hour which leads to a monthly pretax income of >10k euro. This is almost four times the median monthly household income. Even if you maintain a level of spending double that of the median, you can still save 50% of your income. - Even a "normal" senior dev in the Amst…

> A good freelance dev can pull in about 80-100 euro/hour which leads to a monthly pretax income of >10k euro

When I did free-lancing work in the early 2000s, the rule of thumb was that a freelancer income of 1000 euro corresponds to an employee income of 500 euro, if you factor in expenses, sick days, holidays, time to do accounting, time between projects,...

Is that still true? If yes, the 10k euro don't sound that impressive anymore (but still good, of course, compared to the median)

Re: Build Personal Moats

#53

Post by wccrawford »

binaryorganic wrote: post #8

I dunno... I got a lot of value from this article. Nevermind the impossibility of everyone becoming a reputable master of their niche. 1) working towards that has benefits regardless of achieving the pinnacle of noteworthy in the examples given 2) being self-aware enough to be able to articulate the value you bring is not something most people are good at, but it’s definitely something everyone should practice.

Working towards what you like doing and what needs doing will automatically build a personal moat. So long as you are learning, you are building a moat.

If you are not learning, then you risk staying at your same safety level forever.

But none of that advice helps anyone, IMO. People who want to learn are going to learn, and people who want to avoid learning will avoid learning. It's not something you can really force on yourself without a ton of stress, and it'll backfire. You have to go at your own pace when the marathon is literally decades long.

I will agree that there are soft-skills to be learned from this, such as figuring out what your personal moat is. And perhaps you might be slightly more thoughtful when selecting a new job to somewhat influence your moat-building. But most people don't spend a long time selecting the right job. They get one that exists right when they need it because they need to pay the bills. And they very, very rarely job-search while they have a good job.

Re: Build Personal Moats

#54

Post by DonHopkins »

WJW wrote: post #44
mettamage wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get financial freedom How? In The Netherlands, I don't know how to do this other than working in the HFT industry.

I know you just want to bitch about the vermogensbelasting, but: - Go work in the HFT industry. :P - A good freelance dev can pull in about 80-100 euro/hour which leads to a monthly pretax income of >10k euro. This is almost four times the median monthly household income. Even if you maintain a level of spending double that of the median, you can still save 50% of your income. - Even a "normal" senior dev in the Amst…

Thank you for that recommendation, it is exactly what I'm trying to do! I'll check out DutchFIRE.

Re: Build Personal Moats

#55

Post by christophilus »

stocknoob wrote: post #14

Look at the premise here: your life is a competition, a fight. People are coming for you and you'd better have a moat if you want to keep your position. Also, solve the ikigai which has 4 simultaneous variables to optimize. Protip: live simply, save at a decent rate, get financial freedom and you can solve the much simpler 3-dimensional ikigai.

Agreed. I try to solve problems, do my job well, tinker with things that interest me, and listen and be kind to everyone— especially those I disagree with. I don’t worry or fret or scheme. Been doing this for 20 years so far, and am satisfied with the result.

Re: Build Personal Moats

#56

Post by neogodless »

dzink wrote: post #37

For the sake of good discussion about moats from different angles: The moats in the article seem to be for a public personal brand tied to a niche skill that could make you a go-to expert for a while (a tool for others to use). That may work if you want to be the next Jason, Tim Ferris, Naval, etc to attract people, jobs, deal-flow, or funding, but what if you don’t want to give up your privacy or be subject to const…

Just for my sanity, I assume "prompted" is a typo for "promoted"?

Re: Build Personal Moats

#57

Post by AmericanChopper »

jen729w wrote: post #50
AmericanChopper wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Don’t ever become irreplaceable, because when you can’t be replaced, you can’t be prompted.” This is a little bit context dependent. I’ve spent a large portion of my career as a contractor. I’ve never tried to make myself irreplaceable, but it usually happens. Being seen as irreplaceable when your contract has to be renewed every 3 months can be pretty profitable.

You might be like me – also a contractor, happily and for many years now, because I have no particular desire to “climb the ladder” at a corporation. Zero desire whatsoever to be the CEO of anything that’s not mine. That’s not to say that I haven’t grown in my career. My skills, knowledge, interpersonal relationships, have all grown. My salary has grown with, as a result. But I’m happy in my spot, happy with the inde…

The thing I’m most happy about is that my employer knows that all of the time outside what’s written down in my contract belongs to me, and that I can spend it doing anything I like. Including working for other companies or on my own projects.

I don’t think it’s harmed my career trajectory either. I’ve never considered getting promotions to be a valid career path. I’ve always moved up by leaving one job for a new position somewhere else. The permanent positions recruiters DM me about on LinkedIn are mostly reasonably high level management these days.

Re: Build Personal Moats

#59

Post by darkerside »

atoav wrote: post #29
stocknoob wrote: post #14

Look at the premise here: your life is a competition, a fight. People are coming for you and you'd better have a moat if you want to keep your position. Also, solve the ikigai which has 4 simultaneous variables to optimize. Protip: live simply, save at a decent rate, get financial freedom and you can solve the much simpler 3-dimensional ikigai.

I definitely take life a little easier than most of my colleagues. The more they doubt their own skill the more they revert to scheming and try to make themselves irreplaceable — they do things purely because they think these things will fly, never because it is just the thing they'd like to do. I always wondered if — maybe — it is me that is too playful, too improvised, too spontaneous: what if they are right and I…

This mindset is also the product of a privileged life. With some exceptions, you need an abundance mentality to be able to operate without dear of losing your daily source of income.

Re: Build Personal Moats

#60

Post by [deleted] »

dzink wrote: post #37

For the sake of good discussion about moats from different angles: The moats in the article seem to be for a public personal brand tied to a niche skill that could make you a go-to expert for a while (a tool for others to use). That may work if you want to be the next Jason, Tim Ferris, Naval, etc to attract people, jobs, deal-flow, or funding, but what if you don’t want to give up your privacy or be subject to const…

[deleted]
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