21–30 of 82 posts
I concur with a lot of what Nader has laid out here. Specialization + Content are keys to unlocking much higher pricing power. Getting started is tricky, but my most profitable side work has been workshops and lunch-and-learns, which is beneficial as I can re-use a lot of the same content between engagements.
We started with lunch-and-learns, but eventually moved to beer-and-briefings.
An off-topic question: > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out? > she Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here? If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit? I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.
There are people, today, who will fault you for not using 'he' or 'she', since client is singular and 'he' & 'she' (unlike 'they') is too.
An off-topic question: > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out? > she Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here? If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit? I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We started with lunch-and-learns, but eventually moved to beer-and-briefings.
Can you elaborate critical difference between -learn and -briefing or does it just rhyme better :) ?
An off-topic question: > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out? > she Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here? If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit? I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.
Culture wars, but a much more gentle version than the current variety. There's definitely an agenda here as it wasn't done in any kind of unthinking organic fashion, especially given long-established norms (which weren't always male). Rather like replacing BC with BCE.
Some future historian will probably look at an AP style book over time and pass judgement on us all. Dunno how it will look. Maybe they'll think of the singular use of 'they' as implying that humans of this era had multiple personalities.
An off-topic question: > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out? > she Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here? If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit? I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.
> If 'he' isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't 'they' be a better fit? There are people, today, who will fault you for not using 'he' or 'she', since client is singular and 'he' & 'she' (unlike 'they') is too.
If you insist on being gender-neutral, you have to write "he or she" which quicky gets tiresome. Or rewrite without using pronouns, which can also be awkward.
I learned that "he" is gender-neutral if there is no other context, and that's the way I continue to write.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Back in the day", some of us used to deliberately alternate pronouns for these sorts of hypothetical people. The idea was to help nudge people toward perceiving "gender-atypical" occupations/situations/etc. as normal: "The programmer opens her text editor...". Since then the world has changed quite rapidly when it comes to norms around writing, pronouns, and gender, so perhaps "they" fills the same role for younger…
Large corporations sometimes come up with user personas, which I've always thought are fun to work with. Like alternating pronouns, they're a very reasonable, noncontroversial way to remind people their users might not look like them (busy parents, someone performing the same repetitive tasks all day with your application who would appreciation automation, etc)
Calling that an "alteration" rather than a "substitution" gave me a different perspective, though.
I'd often find Alice/Bob examples in (programming-related) books, but seeing "she" instead of "he" in situations where gender isn't important wasn't that common in my experience.
Some other commenters pointed out that the practice is quite old in English. My use of English is mostly limited to reading technical information and blog posts so I can only assume that the alteration not being popular is (was?) mostly intrinsic to the technical articles/blog posts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't read too far into it, probably just casual use of language instead of trying to push an agenda...
> I wouldn't read too far into it I realize how my initial comment might sound bitter as the topic is quite controversial, but I'm more curious than anything. Seeing such "unusual" placement of pronouns a few times in a short period of time made me wonder what's the deal.
Which, if you're trying to avoid gender stereotypes, leads to awkward he/she, somewhat obviously switch among male and female personas, etc. The typical approach in style guides these days is use singular they. 2nd person got rid of the separate singular and plural pronoun as well so it's not unreasonable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If 'he' isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't 'they' be a better fit? There are people, today, who will fault you for not using 'he' or 'she', since client is singular and 'he' & 'she' (unlike 'they') is too.
I'm one of them. Grew up with "they" as strictly plural. Had enough red ink on school essays that the lesson sank in. Every time I see "they" in a singular context it's like mentally stubbing my toe on a tree root. I have to stop, go back and re-read to be sure I didn't miss something that set up the plural context. If you insist on being gender-neutral, you have to write "he or she" which quicky gets tiresome. Or re…
"And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come up..."
That your English teachers were misinformed prescriptivists isn't the language's fault, and shouldn't be used as a ruler by which you measure the writing of others.
> This also applies to software development. If an e-commerce application you are building will bring in $500,000.00 in sales in the next year, then charging 10% to 20% of this amount is acceptable. The same goes with feature implementation. If your feature will save them $200,000.00 in the next year, price with that in mind vs the hourly rate.
And how do you know what amount of money they'll make or save? Do you estimate it yourself? Do they tell you?