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Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

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Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#361

Post by inimino »

eropple wrote: post #349
inimino wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try consulting or entrepreneurship. When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need. When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.

You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do. I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.

Are clients are hiring you as a team of one? If so, it’s easy to see you as replaceable. If you assemble a team then you get to work on more interesting and longer-term projects.

Either you fit yourself into the structure of someone else’s business, or you’re in business. If you’re in business, there’s no lack of diversity in what you spend your time doing. That’s what I mean by entrepreneurship, not “SV startup entrepreneurship”.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#363

Post by Kluny »

> Charge more. Charge more still. Go on.

I find this advice unhelpful. In the past, when I was making $23/hour as a web developer, people would occasionally ask to hire me for freelance work. I've given various answers, from $30 to $100, and haven't had any takers yet. The only freelance work I've actually done so far was when I said, "what do you think it's worth?" and my friend said, "I dunno, 60?" It was for about an hour of work so I said yeah, but I had already done the work by that point anyway.

$100/hour seems like the right amount to me, since my company was billing me out at $116. But no one else thinks so. I'm pretty sure there's more to it than just "charge more".

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#364

Post by blurbleblurble »

dmichulke wrote: post #352
eropple wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do. I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.

Same here, I work independently for a few years now and it just becomes less interesting, and for interesting problems where you'd learn something new (I.e. where you are not good but you know you'd get there quickly) you cannot maintain your rate. I keep wondering if I should take the rate cut for a year or just study mathematics at the local university (which is free here) ...

I've thought about going to study math too.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#365

Post by eropple »

inimino wrote: post #361
eropple wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do. I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.

Are clients are hiring you as a team of one? If so, it’s easy to see you as replaceable. If you assemble a team then you get to work on more interesting and longer-term projects. Either you fit yourself into the structure of someone else’s business, or you’re in business. If you’re in business, there’s no lack of diversity in what you spend your time doing. That’s what I mean by entrepreneurship, not “SV startup entr…

You know, that's a good point. When I consult through some of our locals it's very much a team-of-one sort of thing because we're probably too expensive to rope together too many people onto one project. (Not that we're actually that expensive, but false economies around expertise exist throughout tech.)

Something to think about. Thank you.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#366

Post by blurbleblurble »

rhizome wrote: post #314
blurbleblurble wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply. The hard part is giving in to a job . I think my hesitancy in this area s…

A salaried job that only gives you 5-10hrs/week is a niche unto itself.

Your absolutely right, and not even salary jobs, just part time jobs:

https://tech.mn/jobs/?q=&type=1&role=0&cat=any

vs.

https://tech.mn/jobs/?q=&type=2&role=0&cat=any

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#367

Post by blurbleblurble »

jpm_sd wrote: post #292
blurbleblurble wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply. The hard part is giving in to a job . I think my hesitancy in this area s…

You think you're too good for a job, hence, you are unemployed.

I don't think that at all. I actually admire and respect people who are able to buckle down and focus on a full time job. I also acknowledge and respect that this is not a fit for me. There's nothing wrong with me or with people who that works for, and this is my challenge. Please don't interpret my frustration as a condemnation of traditional employees/employers. I'm learning how to navigate.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#368

Post by eropple »

dcosson wrote: post #360
eropple wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track . I need to…

Sheesh, get over yourself. I'm not trying to be a jerk but this is such an obnoxiously braggy complaint. Yes, companies have complex problems to solve, that require more than a few days or weeks of work at a time. If you want to just wake up every day and decide that you need to work on a totally new project, you're not going to be very useful. Lots of people have a wide range of interests, but you pick one of the ma…

You've heard of "be a multiplier, not an adder", right? My contention is that many good developers can be multipliers across very large portions of an engineering organization when given the chance. Dysfunction does seem to be the natural state of any business, and engineering groups are no exception; technical and social resources capable of and empowered to tackle cross-cutting concerns are that chance I'm describing and provide self-evident benefits over the long term. You're right, that sometimes it happens informally. I am asserting that institutionalizing it makes teams faster, less risky, and happier.

I also happen to think that I'd be good at it, because it's kind of what I already do, and I wish it was more common because that'd be great. Heaven forfend. I mean, you can try to pull the well-actually-it's-labor-that's-bad thing by trying to turn it into my mindset is wrong rather than let's talk about executive and managerial allocation of resources and whether we do a good job of it across the board, but the thing speaks for itself.

And you're right, that post is braggy. It's also marketing: from this thread I've gotten two emails inquiring as to the state of my pipeline and if I'd have time for a chat. It can be both self-marketing and a reasonable observation of reality. (Email's in my profile.)

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#369

Post by ktta »

charlieflowers wrote: post #362

> This is not the modal employee, Is this a misuse of the word "modal"? If not, could someone please explain this definition to me? From context, I'm guessing the author means "typical" perhaps?

He does mean typical, but I'm not sure if the definition is correct. Mode of a sequence is the unit occurring most number of times. So the modal employee is supposed to be the most frequently occurring one.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#370

Post by eropple »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #290
cosmie wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job. It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations. I'm a competent, high performing generalist who…

> "I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the…

I've said this in a sibling thread, but most shops I've seen that doesn't have This Guy are worse-run, less friendly, and higher business-risk shops. (Which isn't to say that counterexamples don't exist, but I can't think of a good one in my experience. The best companies institutionalize the role.)
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