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Yes, I wouldn't expect giving away your services to people/companies to get you work. That's not so much working side by side with a person for a prolonged peri

Yes, I wouldn't expect giving away your services to people/companies to get you work. That's not so much working side by side with a person for a prolonged period of time, as it is working in a dysfunctional, under appreciated client/vendor relationship. I've only given away work for free twice - once before I was a software developer and once volunteering two or three days a week for six? years for a NGO. Other than that, I charge everybody full price, including friends or family, for anything related to my day job. It sets up bad working relationships. Again, good luck.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
You and everyone else here can stop leaving me shitty comments in this thread with dumb advice. What this boils down to is most men will not email me unless they are hoping for a hookup. Because they are apparently scared shitless that a private conversation via email with a woman is too intimate or some crap. Those private discussions are how men make strong professional connections and eventually get work. When I tell a guy he can email me, 99% of the time he only emails me looking for a hookup. Making public comments about how I am just doing it wrong and wishing me luck makes you part of the problem. It essentially drags my name through the mud like I am just an idiot and virtue signals about what a great guy you are while you don't actually do a fucking thing to actually help me. It is just another waste of my time exercise in futility while giving the world another opportunity to see me as pitiable rather than competent, respectable and in need of business connections and paid work.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  To the jerks downvoting my comment, the ggp comment says: Can you do volunteer community management for an organizations some tech organization? Can you somehow finagle some volunteer resume copywriting for Stanford graduates through some organization? You'll never get anything from the graduates you help, but it's the people in whatever non-profit you are working with that will remember your skill and drive. Or anything that gets you working with people who can hire you later. It snowballs from there. When I rebutted that, they did a 100% about face saying they never work for free themselves. So if they never work for free but are telling me to work for free to try get paid work, it is dumb advice. But, hey, let's not confuse anyone with the facts. Let's just pretend I'm a bitch for being pissed off that no amount of proving myself or doing what works for the guys ever works for me and it has kept me trapped in dire poverty for many years. When the guys here are looking to do business, they exchange emails or other contact info and take it to private discussion. When I try to do the same, I get hit on or ignored. You see this in comments on HN all the damn time that people say "email in profile" or whatever. Guys do business and help each other out via private discussions. People leaving public comments with stupid advice they would not follow themselves are absolutely not in any way taking me seriously. It is virtue signaling, just pretending to care without really helping, and it just deepens the problem. When guys take each other seriously as business people, they hash out problems and solutions privately. The vast majority of men will not have a private conversation with me unless they are hoping for a hookup. That is the crux of the problem here.
  - danielvf 9y ago
    I at least, think I'm being consistent in both comments. :) Both times I've said people never get work from the people that they help - only from coworkers. Fifty percent of my income for many years came from engineers and coworkers I worked with while volunteering, and I’m still working with some of them ten years after leaving. My latest client, doing snazzy blockchain work, is from someone I met twenty years ago while volunteering. The same networks of people-who-know-you-can-get-stuff-done build up regular big companies too - volunteering is just another way to bootstrap this outside of such a job.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Defending yourself in comments here is about protecting your reputation. In spite of your claim that HN has had no significant impact on your career, your reputation matters. Mine does not. Women are just supposed to enhance the lives of men for free. If you actually gave a damn about helping me, you would have emailed me try to hash this out privately. You aren't actually trying to help me. You are just continuing to virtue signal and look out for your reputation. Solving my problem is not actually on your agenda or you would be doing something effective about it, not something counterproductive that just serves to further smear me. The reason my website is unfocused is because I cannot get serious engagement from anyone ever. Engagement is how a website goes from being some half-baked piece of shit to being a means to provide a service in exchange for money. I cannot get serious and respectful engagement. I mostly get platitudes and shallow advice that isn't based on much of anything. Chin up. Keep trying. Tally ho. Maybe next time. Meanwhile, my bank account is nearly empty as usual and I am not happy about it. Platitudes do not pay my bills. Encouragement does not pay my bills. Men talking to me to enhance their reputation while pissing on mine does not pay my bills and is nothing innovative. Patio11 has done the exact same damn thing to me. He pissed all over me in public and when I blogged about it years later and someone posted that blog post here because the HN crowd loves its gossip, his only fucking concern was covering his ass and denying wrong doing. Because that's the kind of good guy Catholic boy he is. His fucking reputation matters. My suffering is irrelevant. My inability to come up with enough earned income to have basic food security no matter how hard I try and in spite of high levels of education and competence is of zero concern to him, to you and to most people here pretending they are good people and not sexist jerks. So please stop leaving me these incredibly shitty comments that just get worse with every new one.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

You and everyone else here can stop leaving me shitty comments in this thread with dumb advice. What this boils down to is most men will not email me unless they are hoping for a hookup. Because they are apparently scared shitless that a private conversation via email with a woman is too intimate or some crap. Those private discussions are how men make strong professional connections and eventually get work. When I tell a guy he can email me, 99% of the time he only emails me looking for a hookup. Making public comments about how I am just doing it wrong and wishing me luck makes you part of the problem. It essentially drags my name through the mud like I am just an idiot and virtue signals about what a great guy you are while you don't actually do a fucking thing to actually help me. It is just another waste of my time exercise in futility while giving the world another opportunity to see me as pitiable rather than competent, respectable and in need of business connections and paid work.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
To the jerks downvoting my comment, the ggp comment says: Can you do volunteer community management for an organizations some tech organization? Can you somehow finagle some volunteer resume copywriting for Stanford graduates through some organization? You'll never get anything from the graduates you help, but it's the people in whatever non-profit you are working with that will remember your skill and drive. Or anything that gets you working with people who can hire you later. It snowballs from there. When I rebutted that, they did a 100% about face saying they never work for free themselves. So if they never work for free but are telling me to work for free to try get paid work, it is dumb advice. But, hey, let's not confuse anyone with the facts. Let's just pretend I'm a bitch for being pissed off that no amount of proving myself or doing what works for the guys ever works for me and it has kept me trapped in dire poverty for many years. When the guys here are looking to do business, they exchange emails or other contact info and take it to private discussion. When I try to do the same, I get hit on or ignored. You see this in comments on HN all the damn time that people say "email in profile" or whatever. Guys do business and help each other out via private discussions. People leaving public comments with stupid advice they would not follow themselves are absolutely not in any way taking me seriously. It is virtue signaling, just pretending to care without really helping, and it just deepens the problem. When guys take each other seriously as business people, they hash out problems and solutions privately. The vast majority of men will not have a private conversation with me unless they are hoping for a hookup. That is the crux of the problem here.
- danielvf 9y ago
  I at least, think I'm being consistent in both comments. :) Both times I've said people never get work from the people that they help - only from coworkers. Fifty percent of my income for many years came from engineers and coworkers I worked with while volunteering, and I’m still working with some of them ten years after leaving. My latest client, doing snazzy blockchain work, is from someone I met twenty years ago while volunteering. The same networks of people-who-know-you-can-get-stuff-done build up regular big companies too - volunteering is just another way to bootstrap this outside of such a job.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Defending yourself in comments here is about protecting your reputation. In spite of your claim that HN has had no significant impact on your career, your reputation matters. Mine does not. Women are just supposed to enhance the lives of men for free. If you actually gave a damn about helping me, you would have emailed me try to hash this out privately. You aren't actually trying to help me. You are just continuing to virtue signal and look out for your reputation. Solving my problem is not actually on your agenda or you would be doing something effective about it, not something counterproductive that just serves to further smear me. The reason my website is unfocused is because I cannot get serious engagement from anyone ever. Engagement is how a website goes from being some half-baked piece of shit to being a means to provide a service in exchange for money. I cannot get serious and respectful engagement. I mostly get platitudes and shallow advice that isn't based on much of anything. Chin up. Keep trying. Tally ho. Maybe next time. Meanwhile, my bank account is nearly empty as usual and I am not happy about it. Platitudes do not pay my bills. Encouragement does not pay my bills. Men talking to me to enhance their reputation while pissing on mine does not pay my bills and is nothing innovative. Patio11 has done the exact same damn thing to me. He pissed all over me in public and when I blogged about it years later and someone posted that blog post here because the HN crowd loves its gossip, his only fucking concern was covering his ass and denying wrong doing. Because that's the kind of good guy Catholic boy he is. His fucking reputation matters. My suffering is irrelevant. My inability to come up with enough earned income to have basic food security no matter how hard I try and in spite of high levels of education and competence is of zero concern to him, to you and to most people here pretending they are good people and not sexist jerks. So please stop leaving me these incredibly shitty comments that just get worse with every new one.