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I would see your task differently and more about maximizing _opportunities_ for wealth (and other kinds of fulfillment) 1. Maintain a public presence, includin
by softwaredoug 5y ago
I would see your task differently and more about maximizing _opportunities_ for wealth (and other kinds of fulfillment)
1. Maintain a public presence, including talking about problems you’re working on, open source contributions, blogging, speaking, social media, etc.
2. In (1) and in all interactions make it clear you have great communication and interpersonal skills. Work really hard at this because if you can help investors, managers, etc understand what you want you can go really far.
3. Have humility and a beginners mindset. If someone is smarter/better than you it’s a chance to learn. If you fail, it’s a chance to learn. Listening is a chance to incorporate perspectives and options into an overall better approach AND it comes with buy-in from who you’re listening to if you truly care about their perspective. Also, of course, if you have skills others need, freely give your knowledge away.
4. Pick a valuable niche. This is where the tech/market skill lies. If you can understand something, and combine it with the soft skills above you can go far. And by “understand” I mean in reality you know enough about a very hard problem both add value AND bring a _lot_ of humility about what you _dont_ yet understand. Or perhaps nobody understands.
- podric 5y agoGreat response! I'm definitely saving it. What are some good examples of (4) for SWEs? I'm guessing topics like WebRTC, video codec algorithms, compilers?
- softwaredoug 5y agoI kind of stumbled into a problem space I saw lots of my clients struggling with (search relevance) and sensed a market need ~9 years ago and tried to maximize my opportunities in it. You can read the full story here if you’re curious: https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2020/12/22/hack-your-career-with-consulting.html https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2020/12/22/hack-your-career-wi...
- mraza007 5y agoReally interesting post but I have few questions for you and I would love to hear from you. 1) How do you transition into consulting for instance how do you market your self and create a personal brand 2) How do you do the research to a pick a niche area and how do you find clients within that niche I would love to hear your thoughts
- softwaredoug 5y agoOther pointers that I think I’d point out: 5. Focus and Finish: instead of starting new ideas, finish the last one. You feel great and you can then maximize whatever opportunities that accomplishment affords you 6. Relationships over wealth: don’t be an Ebenezer Scrooge giving up life’s fulfilling opportunities and relationships to maximize wealth. Take care of people and usually you are taken care of. 7. Go easy on yourself: the key to doing something long term is self forgiveness, taking breaks, sometimes being a slacker. You can’t rely on grit and discipline alone as solutions to getting things done.