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Sometimes it means “someone who can bill $300 an hour” with no relation to actual ability. I was a “senior” three years out of college and I had no clue what in

Sometimes it means “someone who can bill $300 an hour” with no relation to actual ability. I was a “senior” three years out of college and I had no clue what in the world I was doing. Come to think of it after 20 years I kinda still feel that way.

a4isms 5y ago
I have demonstrated my ability to convince clients to pay amounts of money like this for my skills. And yes, the not-so-secret thing about consulting is that if you're able to convince a client that you're worth $500 an hour, it's just easy to convince them to pay $300 an hour for the work of a colleague of yours they've never seen.
- dkarl 5y ago
  Ugh, I encountered this a few times early in my career (early 2000s.) The worst case was a team from a large, expensive, high-end consulting company. There was one A player who was fast and sharp and absolutely invaluable, two developers who were slow but diligent, one guy who everybody avoided because he was pissed off that he wasn't as smart as the A player, and one engineer who spent all day in front of an IDE but never checked in any code. Once, as a prank, a couple of my coworkers sent me over to "help" this last person (to be clear, the prank was on both me and the person I was sent to help.) They were staring at code that was just syntactically wrong, and not in a subtle way. It was a Java source file, and the line that they were working on, which I think was the only line they had changed, did not look like Java. They couldn't see what was wrong with it, and honestly neither could I, in the sense that I could only see that it didn't look like Java. This person had been "working" on the project for several weeks, and from that point on, I felt intensely sorry them, because they came to work every day for eight hours, and sat in a chair looking at an IDE, going to meetings, staying late if the A player stayed late, etc., nobody ever talking to them, and I can't imagine what kind of bizarre hell that was for them. I didn't feel comfortable talking to them about it because there was an age and culture and language gap, so I'll never know. When the consulting' contract was up, we renewed, but that person was replaced with another slow but diligent worker, and I never saw them again.
  - missing_paren 5y ago
    What a sad story!
nebulous_two 5y ago
So imposter syndrome is justified sometimes is what you're saying?
- Swizec 5y ago
  To quote a meme: “You all can’t have impostor syndrome, some of you gotta just be bad at your jobs”
  - dgb23 5y ago
    I like this quote. While I think impostor syndrome is real, I also can't believe that so many actually have it (judging from media mostly). I cannot personally relate either. I can relate with insecurity, anxiety and so on _very_ much. But much of that has been based on a lack of experience, practice and knowledge. When those things can heal "impostor syndrome" then it's not impostor syndrome - you'd still have it. There is also a thing that comes up after more experience rather than less: "nobody has a clue what they're doing"-syndrome. The idea or realization that real competence or knowledge is a fad in the first place. Everyone just tries really hard to figure stuff out, but nobody _really_ achieves that. There's confidence, good communication and so on, but those things are orthogonal to what I'm describing. And I include very smart and capable people here. In the end it's all based on a "wishy-washy, good enough, it works so far, those are my assumptions" kind of deal. Not everything is impostor syndrome. Much of it is some version of any of the above, or just plain humbleness.
    - Swizec 5y ago
      > "nobody has a clue what they're doing"-syndrome The more advanced you are in your career, the more your job should be to solve novel problems. Things you, at least, haven't solved before. Preferably things nobody has solved before. If all you're doing is work you already know how to do, you should find a more interesting job imo.
  - vsareto 5y ago
    If we're going that route, then there are definitely a good number of jobs that will make you look bad no matter how good you really are. Companies can be imposters too; we just like to blame the workers first.
cultofmetatron 5y ago
> someone who can bill $300 an hour god.. that hurts. I've worked 10 years in the industry, have rescued code bases and currently am lead engineer and cto of a startup. I've tried doing some moonlighting but people balk when I quote them $80/hr. I really need a better network. plus my soft skills are terrible.
- jameshush 5y ago
  The good news is, soft skills are just skills. If you can learn JavaScript you can learn how to build relationships, or give a presentation. I know this because my soft skills used to be non-existent and now I give talks, workshops, have a podcast, and _even_ do stand up comedy. This free course from a podcaster I listen to helped _a lot_ jordanharbinger.com/course. "Networking" is just a serious of small habits you do daily, there's zero rocket science involved. This book written by my speaking coach was a game changer for me too: https://bookyourselfsolid.com/ https://bookyourselfsolid.com/ You hit the nail on the head though. The high rates come from relationships. Period. You don't _get_ the good gigs, you _earn_ them by providing 10x value to every client you work with and getting warm reviews from them. I do zero machine learning, have no masters degree, and never passed any whiteboard code interview. But there's plenty of people who just need someone competent, dependable, and friendly to make their website work. Best of luck :)

a4isms 5y ago

I have demonstrated my ability to convince clients to pay amounts of money like this for my skills. And yes, the not-so-secret thing about consulting is that if you're able to convince a client that you're worth $500 an hour, it's just easy to convince them to pay $300 an hour for the work of a colleague of yours they've never seen.

dkarl 5y ago
Ugh, I encountered this a few times early in my career (early 2000s.) The worst case was a team from a large, expensive, high-end consulting company. There was one A player who was fast and sharp and absolutely invaluable, two developers who were slow but diligent, one guy who everybody avoided because he was pissed off that he wasn't as smart as the A player, and one engineer who spent all day in front of an IDE but never checked in any code. Once, as a prank, a couple of my coworkers sent me over to "help" this last person (to be clear, the prank was on both me and the person I was sent to help.) They were staring at code that was just syntactically wrong, and not in a subtle way. It was a Java source file, and the line that they were working on, which I think was the only line they had changed, did not look like Java. They couldn't see what was wrong with it, and honestly neither could I, in the sense that I could only see that it didn't look like Java. This person had been "working" on the project for several weeks, and from that point on, I felt intensely sorry them, because they came to work every day for eight hours, and sat in a chair looking at an IDE, going to meetings, staying late if the A player stayed late, etc., nobody ever talking to them, and I can't imagine what kind of bizarre hell that was for them. I didn't feel comfortable talking to them about it because there was an age and culture and language gap, so I'll never know. When the consulting' contract was up, we renewed, but that person was replaced with another slow but diligent worker, and I never saw them again.
- missing_paren 5y ago
  What a sad story!

nebulous_two 5y ago

So imposter syndrome is justified sometimes is what you're saying?

Swizec 5y ago
To quote a meme: “You all can’t have impostor syndrome, some of you gotta just be bad at your jobs”
- dgb23 5y ago
  I like this quote. While I think impostor syndrome is real, I also can't believe that so many actually have it (judging from media mostly). I cannot personally relate either. I can relate with insecurity, anxiety and so on _very_ much. But much of that has been based on a lack of experience, practice and knowledge. When those things can heal "impostor syndrome" then it's not impostor syndrome - you'd still have it. There is also a thing that comes up after more experience rather than less: "nobody has a clue what they're doing"-syndrome. The idea or realization that real competence or knowledge is a fad in the first place. Everyone just tries really hard to figure stuff out, but nobody _really_ achieves that. There's confidence, good communication and so on, but those things are orthogonal to what I'm describing. And I include very smart and capable people here. In the end it's all based on a "wishy-washy, good enough, it works so far, those are my assumptions" kind of deal. Not everything is impostor syndrome. Much of it is some version of any of the above, or just plain humbleness.
  - Swizec 5y ago
    > "nobody has a clue what they're doing"-syndrome The more advanced you are in your career, the more your job should be to solve novel problems. Things you, at least, haven't solved before. Preferably things nobody has solved before. If all you're doing is work you already know how to do, you should find a more interesting job imo.
- vsareto 5y ago
  If we're going that route, then there are definitely a good number of jobs that will make you look bad no matter how good you really are. Companies can be imposters too; we just like to blame the workers first.

cultofmetatron 5y ago

> someone who can bill $300 an hour god.. that hurts. I've worked 10 years in the industry, have rescued code bases and currently am lead engineer and cto of a startup. I've tried doing some moonlighting but people balk when I quote them $80/hr. I really need a better network. plus my soft skills are terrible.

jameshush 5y ago
The good news is, soft skills are just skills. If you can learn JavaScript you can learn how to build relationships, or give a presentation. I know this because my soft skills used to be non-existent and now I give talks, workshops, have a podcast, and _even_ do stand up comedy. This free course from a podcaster I listen to helped _a lot_ jordanharbinger.com/course. "Networking" is just a serious of small habits you do daily, there's zero rocket science involved. This book written by my speaking coach was a game changer for me too: https://bookyourselfsolid.com/ https://bookyourselfsolid.com/ You hit the nail on the head though. The high rates come from relationships. Period. You don't _get_ the good gigs, you _earn_ them by providing 10x value to every client you work with and getting warm reviews from them. I do zero machine learning, have no masters degree, and never passed any whiteboard code interview. But there's plenty of people who just need someone competent, dependable, and friendly to make their website work. Best of luck :)