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This will be at least the fourth such downturn I have seen in my career: - the 2000 Dotcom Bust - the 2008 recession - the 2020 pandemic recession - Now Th

This will be at least the fourth such downturn I have seen in my career: - the 2000 Dotcom Bust - the 2008 recession - the 2020 pandemic recession - Now The short answer is that no one really knows what will happen. A lot of companies are reading the tea leaves - and regardless of what anyone tells you, that's really all it is - and trying to figure out how to make the best moves given rising prices, rising interest rates, a pandemic that, though mostly tamed, still presents challenges and potential dangers, war in Europe, etc. Back in March of 2020 when I was still actively looking, I went through the same thing you are now - companies who were super eager to hire me all of a sudden stopped the interview process and circled the wagons. And these were the FAANGs. My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue. Working for a company feels like a safe move until the economy contracts and they ultimately decide what they think you're really worth. In every one of those previous downturns, I felt like my sense of self worth diminished along with every rejection or ghosted call - and I suffered a LOT of those. This last time around in 2020, I finally gave up entirely and became an independent technical strategy consultant - basically doing what I've always done, but under my own banner instead of someone else's. It took six very hard months until I had a solid client base and consistent enough income to survive - I had to borrow money from some folks during the time to pay the mortgage and healthcare, which was humbling, but it worked. I also have a mortgage, a wife, and a teenager to support, so I really had to get a solid income flowing fast - there wasn't a lot of room for error. If you get a job before you figure out your side gig, great! But maybe keeping working on the side gig because it's nice to have something to fall back on. If you get the side gig running, but it's not making you enough money and you get an offer - take the offer, but make sure you keep building out the side gig. I was probably about your age when the first Dotcom bust happened - I had been out of college only two or three years at that point - and I gotta tell you, that was frightening. When I got my first job out of college, I was hot shit. I put my resume on Monster.com on a Wednesday and by the following Friday I had received about 100 calls, 10 job interviews, and five solid offers. When the bubble burst, not a single person or company returned any of my calls. For nine months. A smarter man would have spent that time trying to build something to make money, to be independent from the vagaries of corporate America and economic cycles over which he has zero control. I was not that smarter man then - it took 20 years and at least three more cycles for me to finally figure it out. Be the smarter (person). Keep applying and interviewing, but spend the rest of the time you would otherwise be working building something for yourself to generate revenue. Could be code, could be an online class, could be selling stuff on Etsy - doesn't matter, so long as it's something you can sustain and that can eventually sustain you if worse comes to worse.

moneywoes 4y ago
Could you please some advice regarding this for someone with 2yoe mostly lamp stack? Where do I find clients after incorporating > My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue
- rzazueta 4y ago
  You need to spend a lot of time thinking about your product and who actually wants to pay for it. Who are your ideal customers? What are their challenges? How does your product solve those challenges? How high a priority are those challenges to that audience? Is there an audience that would put them at a higher priority? How much is it worth to them to solve those challenges - how are those challenges currently affecting their business and how much money could they make / save if they fixed them? If you figure out these answers and get to know your targeted audience very well, you will then understand how they learn about new products and evaluate them. You can then start marketing to them in their language with the value proposition of how your product solves their problems. Put ads up where they will find them, hang out in forums and chat rooms and such where they ask questions, write blog posts about things they are interested in and make sure they get picked up by search engines and - hopefully - news aggregators like this one where your target audience is reading. It's a slow, iterative process that keeps building on itself as you keep going and building momentum. It will be very discouraging at times, but you need to really understand your customers and, when you do, you should be able to figure out why things aren't working when they aren't and how to fix them. Don't worry about going big and scaling - make enough money to support your needs (and trim your needs as low as you can while remaining comfortable). I found consulting clients by posting on my LinkedIn feed. I have one major privilege here - I've been in the industry for more than 20 years and have built a sizable network as a result, all of whom were eager to help me find clients. The bulk of this network is only a few years old, though, so there's no reason you can't build a similar network yourself, if you haven't already. As technologists, we tend to focus on the tech. Spend some time focusing on people, their problems, and how you can uniquely solve them - better, faster, more focused, whatever. You may even find tech isn't the answer to solve for - it may be education or writing or running workshops or something else. And, mostly, build trust in yourself. All of this stuff seems so complicated at first, but that's because we complicate it needlessly. You want o be successful in business? Find an audience that has a need, really understand the consequences of that need and what it means to that audience, create a solution and solicit feedback from the audience, then sell to those who respond favorably. Then, keep listening to them and intelligently improving it to grow the business. If you sit down and think about how YOU would go about doing it, you may find most of the answers you're looking for.

moneywoes 4y ago

Could you please some advice regarding this for someone with 2yoe mostly lamp stack? Where do I find clients after incorporating > My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue

rzazueta 4y ago
You need to spend a lot of time thinking about your product and who actually wants to pay for it. Who are your ideal customers? What are their challenges? How does your product solve those challenges? How high a priority are those challenges to that audience? Is there an audience that would put them at a higher priority? How much is it worth to them to solve those challenges - how are those challenges currently affecting their business and how much money could they make / save if they fixed them? If you figure out these answers and get to know your targeted audience very well, you will then understand how they learn about new products and evaluate them. You can then start marketing to them in their language with the value proposition of how your product solves their problems. Put ads up where they will find them, hang out in forums and chat rooms and such where they ask questions, write blog posts about things they are interested in and make sure they get picked up by search engines and - hopefully - news aggregators like this one where your target audience is reading. It's a slow, iterative process that keeps building on itself as you keep going and building momentum. It will be very discouraging at times, but you need to really understand your customers and, when you do, you should be able to figure out why things aren't working when they aren't and how to fix them. Don't worry about going big and scaling - make enough money to support your needs (and trim your needs as low as you can while remaining comfortable). I found consulting clients by posting on my LinkedIn feed. I have one major privilege here - I've been in the industry for more than 20 years and have built a sizable network as a result, all of whom were eager to help me find clients. The bulk of this network is only a few years old, though, so there's no reason you can't build a similar network yourself, if you haven't already. As technologists, we tend to focus on the tech. Spend some time focusing on people, their problems, and how you can uniquely solve them - better, faster, more focused, whatever. You may even find tech isn't the answer to solve for - it may be education or writing or running workshops or something else. And, mostly, build trust in yourself. All of this stuff seems so complicated at first, but that's because we complicate it needlessly. You want o be successful in business? Find an audience that has a need, really understand the consequences of that need and what it means to that audience, create a solution and solicit feedback from the audience, then sell to those who respond favorably. Then, keep listening to them and intelligently improving it to grow the business. If you sit down and think about how YOU would go about doing it, you may find most of the answers you're looking for.