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Hell, I experience this a lot. My experience is doing a lot of things, and being a force multiplier. However you go to a larger company, and suddenly they're lo
by Justsignedup 3y ago
Hell, I experience this a lot. My experience is doing a lot of things, and being a force multiplier. However you go to a larger company, and suddenly they're looking for very specific experience doing specific scaling that I never got to do in all my roles, boom, it is terrible for my resume. And many young people see this and just decide that let's just focus on that, and make a great resume, rather than try to be useful.
I could have come into a job and say "okay, I know back end, let me focus on that" but instead I spent a day installing a shitty data pipeline that more or less took us through the next 4 years of data analytical needs for almost no cost. Etc.
It is just how it is. I even read a post on HN about a decade ago about how a guy was hire #1, was instrumental in the growth of a company, and when it was purchased was pushed out because they didn't need a generalist anymore, they needed a specialist. And so he decided to drop the generalist role and focus entirely on one technical aspect to the benefit of his career.
So while I agree with Tim, I also have to say, as someone in the thick of it, there's no good way out. Unless you want to keep working for Seed / Series A startups, fingers crossed they sell or you won't make that okay payoff.
- taherchhabra 3y agoI am in the same boat as you. For generalist,after a point, i feel the only way up is to start something of your own.
- trinsic2 3y agoThis is why I dont work for anyone but my customers. There is no way I would deal with the kind of dissonance we are living through today. I do all my design work, my coding, my deduction for people that hire me directly for individual projects. I don't make as much money as I would working for a company, but you can't put a price on piece of mind.
- TotalCrackpot 3y agoDo you have any tips or resources on how to find individual consumers?
- debok 3y agoFrom my experience it seems that there is more work in this space than there is people to do it. If you just tell people that you are open for individual contract type work, the business will roll in eventually. Just give it some time and start by doing it on a part-time basis. It might take several months before you land your first project, but once you completed some work for some clients, more business will come if you are good. You will know when you are ready to take your individual contracts full-time.
- TotalCrackpot 3y agoShould you put an ad somewhere, go to meetups or conferences and say you are open for contracts? Leave CV somewhere?
- debok 3y agoI didn't even do that. I just told people in my immediate vicinity that I am open to individual projects. One project came from my wife's ex-boss, one project came from a colleague who got a project via LinkedIn, but didn't want to take it himself. You can just drop it in casual conversation. "What do you do for a living?" "Oh I'm a software developer at X-Corp, and I also do some work for individual clients" Something like that. People remember that stuff. If you like, you can even tell people you offer a finder's fee. Just don't be pushy. Be willing to build the business part-time until you have enough work to take it full-time. You probably won't be getting big projects from the get go, but if you are humble, that won't be a problem. My first project was just optimizing and cleaning a slow and messy Python script. I charged $35 an hour an threw 10 hours into it.
- TotalCrackpot 3y agoMaybe try creating or working for worker cooperatives? Given that they are fully worker managed they should be a better place for generalists.