3 ms·

> I think it is awesome that you went from 'no job in your area of expertise' to 'normal income' in 18 months. I'm pretty sure my outcome so far is 50%+ luck a

> I think it is awesome that you went from 'no job in your area of expertise' to 'normal income' in 18 months. I'm pretty sure my outcome so far is 50%+ luck and I don't know if I'll be able to sustain it forever. > I am looking for clarity on the 'got sick of dealing with it' part. What were you sick of? Consulting/Contracting work [my only option with $0 in capital] requires soft skills in dealing with people. The majority of my personal failings all relate to soft skills. 1) I've got a tendency to provide too much information rather than too little. 2) I tend to have poor communication with non-technical people [aka clients]. While I could blame it on them, the fact remains it was vital to my income on that course and therefore truly on me. 3) I'm a bit of an odd duck socially, even by programmer standards. 4) I don't have a poker face when annoyed/irritated/etc. I also have poor control over my tone in such situations. Coupled with #1 & #2 this tends to lead to a much higher client turnover than most consultants/contractors experience [I could be wrong, but I don't think so]. 5) I was able to get a "normal job" and I prefer it. However, there is still one older engineer who needles me about #2. ;) > I have never commissioned a survey on it but my experience from undergraduate to career was that there was a 100% correlation between passion for something and top 50% of people who do that thing. Every student I met at USC that was passionate about electrical engineering was in the top 50% of their graduating class, every clerk, salesperson, engineer, gardner, taxi driver, artist, and writer I've ever met who was passionate about what they were doing, did it better than most. That observation has been pretty foundational in my thinking about life and happiness. I would be intrigued to find a counter example. You may be right. I don't think I'm in the top 50% of software developers, I am probably in the top 65%. EDIT: A perfect example of #2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921042 I wasn't sufficiently clear about what I meant by "market rates" which leads to him launching into an explanation that [I think] he realized was not needed when he basically agreed with another poster about the $ figure quoted in the article. This is due to the fact I didn't explicitly define "market rates" as the amount the person received on offer in the article.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
Thanks for the response, feel free to tell me to go away if I'm annoying you. I'm wondering about a third thing now. You seem remarkably self aware in your analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. The skills you feel weak in, communicating with the clients and keeping them engaged, have you looked into partnering with someone who has those skills but lacks your technical expertise? The observation is that finding someone who was a 'people person' to be your interface to the clients might go a long way to creating a more effective enterprise, and some folks are really passionate about customer service and understanding the clients requirements. The trick here is understanding how much that person brings to the total equation. I've known folks who hired an 'admin' for minimum wage and didn't recognize how much better the overall system worked, until the admin (who did see it, quit). But being aware of the 'before' situation and being able to appreciate the 'after' situation, you would be in a much better place to compensate that person in a much better ratio metric way. For example, if you find you double your revenue with that person on board, sharing half of it with them is not ridiculous even if they write no code at all, and all they do is pamper the clients. The danger sometimes is that the 'brains' of the organization rationalizes away the increased revenue as something that would have happened anyway. It doesn't sound like that is your issue though. An acquaintance of mine who founded a very successful company once claimed they owed their success to hiring people who did the things they hated doing. Thanks again for the follow-up.
- opendais 12y ago
  You aren't. The reason I'm on HN so much lately has more to do with my disquiet about work than anything else. That is another flaw, I am a trace of a worrier. :P I did try that for a year [straight partnership, the project I was working on required more than just a developer]. It went poorly, mainly due to my poor judgement in the partner combined with the fact I ignored my instinct about the client. He actually made slightly more than me on that particular deal. That was actually what finally convinced me to switch to being an employee for awhile. I think I just need more time to figure out other people before I try that sort of thing again [hence hanging out on HN].

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Thanks for the response, feel free to tell me to go away if I'm annoying you. I'm wondering about a third thing now. You seem remarkably self aware in your analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. The skills you feel weak in, communicating with the clients and keeping them engaged, have you looked into partnering with someone who has those skills but lacks your technical expertise? The observation is that finding someone who was a 'people person' to be your interface to the clients might go a long way to creating a more effective enterprise, and some folks are really passionate about customer service and understanding the clients requirements. The trick here is understanding how much that person brings to the total equation. I've known folks who hired an 'admin' for minimum wage and didn't recognize how much better the overall system worked, until the admin (who did see it, quit). But being aware of the 'before' situation and being able to appreciate the 'after' situation, you would be in a much better place to compensate that person in a much better ratio metric way. For example, if you find you double your revenue with that person on board, sharing half of it with them is not ridiculous even if they write no code at all, and all they do is pamper the clients. The danger sometimes is that the 'brains' of the organization rationalizes away the increased revenue as something that would have happened anyway. It doesn't sound like that is your issue though. An acquaintance of mine who founded a very successful company once claimed they owed their success to hiring people who did the things they hated doing. Thanks again for the follow-up.

opendais 12y ago
You aren't. The reason I'm on HN so much lately has more to do with my disquiet about work than anything else. That is another flaw, I am a trace of a worrier. :P I did try that for a year [straight partnership, the project I was working on required more than just a developer]. It went poorly, mainly due to my poor judgement in the partner combined with the fact I ignored my instinct about the client. He actually made slightly more than me on that particular deal. That was actually what finally convinced me to switch to being an employee for awhile. I think I just need more time to figure out other people before I try that sort of thing again [hence hanging out on HN].