Many projects have taken longer and been more stressful and had worse outcomes than needed. A lot of the work being done hasn't even been intended to deliver any business value, but to provide an opportunity for one or more people to be seen to be doing something. Actual value creation does occasionally take place as well, but more as a happy accident or a side effect than anything else. I'm very glad I'm not a major shareholder in any of these corporations.
Exactly, these steps work fine if you're blessed geographically. If you live in a developing country like I do, you'd make more money being a construction worker than being a thought working freelancer.
Assess your interests and join related communities. Find new interests and join more communities. Seek out technically interesting domains currently attracting the interest of entrepreneurs and investors. Ignore any stigma and be a good person with integrity. Be attentive. Be intentional. Look for problems you think you can solve. Solve them for people.
Build connections. Make genuine friends. Help your friends out. Spend time helping them find work and being there for them when they need it (Looks like you're doing this now!). Good people may return the favor one day when you most need it.
Showing up is half the battle. Show up everywhere. Find cool emerging scenes and become an early expert. Don't fake it; develop the ability to be earnestly interested in anything. Be interested in what other people are doing. Make your services and expertise known. Make it easy to contact you.
Go out and talk about what you know in public spaces such as this forum. Reach out to people who are doing the same, and build a professional network. No pretense, just reach out, tell them what you like about them/their posts, tell them what you do, and that you'd like to keep in contact with them. Remember personal details they share with you. Follow up. Raise your flag and people will see it, and your tribe will coalesce. I received several emails just yesterday from the Hacker News community, people reaching out to discuss things that I've posted and offer work.
You won't find work tomorrow following this advice. You might not find work at all this year, or next. But this is the playbook for networking online and finding yourself in interesting situations with interesting people. Do that enough, and suddenly it becomes history. Suddenly you're a known quantity in your circles, and you have contextual expertise to draw from in order to solve people's problems. People will pay you to do that.
Thanks that was inspiring to read. I'm curious your thoughts on names in all this. E.g. your profile/website (cool website btw!) uses a handle or brand (badsoft), but no "I am Firstname Lastname". How do you introduce yourself to others, and when are you strictly pseudo-anonymous? Just curious around personal preferences and challenges or benefits of being "Face and name" vs "my brand".
I've worked with people in the past who only call me by a handle, even face to face. Some people really could care less depending on the scene. Other people will want to know everything about you, and it's your preference where your boundaries lie.
I've also hired anonymous engineers before, depending on the work. If it's confidential IP or user data, it's risky to work with anonymous employees, though I am fine with them being pseudonymous within the company as long as I have verifiable data on file in the event of a sudden disappearance, breach of contract or something else.
Personally, I have a few handles as well as my company, and different engagements may go through me personally or through my company. I'm forthcoming about my name in less public spaces, but Hacker News is quite a public space. I still sometimes consider attaching my name, but for now I don't. I express my own opinion on this website and don't want it to affect others.
Bennett Foddy and Zach Gage have a great video [0] about the value in prominently attaching your name to your life's work and brand, and I think they raise very valid points. There are pros and cons to every approach, and I just recommend letting your principles and personal boundaries guide you; if you're fine with your name being public or semi-public, go for it. If not, you can still carve a unique path through this industry with a healthy bit of networking and showing up with a shovel.
I typically move business correspondence to a personal email that does contain my name as well, though a lot of correspondence also happens under a handle elsewhere on the web.
Back when I did consulting, I started locally and eventually went nationally. I even had my state in the company name and emblazoned on my web page; didn't stop Big Names from across the country from hiring me.
I know, I guess my comment is driven by all the AI-resume generators.
Try a random resume and the first suggestion you get from them is "Add numbers". You add numbers and you still leave some bullet points without any, and the next suggestion is "Add missing numbers to these bullet points". So as a hiring manager I see resumes with numbers and my instant guess is that resume is generated by any of these services. :D
In general I feel the numbers are _more_ relevant if you (a) hold a senior/manager position and (b) had some actual business impact, e.g. "increased ARR from 1m to 100m as a revops manager", "grew the engineering team from 5 to 100 people as a head of engineering" and so on. Numbers like "made the api 10 times faster", "reduced ETL pipeline runtime from hours to minutes" feel almost arbitrary. You can justify them just fine, but still. But perhaps I am just biased by the AI-generated stuff, that's all.
Would you want to share how your work or personal life has been affected by these?
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