DaedTech

Stories about Software

Jun
11

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Positioning Yourself to Coworkers as a Stealth Consultant

Category: From Developer to Consultant, You Asked For It | 4 Comments

In a nod to yesterday’s announcement, I’m going to demonstrate how just unaltered the DaedTech blog might be, content-wise.  To wit, here’s a both that qualifies in both my reader questions series and my “developer to consultant” series.  This makes sense, since it’s a question about the developer to consultant series.

Today I’ll talk about positioning yourself as if you were an independent consultant, but with the caveat that you’re trying this out on your coworkers.

Positioning Revisited, But Internal to a Company

When it comes to posting on this blog, I love not having to make the caveat that my opinions aren’t my employer’s, or whatever.  The more used to that I’ve become over the years, the fewer punches I’ve bothered to pull.  And so it went with my first developer to consultant post.  In that post, I unapologetic declared that every developer should become a consultant.

If I were writing a book, that post would have been the prologue.  Chapter one, then, would have been this post about positioning.  It’s a long read, but I recommend it for understanding the nuance of positioning.  At the 10,000 foot-iest of 10,000 foot views, your positioning is your plan to ace the question, “why should I hire you, specifically?”

The reader question came in the comments of that post.  And here it is.

For an employed software engineer, what are some of the ways to “signal” your positioning strategy? In other words, how do you let the org/team/manager know what your unique value prop is? I’d love to get your thoughts on this.

This is an interesting thought exercise, because to participate in the standard hiring process is to have the worst possible positioning strategy.  When you do this, you’re saying, “I’m slightly better than dozens of otherwise interchangeable resources whose resumes you’re holding, so hire me.”  To have a good positioning statement as a consultant is to say “I’m the only person that can deliver X for you in exactly the way you need.”

So today’s topic is about how to develop the latter flavor of positioning strategy in the former world.  But who am I to shy away from nuanced topics?

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Jun
10

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Contrary to No One’s Demands, I’ll Blog about Whatever I Please

Category: The Life of a Programmer | 2 Comments

Since switching the reader question responses to Tuesdays, I don’t blog on Mondays.  Today I’m going to make an exception to write sort of a meta-post.

Categorizing it as an “announcement” would be a little too grandiose.  Instead, it’s kind of an explanation for my regular readers and something that I may link back to in the future for reference.

I’m reconsidering how I think about the DaedTech blog.

I’m Not Doing Anything Drastic with the Blog

Having said that, let me pump the brakes on any speculation about a pivot.  There won’t be one.  I’m not going to suddenly start blogging about knitting or something.  I’m not going to monetize the blog in a different way (except that I did recently remove the paid ads from DaedTech).  And I’m definitely not going to stop blogging.  I honestly don’t think I’m capable of not writing.

I mean it when I say I’m reconsidering how I think about the blog.  I’m going to start approaching topics differently and writing somewhat differently.

In short, I’m going to back for writing this blog purely for the fun of it.

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Jun
7

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DaedTech Digest: Grilled Pigeon and Eating Habits on the Road

Category: Digests | 2 Comments

During last week’s digest post, I talked about an existential issue of sorts.  Do I get home sick or road weary?  And the answer is generally no.

This week I’ll switch gears a bit and talk about something both tactical and mundane (unless you make it otherwise).  I’m talking about eating.  Specifically, how does eating work when you’re in a constant state of transit and shuffle?

So do you go out to eat all the time, or, like… what?

Before my wife and I ever started doing slow travel stints, I did a lot of business travel.  And, we’re talking 100% commuter business travel.  And when you travel like that, you eat out a lot.  All the time, in fact.  There was a year of my life where I don’t think I did anything but eat at restaurants and carry in food.  (Because when you fly out Sunday night and fly home Friday night, it’s not like you tend to spend Saturday night hitting the grocery store to do a bunch of cooking.)

Why am I mentioning this?  Well, to frame my answer to the question as a slow traveler.  Believe it or not, I got pretty tired of never making dinner like folks do.  For one thing, the “traveling consultant 15” is way more of a thing than the freshman 15.  You gain weight doing this.  And secondly, it just becomes sort of depressingly decadent after a while, like eating fettuccine Alfredo for every meal or something.

So when we adapted to the slow travel lifestyle, it was always with the idea that I really didn’t want to eat out all the time.  Oh, don’t get me wrong — I still like a good meal at a good restaurant.  But when we travel, we want to grocery shop, cook with local ingredients, and experience life as if we were locals.

What’s the balance, then?

Let’s get down to brass tacks.  How we eat depends almost entirely on length of stay.  Let me break it down.

  • 1 week or less.  Typically this means a hotel or maybe a short-stay AirBNB.  We almost certainly eat out or carry in every meal.
  • 1 to 2 weeks.  This is probably going to be an AirBNB.  We’ll do some minimal grocery shopping, looking for botique-y local places where we can buy things that don’t require wholesale assembly from raw ingredients.  This place in Ocean Beach, San Diego, for instance.
  • 2+ weeks.  Always an AirBNB, and our grocery shopping becomes more extensive.  It’s still not quite what you do at home — we’re not picking up 10 pound bags of flour and stocking a full spice pantry.  But, we supplement whatever the place’s owner leaves us with a decent amount of local groceries, kind of getting the full local experience.  Bonus points whenever we find farmers markets.

We like to mix it up, since you obviously want to try some of the more interesting local restaurants.  The easiest way to do this is grocery shop more in the beginning and go out more at the end as you start running out of groceries.  This is obviously better than throwing out a bunch of steaks or whatever the next time you move on.

But, whether we’re somewhere a day or 3 months, we’re always looking for interesting experiences.  For instance, check out this menu from a restaurant in Portland, Oregon.  Yes, you’re reading that right.  It’s pigeon.  And you’d better believe I ordered and ate the pigeon.

Why go everywhere, if you’re not going to experience everywhere?

Picks

  • I stumbled on this Youtube channel recently, called SciShow.  It’s sort of like the love-child of Buzzfeed and the Science channel, and it’s pretty binge-able.
  • Here’s something I use all the time and totally take for granted.  But it’s totally indispensable.  I’m talking about the Windows snipping tool.  If you use Windows machines at all and have never heard of this, get familiar immediately.

The Digest

And, as always, have a good weekend!

Jun
4

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Software Jobs for Social Anxiety Sufferers

Category: You Asked For It | 1 Comment

It’s been a while since my last reader question post.  It’s hard to feel too bad, though.  I was combining a cross-country relocation with a two week vacation.  So I suppose the internet just had to do without my wisdom for a few weeks.

But I’m back in the saddle, so that changes today.

For this week’s reader question post, recall a post I wrote about how to find remote programming jobs (and why you should find them).  Anyone who follows my digest posts knows that I’m location independent and nomadic.

Naturally, this means that I work remotely.

I’ve actually worked either partially or completely remotely for years, since before I ever started to vagabond.  And the longer I do it, the more I advocate for it.

Companies love to mass the troops inside of four walls for the kind of camaraderie and collaboration you just can’t achieve remotely.  And, while I understand the draw from a management perspective, from a quality of life perspective, I find life too short for commutes, khakis and birthday cake in the break room.

Remote Work for When the Office is Actually Torture

But what about a different situation?  I’ve gradually evolved to remote work because I prefer it.  In contrast, today’s reader question concerns someone for whom going into the office is actual, acute torture rather than the vague, existential angst embodied by Peter Gibbons.

Here’s the question:

I was reading your article about finding a remote programming job, and I was wondering if you have any advice for someone who has very bad social anxiety, to the point where they have not been able to get any type of programming job, outside of an internship for school. I’m asking for my brother, who has a degree in computer science and is incredibly smart and gifted.

He just has an extremely hard time forcing himself to interact with people. He’s really interested in finding a remote programming job, but doesn’t know where to start. If you have any suggestions for him I would really appreciate it!

The One-Two Punch of Social Torture and the Entry Level

Looking at this question, the social anxiety element certainly pops out at you.  I mean, after all, it’s the meat of the question. But it’s not the only challenge here.

We’re also talking about someone without significant previous work experience to draw on.

I’ve spoken to challenges at the entry level before, in a post about finding an entry level job without a degree.  The person in question has a degree here, which is certainly a help.

But the desire for a specifically remote position mitigates that.  The corporate world doesn’t trust entry level people to work “unsupervised.”

Now, one quick note here.  As someone who is an introvert and has embraced that, what I’m not going to do is offer any advice about dealing with or “conquering” the social anxiety.

That’s really not my forte and, even if it were, I see nothing wrong with a quiet, introspective life.

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Jun
1

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DaedTech Digest: Home is Where the Wine Is

Category: Digests |

Hello everyone.  It’s been a good bit of time since I announced my vacation and subsequent return to the woods and my lake for the summer.  I’d meant to post earlier, but it turns out that relocating and returning from a vacation cause time to get away from you.  So DaedTech has been tumbleweeds dust for the last week.

But no longer!  Let’s pick things back up with another digest post and another little blurb about the nomadic life.

Do You Miss Having a Home Base?

I’ll ease my way back in with something of a softball, and one that people as me a lot.  If you’re used to a pretty transient life, do you come to miss home base?

This might seem like a no-brainer.  I mean, if I got homesick, I’d probably just go home, right?  So clearly I don’t, right?

Well, it’s not quite that simple.

My wife and I have spent a lot of time doing what’s known as slow travel (weeks or months at a time in places).  And before that, I traveled 100% as a management consultant for a long time.  So the last time I was routinely situated in a normal, single-dwelling life was roughly 2013.  I’m used to travel and accustomed to transience.

As such, I don’t miss having a home base, really.  I like variety.  And I’ve gotten used to a pretty spartan existence without all that much stuff.  I don’t really need more clothes than fit in a decent sized duffel bag, and we moved around for six months with only what would fit in a Jeep.

The one way, however, in which the lack of a home base wears on me is a purely logistical one.  Things like mail, having stuff shipped from Amazon, storing supplies, etc. that most people take for granted get pretty weird pretty fast when you slow travel.  Ditto things like finding someone to look after your pets or clean your place.  You’re in a constant state of just having moved, which can get somewhat burdensome.

But beyond that, I love the life.  Toward that end, here’s a photo that I would have posted if I’d done a digest two weeks ago on schedule when we were in Napa California.

Picks

  • For any of you hustlers, entrepreneurs, or people aspiring to the same, you’ve probably at least considered the idea of a virtual assistant.  If not, you should at least put it on your radar.  Once it’s on your radar, check on this service for helping you find a VA.  It took very little time to fill out the form and I’ve already got a number of frankly very impressive folks reaching out to me.
  • In that vein, I’ll pick the Four Hour Work Week.  This books is a fascinating read on the whole, and it’s also where I first heard of the concept of a virtual assistant.

The Digest

Have a good weekend!

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