Ask HN: What would make your life better?

Re:Ask HN: What would make your life better? by personlurking on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:31AM (#12530872)

The other day here I saw an Ask HN about how to enter the "$300K club". While I have a low cost of living abroad ($600/mo total), I'd be super happy to enter the $1K/mo club, and over the moon if I could get it up to $2K. For that, I'd need a better understanding of my skill set as well as how to develop a better one.

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Re:Ask HN: What would make your life better? by iDemonix on Monday September 19, 2016 @08:52AM (#12531011)

Yeah I saw that post, it was quite depressing. I'm a techie that has no interests in management, and where I live rent is £950+/mo (around $1300) without bills/council tax etc.

There's nothing quite like slaving away all day, completing on-call shifts and doing work on the weekends now and then, and being able to save barely any money towards buying a house instead of renting (as renting is a mug's game in the south of the UK).

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Re:Ask HN: What would make your life better? by GFischer on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @05:55PM (#12543745)

If you are any good, I think you're better off developing a network or looking for customers than spending too much time over-polishing your skills.

Patrick McKenzie's advice is good, see:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

And I've also read some really good advice here on HN.

My own personal experience: Based on what I believed to be an unmet need/new opportunity, I built a pretty small project. With help from the university I graduated from, I got contacts with the local business community, and now I have more leads (not yet customers) than I have time (I'm currently full-time employed).

Businessmen were really kind and gave me 15 minutes to listen to their needs and pitch my product. We over-estimate the difficulty of securing a meeting (that's not the same as securing a sale though).

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