zenpaul

Family game night on Jitsi video conference.

Went from seeing my parents and siblings in person once a year to seeing them virtually every week. I'm much more involved in their joys and struggles. It's a healthy dose of laughter and silliness every week.

In September Planet Money podcast covered how the plastic industry sold the public on plastic recycling when they know it was not realistic.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land

Yes, This American Life did a great story on this.

"We’ve fought two wars since 9/11. We got help from tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans—some were targeted or killed because they helped us. We owe these people. We’ve passed laws that say so. So why has it been so hard for us to get many of them to safety?"

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this-one

Two important takeaways here.

"In fact, in the fine print, the CDC’s flu numbers also include pneumonia deaths."

"If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu."

For the average person, COVID-19 is better described as "highly contagious and extra deadly pneumonia".

Planet Money did a good podcast on this topic recently. I learned that it's hard to follow CDC guidelines when you're sleeping 20 in a garage and there's only enough water to shower every few days.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821593542/episode-984-food-an...

I can relate! I started my SourDough starter SanDy a week and a half ago and have made a couple of great loaves since then. I'm on my way to the store tonight for more flour.

Just listened to the Darknet Diaries Courthouse podcast about the pentest gone wrong that was referenced in the article. Highly recommended.

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/59/

The overriding thing is to "take care of each other". If they want more updates, send more updates. If they want less updates, send less updates. How do you know what they prefer? Ask them.

Communicating about communicating is underrated.

"If you write about your passion, you will never lose enthusiasm because you are creating a little corner of the internet that’s yours, you made it, you made it beautiful, and now it’s also available for everyone else, but even if no one shows up, it stands on its own."

One of the most inspirational statements I have seen in a while.

jiggawatt has a good example.

The thing is that managing inevitable scope changes is an art and a science. Some changes get accepted as part of the project, others are scoped as fixed price updates and others are very hard to scope so may be hourly. In any case this involves identifying the changes, scoping the work, estimating the work, pricing the work and then negotiating with the client to accept the pricing on the change. All of that takes time, often has little to do with the actual development and adds additional risk. That change control is the delicate balance of pleasing the customer while continuing to make money without taking on too much risk.

Yes, the consulting agencies or headhunters do just that. They do the day to day work of talking to hiring managers. Then they take their cut either when they place someone full-time or take a cut out of the hourly consulting rate.

It varies from place to place, but in the NYC metro area it is common for companies to only staff up through agencies so there is no chance to go directly to companies unless you know someone inside the company already.

Good point. From this thread it is clear that people have made a go of it with project billing in some domains. I develop enterprise business systems that are generally too large and complex to reliably estimate or manage to a fixed budget.

In any case, all it takes is one project with one unreasonable customer who demands extra work and then doesn't pay, to wipe out the gains from lucrative projects.

Also, in the long term you accumulate responsibilities like mortgages and families that makes that low-risk monthly revenue stream so important.

Good luck making $2M as a solo consultant. In order to take on projects that big and maintain your customer pipeline you almost certainly have to build a team which is what I call creating an agency.

Billing hourly or daily is about the same. Weekly gets complicated. It is all about reducing risk, locking in cashflow and getting compensated for your time and energy.

Yes, absolutely.

Also, once you get good rates, you ask for a higher rate from the next customer. If it is higher than their highest rate they tend to tell you what their highest rate is which gives you a great place to negotiate from. Like, maybe I'll take less if I can work remote 2 days a week.

I've been there and done that for better and worse. It sounds like the author wants to create their own agency which is a different game than being a solo consultant. If you really want to be a solo consultant...

Lessons from 20+ years as a solo consultant:

- Customers rarely know what they want.

- Customers always change what they want.

- Change control in fixed bid work is vastly more important than how smart or productive you are.

- It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to find customers.

- One gets customers by searching, networking, having other good customers and mastering useful technologies.

- What matters long term is consistently making money every month.

If you truly want to be a solo consultant:

- Maintain good relationships with your customers.

- Bill hourly and get paid no later than monthly.

- Be willing to work with consulting agencies and accept their markup on your rate.

- Always be learning and using new technologies.

- Always be looking for the next opportunity.

It's another indication of the danger of the incompetency of the current administration as outlined in Michael Lewis' excellent book "The Fifth Risk". The Fifth Risk being "Project management", or lack thereof. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

"Systems like Six Sigma appeal to managers because they are rooted in the pursuit of predictability, and all managers crave predictability"

And what innovator wants to work in a place like that? I left years ago because that culture was driving me crazy.

Being a homeowner, hearing an "irritating mould problem" didn't make me think "resilient fungi could lead to new kinds of materials for use in space". It made me think that there are some serious health risks for those astronauts if that mould gets out of control.

Funny nobody mentions that.

What I always say is "speak what you know" in a confrontational situation. It is an authentic way of communicating that opens up conversations. For example, I can say that "I feel frustrated when you show up to the meeting 10 minutes late." instead of "You are so disorganized that you never show up to the meetings on time." The truth is what I know is my feelings and what I don't know is what is going on in their world.

The randomize button in the lower right corner is the best way to see the possibilities.

And in other news, "2017 saw largest total population in US history".

How about "2017 saw highest increase in death due to alcohol, drugs and suicide in US history"?

This comment from accpi jumped out...

Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so they discard it.

Or train the network with unknown or not-a-number data or pseudo data. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5359699?oq=5%2C359%2C699

Radiolab just did a similar podcast "Tweak the Vote" about new voting variations. It digs into some real examples in Ireland, San Francisco and Maine. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/tweak-vote

My personal policy is NO email on the phone and no Slack/group-chat alerts on the phone either. Anyone who matters has my number and can call or text me at any time. That puts the interrupt driven work of filtering out the 99% of non-emergency information on them, where it should be. The only exception to this is if I'm explicitly on call for something specific, but I try to minimize that time.

For email I always filter ALL automatically generated emails (JIRA updates, etc.) to a folder which I generally ignore. Then when I get to the computer to deal with mail I go through everything (from real people) at once a few times during the day. I leave nothing unread or unresponded to, even if it's letting them know it will be dealt with tomorrow.

Seems to keep everybody happy and productive, most importantly myself.

Ha, ha, ha, I just got laid off Monday along with most of the rest of the team with no notice. The market seems to be fairly hot here in Fairfield county CT so I'm jumping right back in and expect to pick up another job/contract in the next month. It's just a matter of rate and commute...

It is tempting to just do my writing or something else but I love the work, it pays well and it's fairly expensive to live here.

Speaking of writing, I wrote this the day after the layoffs and it pretty much sums up my feelings...

A tree fallen; the turn of a leaf

Why is the HR team here with crisp manilla folders? "There's an announcement at 10," please assemble the soldiers.

Somber words were spoken and no questions were asked. Then with cleaning out our desks most of us were tasked.

The screen turns red, system down in sector 4! I tense for a moment and then gleefully ignore.

We pack the last picture and hold back a tear, And say "it's still early, but let's all get a beer."

We relive the drag-out meetings where we battled for the truth, And the late afternoon YouTubes bordering on the uncouth.

For some it's a blow; for others relief. It's a tree fallen; the turn of a leaf.

So I'll join another startup, yes that will be fun. Or even a bank, if they really want to get shit done.

The joy of building and creating with keyboard or pen, Is what I live for over and over again.

If you're team's on a mission with problems quite hard, Tell me about it. Please call me. The number's on the card.