You're a founder. You're an officer. You're visiting this webpage out of curiosity or because you need something done, full stop. You're perennially short-staffed because there just aren't enough competent people to go around. Your organization is thriving and you're not shy about writing checks to make your problems go away. Currently, your biggest problems are "business" in nature. (Which "technologies"? Who cares?)
Say you reach out to me. What does the course of our relationship look like?
First, you plug your email into my contact form. There are other fields, but they're basically optional. The contact form is so my inbox doesn't get spammed to hell and back.
Then, within a day or two, I send you an email. We exchange two or three emails and then talk on the phone. By the way, I send emails, I make calls, and nothing else. No videoconferencing, no social media, no weird apps.
Two or three calls later, I either have a good idea of what you're looking for or I don't. If I think it'll be beneficial for both parties, we do it. If I don't think it'll work out, I'll refer you to someone who's able to help.
We do it. It takes three to six months. After three to six months, it's done. It's solid and robust and won't require much ongoing maintenance. I drove it mercilessly from start to finish and you sent me a bunch of weekly checks. Everybody's happy. Everybody wins. The checks made your eyes water but in the end "it" makes more money than it cost and you recommend me and my services to all your friends.
Fundamentally, it comes down to the "human REPL". To a surprising and perhaps unsettling degree, no one really understands what's going on in the computer, we just have to infer what's going on by making changes and observing. So the human being is sitting at his computer making changes and refreshing to see what's changed, and he can only see lag and performance issues that are apparent on his machine. Everything else (not UI) is invisible to him. If the computer did computation instantly, there would be no real way for him to know (much less incentive to know) the performance or purely "mechanical" difference between, say, subtracting 1 by counting down 1 and subtracting 1 but counting up from 0 until the "next" number is equal to the "current" number. Weird concept, huh?
P.S. I've just replied to your very excellent post from 6 days ago.
What I've learned from your (very excellent) post — and this is what I suspected, really — is something you may not like: $200 an hour isn't enough... you're not charging enough. Sorry. And yes, my post was bait in hopes that I would metaphorically lure you out of your lair. Sorry for that too.
You've spent 2 decades building a reputation as "the best guy in the area", you're booked so solid that you don't bother taking new clients, and your rate doesn't reflect your reputation or productivity and your current retainer, including your own labor inputs, is hardly more (probably less) than a basic small-business managed hosting plan.
At $200/hr and your self-described productivity, you're not the "look what I can afford" provider, you're the value provider. Basically, you're doing your "basic", "non-templated" web code (which, oh by the way, includes your own hand-rolled infrastructure) for less than the cost of the template-nonsense that plucky entrepreneurial types are selling to small biz all over the place. (Again, you'd be amazed at what small businesses end up spending just in hosting. It's often as much or more.)
That's what it sounds like to me, anyway. And all this comes with a big fat disclaimer: you know infinitely more about your business than I.
P.S.
> I realized this when I found out my in-laws' tiny mortgage office was paying a database specialist $500/hr - back in 2006 - to come in once in awhile and work on their Salesforce installation, back when I was only charging $50/hr for full stack web work. To them, she walked on water.
> As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it.
Where do you find companies and individuals willing to pay $200/hr for basic, non-templated web code?
(Or is it one of those things where they find you...)
Frankly, I dislike work. I came to this realization a few years ago. Back then, I had a very good job with a top-shelf company, yet I was spending an inordinate amount of time wondering if "this" was "as good as it gets". Rolling out of bed in the morning is hard if you don't have a reason. Nothing to live for. This continued for a period of time. Finally, one fine day, I knew that I had had enough; I called in, announced my resignation, returned the laptop, packed my bags, got in my car, and went on a very, very long drive.
Today, I work to live, not live to work. My philosophy is simple: live well while working as little as possible. So I trade high-impact expertise for cash, and spend the cash on fast cars and fast sports, and they all lived happily ever after.
Let me tell you a little about something else. I'm a perfectionist. Unfortunate but true. It's physically impossible for me to produce something inferior. Equally, once I start something, I don't stop until it's done. So I don't start very many things, and I make sure that what I do start will be worthwhile. In other words, it should be in good taste, and it should be throwing geysers of money in my direction.
Are you made for me?
* You are at or near the helm of a small- to mid-sized tech or tech-adjacent company.
* You need (my) outside expertise more than you need (your) money.
* You know what you want but not what you need.
* You want it sooner than later.
* You value quality and efficacy above all.
* Your company isn't doing anything creepy or weird.
* You have a certain fighting spirit.
* You live like every minute is precious, because it is.
Frankly, I dislike work. I came to this realization a few years ago. Back then, I had a very good job with a top-shelf company, yet I was spending an inordinate amount of time wondering if "this" was "as good as it gets". Rolling out of bed in the morning is hard if you don't have a reason. Nothing to live for. This continued for a period of time. Finally, one fine summer's day, I knew that I had had enough; I called in, announced my resignation, returned the laptop, packed my bags, got in my car, and went on a very, very long drive.
Today, I work to live, not live to work. My philosophy is simple: live well while working as little as possible. So I trade high-impact expertise for cash, and spend the cash on fast cars and fast sports, and they all lived happily ever after.
Let me tell you a little about something else. I'm a perfectionist. Unfortunate but true. It's physically impossible for me to produce something inferior. Equally, once I start something, I don't stop until it's done. So I don't start very many things, and I make sure that what I do start will be worthwhile. In other words, it should be in good taste, and it should be throwing geysers of money in my direction.
Are you made for me?
* You are at or near the helm of a small- to mid-sized tech or tech-adjacent company.
* You need (my) outside expertise more than you need (your) money.
* You know what you want but not what you need.
* You want it sooner than later.
* You value quality and efficacy above all.
* Your company isn't doing anything creepy or weird.
* You have a certain fighting spirit.
* You live like every minute is precious, because it is.
The null hypothesis determines the "unfounded claim". For example, judicially, the null hypothesis is, "You are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law." Similarly, commercially, the null hypothesis is, "If it's profitable and mostly legal, corporations will compete to do it better."
Fingerprinting is both profitable and legal. It is so profitable and so legal that today's most dominant corporations, entities representing trillions of dollars of value, are founded on its premise.
The "unfounded claim", therefore, is yours. Or do you have any evidence that you are not being surveilled?
The incentive is in the mind of the beholder. $42,000 captured the mind of the author; for its promise, he worked extremely hard and long, mustering a productivity far and above what he normally would have achieved. Then, when he in fact received not $42,000 but $3,666, less than one-tenth what he expected, he convinced himself that this was not a loss but a win because $3,666 is $3,666 more than $0.
What is your lesson here? My lesson is to become the house, because the house always wins.
It appears that your null hypothesis embraces the benevolence of tech companies. Is this a reasonable assumption? How, after all, do they make their money?
You're a founder. You're an officer. You're visiting this webpage out of curiosity or because you need something done, full stop. You're perennially short-staffed because there just aren't enough competent people to go around. Your organization is thriving and you're not shy about writing checks to make your problems go away. Currently, your biggest problems are "business" in nature. (Which "technologies"? Who cares?)
Say you reach out to me. What does the course of our relationship look like?
First, you plug your email into my contact form. There are other fields, but they're basically optional. The contact form is so my inbox doesn't get spammed to hell and back.
Then, within a day or two, I send you an email. We exchange two or three emails and then talk on the phone. By the way, I send emails, I make calls, and nothing else. No videoconferencing, no social media, no weird apps.
Two or three calls later, I either have a good idea of what you're looking for or I don't. If I think it'll be beneficial for both parties, we do it. If I don't think it'll work out, I'll refer you to someone who's able to help.
We do it. It takes three to six months. After three to six months, it's done. It's solid and robust and won't require much ongoing maintenance. I drove it mercilessly from start to finish and you sent me a bunch of weekly checks. Everybody's happy. Everybody wins. The checks made your eyes water but in the end "it" makes more money than it cost and you recommend me and my services to all your friends.
The End
Click now: https://jgohmulwybk.typeform.com/to/OwwN45aR