Artistic Skill in High Demand in Tech Industry
Having design chops means being able to write your own ticket. Craft the front end to one fantastic web or mobile app and you can count on follow on work indefinitely. It’s not just startups and tech companies who are desperately seeking designers. I’ve communicated with blog designers who were booked for months in advance, and charge a healthy premium for their page layouts.
Tag: career counseling
Celebrity or Pro Chops, Pick One
While tracing the perimeter of the mall I failed to filter out an American Idol segment repeating ad naseum. The hosts were shouting to an ecstatic crowd about the prospect of becoming instantly famous. One young woman states, “this is the most important day of my life”. A mother screams about the perceived success of her child, “my baby made it!” Did they really?
The Rejected
Should I stay or should I go now
Migration Patterns
Like many days before, I waited outside the mall where I walk each morning. An enormous flock of birds surged through the area, swimming by over half a minute. There’s nothing more natural than moving to where life is more hospitable, and the flock was rapidly heading to warmer weather guided by habit and instinct.
Samurai and Ronin, Founders and First Employees
This post is the result of introspection related to a couple of positions I’ve come across. The most recent is an employee number one position in a YC company lead by two founders called ZeroCater. They’re profitable, have big growth plans, and they’re running a Python/Django stack but need help scaling up. Thanks to Andrew Badr for taking a few minutes out of his busy schedule to contact me and answer a few questions. David Tisch, the managing director of TechStars New York discussed an attractive HackStars staff position for the coming January-March TechStars NY program. While I’m optimistic about the program, the HackStars position misses out on the valuable social signal of being a carefully selected startup, and is more aligned with an employee number one position. The HackStar role is still a great vector to forging a company and improving tech and business skills.
Job Alignment and Getting Paid to Learn
The above image was a short exchange between Scott Carleton of Artsicle and Tyler Kieft of SpeakerText starting from the bottom. It provided the impetus for the rest of this post.
Signaling Issues: Does sharing a public resume conflict with fund raising for a Startup?
Hourly Wages vs Income Streams
Work primarily falls into one of two categories. The majority of work is hourly labor. We perform some work and get paid for the service. Superstar employees can make incredible salaries, but these cases are the exception and not the rule. All hourly labor jobs cease generating income the moment you stop working. It’s pretty evident that this is not a type of work model that is scalable.
Variable Freedom in a Contracting Economy
I have witnessed a decline in the personal freedoms of those around me due to the large contraction in our economy and felt it was worth discussing further.
