Posts in the “career” category

“My best teachers were not the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones deeply excited by questions they couldn’t answer.”

(from Brian Greene on Twitter)

“It just tells you how tough this team is. Down 25 points, we just keep grinding and we finish on top again.”

~ Julian Edelman, New England Patriots

(You hear it all the time in sports: Keep Grinding.
Do the same in your own professional life and career.)

One of the things you have to remember when working with human beings is that IQ is not the same as EQ, and they’re rarely equal. Some people have a horrible temper. One guy I know is smart, but he remains the biggest jerk I’ve ever met.

I remember hearing one time that when people are hurt in their childhood or teen years they stop developing emotionally at that point. So if they are somehow hurt when they are twelve years old, they can be thirty years old physically but only twelve emotionally. I don’t know if that’s 100% true, but it seems like it in some cases I know. (And the hard thing is that these people don’t know that they have these problems.)

“What is done in love is done well.”

That’s a quote from Vincent van Gogh. I always think you can tell when someone loves to do something, such as love in designing things and writing beautiful code. Conversely, you can always tell when something feels rushed.

There’s a well-known sports psychologist in Denver who tells people to feel less stress by focusing on process, not the results of the process. I suspect that’s where this Adam Gase quote comes from:

“We’re just trying to get players better, rather than worrying about the result. We follow our process, and whatever the outcome ends up being, well, it’s been good in the past.”

(A quote from this si.com article.)

I hear a lot of people say they want to be successful. For me this always comes down to, “What are you willing to do to make that happen?”

In my own case I had to overcome a fear of public speaking, learn how to write software, learn how to build and manage a company, learn some sales techniques, make sacrifices on how I spend my time, etc.

Things you shouldn’t say on a job interview:

Interviewer: Why do you want this job?

Me: I’ve always been very passionate about not starving to death.

(from this twitter page)

One of my favorite things about working as a consultant is that managers treat your time with respect. As a regular salaried employee, managers will say, “I need you to stay late tonight,” with the implication being, “suck it up.”

As a consultant who’s paid by the hour, when a manager says “I need you to stay late tonight,” you can always say, “No problem, I don’t mind staying if you don’t mind paying double time (as stipulated in the contract).”

In reality you rarely have to say anything like that. Good managers realize that when they ask you to work overtime they’re also saying that they’re going to pay your overtime rate. But if you’re dealing with a first-time manager you sometimes have to say something to that effect to make sure they understand what they’re asking for.

I can’t tell you how many times a manager told their regular employees that they had to stay late, and then they’d look at me and say, “Not you. You go home.” You might think the salaried employees would be angry at you for this preferential treatment, but I’ve always found that they understand that it’s part of the system. Back in the day when I was a regular employee I wasn’t angry with the consultants, I just found myself being envious about their situation.

(I write more about lessons like this in my book, A Survival Guide for New Consultants.)

The “algorithm of success” (in life).

The words “The tyranny of the final product” remind me of every software project I’ve ever been involved with, and the few books I’ve written.

This image comes from the table of contents of the book On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

From this Twitter page:

Interviewer: Who are these people with you?

Me: My squad.

My mom and dad: *whispering* tell him about our goals.

I share this because I was just thinking about interviewing several job candidates who brought friends, family members, or spouses with them to job interviews.

“I had to break up the team for us to move forward in the right direction. That means getting talented players that fit with each other on and off the court. Also getting players who understand that while playing basketball is fun, this is also a business. So we need guys who will ice after practice, watch what they eat, avoid having those three extra beers when they party, and get the rest they need. I think we succeeded in getting this particular cultural change.”

(A quote from Phil Jackson, GM of the Knicks, in this story.)

In recruiting software developers, I generally didn’t think about whether guys would fit well together, but there were a couple of times where I backed off on recruiting guys who expressed certain agendas during the interview process. In two cases that immediately come to mind, one guy declared, “Anything I write is open source,” which you can’t really do as a consulting firm, and another guy seemed to intentionally steer a conversation into politics and got into an argument with one of my co-workers during the interview process.

Another guy wanted us to get into a bidding war with another company, so I said the equivalent of, “Have a nice day, see you around.” I tried playing that game with a guy once before, and I can say from experience that you have to be careful about recruiting a guy who’s only interested in going to the highest bidder.

This is a good quote on teaching, from this espn.com page:

“One thing that we’ve learned as coaches: we’re teachers,” O’Brien said. “He’s the quarterback. If I’m just talking to him, eventually they’ll just see my mouth moving. Blah blah blah. We want them to get up there and actually do it.”

My printed book, A Survival Guide for New Consultants, has been available for a couple of years, and now it’s available in a free, online version at NewConsultantsBook.com:

Update: I’ve made almost one-half of my Kindle eBook, How I Sold My Business: A Personal Diary, freely available online. There are no ads, and no registration required, it’s just free.

My notes from a TED Talk by Shawn Achor, titled “The Happy Secret to Better Work”

Thesis: Happier, positive brains work better:

This article is now part of my new eBook, which is only $2.99 on Amazon.com:

I hope you enjoy my book, and more than that, I hope it helps you have a very profitable and rewarding career.

In 1993, I took a leap of faith, and began a career as a software consultant. I initially worked at a "full-service" computer company, left that company after three years, lived out a one-year noncompete agreement, then started my own business named "Mission Data" in 1996. I sold that company in 2007, started Alexander Consulting in 2008, and later created Valley Programming when I moved to Alaska. During these years my salary went from $30,000 to over $300,000 per year.

Just a quick note today that while I've been busy working on my next book (which will be printed by a major publisher), I just noticed that sales of my last eBook, "You Want Me to Do What? A Survival Guide for New Consultants", have really picked up.

A friend of mine is currently unemployed, and as I've talked to her about ways to approach her situation, I'm reminded of how I started a consulting business named Mission Data.