> > That means (at least in the programming field in Silicon Valley,)
> > you will have to make fifty to a hundred and fifty calls a day, day after
> > day, to get work..... . I hang up, click a
> > few keys to mark the prospect for whether I should call him in 90 days or
> > more often; and within three or four seconds after I have hung up, the
> > next number starts dialing. Go read http://mall-net.com/webcons/
>
> I was completely floored when I read this! Do other people do this
> kind of thing to get work? Is this something that's unique to Silicon
> Valley?
I don't know. It just tends to keep me working. Either I do it, or
I call a bunch of agents that take a third of my paycheck and do the same
thing. And here is silicon valley, there are enough businesses that I
can do this. Back home in Connecticut, I wouldn't get enough return
for the telephone expenses.
In some telephone areas, it may actually be cheaper to rent a no
phone fee motel room to do the telemarketing from.
> result of my answering an ad in the newspaper. I do a fair amount
> to sow the seeds: publish papers, give presentations at conferences,
That is your way of getting work, and a most effective way, I might
add. But you are not in control of when and where the work will come
from. (No more than I...)
> do pro bono work for professional organizations and charities, etc.
> I used to give tutorials on web technology at conferences that were
> in some other technical area, for instance business process modeling,
> but those no longer have the impact that they did in the early days.
Hmmm... These can be effective. I had tried to have little luncheon
talks on this available, but no one took me up on it when I offered. I
guess I am just not that outgoing a guy. It just depends on how my
biochemistry is doing. I feel a lot more comfortable working on something
with a good thematic texture. I love the kinds of things that confuse the
heck out of everyone else, because then it is just matter of belief. They
believe it can not be solved, and so don't try. I believe I can solve it,
and so do. Anyone could have solved it! They just didn't believe it
possible, and so never really tried. At least that is my take on it, as
none of the stuff I do seems that complicated to me. It just takes time to
understand what is involved, how it is related, and then widen the scope
of one's thoughts till the answer... just falls in like a tree falling
into a river when the bank is undercut far enough.
> I also keep in touch with old friends from college, prior jobs, and
> study groups, committees, and standards groups that I've worked on.
That can help a lot, too!
> I run a web site for alumni of a great little start-up that I worked
> for in the 70's, SofTech. The company is gone, and the employees
> have gone on to important positions all over the place. That web
> site has brought in maybe $250K worth of business.
Interesting thought!
> But 100 calls a day? Most of them apparently cold calls? Man, that's
> Doing Hard Time.
They are not exactly cold, I've called these guys a few times before,
and have notes on our last conversation in many cases. But yes, in the
other sense, they are cold calls. It is part of the job to warm them up,
get them talking about their projects and problems, etc.
A bad day is a 100 - 150 call day. A good day is when you get two or
three people open up and just talk, a 30 - 50 call day. If you cross the
15 minute threshold talking about HIS problems, you will probably get the
interview, and then the contract. That is the real goal, not the 100
phone calls. But if you don't make those calls, you won't find those new
friends with their interesting problems. And that is what I am really
looking for, interesting problems to solve.
(Whereas if I go through the agents, it is how many years of this,
how many years of that, etc. and they put some dummy who has written
nothing but counting loops in Fortran for 50 years into the position. I
love it when they say they won' take anyone with less than five years of
XYZ, and XYZ has only been on the market for three years, if that! And if
I get that position, I never use XYZ, because half the time, their
decision to use XYZ was the cause of their troubles.)
It was the depths of the "recession". I had just gotten married,
moved, and was between contracts. I didn't know what else to do on a short
term basis. I started with 3x5 cards, and wrote a contact manager in two
weeks while calling on the phone. It got me some work. Another friend
said he use to drive through Silicon Valley on Saturdays, looking for
companies that had cars in the parking lot, and walk in looking for a
manager. Now, every place has security guards and badge readers, so he
can't do that any more.
Fishing with the phone isn't the greatest thing, but it is something
that I have learned to do. Either the agents do it for me, or I do it
myself. It sometimes takes five to ten thousand calls for me to get a
contract, several times that if the economy is down. And then, I get to
take a nice and quiet vacation thinking and writing code someplace,
working with some nice people, and actually get paid! I love those
vacations!
And some times... a friend I'd worked for before calls with an
interesting problem he has. And we chat, whether or not he can hire me. I
just enjoy working on interesting problems.
Your way of writing papers, etc. is a better way. But I find that
when I write about, or even talk about the things that I do, no one
believes me. Just look at http://www.mall-net.com/jv/codegen.html . Use a
mail merge program or a database program to write other programs? That
may have worked on one project; ( major ones,) but never in a million
years would it work on this 140,000 line project! (Sure did!) With
140KLOC in 3 months and two people to do it, we don't have the TIME to
experiment with this kind of stuff! (Don't have time not to. Why do
something you know can't work?) And what kind of methodology do you use???
(I dunno, do I tell them I do Karnaugh maps of the spec.? They would not
believe that either! But that is sort of like what I do, a kind of
nebulous abstract state minimization on some phantom something vectored at
about right angles to the spec.) So I just look at the spec, think about
it, and do a few little prototypes till I get one I can proceed on and/or
demonstrate to show the approach is sound. That is, when that particular
approach is the answer. I've done all kinds of other strange things. But
if I talk about it before I demonstrate the proof of concept, they get
Very irritated and tell me to get on with the death march. (The only
reason it is a death march, is their belief that it can not be anything
else! So a good part of my gentle art is persuading them there are
alternatives to marching off the cliff or charging into the side of the
mountain.)
So I am out there fishing with my telephone again. Or should be,
instead of writing this letter. Do you know anyone is silicon valley who
has an interesting vaguely software related problem to solve? Or a
webmaster? I have a mind available for rent. And I had better get it
rent out soon, or someone else will rent this apartment.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----------------------- IMAGINEERING --------------------------
----------------- Every mouse click, a Vote -------------------
---------- Do they vote For, or Against your pages? -----------
----- What people want: http://www.mall-net.com/se_report/ ----
---------------------------------------------------------------
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
