The employed consultant
Software engineer, author, and educator Swizec Teller joined me to talk about consulting vs employment in Silicon Valley.
Ditching Hourly – Nov 20, 2021
Talking Points
- How to apply consulting type thinking to your day job so that you can really rocket ship your career
- How Swizec sees his Sillicon Valley job
- Silicon Valley doesn't really hire freelancers
- Working in SIlicon Valley is very different to the rest of the world
- The most succesful Silicon Valley people work like consultants
- Being the employee vs consultant in Silicon Valley
- Being able to say no to things in the workplace
- Focussing on results
- The benefits of using OKRs in the workplace
- The reason why people change companies often
Quotable Quotes
"When I made it to Silicon valley, I very quickly realized that the market here doesn't really hire freelancers. At least they try not to hire freelancers for various reasons" - Swizec Teller
"Silicon valley is a little weird in that unless you have Silicon valley experience, they count it as you don't have experience" - Swizec Teller
"Even if you have 20 years experience in different types of industries, once you come to Silicon Valley or to a Silicon Valley-style startup, it essentially resets to zero because the way of working is just that different" - Swizec Teller
"Most successful Silicon Valley people actually work a lot more like consultants" - Swizec Teller
"The more money you're paid, the more autonomy you have" - Swizec Teller
"A lot of people, especially younger people when they're starting employment, they don't realize that they have the ability to say no to things" - Swizec Teller
"A lot of people want to have flexibility, but aren't providing the results" - Swizec Teller
"When you see more management by time, it is often secretly a signal that you're not pulling your weight, or you're not meeting expectations" - Swizec Teller
"As you start to increase your altitude of involvement with a client, you're dealing with people farther and farther up the food chain. They don't care how long it takes you to get the results. They just want the results. And in fact, the faster you can do it, the better it is so" - Jonathan Stark
"A quote that really changed my mind in this perspective was from a CTO a couple of companies ago, who said, 'Look, dude, it doesn't matter how good the code is. If we don't survive, like we need to survive first, then we can focus on code quality'" - Swizec Teller
"If it doesn't provide business value, you might as well throw it in the garbage, like it doesn't matter" - Jonathan Stark
"A lot of startups these days are trying to follow the OKR process where the idea is that instead of telling people what to do, you tell them what to achieve, and define business objectives and business metrics" - Swizec Teller
"I've heard people getting like 30% plus raises just at their jobs and 2x by switching jobs. There's too much money sloshing around and it needs to go somewhere." - Swizec Teller