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What brought this about and the reply (Score:1)
A recruiter mailed me -- unlike the last 1,000 recruiter emails, it was intelligently written and persuasive. It earned a reply. But which reply... I don't want to just say "no". Any reasonable offer will be considered. But I don't want to flop back to full-time work again as my consulting is starting to stabilize again. Last time was a disaster. But I'm really not making a living wage now...
Anyway, for posterity, here's what I have as a reply... I'll probably tone it down a bit before I send it, but first, I'm saving a copy.
---------------
Sorry for the slow response. I wanted to mull this over a bit. But I felt
that one way or another, you deserved a reply -- intelligently written emails
are rare and should be encouraged.
It's true. I'm spoiled rotten as a consultant. A company would have to make
me quite an offer to lure me away from this. But I'm open to offers. I'm not
interested in more money than I have time to use. What good is a fat salary
if you can't ski on it?
* Infinite vacation days at my descretion
* Get my work done and I can "go home early"
* Can make quirky rules, like I don't answer the phone without an
appointment
* Veto power -- no one's bad designs or run-away ambition can set me
up to fail on a project
* Hired for my expertise, not necessarily for my labor, so I can use
my experience to save myself lots of pointless work and keep my
client from wasting time and money, preserving my value
But my rates are reasonable. Perhaps Xxx Company should hire me as a contractor.
Seriously though, I don't mean to come across as *too* spoilt.
Programming is a strange beast. Most programmers aren't lazy.
Programming requires sustained intense concentration. It's hard.
And there's a heck of a learning curve. But attempts to get it
working factory style, 9-5, everyone working hard rather than
being clever, just don't work and then the programmers get blamed.
Managers *hate* clever. Non-geeks despite it. When programming,
it's your lifeline. Every algorithm documented or improvised
is a bit of cleverness. So, can you show me a work environment
where I can be clever rather than just work really, really hard?
Somewhere so resolved to hiring the best that they'll indulge
unusual requests?
Reply to This
Re: (Score:1)
And now the reply looks like this:
------------------------
It's true. I'm spoiled rotten as a consultant. A company would have to make
me quite an offer to lure me away from this. But I'm open to offers. I'm not
interested in more money than I have time to use. What good is a fat salary
if you can't ski on it?
Working in a company, there's no prospect of getting your work done and then
taking the rest of the day or week off. The primary incentive is missing --
finishing. You have no veto over ill-concieved
Re: (Score:1)
I call this process (of 40 hour typing sessions) "bugging", since the inevitable result is 10 hours to "bug" something and 100 hours to debug it.
"Bugs are inevitable. All software sucks."
Sure, when you have a bugger writing your software instead of
Re: (Score:1)
Reginald Braithwaite had a great post about this the other day: Bricks [raganwald.com].