AlternateIdea: How to work full time part of the time

July 22nd, 2005

How to work full time part of the time

0 comments on 889 words

I received some responses to “my previous entry”:http://www.encytemedia.com/article/39/thanks-rails about scaling back on my day job to 3 days a week. “Luis de la Rosa”:http://luisdelarosa.com/blog/ (cool name!) ask some good questions:

I wonder how this sort of thing goes. Can you share any tips or lessons learned on this? Was there a lot of negotiation involved? I’d like to do something like that eventually, after I get a more steady income on the side.

Well, I have to admit first of all I work for a great company with a great boss who is willing to listen to me and who values my opinion. I came to this company less than 10 months ago with very little real world experience. I’ve never worked for a web design shop before; That’s right, this is my first experience in working with a Project manager, other developers, functional specs, design briefs, etc. I knew how to design and build websites to the best of my ability and I’m thankful I was given the chance to show I could do it.

h2. Stand up, Stand out

I don’t believe the argument that “everyone is replaceable”. This point could prove to be true if you are a run-of-the-mill developer or designer who follows all of the rules and don’t believe in “R-Directed thinking”:http://www.leading-minds.com/biography.cfm?speakerID=9 .

The company I work for has been in business for over 10 years and in the bubble had about 30+ employees. Now we are about 8 people strong so it’s easy to shine and stand out above your peers.

I convinced the company to break away from the table based layouts and I’ve now convinced them (a .NET and asp shop) to explore LAMP technologies and to give Rails a try. I’m happy to report that we have two Rails projects in the hopper and more on the way!

I came in as a nobody and became someone who changed the way they think and operate.

h2. Negotiating your deal

I sat on the idea of approaching my boss for about a month until it got to where I wasn’t able to sleep at night thinking about the opportunity I could be missing out on.

I finally worked up enough nerve and finally had enough confidence that this was what I wanted. So we sit down in the office and the conversation began.

I started off with the point that I had been working myself to death trying to juggle my career as a consultant and my day job. I was really passionate about wanting to pursue my consultant business, but I also loved and needed to keep part of my day job.

I explained that what I was doing was not in direct competition with the company I was working for. My clients come as referrals and also most of them are developers looking for someone to work with them and not for them.

Finally I explained that I would be bringing in a lot more income as a consultant than working full time but it wasn’t really about the money. It is purely about the opportunity and this is something I’m driven to do.

In retrospect my boss knows my character and who I am and how passionate I am about the things I do. I like working at my day job and I still need it, but I would be grateful for the opportunity to be able to pursue my career as a consultant.

We still have to work out some details for vacation time, but beyond that it’s a done deal. My boss actually wants to know more about the way this new age software movement works and the mindset of those involved.

h2. Have fun!

Now I have time to pursue the risky world of consulting but with the cushion of a day job to fall back on so I won’t be eating off the floor. I’m having a great time and I’m confident I made the right decision and all of my hard-work and sleepless nights paid off!

Justin develops iPhone and Mac software over at Labrat Revenge by night and by day he is the Design Director for entp, the company behind Lighthouse, Warehouse, and Mephisto. You can check out his dated portfolio for a peek of what he's done.

Beautifully simple issue tracking and project management. With a beautiful Mac-like interface, email and subversion integration, Lighthouse is the perfect project management tool. We took the suck out of issue tracking.

Jan12

YouTube has just announced HouseHub and Senate Hub.
permalink
Oct10

Best Practices For Cocoa and CocoaTouch—Invaluable tips from Cocoa developers.
permalink
Sep25

Track House And Senate Votes On Twitter. I’ve put together a small script that parses vote data collected by Govtrack.us and posts to twitter.
permalink
Jul28
permalink
Protip: Color grep searches in terminal
```
alias grep='GREP_COLOR="1;37;41" LANG=C grep --color=auto'
```
Stash this away in your Z Shell (~/.zshenv) or Bash environment (~/.bashrc) and set your preferred ANSI code.
Jun08

ActiveRecord Ported To Objective-C brought to us by Ninja Kitten
permalink
May06

With the release of Opera’s DragonFly, IE 8’s Developer tools, Safari’s/Webkit’s Web Inspector and Drosera; and the Grand Daddy of them all, Firebug – we’ve now come full circle.
permalink

Feb08

permalink

DoubleClick and Define using Apple Dictionary


var selection;
if(window.getSelection)
  selection = window.getSelection();
else if(document.selection)
  selection = document.selection.createRange();

document.observe("dblclick", function() {
  if(navigator.userAgent.include("Macintosh")) {
      location.href = "dict://" + selection;
    }
});

A quick (and probably dirty) Prototype-based hack allowing Mac users to get the definition of any word by double clicking it.

Feb08

permalink

A strftime for Prototype


Object.extend(Date.prototype, {
  strftime: function(format) {
    var day = this.getUTCDay(), month = this.getUTCMonth();
    var hours = this.getUTCHours(), minutes = this.getUTCMinutes();
    function pad(num) { return num.toPaddedString(2); };

    return format.gsub(/\%([aAbBcdDHiImMpSwyY])/, function(part) {
      switch(part[1]) {
        case 'a': return $w("Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat")[day]; break;
        case 'A': return $w("Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday")[day]; break;
        case 'b': return $w("Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec")[month]; break;
        case 'B': return $w("January February March April May June July August September October November December")[month]; break;
        case 'c': return this.toString(); break;
        case 'd': return this.getUTCDate(); break;
        case 'D': return pad(this.getUTCDate()); break;
        case 'H': return pad(hours); break;
        case 'i': return (hours === 12 || hours === 0) ? 12 : (hours + 12) % 12; break;
        case 'I': return pad((hours === 12 || hours === 0) ? 12 : (hours + 12) % 12); break;
        case 'm': return pad(month + 1); break;
        case 'M': return pad(minutes); break;
        case 'p': return hours > 11 ? 'PM' : 'AM'; break;
        case 'S': return pad(this.getUTCSeconds()); break;
        case 'w': return day; break;
        case 'y': return pad(this.getUTCFullYear() % 100); break;
        case 'Y': return this.getUTCFullYear().toString(); break;
      }
    }.bind(this));
  }
});

UPDATE: Bugs fixed. Thanks Andrew and Stephen

Also, some of my old and new code has been posted on GitHub. You might find something useful.

Feb04

A beautiful, organic animation by Flight404 created using Processing.

Processing in Action
Jan08

Aaron Patterson shows us how to define ruby methods which can be called from JavaScript using RKelly.
permalink
Jan07

Dustin might not surprise you at your house with a book in hand, but he’ll damn sure send you his innermost fu in the form of a shiny yellow and black book. It’s an excellent read if you’re looking to put more funk in your functions and class in your classes. Check out “Pro JavaScript Design Patterns” by Dustin and Ross Harmes.

—I’m Justin Palmer and I approve this message.
permalink
Dec23

IE 8 PAsses the Acid 2 Test for those not keeping tabs on things.
permalink
Oct24

Mislav has written up an excellent overview on upgrading Radiant (which used 1.5) to Prototype 1.6. The article does a great job of showing how 1.6 is superior to 1.5.
permalink
Oct19

According to the New York Times, the Daily Show Archives, with over 7,000 videos are online—free and searchable.
permalink
Oct11

Telemarketer gets owned

AlternateIdea

How to work full time part of the time

Share your thoughts