RJ from The Freelance Podcast was gracious enough to invite me on the show, hoping to share my 12 years of successful freelancing experience with his listeners. We get into a bit of the armchair psychology of being self-employed and maintaining persistence. We also discuss the “maker” mentality, both the…
Christopher Hawkins
So, 2014 was a big year for me, but not in the ways one wants a year to be big. I had planned on moving from consulting to product sales, but it didn’t happen. In short, the year can be summarized (at a very high level) thus: 1) Made a bunch of…
Very often, I will receive an e-mail from a developer hoping to go out on his own, asking “What is needed to get started in consulting?” Let me begin by telling you what is *not* needed: Permission! I say this up front because a lot of people who are otherwise…
Yesterday I had the privilege of spending 9 hours working from The Hashtag (@Hashtag_Fresno), a co-working/collaborative workspace located in Fresno. It was both enjoyable and stimulating, and I came away with the sense that I had just spent 9 hours looking at a blueprint for the eventual standard workplace of…
I’ve often pondered the idea of founding a co-working space in Visalia so as to be done with the grind of finding good office spaces for a small, mostly-virtual team. Rather than being deskbound and isolated in less-than-ideal space, why not be in a more open and communal space? Why…
One of my all-time favorite articles is Productive Jealousy on Signal vs. Noise. David Heinemeier Hansson insists that jealousy need not be an angry or destructive emotion. I tend to agree with him – in fact, negative emotions are my primary motivation. I suspect that there is a conception out…
Q. How do you handle your workload when your key man is out/unavailable? A. Cogeian Systems is basically my vision of how software development ought to be done, implemented by my team. In some ways, I am the key man. In other ways, my team members – every one of…
Updated 14 April 2016 I think I read too many blogs, follow too many people on social media, and get news from too many sources. Perhaps you do, too I know that Scoble is legendary for keeping up on umpteen jillion blogs, but even with the aid of feedreaders (are…
Q. Have you abandoned your blog? If so, is it because you don’t think it has marketing value? A. Although I have undoubtedly neglected my blog, I have not abandoned it. What it comes down to is time invested and value received. Right now the project work is flowing freely…
I read a great article on Cameron Moll’s blog today about all-day tech interviews. One of the things he mentioned in the article that struck a chord with me was the use of brain-teasers as an interview tool. According to Cameron, the brain teaser counts for a full 25% of…