Author here - thanks for all the comments and feedback. Lovely surprise to wake up to this on the HN homepage.

Some light additional context - this is part of my ongoing series "The Strategic Independent" which will eventually become a book sometime next year. All the posts in that series are catalogued here: https://www.are.na/tom-critchlow/the-strategic-independent

This post (and the whole series) is designed for independent consultants, free-agents and freelancers who have to navigate entering and exiting client environments often faster than full-time employees. Hopefully there's something useful in that context but many of these ideas could be applicable beyond that also.

Anyway - thanks for the love. If you have topic suggestions for future posts in this series would love to hear them! Thanks, Tom.