How is this different than what any new market entrant encounters? This is what sales and marketing is for; business as usual. I’ve never launched a product that the world was familiar with before I launched it.
> I don't believe most Tesla owners are aware of this. Most that I know see an obvious choice in a product with no real competition.
We are quite aware and there is plenty of competition now. A lot of us are canceling orders after being burned by Tesla policies, poor customer service, poor vehicle quality, unmet commitments, fantasy autopilot capabilities, etc.
This and it’s very well known, but don’t discount their talent. There are plenty of smart and effective people at McKinsey, even if they make mistakes like the rest of humanity.
This is the time to try your hand at entrepreneurship again. Most private investors I know are investing purposefully right now. Forget VCs and bootstrap - build the future you want - show you have grit. I work with a lot of exited bootstrapped founders and many of us are excited for the future.
Most are not willing to struggle, sacrifice, survive, and grind for a decade or more. Be the exception and build sustainable value. Money follows; perhaps trite but true. Sadly, this is excellent advice that many ignore (this may not actually apply to your specific circumstances, of course).
Your career path makes you top talent in the eyes of many. Honestly, your journey sounds like a leader’s narrative in the making. No excuses, get in there and get it done. I look in the mirror every morning and say nearly that exact thing to myself: “get in there and fight, today like all the other days before and all the days to come”. This is not figurative, I do this literally every single day as part of my daily routine and I don’t let up, even in my darkest hours of which there have been many over the years. I attribute my success to this mentality, perhaps it can work for you.
Depends on the person. I have trouble with red and green traffic lights, despite what others have indicated are clear contrast/brightness differences. I use the position of the lights and Tesla’s green light detector to combat this. Aren’t eyes weird?
Often it’s as simple as requesting it. In my experience, the first few are less about being hard to convert and more about getting a 1:1 rate that is truly market rate and not just the equivalent of salary + benefits = rate. It should really be salary + benefits value + risk value (e.g. 100k/yr FTE salary is more like 100/hr contract rate, not 70/hr (need to include risk!). Also, push hard for a weekly rate and not hourly. Daily rate is second best but still much better than hourly. Again, remember the risk side. You need to compensate yourself for this and market rates usually take this into account, so don’t second guess why market rates are as high as they are (imposter syndrome can get in the way here for some, so keep that in mind too).
If you’re at an enterprise, sometimes you can go to one of the major contract vendors used by the enterprise for placing contractors, start an LLC (or other legal entity), and subcontract through them. If you can, though typically less successful in the enterprise space when you’re one person or building a small firm (the space I operate in) unless you are highly valued by your target company, try to go direct as a vendor yourself. There are many long term benefits to having vendor status in an enterprise.
I’m a consultant and bootatrapped it into a profitable firm. First, understand the difference between a contractor and a consultant. Though not all differentiate the two, many do and that’s reflected in the market rates associated with them (consulting == contracting + hard-to-find expert advisory). Convert a single existing FTE role into a consulting engagement to get you started if you can. If not, your ability to sell yourself is highly variable and something you’ll need to try and fail at a few times — this is highly dependent on your personal social strengths and weaknesses in my experience making quality general advice hard to give. Have 3-6 months living expenses in the bank, at least. This will help smooth out cash flow inconsistencies. And perhaps the most important thing is to not waiver on your rates. There are many leads that won’t pay for value; avoid them for the many who will. It will seem at times that lowering your rates is necessary, but its far more likely to be a symptom of looking in the wrong place for the right clients; recognize this as a fail in the try/fail cycle, and try again.
Happy to answer more questions if you can narrow down your ask to specifics.
I largely agree with you, except that I think the most valuable experience gained is that of exposure to information a typical software engineer is not privy to. I think this is often overlooked and is what doing a short stint in consulting should be about. Getting the opportunity to understand the inner workings of an organization at, often, a senior management level, was one of the most lucrative lessons of my professional life and is a selling point that I use when interviewing candidates because it’s generally true if they conduct themselves intelligently. Also, to reiterate your point, consulting can be incredibly lucrative if you price yourself at market value — most freelancers and consultants I’ve met are too afraid or nervous or get caught up in imposter syndrome, etc. to charge their true value. $300k/yr (in the US) is near trivial to make annually as a consultant, $400k/yr is where most capable software engineers should be, and yet few get there for reasons I attribute to lack of self confidence — a shame really.
This looks a lot like a Probabilistic Programming Language, minus the explicit probability aspect. Almost like operating over a Bayes Net, but simpler. I like this model of computation and I think one can go quite far with these approaches. See: TensorFlow Probability (Python), Amidst (Java), PyMC3 (Python), Keanu (Java), etc.
I think you may be conflating energy usage optimization with futures trading. Utilities often use forecasts for different purposes than futures traders, e.g. demand/response. And there are many utilities that aren’t aren’t tiny. In fact, most are larger than they seem (it’s expensive to be in this business), and all of them are looking to optimize heavily. I work in this field in a similar capacity to these guys and there is money to be made legitimately.
I have dealt with a similar situation, in a sense more than once, and my strategy was to first integrate the identified risk into my model and then compare it against my own risk profile. If the risk was above a threshold (simplifying), I take an offensive posture in cases like these.
For example, in this case, I would minimally identify and locate the individual responsible for the email. I think that is doable.
Though criticizing the JVM is fair game, this sounds too absolutist. I like and dislike some things about C++, Java, Scala, Python, Bash, SQL, etc. I bet you do too, no?
That 1M employee is generally not “moved” to another group, in my experience. They are often already at a seniority level that is above the group. Also, like most VP’s, their compensation is not typically accounted for in a group/division/etc budget in the same way as their reports.
This reflects my experience too. I’d also like to add one more thing though. In many tech orgs (and some non-tech orgs like mine), top IC’s are actually the equivalent of VP’s. Their compensation, responsibility, accountability, and impact are often at the same level or sometimes even higher.
I’ve used Multipass extensively and I can honestly say, while it’s a great start, it’s not even remotely ready for prime time on MacOS. I have lost tons of VMs that get stuck shutting down and are never able to come back up due to corruption. Still, it’s worth checking back in at a later date. Docker continues to be my go-to for now.
These all ring true in my experience too. One more thing I would add is to specialize if you can. Don’t try to be too general in the services you offer. You can greatly increase your own market demand this way.
I generally disagree with the “charge more” recommendation in the beginning. The reality is that until you have a sustainable client base, taking lower rates is often a necessity. In time, though, you should raise your rates to be market center.
One more mistake I would add was that I didn’t specialize at first. I marketed myself as a general full-stack software developer and that was the wrong move. Now I specialize in a particular area that I focus on and excel at and that is something companies are willing to pay for. The value proposition is clear; they’re paying for a specialization that they won’t ever have (or need long-term) in-house.
Edit: I own and run a very profitable consulting company, among other things.
TLDR; you can be tracked in almost all practical cases.
Temporal and spatial; when you’re browsing, where you’re browsing, and how you’re browsing. We can predict future non-unique (unknown) browsing behavior by training on your past unique, known, behavior. It is a common misconception, by those that are not in adtech (e.g. your typical software dev), that a fairly non-unique rating on sites like these will correlate with being difficult to track (not saying this is necessarily you).
Thank you for this. The only waste of time here was a result of this individual’s lack of commitment (sorry, but it’s true) and misinformed understanding of the efforts involved in the launch process of any business, let alone his. I hope he sees this and realizes all hope is not lost if he sticks with it, evolves it, and plans for the ramp period accordingly. Success is never guaranteed, but you have to give it a chance.
“relating to or using signals or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position, voltage, etc.” - from our friends at Oxford.
First, you are quoting something that I did not say. Second, I disagree that the items I listed are all a good experience using the mechanisms you highlighted and aren’t an important part of the driving experience; they are indeed “critical” (quoting your mis-quote) to the UX that leads to the choice of vehicle for myself and many others. It is disingenuous to reduce the argument down to basic controls required for vehicle movement and I think you know that.
The last thing I’ll say is this: I think it’s unfortunate that you are so invested in defending your position at all costs that you are unable to separate the argument from passive-aggressive personal attacks.
I think you are making false assumptions. One can not drive any car without using the vehicle interface on an almost constant basis, including the Tesla. Since the Tesla only has a touchscreen for interfacing with the vast majority of the vehicle's functions, you are therefore using it constantly - that is my argument. But maybe you use cars differently than myself and those I've surveyed, e.g. music browsing, imperfect automated climate control settings, navigation, insane/ludicrous mode, apps, etc.
I’m not sure why you’re getting upset. I have owned a Model S for 3yrs, I have close friends with Model 3’s that I have driven on a regular basis, and this is a reality that we all agree on. I am most definitely not misinformed. Nearly every setting is controlled on the touchscreen interface. I’m not sure why you would claim that is not the case.