| Very carefully. I currently work as a self-employed independent contractor in the cloud-engineering and devops automation sector in the greater Boston area. I have a strong focus on minimizing cost while making sure the customer achieves that they intend to, and that has given me an edge over fellow contractors that like to drop a known pattern in place and call it a day. Here's an example. I had a meeting a few days ago where I was asked to optimize a section of a product that made no sense to me (eliminating DNS and SSL tunnel start-up times). I have a firm believe in how I operate that I do not want to waste my customer's time, money, or my time in the work that I do. I came back with a data-driven response showing other areas of the product with low hanging fruit that got seconds of time back instead of milliseconds on the area they wanted. I implemented one solution as an example, and landed several more months of contract work with them as a result. I don't want to waste my time to get paid, I want to solve interesting problems and get paid solving them. I also want to stand behind my work, and stand proud. So for me planning my career is as simple as finding companies that have problems I can address, for me that is low level network protocol analysis, distributed systems, cloud deployments, and java optimization. I hit those hard, and then build up quotes from customers I have worked with to show potential leads what I am capable of. Understanding that anyone you are talking to is a potential lead was huge for me. Just because it's some guy you ran into at a bar, some woman talking about her start-up, whatever - they all are potential customers, and you need to hold yourself as a professional. Don't be an ass, establish credibility, and show that you actually care. Money follows. |