| This is exactly the conclusion I've come to as well. It's not that I don't have the soft skills capability to do it myself. And maybe it's an ego thing but I think I'm also pretty strong on the soft skills front. HOWEVER, and it's a big "however" -- I don't truly enjoy it. I don't mean that I don't like building a relationship with clients, putting thought into my communication, etc. In some way I do enjoy those facets of it a lot. But, I'm an introvert by nature and when managing clients, acquiring clients, etc... It feels like I'm putting on a persona that's not truly myself and it's very draining emotionally and intellectually which ends up actually impacting the quality of my work over time. I would love to be able to find a "talent manager" who can do the job of "talking to the customer and bringing the specs to the engineers."/officespace I think to most people this sounds exactly like just "having a job." And people will ask what's the difference from simply having a manager? I think this perspective is also why there's not a solid existing industry that fits the needs here. As well, I don't know if this is necessarily true but having someone with at least some basic level of software knowledge I think is a huge plus to being a talent manager as you or I would think of them. That helps to ensure that the quality of working coming in meets at least some base level. The problem of course is that anyone with the right knowledge will either be a developer themselves or in some other role already. To make this work they might need to be able to manage multiple talents.. but then it runs the risk of turning into an agency of sorts, right? And I don't off the top of my head know exactly what the qualitative differences are here between an agency managing multiple contractors and a "talent manager" but I think there are some and would love to hear thoughts on what those would be. I think it's all centered around how the relationship actually works. As you say you want to hire/pay a percentage and I would as well. That keeps the talent manager working for the engineer(s) versus the other way around. |
I don't get why freelance software engineering can't be the same. I would pay a recruiter handsomely to do that exact service. I mean, we're not actors, but this is a rich sector, there's a ton of demand, it's a worldwide market, so where the heck are they?
I want to act^H^H^Hwrite code for a living, not getting real good at job hunting.