Shady Acres

I recently went through a whirlwind experience where I almost got a consulting job for a large silicon valley startup doing data mining work. In the end, it didn’t work out due to my being remote (tip #1: avoid remote work, companies typically prefer to work locally). Despite that, simply going through the interview process, which included a very unique skills assessment component, taught me a tremendous amount. I spoke to a number of people along the way; experienced consultants, friends in the tech industry, professors in the field. The following list details some of the more salient points they shared. I would love to hear whether you agree with these points… as I said, I’m a the rookie here, trying to learn as fast as I can.

• Your most valuable asset is your reputation. Always be courteous, respectful, and pleasant. While true anywhere, this is particularly crucial in Silicon Valley; whomever you’re dealing with today knows fifteen other people who may be interested in your skill set. My interaction with people at this company may play a crucial role in whether I get a second chance elsewhere. On that note,

• Your reputation begins forming the moment you start talking. Professionalism is key. Do all necessary homework before phone conversations. If you’re a poor speller, use spell check before sending emails. The fact that you’re a total n00b should be only apparent to those you’re asking for help; your (potential) client should not have to suffer at all for it.

• Get help writing your contract. Contracts can be complex beasts. If you do it poorly, you may end up paying dearly.¹ Here are some of the tips I was given, which you may or may not decide to use in your own contract:

  • Specify both an hourly rate and a daily rate. The daily rate should be the eight times the hourly rate, plus 10-25% or so, to account for the fact that you can’t do other stuff as easily when on the road. That rate will typically be used when you’re asked to travel.
  • There’s a reason the airlines call it “business class”. If you’re being asked to travel more than X miles (1000, 2000, international, whatever you feel comfortable with), it is acceptable to ask that travel should be in business class.² Personally, I wasn’t comfortable implementing this for my first job, as in this case it would have made hiring me much more expensive, but its worth paying keeping in mind.

• Ask others in the field to determine how much to charge. Towards the end of the interview process, I spent way too much time trying to determine how much I should charge for my services. In hindsight, I realized that the task of determining rates is a simple mixture of the following two factors, in order of importance:

  1. What people in the field typically pay for the services you intend to render
  2. How comfortable you are charging that amount, based on your experience

  As you know your experience level, the trick is finding the “average going rate”. You can try sites like salary.com, but your mileage may vary; I was not able to find useful information from that site or a number of similar ones. In the end, I found that the best approach was simply asking people who would know the answer; experts in the field, professional consultants, etc.³ If you’re reading this, chances are you either know someone like this or have a friend (or friend of friend) with useful contacts; ask around. As a last-ditch effort, you can even try calling other consulting companies who do similar work. Remember, you’re most likely a complete nobody at this point, as you’re just starting out, so established businesses should not feel threatened by you approaching them.

I hope you find this list helpful. Please leave comments this is merely a collection of some of the advice I was given by a variety of consultants with decades of experience. I hope you find some or all of it useful!

1. On a closely related note, I highly recommend all aspiring consultants (as well as anyone else running a small business) watches this excellent presentation on the value of finding a competent lawyer. ↩

2. A note about this tip for non-regular travelers: traveling is tiring. People who don’t travel a lot will not realize this. Going cross-country for a two-day meeting will leave you a lot more wiped out than just heading down to the office for two consecutive day-long meetings. Additionally, all the time you spend in the airport, on the plane, and in the hotel will almost certainly be less productive than the time spent in your familiar, well-equipped office. It’s a lot nicer to come to a meeting after a good nap in a comfortable seat than after a ride in “cattle car” class with two screaming kids next to you and barely enough room for your laptop, let alone your legs. ↩

3. See this tangentially related article for some tips on how NOT to search for advice. ↩

Apple has excelled in many ways over the past ten or so years, but their greatest success has been in the field of hardware design. Stating that Apple is an industry leader is misleading; for years after the initial release, the iPod, there is no second place device, but rather a potpourri of third-tier contenders, and this is still currently true for the iPad. The iPod represented over 50% market share for the better part of the previous decade, and the iPad’s market share is well summarized by this popularized tweet: “there is no tablet market, there’s an iPad market.”

Then, yesterday we beheld the news that Steve Jobs—visionary, black turtleneck industry supporter, design perfectionist—is resigining. Steve Jobs has resigned! Long live Steve Jobs!

Both the mainstream media and the tech bloggers will spend the next few weeks analyzing Apple’s current talent pool, attempting to figure out whether the company can retain it’s industry-leading position. I know I’ll be reading these analyses with interest. However, for the sake of argument, lets assume that a consensus is reached that Apple is in trouble.¹ Not immediate trouble; many analysts seem to agree that Apple’s current roadmap will last them at least two to three years. However, after that point, the absence of Jobs’s influence on Apple products will cause the magic, the je ne sais quoi that makes the market insatiable for anything Apple, to begin fading. The subtleties which Steve injected into the devices start to go missing.

I postulate that there are two possible outcomes. The first, and bleaker, result would be a proliferation of wannabees. Once the market leader starts to stumble, design copycats will flood the market with their “iPod plus one feature” devices. Yes, this is already happening, but due to the continued prominence of the iPod, the wannabees are always a step behind, and are always playing catch-up trying to copy the latest new killer features (iTunes store! App Store! Buttonless touchscreens!). Once the new features aren’t that “killer” anymore, once the three year roadmap is over and the true loss of the visionary is felt, the wannabees will be able to take the lead. At that point, everyone suffers, most of all the consumer. Bleak indeed.

The second possible outcome, and one which I am very optimistic about, is that the loss of an industry leader will result in new leaders taking his place. When any field has an easily identifiable, head-and-shoulders-above-the-rest individual, aspiring stars have the significant disadvantage of always having their skills viewed as “how do you compare to that guy?” This can have a very damning effect on the individual; overall, their skills may outmatch to the current leadership in some respects, but if they’re lacking a particular trait which “that guy” possesses in spades, rejection is all but inevitable. They can cry foul all they want, but the reality is that the metric used to evaluate skills simply becomes, “are you him, but better?” This effect can be extremely tenacious, and often can only be mitigated by a change in leadership.

In that vein, Steve’s retirement may have the very positive effect of allowing potential design geniuses to shine. When every UI breakthrough is received with a “Yes, but how does it compare to the iPad?” and “Sure, this is awesome, but can it compete with the prevalence of the iPod?”, potentially groundbreaking advances tend to get lost in the shuffle. New folks now have the chance to shine.

Here’s to the next guy. May his impact on the field be every ounce as great as that of Steve.

Addendum: Those reading this may be thinking at this point, “That’s the wrong viewpoint, everyone always has a chance, and the market will choose the best. Even the small guy can win if he’s good; the market will support him.” Unfortunately for the small guy, it doesn’t always work that way. Venture capitalists may choose not to fund when there’s such a strong market leader because the risk is too high. Realities of small business may force a potential success to shut it’s doors; too little good press relative to the Big Guy, poor product advertising relative to the Big Guy, too much difficulty getting good word-of-mouth sales for the Little Guy relative to the Big Guy. While there are still dozens of factors conspiring against young², enterprising business, the removal of this (fairly significant) factor could make all the difference.

1. I’m “just another guy” who loves Apple products, and I’m definitely no market analyst. However, to me, this seems the most likely problem to be faced by the first post-Jobs Apple device, which is why I choose it as my doomsday scenario. ↩

2. “Young” in terms of years experience in the market, not age. ↩

I recently was in talks with a fairly large internet startup trying to set up a consultancy position related to data mining. The experience was a first for me; I finished my engineering PhD two years ago, and I’ve been working in research as a postdoc since then. I found myself in the surprisingly uncomfortable position of trying to sell myself for cash. Thankfully, everything went very well - even though in the end I didn’t get the job, it wasn’t because of something I did; they were very pleased with me (at least, that’s what they told me), but there were situational difficulties that led them to scrap the position for the time being. However, the ordeal of attempting to convince someone that I have something of value, and that they should pay me to access it, was very new to me, and I was only able to handle it as well as I did (which clearly could have been better, as I didn’t get the job) with lots of discussion and advice-seeking from family and friends.

While this was going on, a family friend came to the states. This fellow, and American who moved to Israel a few years ago, has no advanced formal education. However, he has it where it counts; this man is a businessman, and he knows his stuff. His current job floors me every time I hear about it.

He sells dirt. To tourists. Who buy it. And he makes a good living doing it.

Now, to be sure, this is not just any dirt. This is dirt from the Holy Land. He packages it up in a nice little vial next to two more tubes of Holy Land water and Holy Land oil. They’re all packaged together in a nice cardboard box, probably with some very lovely Pslams or something written on the back. And, I want to be clear, the people who by it are good, religious people who very much value this sort of thing¹; I have absolutely nothing against them. They may be looking for a meaningful keepsake by which they can fondly remember their pilgrimage, or they may be completely irreligious tourists looking for a unique souvenir that’s not a refrigerator magnet. The point is, his entrepeneurial brain realized that there are people who appreciate this sort of thing; in fact, these people will pay for his dirt, because it’s packaged all nice and pretty.

The juxtaposition of his visit with my interview process was jarring to me, because I’ve put in almost ten years to my education and I’m working my tail off to sell my skills to someone, and this guy with practically no education is able to make a living selling dirt and tap water to tourists, who buy it for a premium. This was a serious in-your-face reminder of how business acumen is not just requirement, but one of the most crucial requirements for job seeking that exist, and its also something you will probably not be taught much about in school.

I took home a few lessons from this:

• Business acumen is crucial. Everyone knows this. I knew this. However, seeing this principle in action really makes you understand that “good business acumen » education”. Even if the only thing you’re selling is yourself, understand what you’re selling. Develop on your own elevator pitch.

• Just because a market is oversaturated doesn’t mean a solid newcomer can’t gain market share. If any of you have been to Israel, you’ll know that the market for tourist souvenirs is hardly looking for more competition. However, this fellow came up with a novel implementation of an old idea, packaged it well, and has carved out enough of the market that he and his family can live on it. This happens in the tech market all the time; the best example that comes to my mind immediately is hipmunk with air travel.

• Focus on what you know. My skillset: (1) I can program in five languages. (2) I’m able to interpret neural signals and tell you what you’re thinking before you even know it yourself. (3) I know how to create a machine learning program that learns from it’s past mistakes. (4-inf) All the other stuff I’ve learned along the way.

  This guy’s skillset: (1) Selling dirt.

  Focus on what you know. My friend knows how to monetize his skills, and he does so to good effect. There’s always more to learn, and you SHOULD stay on top of new developments, but don’t undervalue your current skillset. DEFINITELY don’t skip out on improving what you know just so you can spend a few days with the hot new tech on the block. “Wide and shallow” knowledge may be good for a Jeopardy contestant, but young job-seekers will almost always be better off with a very deep understanding of a choice one or two technologies. Next time the opportunity comes around, Instead of working on learning something new, work in improving skills you already have for a bit, and it will do you good.

1. Growing up, my parents had a little display case on the mantel with a piece of the Berlin wall on it. As a kid, I always wondered whether the folks in Berlin would ever come by our house and ask for it back. ↩

I’m a regular reader of Hacker News, and within this past week two interesting topics made the front page. The first was an interesting article entitled “There’s always a plan B”. The author argues that, no matter what happens, every company needs a plan B, as well as a plan C, D, E, and so on. In any industry, the tech industry in particular, landscapes change ridiculously quickly, and companies who can’t make strategic changes quickly will suffer for it.

The second topic is that of Google’s purchase of Motorola. There have been many interesting analyses of the acquisition, but the most interesting one I’ve read was a Slate article by Farhad Manjoo. He argues that this huge expenditure will force Google into the business of selling smartphones, simply to recoup costs associated with the merger. Earnings from adviews simply aren’t high enough to make the acquisition profitable.

The interesting thing is that people seem to be assuming that this is a bad thing. Android is open! It’s free! This merger would put Google into competition with the handset makers, and Bad Things would happen! How could they renege on their word?

It’s called Plan B.

The original strategy that Google employed was to distribute Android for free. This makes a lot of sense, given that almost all their products follow this strategy; give it away for free, make money on ads. It works pretty damn well; they’re one of the most valuable companies on the planet. Understandably, they attempted to use this same strategy with Android. However, as said in a surprisingly accurate statement by Steve Ballmer, Android’s not free. Many have written about the hidden costs to carriers; delayed updates, inconsistent user experiences, accusations of preferential treatment among carriers, and app stores more similar to a jungle than a garden. The recent patent problems, and the statements they’ve elicited from the Google elite, have clearly shown that Google did not anticipate what they were getting into with Android.

Enter plan B, the merge with Motorola. Google now has access to an additional 25,000 patents. However, as described by Patel, they could have just licensed the right to litigate those patents. Instead, they bought Motorola outright, and now conveniently can execute a complete vertical integration strategy, similar to Apple. Why not take advantage of it? As said by Manjoo, they are currently making $1 per adview on Android, but they can potentially make upwards of $150 per handset sold, and they’ve already shown that they can make excellent phones with the Nexus series.

But what about their committment to all the other handset makers? From a risk-benefit standpoint, it’s almost no contest. Android as it stands is not making them huge money. End users don’t even know what Android is¹, let alone care whether their phone runs it; give them a phone with SMS and Angry Birds and they’re happy. Google knows how to make a good phone without external help. By making their own phone, they can gain significantly. Sure, they’ll have serious competition in numbers, but as Apple has shown, it’s all about the profit margins. For Google, Plan B is looking very, very lucrative.

1. Ask a non-tech user what OS their phone uses, and they’ll give you a blank stare. From my experience, most don’t realize that phones have an OS. ↩