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8th Oct 2012
postI resigned: 5 weeks later
Just 5 weeks ago I posted my story about how I resigned from my job and started as a freelancer. I casually shared it on hackernews and my facebook and went to do other things. The response was really overwhelming. Hartwarming. I got some great feedback. A lot of comments on my blog and on hackernews. A lot of people contacting me how they would like to do the same. I even reconnecting with old contacts. My server crashed several times and last week I got a 6 EURO bill for the 31 GB of traffic a used on top of my fair use policy.
Thank you all very much for your comments and advice! You really made my day!
So how am I doing?
I’m doing good. I’m on my first contract. It’s a parttime asp.net / jquery job till the end of the year. Building educational software (which is my preferred domain) and on a 10 min bike ride from home. It’s a nice team of highly skilled people, working hard on a nice project.
Before I started freelancing I had a lot of fears. I had the fear that I would not be able to find work, that I’m to socially awkward to connect with other people and that I overestimate my own skills. All where rendered untrue in the first weeks. I have had several offers for projects. I managed to be part of a new team within days and receive praise about my work and I’m able to contribute very well. And best of all: it’s very long ago that I’ve been so relaxed. I’m providing for my family and they have a happier dad and husband.
Off-course it only has been five weeks. But the outlook is good. Feeling verry happy about my decision at the moment!
How did I start?
On of the first things I did when I decided to resign was to call the people I know that have done the same. Two former co-workers started freelancing a while ago. I called them with two questions: “Would you do it again?”, “How are you doing it”. They both answered with a very convincing: Hell Yeah! And very different ways in how they are doing it. They both gave me the same important advice: get the word out. Change your linked-in profile, your twitter-account get the word out. Make sure people know what you can and what you do. And secondly: pick a niche … eventually.
Take two years of starting up and making some name and make sure you are an expert in something. So that when people say: “If I only knew an expert [windows debugger, jQuery guru, App developer, drupal OTAP specialist, ...] my day would be saved”. Fill the dots for something. What do you get complimented on by your co-workers, your boss? That might be your thing! But if you don’t like what you are best at, what do you do?
At my goodbye speech my former boss said it very well.
“It’s a shame, the thing [he] is the best in, he doesn’t like doing at all”
According to my boss my talent is to explain technical things to non-technical people in a non-threatening way. And that makes me a good seller apparently. But boy do I hate that.
And that is my next hurdle. I need to find my niche while I’am a generalist at nature. I have broad interests and want to learn everything. I find an interesting topic, delve deeply into it. Even buy some books … and then my interest fade quickly.
So what will my expertise be?
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3rd Sep 2012
postI did the scariest thing: I resigned.
Two months ago I did the thing that nobody expected me to do. I am 32 years old. Father of a 1 year old girl, I have a house with a mortgage and a job which payed well. And I quit. It was bound to happen sooner of later. I worked at the same company for 8 years. Doing different things every 1,5 years. I went from being a webdeveloper, support manager, technical manager to product manager and finally an app developer. I have tried a lot of things and found out what I really want in a job. And I wasn’t able to get that anymore from the place I worked. So the decision was easy. I decided within that weekend.
I had a great time working at the company. I learned tons, made a lot of friends and got a lot of support trying out new things. But being part of a projectteam wasn’t going to cut it anymore. My dreams and ambitions are bigger. We grew apart.
I explained this all to my wife and luckily she was very supportive. People around me where shocked. By quitting my job I also resigned my right on government support. If I had been fired instead of quitting the government would have paid me a salary for the next couple of years. Now I get nothing. People call me brave other people call me stupid, some call me both. I have to take care of my people and the economy in Europe is not exactly blooming right now. A lot of people ask if I have found another job or some contract work and are amazed when I tell them I don’t have any. Normally people don’t quit without have some sort of guarantee for work.
I’m excited. And scared. I am on my own. I know my goal. I want to work in a company like Valve, Mojang, Khan Academy, Fog Creek or Github. Places with a hacker culture (or so it seems). Small teams of likeminded people working hard, playing hard to achieve a goal. Unfortunately these companies are all out of reach. I don’t know if i’am good enough to work at any of those companies. But anyway I won’t be able to relocate. My wife is a highschool teacher. See lectures Dutch. And therefore she is bounded to the Netherlands. Not that I regret that, I like living where I live. Having my parents and family close. Above all my family comes first.
Instead of grieving about the fact that I won’t be able to work at one of these companies, I decided to try and build my own. We have some savings that will last us around 4-5 months. We have a sideproject (jufmelis.nl a site I run with my wife for people studying Dutch ) which will grant us another 3-4 months. My plan is to build some low-maintenance projects to generate an extra income. Do contract work as a webdeveloper and appdeveloper and try to build a company from there. The goal is that in 2 years time my small company has grown to a small team, hacking away with nice people in a nice office. Making quality stuff for people. Put a smile on people’s faces when they use our products.
Today is the first of my unemployment. I have given myself 4 months to prove that this plan can work. I truly believe that it can. To be successful I have to get out of my comfort zone. It will be hard, I will hit walls, I will fail at things but hopefully I can make this work. Wish me luck!
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9th Apr 2012
postJavascript DCPU-16 simulator
Recently Notch (of Minecraft fame) anounced his new game: 0x10c. It is a space game. In this game you control your ship via a computer. This computer is the dcpu-16 . And this computer is fully programmable. Notch released the spec and a lot of tools have been released in the days after. I was immediately triggered by the spec and decided to build a javascript for this CPU. I took me a while but here it is: the javascript DCPU-16 simulator. You can find it on Github here: https://github.com/wasigh/Javascript-DCPU-16-simulator
I tried to fully test test the CPU. But still there are some bugs. Mainly because my misunderstanding of the spec. It was a fun project to do and I learned a lot about CPU’s and why a IFN will take an extra CPU cycle when it test fails. Hint: variable instruction length. Feel free to Fork it on github, post issues and send me pull requests.
A lot of discussion about DCPU-16 is over here: http://www.reddit.com/r/dcpu16
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30th Dec 2011
postintroduction to HackerNews
It must have been something like two years ago. While surfing the Internet I came about this tech news website called hackernews or simply: HN for it’s members. And since that day HN is my start of the day. I’m not an active member of the community when it comes to posting links or comments, but I read the topics and comments almost every day. At first glance HackerNews is just a news site like many others. A really ugly one for that matter. But it powers lie in its simplicity. It is a community where all is focused on quality content. A simple list of “hot” topics. Voted on by the community and sorted with a time weighting algorithm. The true power of HN may be in the comments. The topics discussed on HN are very broad but almost always contain a link to programming or running your own “online” business.
HackerNews has been originally started by Paul Graham (pg) as a way to collect links and share them with the people they founded via ycombinator. It organically grew to the size it has now. Rarely have I seen a community which such openness and people willingly to help other people. On HN I learned a lot from people like Patrick McKenzie (patio11) whose blog and tweets are a goldmine for online marketing, SEO and A/B testing. Also Jacques Mattheij springs to mind. He maintains a blog about startups and tech in general. And the list goes on and on.
But don’t take my word for it: have a look for yourself: HN’ best. Don’t blame me when you get addicted
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27th Dec 2011
postThe programmers era
We can safely call this era the programmers era.
The latest mayor companies where build by programmers. Software is everywhere and is only getting more important. Soon no company can exist anymore without software.
Programming is an unique profession. As a programmer the only thing I need to build something of value is a computer, an internet connection and some time. And on top of that I can easily build upon the work of others. Compare that to the work of carpenters or a bridge builder. As a programmer I can work anywhere, anytime.
This characteristic is at the same time a blessing as a curse. Because I can work anytime I feel guilty when I’m not working. I always have the feeling that I should be building something cool or profitable. The common sense among programmers is that everybody should have a pet project they should be working on. Or help other people at fora like stackoverflow.com. This goes as far as to make having an active github or stackoverflow account a prereqisuite for a job opening.
The blessing is in the possibilities being a programmer provides. Working flexible hours, running pet projects as a lifestyle business. Always a new technology to learn and master. Never a dull moment.
Sometimes I really hate my work. But I never can imagine doing something else. Once a programmer: always a programmer.
