So You Want To Do Your Own Thing?

Joe's Nerdy Rants #43 - Weekend reads and other stuff

So you want to do your own thing?

During a panel this week at the Generative AI Summit in London, we discussed career progressions. The standard career progression is you start as an individual contributor, move to management, and finally move on to a leadership or executive role. To paraphrase Drake, started at the bottom, now you’re here. Suppose this is what you want to do with your career, congratulations. You can stop reading. This rant isn’t for you. Climbing the corporate ladder isn’t something I aspired to do, so I didn’t. I don’t have much advice in this area. Get corporate career advice from people who’ve been successful in that path.

But what if you want to go off on your own? At some point, everyone with a 9-5 dream of quitting their job, being their boss and giving the corporate world the middle finger. Make a boatload of money and invite your former co-workers on a flight to Monaco in your Gulfstream. That’s the dream. The reality is most people don’t leave their jobs. I don’t blame them. Most people shouldn’t be on their own for reasons I’ll discuss in a bit.

I’ve been independent for many years, running a few companies and doing other side projects. I half-joke that I’m unemployable. Being independent is second nature at this point. So, I get a lot of questions like, “I’m tired of working my 9-5 and want to do what you’re doing. How do I get started?” Here are some suggestions.

First off, understand who you’re getting advice from. Take me, for example. I get questions all the time from people on how they can what I do (whatever that is). They might see the travel and “cool” lifestyle on social media and wonder how they can do the same thing. My situation is unique and it’s impossible to replicate. And frankly, you probably DON’T want to do what I’m doing. What you see is the result of my personality quirks. Unfortunately, I also don’t have a shutoff valve, so I work endlessly, often into the late nights and weekends. This is a bug and a feature. I’m just wired differently. I love what I do, and this is fun to me. I was lucky to find a career that doesn’t feel like “work.” This has the side effect of there being little difference between life and “work”. I’m not saying this to sound cool. Far from it. So, don’t blindly try to copy me. It’s not healthy and you’ll very likely hate it.

The same goes for anyone else dispensing advice. There’s a LOT of horrible entrepreneurship advice out there. Some good, but mostly complete crap from hustle bros trying to sell you something. Understand the background of the person. Have they done the thing you aspire to? Or do they just talk a lot of nonsense? What was their experience and path to get to where they are today? Take what works for your situation, but understand that person's context and experience.

Second, avoid stupid risks. Some people will tell you to leave your job and “burn the boats,” as the old story goes. This is extremely reckless advice. When employed, you have two things on your side - time and money. Use this as an opportunity to get your finances in order. Pay off debt, build a cushion of cash and investments.

As for your business idea, start small and test things out. Don’t just quit your job and jump into “doing business.” I hastily did that once when I was younger and failed miserably. But I also had enough time to recover. In that process, I learned a ton, which helped me immensely with my current situation. But in retrospect, that came with the opportunity cost of earning while learning. By this, I mean keep your job and do some small experiments to know your new business. What are customers willing to pay for? 

Of course, if your job prohibits you from having side projects, then you’ll have to get creative or put the idea of entrepreneurship on the back burner. But hopefully, you’ve read your employment agreement and understand your situation.

Third, test and iterate.” Find out if people are willing to pay for your product or service. Not just sign up or tell you it’s an awesome idea. Signups and platitudes don’t keep the lights on. You know when your idea is good when people pay real money. This doesn’t need to be a big blowout. If you’re considering consulting, get a paying client for a small project. If it’s a product, develop a prototype or a one-off and sell that. Money talks and getting the validation of paying customers will give you the confidence that you have something worth pursuing.

Fourth, speaking of getting paid customers, sales is key. You’re going to have to get good at selling. Sales don’t come naturally for most people. Most people hate it and hate salespeople even more. Here’s the deal - you’ll have to learn to sell and close deals. Read books, find a sales mentor, and get out in the world and sell. Sales is the lifeblood of any business. Plus, being good at sales will help you in your day job. You sell every day, whether you know it or not. In your own business, sales is your full-time job.

Fifth, always build your network. As someone once said, “Your network is your net worth.” This is true whether you’re employed or an entrepreneur. I can’t count how often I’ve seen very smart and capable people lose their jobs and struggle to find work because of their anemic network. I even see this with people in their 40s and 50s. You’d think that being established in one’s career, they’d have a network to fall back on. Then the layoff happens, and they’re scared and have nobody to help them. And if that’s not bad enough, try being on your own. I see lots of entrepreneurs who have trouble selling because their network is weak. Your network opens doors to new people and opportunities. Who you know is almost more important than what you know. 

Another piece of advice with networking is pay it forward. Do lots of things for people. Help others without expectation. Stop being so damn transactional. You’ll be surprised who might help you when you need it.

Finally, use your time wisely. Time is tricky with entrepreneurship, especially when you start. Without the confines of a regular job, you’ve got a lot of time on your hands. You can use it productively or squander it “playing business.” Playing business means joining networking mixers and taking lots of meetings for their own sake. This might sound like I’m contradicting my statement about building your network. I’m not. Most of these, like networking events and “intro” meetings, are low-calorie, high-effort activities. For networking events, if everyone is handing business cards or swapping LinkedIn connections, it’s probably a bunch of entrepreneurs like you, all struggling to build their network. With “intro” meetings, if the person is trying to get free consulting or intros from you, this is a massive waste. Learn to scope out events and people you’re meeting with beforehand. If it’s not a good fit, avoid it. These are time drains. Focus your time on things that build your sales funnel and drive revenue. Don’t waste your precious time with bozos. 

Also, know that everything takes 2-3 times longer than expected. You can “perfectly” plan your sales and product push. Don’t expect to hit things on time. Nothing executes according to plan. You’re going to be late. That’s how it is.

Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. I’ll probably piss off some hustle bros when I say that most people shouldn’t bother. Working for yourself requires such a high level of discomfort and uncertainty that most people will crack under the pressure. You will experience extreme highs and deep lows, often on the same day. But at some point, you get used to it. But most people don’t get to this point. They quit and return to the corporate world because it’s easier. I don’t blame them. Running a business is brutal. But for masochists like me, I know of nothing else at this point. It is what it is.

I applaud your desire to leave your job and find something purposeful. Time is short. One day, you’ll blink, and your career will be half over. Spend your time doing things you’ll be proud of. Do you want to look back on your career thinking, “I was thrilled I spent my time dealing with total assholes at work, just to make sure the data warehouse ran so I can make a bunch of reports and dashboards nobody looks at”? If not, try something else. It doesn’t have to be a big hit. Just build the sets and reps to get the confidence and traction to move to something different. Or, find another job that’s a better fit for you and your goals. There’s a ton of awesome stuff happening in tech and data these days. Don’t shortchange your career. Even in a tough job market, I always see people landing new roles. It’s not the good old days of ZIRP, but it’s possible. Don’t limit your thinking or prospects. Whether your get another job or go out on your own, good luck out there!

Hope you have a fun weekend!

Thanks,

Joe

P.S. If you haven’t done so, please sign up for Practical Data Modeling. There are lots of great discussions on data modeling, and I’ll also be releasing early drafts of chapters for my new data modeling book here. Thanks!

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Cool Weekend Reads

What Is the Best Advice You Have Ever Received? - Issue 203 (Data Analysis Journal)

More career advice!

A few other data friends and I share some advice that helped us in our careers. Enjoy!

How Change Data Capture Works: Understanding the Impact on Databases (John Kutay, Striim)

Does log-based change data capture (CDC) consume memory resources from a database? My good friend John Kutay wrote this really good overview of CDC and how it affects database performance. If you’re interested in the overhead of CDC, check this out.

The Alternative Implementation Problem (Pointers Gone Wild)

“Hopefully, at this point, you see where I’m going with this. What I’ve concluded, based on experience, is that positioning your project as an alternative implementation of something is a losing proposition. It doesn’t matter how smart you are. It doesn’t matter how hard you work. The problem is, when you build an alternative implementation, you’ve made yourself subject to the whims of the canonical implementation. They have control over the direction of the project, and all you can do is try to keep up. In the case of JITted implementations of traditionally interpreted languages, there’s a bit of a weird dynamic, because it’s much faster to implement new features in an interpreter. The implementers of the canonical implementation may see you as competition they are trying to outrun. You may be stuck trying to ice skate uphill.”

I remember alternative languages like JRuby and Jython that went nowhere. Then there’s PyPy, which seemed promising, but I don’t see it used very much. SQL is a bit different because variations are tied to specific databases. This is a good synopsis of why sticking with the mainstream language implementation is usually a good idea versus trying to move the masses to your version of the world. It’s just extremely difficult.

VCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don't need
roads (TechCrunch)

Rough terrain != roads. I think this is super cool. Also, something that didn’t occur to me for some reason - “And if you remove people, you immediately get a reduction in your insurance premiums. So the ROI for those vertical applications is now, and it’s significant,” said Andreev.”

Computer-Science Majors Graduate Into a World of Fewer Opportunities (WSJ)

It seemed like only yesterday that CS majors were getting 6-figure starting salaries from every company out there. I’ve heard from CS students they’re scared of today’s job market. I’m very curious to see what enrollment in CS and broader STEM subjects will look like in the coming years.

Other cool reads…

Microsoft’s new Copilot AI agents act like virtual employees to automate tasks (The Verge)

Blinded by Metrics (OnlyCFO's Newsletter)

The Beautiful Rawness of Steve Albini (The New Yorker) - RIP

Scrum's Built-in 'Get Out of Jail Free Card' Against Criticism (Maaten Dalmijn)

I Want Flexible Queries, Not RAG (Win Vector)

Cyber Security: A Pre-War Reality Check (Bert Hubert)

Study Finds That 52 Percent of ChatGPT Answers to Programming Questions Are Wrong (Futurism)

Amazon cloud boss Matt Garman inherits business under pressure to keep pace in AI (CNBC)

New Content, Events, and Upcoming Stuff

Monday Morning Data Chat

Coming up…

There might be one more episode from Matt and me. After that, we are taking the Summer off from the Monday Morning Data Chat. Back in the Fall, with a whole new lineup.

In case you missed it…

Chris Tabb - Platform Gravity (YouTube)

Ghalib Suleiman - The Zero-Interest Hangover in Data and AI (Spotify, YouTube)

Bart Vandekerckhove - Data Security Deep Dive (Spotify, YouTube)

Yali Sassoon - Using LLMs to Support the Analytics Workflow (Spotify, YouTube)

David Yaffe & John Kutay - The State of Streaming and Change Data Capture (Spotify, YouTube)

Solomon Kahn - Customer-Facing Data Products, Why A/B Testing is a Waste of Time, and More (Spotify, YouTube)

Katharine Jarmul - Are We Solving the “Right” Problems with AI? (Spotify, YouTube)

Matt Turck - The 2024 MAD Landscape (Special Show) (YouTube)

The Joe Reis Show

This week…

5 Minute Friday - Career Progression Advice (Spotify)

Yulia Pavlova - Yulia Pavlova - AI and Disinformation/Misinformation in the Media (Spotify)

In case you missed it…

5 Minute Friday - Is Data Modeling a Waste of Time? (Spotify)

Safiyy Momen - The Good and Bad of the Modern Data Stack, Controlling Cloud Costs, and More (Spotify)

Gordon Wong - Why Most Data Teams Aren’t That Valuable (Spotify)

Roman Yampolskiy - AI Safety & The Dangers of General Super Intelligence (Spotify)

5 Minute Friday - It's Fast Enough, or Why Programming Language Wars are Dumb (Spotify)

The ChangeLog comes to my show! - (Spotify)

Bill Inmon - History Lessons of the Data Industry. This is a real treat and a very rare conversation with the godfather himself (Spotify) - PINNED HERE.

Events I’m Speaking At

Matillion Deep Dish (San Francisco) - June 4th

AI Quality Conference (San Francisco) - June 25th Register here. Rumor has it I’ll also be DJing there…

(Taking the Summer off, sort of…)

Big Data London - September 18-19. Register here

DataEngBytes (Australia) - Late September/Early October, TBA

Gitex (Dubai) - Fall, TBA

Helsinki Data Week - Fall TBA

Lots of other stuff in Europe - Fall, TBA

Asia - Fall, TBA

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