So in that NYTimes profile of me, @daiwaka wrote "Mr. Quinn said Amazon had never tried to rein in what he said."
That's not ENTIRELY true, and I do want to be fair to @awscloud.
While @awscloud has never once tried to stop me from publishing anything incendiary, or urged me not to deliver a Hot Take, they jump with a *QUICKNESS* when I say something that they perceive to be factually incorrect.
Their approach can best be summed up as "shitposters gonna shitpost, but the second it confuses a customer that is A Problem."
And what's more is, they're right. A few examples!
When @awscloud Backup released Backup Metrics, I cracked that "too bad they don't ship Restore Metrics."
Welp, it turns out they do! And they were FAST to request that I clarify that for customers, which I had no problem doing.
I'm wrong from time to time! This stuff is hard!
But the really, REALLY interesting "corrections" from AWS are when I talk about why the user experience for a service is shitty.
Often they'll ask me for more information about why I feel that way, and then I don't hear about it for a while.
And then the shitty thing gets FIXED! And somewhere along the way, the faceless company is a bit less faceless to me.
The @okta news is super great and all, but every time I hear their name I’m reminded of the time I had to sign an agreement not to attempt to hire their staff for a year in order to enter their office to speak at a meetup.
This was their “doorway NDA” and is almost certainly unenforceable, but it annoyed me something fierce.
Years ago I had to turn a meeting at @AppDynamics into a meeting at the nearby coffee shop for the same reason because I was at that time actively counseling one of their staff to leave.
Hear me out. In the first thread I talked about finding a positioning that works as "the expert in An Expensive Thing."
In the second, I talk about value based pricing instead of hourly.
So you're now a very expensive expert here to solve a big expensive problem.
In the technology industry, I maintain that implementation opens up Pandora's Box of delivery risk, while simultaneously damaging the perception of your value.
So, as you've probably heard if you've worked with, met, passed on a street, been in the same coffee shop as, or just had a dream about @jonathanstark, "hourly billing is nuts."
I used to disagree vehemently. I no longer do.
Unless you're an attorney, people are going to cap out in terms of what they pay you somewhere around $250-$300 an hour.
That's good money, right? $600K a year assuming 40 hours a week. Let's start there.
There we go. And as an apology for the trouble, @Microsoft has disabled the social profile nonsense.
What kind of crapass "cloud" conference is this?! They've got pre-keynote streams so you feel engaged and involved, they bother to *mention* the virtual sponsor expo hall so customers know it's there...
MS has so much to learn from AWS's approach to half-assing things.
My personal guide for burned-out employees with chips on their shoulders. I recommend none of these. I am guilty of all of these. This is why I'm a terrible employee.
Put expenses on your own credit card and then submit them. If you experience pushback, stare them dead in the eye and say "okay, so don't pay it." See if they call your bluff.
(They almost never will.)
If someone asks you to work late tonight, you have plans. Maybe a date with your spouse. Maybe playing video games. Maybe you plan to cry yourself to sleep. Not their business; they're your plans.
Emergencies aren't "someone else fucked up the planning."
So you want to be an independent consultant. Let’s skip past the stage where I scream “don’t do it!” and onto the next step:
How to position yourself.
It's natural to want to be the jack/jane-of-all-trades; anything within the vague realm of technology being what you do.
It's also a mistake.
Your first deals are going to come from your network--friends, former colleagues, etc. You want word of mouth to spread, because traditional marketing in this space is nightmarish.