Dave VR – Page 30

It pays to be flexible

In the world of freelance work, everything is negotiable. It’s surprising to see fellow freelancers who limit themselves to seeking only 9-to-5 roles for fixed durations of 3, 6, 9 months, or even a year. They often dismiss opportunities for short-term consulting, part-time engagements, or simultaneous projects with multiple clients. This rigidity can lead to missed opportunities.

One client once mentioned he couldn’t afford me because he didn’t have enough work to keep me occupied full-time for three months. I asked why he felt that was necessary. He explained that all the contractors he had previously worked with insisted on full-time commitments of that length.

I prefer to remain flexible, and this approach has opened many doors for me, leading to diverse and interesting opportunities. By flexibility, I mean:

Availability: I’m open to a variety of engagement lengths—whether it’s a few hours of consulting, a day here or there, a week, a month, or longer contracts of 3, 6, 9, or even 12 months. I’m also willing to be available on short notice, including weekends and evenings when needed.

Payment Model: I’m comfortable with different payment structures, whether it’s hourly, daily, or on a project basis, often with milestone payments leading to a final payment upon completion.

Services Offered: I provide a broad range of services, adjusting my fees based on what the client needs, deadlines, and the length of the contract.

It’s crucial not to take offence or get upset when negotiating. Some clients might try to negotiate hard, suggesting they don’t pay much for your level of service. In those situations, it’s best to thank them for their time and move on. If they can’t afford your rate, there are plenty of other clients out there that can.

Another important tip is to prepare for the unexpected. As the saying goes, plans often become obsolete the moment they’re created. Priorities shift, budgets fluctuate, and clients change their minds. Contracts might end sooner than expected, or you may find yourself taking on additional work.

Staying adaptable is key to thriving in freelance work. Embrace flexibility, and you’ll find many rewarding opportunities.

Don’t just work for money

Early on in my career I found myself at a large corporation where, after a project ended, they were reluctant to let me go. To keep me on they loaned me to another team, with my original team covering my invoices. The catch was that the new team didn’t have much work for me, so they assigned me the task of developing a Test Strategy document for an upcoming project.

By the end of the first week I had a draft ready for the project manager’s review. He suggested some revisions, and we agreed to meet again the following week for further discussion. Making those changes took only an hour, but this pattern continued for months. The new team had little for me to do, opting to leave me to my own devices while checking in weekly to review that one document.

It became increasingly absurd, especially when the project manager began critiquing the font choices and justification in the document. This “work” stretched on for six long months. I stayed primarily because I was awaiting an upcoming project with my original team, which promised to be much more engaging—and, of course, for the paycheck.

Those six months taught me a valuable lesson: I never wanted to work solely for money again. It was painfully boring, and life is too short to spend it counting down the hours at a job that doesn’t inspire you.

Realising that the company had no intention of releasing me, I began taking walks around the campus instead of sitting idle at my desk. I explored the on-site cafe, library, and communal areas, meeting and chatting with others while adhering to security protocols. This experience highlighted the importance of networking.

Now, when I wake for work and suddenly realise it’s the weekend, if my first thought is one of disappointment because I can’t work that day, I know I’ve found a job I enjoy. That’s the criteria I apply to every new contract I consider: it should be fun and interesting. Working with great people is a bonus.

Reflecting back to my school and university days, I fondly remember being part of the Amiga demo scene. I loved when my parents occasionally would leave for the weekend, allowing my friends and me to set up our computers in the living room. Over those weekends, we coded, created graphics, composed music, and assembled software to release. It was a blast—we enjoyed beer, pizza, and anime while working late into the night! For us, it never felt like work; it was pure fun. That’s what I seek in every job opportunity: a project that excites and entertains me.

Don’t just work for money.

The Safety Net

One of the most powerful things that I learned early on in my career is that of having a safety net. Also known as a war chest, rainy day savings, or emergency fund. Essentially a pot of liquid assets or money safely stored somewhere that will enable you to survive hard times such as unemployment or a health problem.

Ideally this fund should last you at least 6 months. A year is better, two or more years even better.

This safety net doesn’t just allow you to weather the unforeseen, it also has the added bonus of giving you a better work-life balance and even boosts your confidence. You see, if you lose your job you know that you are able to survive for a period of time without it. The larger the safety net the longer you can be without income. This has the knock-on effect of not making you desperate for work in-between jobs. You are not so desperate for work that you have to take whatever is being offered. You don’t have to work for awful bosses, you can pick and choose who you work for and when. If you don’t get a job, so what? The worse case scenario is you return to your couch and binge watch Netflix for a while or catch up on your reading. It’s not the end of the world because you have your safety net.

They say that retirement is wasted on the old. Plus we are never guaranteed to make retirement. You might get hit by a bus tomorrow so why put everything off until the end of your lifespan? Why not have mini-retirements throughout your life? That’s the beauty of the safety net as it allows you to do this. As it grows it allows you to be out of work for several years and still maintain your lifestyle. Why not take a long holiday? Three months, six? How about a year off? Gaps in your resume don’t matter these days as they can easily be explained away. I took time off to travel and explore the world as a reward to myself for all the hard work I put in this past year or so. That’s the beauty of the safety net.

The Padlock Analogy

When discussing ways of learning and thinking outside the box I like to use the analogy of bypassing a padlock.

When looking at a padlock most people – without the key or combination – will probably think of using a bolt-cutter or picking. With the former, most TV shows and movies depict thieves with bolt cutters easily cutting through a padlock, and with the latter most PI or spy movies will show some deft lock picking taking mere seconds. Both will work if you know what you are doing, but how else could you bypass a padlock?

There’s a saying that goes something along the lines of: “There’s a difference between wisdom and knowledge retention”. You can read many books and master many areas of study such as biology, chemistry, geology, physics, psychology, etc, but it’s how you use that knowledge that counts. How you combine areas of expertise looking for overlaps and interactions that others may not have considered.

Take the simple padlock for instance. What if we applied chemistry? We have acids that could eat through part of the mechanism, oils for lubrication, maybe use liquid nitrogen to super-cool the metal rendering it susceptible to damage under impact. How about physics? We have opposing forces, kinetic energy, levering, or heavy impact.

The point is the more you learn the larger the data your mind has to tap when “thinking outside the box”. Just watch any episode of McGyver (the original or remake). The more you learn and the more you train your brain to think this way, the more the everyday looks different to you.

There’s always more than one way to approach a problem, but the solutions that your brain can come up with will rely on the data it has available to mine.

OSINT NOW

When it comes to finding information about a company that is not publicly available, LinkedIn can be your friend. A while back I had subscribed to NOW – formerly NOW TV, a division of SKY TV in the UK – and I wanted to know more about the technology they were using, but there was nothing returned using search engines. That’s when I decided to use OSINT with LinkedIn. OSINT, or Open Source INTelligence is a research method using publicly available sources, in this case LinkedIn.

Most employees sign contracts or NDAs that state that they will not discuss what they do for a particular employer, but that doesn’t prevent them from advertising their skills and experience to help them secure future employment.

Searching LinkedIn for keywords such as “Now TV” revealed a who’s who of the team working at NOW presently and in the past. Front-end and back-end developers, database admins, project managers, etc. It was a data-mine of information on the technologies being used. I also saw references to “Roku”, which I learned was the hardware manufacturer of the NOW TV stick. There was also mention of a project called peacock, which I discerned as a streaming platform in the US for NBC. It appeared that both the NOW and Peacock teams were working on shared technology. All of this information was not publicly available but could be obtained with just a few brief searches on LinkedIn.

Pivoting

Early in my professional career I found myself in a constant battle with outsourcing. As soon as I got wind that my role was to be outsourced I would start looking around for the next opportunity and master the skills required quickly. I would then have a period of both starting my new role while handing over the last one.

This kept happening so I would “up” my game. I moved from being a manual tester to test automation learning various tools and programming languages along the way. Yet outsourcing kept pace. I next moved from test automation to performance testing. I not only had outsourcing to contend with but now I was competing with automation frameworks that were replacing the need for actual testers.

I kept this up for many years specialising in specific frameworks, tools, and having a broad range of test skills. I even stepped into security testing becoming a penetration tester but then I found myself up against pentesters who had certified in India for a fraction of the cost and that could undertake the work remotely for less than the cost of living here. So I switched again from freelance to employee switching to domain expertise. Now I found myself up against AI.

AI and ML is offering companies a faster, cheaper way to detect bugs and identify UI/UX issues, and to offer improvements based on real-time analysis of how users are using the software or service under test.

It can be disheartening when you see your profession slowly being reduced to a computer program, but such is the nature of the industry, and I’ve enjoyed the journey and everything I learned along the way. You have to keep learning and evolving in order to stay in the game or face being made obsolete.

Intro

I’ve endured three decades of working as a professional for CEOs, MDs, boards, and entrepreneurs. I’ve been shouted at, threatened, and generally treated badly as if they owned you just because they are paying you a consultancy fee. It’s been high stress, anxiety-ridden, and sometimes depressing work at times. Not always, but sometimes. And it leaves you either hardened or broken, or somewhere inbetween. With multiple mental health issues all combining to make a party in your head. One that you did not want to be invited to.

Therapy helps, CBT gives you tools to cope, but embracing life and realising that not everyone and everything is out to get you or to make your life hard helps too. It’s all about your mindset, with mindfulness, journalling, and just going for a walk. It may take a little time but you’ll get there. Soon you’ll learn how to find your way through and to even embrace the wild rain.