

Working for free and what it taught me - quaffapint
http://codeofrob.com/entries/working-for-free-and-what-it-taught-me.html

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Tichy
While I think it's cool to do this and I am a bit envious, I would still like
to add the recommendation to not dismiss money so quickly. I have some friends
who think like that and it concerns me a bit.

The thing is, you are not taking into account that there might be times in the
future where you could actually need some backup money. For example an illness
(or simply old age) could make you unable to work for several months or even
years. Not even counting other things you might want to do that money could
come in useful for. In the future, you also might have a family.

I'm certainly not advocating missing out on life for fear of running out of
money and running in the treadmill like crazy just out of fear. But saving
money in the good times probably can't hurt.

~~~
TamDenholm
This applies to freelancing/business but it works in this context too.

What i would say is never ever discount. Either work for exactly what you want
to be paid, or work for free, dont work for a discount. Discounting has the
problem of having the obligation associated with being paid, but without the
satisfaction of making you feel like you're being paid what you're worth. It
also sets the baseline of what the client/employer thinks you're worth,
they'll have the same expectations as if you'd be getting paid your usual
rate. If you work for free, usually, the expectation of delivery is far less,
which gives you more freedom.

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miahi
In this case, free = non-profit. I think 99% of the population would work for
"free" provided their expenses are paid.

~~~
RyanZAG
I'm part of the 1% then. Sure, working is fun and all, but there are things I
want to do in life besides working. Those things generally need money to pay
for.

~~~
tjbiddle
In this case - What the author wants to do in life besides working is travel
and gain some rich experiences by meeting people across the world. To me -
that's really freaking cool.

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Mithaldu
> I offered up my time for free providing my expenses were covered

Those two things do not mean the same thing.

> Experience in Tool/Language X is a stupid thing to ask for

I'm pretty sure my experience with Perl won't allow me to write useful C
within two days, no matter how experienced my coworkers.

It would've been much more interesting to read about how he actually found his
"jobs".

~~~
6d0debc071
Your experience with pearl will probably let you learn to write decent C ahead
of needing it.You know you're going to be interviewed, potentially, take a
couple of weekends and learn it.

~~~
Mithaldu
> pearl

I see what you did there.

And as Joeboy says, it would be months. I can say this with confidence because
i know enough about C to know how little i know about it. Just the thought of
memory management and all the complexities involved makes my skin crawl.

~~~
robashton2
Maybe - I can't help but feel you're all putting C on a pedestal though -
thinking you're immune from memory management issues because you're not using
C seems a bit weird.

I feel confident that if I was asked to do C at one of these gigs I'd have
been able to deliver something useful. Perhaps less if it was C++ because it's
a bit swiss-army knife and there are a lot more "don'ts" to pick up.

~~~
Mithaldu
I'm not really putting C on a pedestal here. :)

I'm only saying: Some skills are so radically different that you cannot
transfer easily from one to the other. To give a counter example in the other
direction: When i taught a former Lisp developer Perl, it took him 3 months to
get to a good level, and 3 more to be on a very high level. And he's an
extremely bright guy.

Then again, he had never done web apps before. Maybe the language matters a
lot less if you're staying within the same problem domain.

~~~
robashton2
"then they'll get on that stuff and make it happen providing they have some
similar experience and you have an in-house knowledge pool for them to draw
on." <\-- some similar experience is probably another way of saying that.

If you asked me tomorrow to go and start doing system programming in a
language I knew well, I'd probably be screwed. Ask me to work on a database
engine, compiler or web app and I'd be okay.

I'm mainly focusing that ire on the typical enterprise stuff LOB stuff, where
it truely is all the same and just because you'd been writing Foo v1 for three
years doesn't mean you won't be able to write Bar v300

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vickytnz
Reading this, this is perhaps comparable to getting university education: you
are losing money, but you get some interesting experiences to set you up for
later. That said, in an age of free internships and similar, I hope this isn't
done too often so as to give employers ideas….

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_mulder_
>People are generally okay

This really resonates with me and I've come to the same conclusion from my
own, similar experiences.

Its a shame mass media has cultivated an irrational fear of outsiders into
everyone.

Ironically, even the people I've met who have been so kind and generous often
try to be helpful by warning me about such and such race, or part of town, or
different religious people to avoid because they're dangerous for one reason
or another.

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gautamc
What is "A MBA running Debian for doing most things" ?

~~~
rpeden
A MacBook Air, running Debian.

