Article subtitle says it all: It’s become fashionable to claim that other countries hate the U.S. Having traveled the globe for three years, I can tell you: That’s absurd.
This is a great idea, look forward to reading. I work with founders, devs, and execs as a mentor & coach. So I find tools in this topic valuable for people and the community to be in their best flow. Feel free to reach out if I can help
Another chapter of classic software comes to a close. I have always been a fan of this office suite, as it has been a reliable workhorse for my needs. Many thanks to the developers.
Yes indeed, I have a couple mentors and they are great people to have in my life, for both professional and personal development.
One of my mentors I met organically, the other one formally. So IMHO the two best ways I know to find mentors are:
• Organically: Talk to lots and lots of people. Especially in real-world situations. Attending events which you enjoy, whether work-related or not, is also a great place to meet potential mentors.
* Formally: Look around online and ask friends if they can recommend a coach / mentor. (I'm a mentor and coach myself). Talk to a few people and see if you find someone with a potential fit. Most coaches will offer the first session for free (I do as well).
Hope that helps. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat.
Congrats on achieving your MVP! Marketing (and sales) are a crucial function of your launch and future success, assuming your business model and MVP are solid so far.
Finding the right marketing person will determine how much revenue you take in. This can lead to great success, or a total flop if the marketing & sales don't work.
Keeping that in mind, there's about 100 questions to consider for such a candidate, which you can find in the list of questions for cofounders or business partners.
I strongly recommend a phased approach to collaboration, with an initial trial period, and benefits or rewards coming only after proven results.
Ultimately, when you work with the person for at least a full year, you will know if they are "not a fit", just mediocre, or totally amazing for your business.
It's a good question, yet I would propose the question itself is limiting. Being efficient includes being accurate and correct, as much as possible, over and over again, and such skills are developed with consistent practice, not with any "hacks", and usually taking more than a day.
As basic as they sound, my top 3 here are: Priority planing, execution management, and psychological self-management.
These do take more than a day to learn and implement, and after that, you are the most amazing professional possible.
Because in the long run, it's not just about having great ideas, it's about collaborating with other people, and convincing those people about your great ideas.
For several of the companies I do hiring for, we focus on how well a person fits for the job. We're not concerned about the location of the person, as long as no time zone issues or legal issues with payment come up.
That being said, that's not always the case. Lot's of companies can still only pay staff in their own country, or just a few countries. Some companies also want local work authorizations, even if the person is working remote. (An unfortunate situation, yet common).
So your search will be very different depending on if you have a US work authorization, and depending on how the company is able to pay you.
Another option is to setup a small company in the US to sell your consulting services and do your billing on a B2B basis.
I would suggest starting now, to network with people on LinkedIn, who are in your target locations and industries. With a 1-2 year lead time you can definitely figure everything out and have some good options organized.
To your questions #3 and #5, my suggestions would be threefold:
1. If you decide to switch to data engineering, talk with your professional network, and grow your current network, to find the new role. It can be pretty tough to change roles via the conventional hiring process, and finding a new role "organically" leads to some of the best jobs.
2. Evaluate your current situation and do a little writing: What's good? What's bad? What do I want for the future? Putting these answers down on paper, and revising them over the course of a couple weeks, enables you to achieve clarity, which then leads you to constructive actions.
3. Speak with a career mentor or coach. Because of inherit human bias and observation effects which we are all trapped in, we suck at self-evaluation. While friends indeed help, there are limits to what friends can do, and over-doing this with friends will damage friendships.
The job of a professional mentor/coach is to give you rational feedback, free of constraints such as friendship or working together. In this way, you learn and solve your problems much faster than you would alone. (Source: I am a career mentor and coach myself).
Consider this, a crucial element of business is risk management. People and companies who don't wish to manage a particular risk will choose to outsource it.
For example, by paying an insurance company $x per year, I can be pretty confident that my legal liabilities for my [car, house, etc] won't exceed a certain amount per year.
In the case of certain projects, companies who are looking to reduce their risk look for fixed-price contracts.
In a fixed-price contract, much of the risk of the project is on the vendor's side.
So the vendor who offers a fixed-price contract has to be very confident, that they have done similar projects many times before, are very familiar with the costs and risks, and have reliable paperwork, processes, and people who mitigate all the risk factors on a daily basis. If the vendor manages the risk well, and successfully implements the project, they can make a good profit.
When you as a vendor offer a "time and materials" contract, or hourly contract, you have much less risk. The hiring company is taking all the risks, that the project scope is well defined, that the people and processes work properly, and that the work is performed efficiently.
So the question really goes back to you, do you have project types where you have lots of experience, and can confidently offer a fixed bid? If yes, put together a very solid proposal, with a tight SoW and very detailed contract terms. In the course of the project, manage the risk daily, and raise a red flag quickly in case of problems.
If not, avoid the risk, and stay on a time and materials basis.
in my view it's worthwhile to speak with a professional career coach or mentor (I'm a career mentor and coach myself), because there are too many variables to cover in a list or even in a whole book.
This is because, even if you follow all the best checklists and guides:
1. You might not be making the right "impression" which matches for the role you wish you obtain
2. There may be something in your profile which triggers a red flag during the hiring process.
A good coach/mentor will help you fix such problems so you don't waste time, energy, and frustration.
Sorry to hear that, it sounds like a tough situation.
My suggestion would be to speak with a professional career coach or mentor (I am a career mentor and coach myself). It sounds like you have a good background, but something is going wrong in the hiring process.
The hiring process today is complex, and many job applicants will get auto-rejected for simple reasons. When you work with a coach, they can show you which red flags are in your profile or CV/resume, and you will be able to fix them together.
Sorry if the question seems very basic, but what are you looking for in your next job, precisely?
I find that writing this down helps to make the search process easier.
To reply to your comments:
> Has anyone used LinkedIn _regularly_
1. We hire regularly via LinkedIn and see that many job applicants use this regularly as well to find jobs. LinkedIn is a hugely successful hiring platform.
> It’s hard to decipher what a given organization is looking to accomplish sometimes.
2. Not all companies want to reveal their intentions publicly, for many different reasons. These are good questions for the first interview.
> read like a Cheesecake Factory menu of duties and experience requirements
3. For sure, LinkedIn and all the other sites have their quirks. Which other sites have you tried so far? Which site seems right for you?
> seeing that a role had “200+ applicants” is a bit demoralizing.
4. Yes there are a lot of applicants out there. Consider it from the perspective of the people hiring: When I'm hiring people, usually only 1-2% of the applicants stand out from the crowd with their LinkedIn profile and resume / CV.
How can your make your profile and CV stand out, so you're invited for the interview?
When you have a great profile and CV, you can be confident that you're putting your best foot forward, and if they don't invite you for an interview, it's probably not a good match anyway.
1. Family in a quality German rural setting: Over the long term, healthy and functional family relationships are meaningful source of fulfillment, and make everything else in your life just a little bit easier. In combination with the quality rural life in many areas of Germany, it is a healthy foundation for friends, family, and children.
2. A geographically independent career: Depending on your career choices, and if money is a priority for you, you can make great money while being geographically independent. There are many different ways to accomplish this depending on how much time/effort you wish you invest, and which options you would consider.
3. Quality of life: While I am generalizing here, IMHO, the quality of friendships, family, and social connections is better in Bavaria than California. Of course this depends on your exact situation, which street you are living on, where your family & friends live, the social infrastructure of the town, etc etc.
4. Better health and safety in Bavaria: as can be found in public statistics.
5. Social development for children in Germany: For the most part, I find the quality of the social upbringing and education system in Bavaria better than California (again, generalizing, as there are bad and good patches anywhere). Speak with a few high school graduates from California and from Bavaria, and note your observations. For example I observe: How mature are they as young adults? How well-adjusted are they? How grounded do they seem?
Background: I am a career mentor with long-term US and German experience.
A few things come up for me, as well as friends who I talk with:
1. Clear separation of work space and home space. Yes, a separate room can help with this, yet physically going somewhere for work feels more effective for me.
2. Connecting with colleagues at the office. Informal face-to-face interactions help to foster communication and build trust over time. The hallway chats, lunch discussions, and personal conversations in a face-to-face setting create a stronger connection that what is usually possible online.
3. For focused work, a quiet home office office is very effective, as so many businesses have gone with open-plan offices. I organize my schedule so I can do focused work on at-home days.