Shoutout to one of my favorite OpenRA podcaster - watching the game is a lot less stressful than actually playing it: https://www.youtube.com/@CovertFlobert
"To some clients, 'UG' reads as 'not serious.'" -> more of a sales isssue
Consulting or dev work doesn't need deep capital. we're insured for X if Y happens. A UG is fine. The "not serious" label only sticks because founders keep caving to it.
Let the client adapt to your setup, not the reverse. If their compliance department doesn't get it, that's a gap to close, evry time you stand your ground, you normalize the UG for the next founder.
At least we get to raise the next generation of IT geeks because they'll have to understand a bunch of networking basics to watch porn, and might get hooked on it. (on IT)
Well - it does make sense. If an organisation that contracts me has to chose between a) BYOD - but restrict downloads, etc, enforce export control, directly in the browser - I happily take that, vs getting a Windows laptop that is locked down and forced to work with that.
It evolved out of some weird interaction someone was smartassing me that the moon wasn't full when I was pointing to how pretty the full moon was. After that, between a friend and myself, it became a bit of a running gag how full (or not full) the moon actually was. This was my first real project I kind of "vibe coded": https://moon.masca.teide.cloud/ - showing you how full the moon is to the 10th decimal
The ultimate way of installing windows least bloated is chosing Region "English (World)" - as usually the bloatware is country specific. Avoid US, UK, etc. That's where the Candy Crush comes with.
I fail to understand how you can measure keystroke latency coming from a KVM. Everything behind the KVM is invisible to you, assuming that it is spoofing a legitimate logitech dongle and emulating a legitimate screen edid.
The KVM uses buffering and queues the keystrokes. So the net time between them is the same as if I would type them locally.
What you could measure is the fingerprint of USB initialization and enumeration of keyboard, mouse etc when connecting and starting up.
PLM, which OP has expertise in, is usually tied to the IT infrastructure in the digital engineering in the manufacturing industry. That's not going away anywhere soon. We are still far away from a full automation / digitalization in these areas.
I run a small consulting shop in Germany, also specialising on PLM (and IoT) - I never landed a gig in the US. The problem with PLM is that more often than not you operate in high tech / defense and because of export control regulations you need residency.
For getting projects in Europe, what worked for me is cold outreach on linkedin. However not directly for the end client (that really never worked) - but there are a lot of companies in between - medium size consulting shops / service integrators. Also digital strategy consulting shops sometimes realize in the middle of a project that they should better own the implementation themselves(because some other partner has been identified as unreliable or too expensive)
A big aspect is being consistent and send a few messages per day.
What also worked was applying to jobs, and after making the first contact breaking it to them that I actually run my own company but that I could solve the issue that they were trying to fix by hiring me.
At last but not least - send me your CV to daniel a teide d tech - if you have experience with PTC's Windchill PLM there is a chance that I have work for you in the future. But also if not, it's always good to extend the network. I have worked in the past with freelancers from India, usually setting up legal/contractual aspects through deel.com
A lot of companies do not want to deal with GbR / freelancers anymore as it quickly gets them on the hook for evading social security taxes (Scheinselbstständigkeit) - in my experience having a limited is helpful for landing projects with big corps
This is wrong. The UG offers the same protection as the GmbH. It's probably less trusted.
Funfact: you should always use the full title, Companyname UG (haftungsbeschränkt) on all communications and contracts. Emitting the 'haftungsbeschränkt' or shortening it 'haftungsb.' may make you as a CEO personally liable for damages occured.
I lost 450$ on amazon.com for a product that never arrived. Apparently I complained too late and they 'have no shipping info' - might do an ask HN about it and try my best at a writeup.
I started recently (2 years ago) and running a small consultancy, and using part of the revenue to build my own product.
What worked for me was starting to give out small tasks via <your favorite freelancer platform>, often giving the same tasks to multiple individuals and then decide with whom I am going to stick.
Has been pretty successful for finding talent, not sure how much my anecdote weighs in though.
Working together with friends is something I probably won't do again, it's just too easy to cross damage professional or personal part of the relationship when there are issues arising.
So if you can afford it and have the time, I would recommend starting on freelancer platforms. It also allows you to make mistakes as these relationships do not require commitment from any side. Down side of course is, that you might lose good talent as they are also not comitted to you.