Last Thursday was my final day as a full-time employee of Evolution Robotics. I've been thinking about this for a long time; I knew I wanted to try consulting, but even though I've worked at small startups for the past 10 years it still felt like a big leap to go independent.
I have now made that leap.
I'll be helping Evolution for a while, but I can't wait to rustle up some interesting work after that. I tell people I'm now a freelance roboticist, but the truth is I wouldn't mind working in some different areas, too. This should be fun.
Posted by jjwiseman at June 13, 2005 11:44 PMFreelance roboticist... now that is a cool job title.
Posted by: Slava Pestov on June 14, 2005 01:17 AMCertainly much cooler than plain ol' "freelancer"!
Congratulations, and good luck!
Posted by: Rich on June 14, 2005 02:02 AMDid they actually have you coding in C at evolution?
Good luck with it!
Posted by: Zach Beane on June 14, 2005 01:56 PMAs someone who recently pulled the rip cord and bailed out into academia after many years of consulting, let me give you a hearty 'Good Luck!'
and a few words of advice that you are of course free to ignore!
First off, if you don't have it already, get Gerald M. Weinberg's "The Secrets of Consulting", and you will save yourself a lot of grief. The 'Orange Juice Test' section alone is worth many, many times the cost of the book in bad jobs avoided, and good ones closed.
Don't charge too little, as you WILL have dry spots. The feast or famine consulting roller coaster can be very, very tumultuous!
If over 15 years of consulting, on and off, I've had clients ranging from individual users and small businesses up to several Fortune 50 and other large orgs, and Weinberg has much wisdom that applies to all of them, regardless of industry.
And again, Good luck!
Posted by: David Mercer on June 14, 2005 03:10 PMI always thought 'interesting' and 'profitable' were inversely proportional in the realm of computer consulting. e.g., "Y2K" stuff was mind-numbing, but abundant, but paid the bills. So I wish you all the best.
Also, so much 'consulting' is corporate IT work is 'stick stuff in the database and get it back out'.
And indeed, freelance robotist has a very snappy ring to it. Like something in a sci-fi novel.
Posted by: billmil on June 21, 2005 07:25 AMHeh. "Toe Fat"
Posted by: c0ooooooooa980ldldly on June 23, 2005 05:20 PM