Transcript: Roll Your Own Tech Job - Erin Mullaney

Hi, welcome to another episode of Django Chat, a weekly podcast on the Django web framework.

I'm Carlton Gibson, joined as ever by Will Vincent. Hello, Will, how are you?

I'm good. Hi, Carlton.

Hello. And this week we've got with us special guest Erin Mullaney, who's going to come on.

We're going to talk about freelancing and things like that. Hi, Erin, how are you?

Hey, I'm doing really well. How are you?

Marvelous, marvelous. A bit tired of being locked in the house, but other than that, we're good.

Sure. I think we all are getting a little tired of that.

Although I've been a remote worker for, I think, three years now.

So I feel very well prepared for this moment in time.

Yeah.

Well, Carlton, you're literally locked in the house in Spain, right?

No, yeah. Well, yeah, there's a lockdown in Spain.

I mean, I was just outside with my kids. Can you go outside in your yard?

No, we can go in our backyard, but we're not allowed out in the street.

And that's been the same for six weeks.

Yeah. With four kids, everyone.

yeah so i mean it's you can't go for walks no we can go to the shop or the pharmacy and you can go

as a single adult um and the police are quite strict about it and you know i mean spain's been

very heavily hit so it's understandable absolutely everyone's starting to look if there can be some

easing because the kids the kids need to get out and run a bit um but i think it's going to be a

few more weeks yet so anyway but uh well they have um mandatory face masks where i'm from

in um brookline mass with 50 fines so um that's about as strict as america gets with it anywho

so working from home yeah i mean working remotely so i've been doing that a long time as well so for

me it was the change wasn't too bad apart from the fact i've got children at home the whole time

which obviously you're not you're not baking sourdough bread all the time and catching up

on netflix carlton no no no i think if i wasn't if i wasn't able to go for walks i think my code

would really suffer personally so i would really miss that i hope you get back to that soon carlton

yeah no i missed that i missed that i do get to do a bit of tai chi outside which is but i just

want to go for a walk please anyway but anyway we should talk about um freelancing and yeah well

You gave a fantastic DjangoCon talk, which we'll link to in the notes and I want to talk

to you about.

But first, how does one come into the Django world?

What was your origin story?

So my origin story for coding kind of begins when I was working part-time while I was in

college.

So I went to college for computer science, actually, luckily, although...

You're the only one here who can say that on this podcast.

Yeah, yeah. I think that people feel funny about not having gone to school for computer science.

And I just want to tell them that it really doesn't matter. I mean, I'm glad I went to school

for computer science. It's kind of a cool thing to put on my resume. But where I learned to code

was at multiple jobs. All my closest Django friends didn't study it. Yeah, yeah. And I was

talking to a friend recently about it. And she, she was like, well, of course you went to school

for computer science. So I feel like I have to catch up every night and learn these things.

And I was like, no, no, no, I please shut your computer off at 10 PM at least and get a good

night of sleep. That's, that's way more important. Um, but I digress. So, so I think that attitude,

it's important to note that, I mean, you know, the imposter syndrome and everything.

I don't know, Carlson, I'm curious what you would say. I would say that I certainly,

the feeling doesn't go away. I just put it in context where I know that nobody knows everything

and I don't go around apologizing for it. I don't know. So it's, you know, I don't know. I don't,

I don't feel the need to apologize because no one can just whip off whiteboard algorithms.

And I've had to do that before. And so I didn't do computer science at university. I've spent 20

years reading all the right books and doing all the things, not, you know, not calling it constantly,

but on the back burner. And so I kind of feel like I know that stuff well enough, but how often does

it come in handy i don't never have to implement an algorithm the library always compiler yeah

when's the last time you did a compiler from scratch you know i might write a parser from

time to time that stuff's handy you know but yeah i don't know no it's totally not the most

relevant thing in the world but but i think part of it too is you get to know the people who are

experts and you realize where they're at and then you go there is no white unicorn person that we

think is out there who you know knows everything off the top of their head everyone has pretty

major gaps it's just you don't need to tell everyone about them all the time yeah especially

if you're applying for a job right and nobody expects you to know everything at their in their

heart they don't expect you to just like have this like amazing amount of experience to just

know everything without looking it up i mean i look everything up every day that's i think that's

the key to being a good programmer is to know how to look things up and know who to ask

questions to, like you were talking about with experts. But anyway, so I was in college

and I was working 20 hours a week at this office as an admin person. They found out I was going

to school for computer science. They liked me. They saw that I was a hard worker and they said,

do you want to transfer sort of into a more coding role? So this is around the year like 2000. So

there was a lot of needs like the Y2K stuff, there was a lot of needs around, around coding. And this

was a mutual fund company. So they had a lot of a lot of needs. And they actually had a lot of I

think they're either Fortran or COBOL program. Yeah, that sounds like textbook COBOL Fortran

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they also had a department that was doing Visual Basic and Microsoft SQL and then getting into .NET. So they said, do you want to like kind of translate into that department and we'll hook you up with a coding mentor who can help you.

And so at this job, I learned about source control.

Do you all remember?

I'm going to age myself.

Visual Source Safe.

I learned how to use that.

I learned Microsoft SQL, and I learned ASP at that time, a little bit of that, and a

lot of Visual Basic.

So this is going back to like 20 years ago.

So that was my first programming job, and I was doing that 20 hours a week and then

doing that full time in the summertime.

And then when I graduated college, I continued there full-time for a year and then transferred – well, took a different job at the University of Pennsylvania where I did ColdFusion for many years and Microsoft SQL, a lot of SQL, a lot of ColdFusion.

So that's really where I – I mean, I think, like, we're always constantly learning in this industry.

So I like to say that's where I was like really thrown into the fire because there they were, the department I was working for was supporting so many different applications.

So I would switch from working on a Flash application one day to working on a ColdFusion the next and just sort of fixing bugs on all these different platforms.

So I really felt in a good way thrown into this environment where I had to learn quickly.

And I was hooked up with some good mentors there, too.

So how I got to Django eventually down the line was they eventually decided to no longer support ColdFusion because ColdFusion was not going to be supported anymore.

I don't know if either of you have heard of ColdFusion, maybe?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, you're like...

Yeah, yeah.

So we were like a fully Adobe shop.

We were doing ColdFusion and Flash.

And if you've heard of Flex, we were doing that.

um so i'm going to adobe max every year which was super fun um so so they as a as a as a department

at the university of pennsylvania i was specifically working at the wharton school

and they decided wharton wide we are no longer going to to support cold fusion apps we're going

to sunset it we have to pick a different um language framework so they had a task force for

it and this was this was wharton wide so so this is like all sorts of like smaller departments had

to had to like be on board for this so it took some time for them to choose a framework in the

end it was between django and a java framework that i don't remember and django won and i took

that as, okay, Django is the thing I need to get into now. So while we were starting to translate

apps from ColdFusion to Django there, I was looking for my next job because I was ready to move to a

new state. So I was moving from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to North Carolina. And that is how

I ended up doing Django because Wharton kind of chose it. And then I used it as part of my

looking for a new job. I really liked working at Wharton, but I wanted to move

and I wanted to change things up. So, so I took a job. So I started applying to jobs in North

Carolina and a friend of mine sent me a listing in Durham, North Carolina at this place called

cactus group and it just all the stars aligned they had an opening i came down and interviewed

there and it kind of happened a little bit more quickly than i was ready for we weren't quite

ready to move to north carolina but the job was right so so i yeah so i took the job at that

jango firm and and started really really learning jango very very quickly um and that was five years

ago in early 2015 right because like perhaps listeners don't know but cactus is one of the

sort of older more established um django agencies you know they've been around in

for well forever and part of the community and you know still are and i think 12 years or something

like that yeah they had their 10-year anniversary recently i'm trying to remember if it was one year

or two years ago but yeah they've they're fairly established in the django world but i didn't know

that at the time. I was just interviewing at a place that did Django. Well, yeah, it's a good

choice. I mean, I try really hard not to pick favorites, but I would say they're definitely

in a small number of elite Django consulting firms I recommend to people when they ask.

Yeah. And at the time, and still currently, a lot of the people there were really amazing mentors

for me. And it was just, it was a great time to join there. I was, I don't know if you remember

mark lavin he was there at the time karen tracy is still there and um a number of other people

who were able to work with me in this position where i was a long time coder but not long time

with django so what makes a good mentor for you because we you know it's one of the difficult

ones people always ask for mentoring and you always as a you know a senior or established

or long time hand you think oh i'd like to mentor but then what what is it that makes a good mentor

um i think i'd rather answer the question of what makes a good mentee

and put yourself into into the mentees uh shoes because i think of myself as both a mentor and a

mentee at different in different relationships with different people and so when i was coming

i'll talk about when i was coming to cactus because i've been mentored throughout my whole

career. But really, when I came to Cactus, here I am, this longtime developer, I know, I know the

ropes pretty well. But as far as Django goes, I'm getting my feet wet and, and, and proving myself.

So the best way that I could be a good mentee was to really not, not push it too hard. So,

so I would schedule time with people and say, can you pair program with me for the next 45 minutes

on this problem? Um, and we would set a time together and one of us would be the driver.

And I would, I, that's how I learned about, um, break points because break points was not a thing

in cold fusion, cold fusion. It was just totally, it was a different, it was a different idea. So

So I learned about breakpoints by sitting down with a developer, probably Vinod at Cactus Group.

And he was using IPDB and I learned about them from him.

And, you know, so there were different things that I was able to learn as a mentee by just watching people work and trying not to take too much of their time.

So I was always, if I was sitting and pair programming with someone, I was always watching them too and making sure that I wasn't, that if they were getting to a point where they were like, okay, I'm done pair programming, I would know to say, okay, I think this was really good.

Thank you for your time.

And I'm going to go back to my desk and use some of the things that I've learned.

That's that EQ that some developers don't have.

i think you can develop i think you can develop it though yeah no but i think that's a fantastic

point is that obviously when you're making the ask you don't think of what you can do as a mentee and

i mean you've listed all the bullet points i would say of someone who wants to be mentored of

you know yeah it's it's an important thing to say because and maybe this sounds a little

cold but i'm sleep deprived so i'll say it so some people say will you be my mentor as if it's like

an honor and really it's it's just like a a lot of unpaid free time um so it's important to yeah

for it to be some reciprocity in the relationship you know if you if your colleagues that's great

if it's a random person you know carlton myself are approached i don't know there needs to be

some back and forth maybe we're learning about some project you're working on there's some part

of the community but it's good to have in mind that it's not just a one-way street i guess is

what i'm trying to say i try and help on like the forum say and a good question that invites a

response that they've done the work and they've you know they've so when you read you read it and

then immediately you're like oh yeah there's the answer or there's a point i'd make whereas the

other question is like just a dump and it's it's like oh i can't where do i even begin i'd have to

do hours of work to even start to answer that question it's like next level google skills is

knowing how to ask the right question i think right how to frame it so it's concise prove that

you've done some work but not have it just be yeah how do i build my app which i understand

the impulse to ask such a question but it's not answerable i mean and you also the other thing

that really helps is that if you're working on the working towards the same goal so a lot of my

mentor mentee relationships at cactus specifically we would be on the same team together so we were

trying to get tickets done and sometimes pair programming you actually get things done more

intelligently because you sort of step back and talk about the the the solution together um and

then you are are trying to reach the same goal so so pair programming can kind of i don't know

it's it's a real positive it's been a real positive experience for the most part for me

I'm incredibly envious you've experienced it. I've never experienced it. I left myself in a room for two years and sort of kind of learned Django.

I haven't done it in a long time, but I have done it in both experiences where

I was working at Cactus and we would have pair programming time, usually because I would

ask for it because other people are more reluctant maybe to ask for it.

I'm not sure why if they feel like they just would rather work on their own or if they

feel like they don't want you to see the magic behind how they come up with solutions which is

a lot of google for me it's the exact lack of magic they don't want you to see right

yeah so um yeah but i think that's that's another factor of figuring out when you're

when are you stuck enough to ask for help and i suppose this goes in the bucket of experience

along with googling of you know like like the three of us we have a sense of like i will spend

a couple hours maybe i'll sleep on something but if at this point if i'm truly stuck on something i

will you know kind of then raise my hand but i don't immediately raise my hand and i guess i'm

just saying that there's a sense of when are you actually stuck versus when have you not done the

work and there's no need to spend a week on something at any level but you should at least

put the work in and prove that you know to carlton's point about asking a forum question

if you say here is this concise problem i have here are the steps i have taken that didn't work

you can see where someone is on the journey versus when someone just is lazy basically and maybe they

don't feel lazy they're frustrated but like you have to have like enough frustration to

have tried i like the way the forums work too i like the i started typing a question into them

recently before i had done a lot of research and and i liked the i think it sort of popped up and

said have you have you are you ready to release this question are you ready to to ask this question

or have you researched it more and then i did a little more research on it and i didn't end up

asking it and i was glad i hadn't asked so i just liked that interface i just wanted to give you

that feedback oh on the official django forum yeah yeah i'm not sure who worked on the django

forums was it carlton or no no it's um it's a rails app no it's um yeah is it yeah it's um yeah

discourse um it's it's a textbook i mean it's a off-the-shelf white label thing um andrew godwin

did a lot of the work to um implement it and we the django software foundation are now um

continuing to pay for that in going forward as part of the um django ops stuff which um

which i should call out um the head of cactus group tobias is on the ops team and

does quite a lot of unseen work to help the Django infrastructure.

That's awesome. Yeah, Tobias is great.

So I do want to get to, so eventually you left Cactus Group and you had this fantastic talk,

which I wish I had seen. So I rolled my own job four years ago and man, it would have saved me a

lot of time if I'd seen your talk before that. So how did you get to learning? Because so many

things i was like yep yep didn't think of that in advance yep um so what so you so you left cactus

group and then learned all these things about rolling your own job yeah so i never felt like

i really left cactus group although i did have like a goodbye lunch um at the time um i ended up

in 2017 moving to san francisco for a year because my husband got a job offer out there

and so the decision up to me was should I look for a job in San Francisco there are all these

it's the land of tech opportunity but with that comes whiteboard interviews you mentioned

whiteboard earlier and I really was not interested in any more whiteboard interviews I had been on a

few and I didn't want to go that route so I didn't really want to work for another tech company

I liked working at Cactus so when we decided to move to San Francisco which we only stayed there

for a year but when we decided to move out there I asked Cactus if I could still work for them but

just based out of California and they even had a client in Oakland at the time that I knew would

benefit from me being out there. So I sort of brought that to them. And they were unable to

deal with the taxes in California because California tax law is really complicated and

different from North Carolina where we're based. So they gave me the option. They sort of said,

look, we can't work with California, unfortunately. We would love to keep you.

do you have any interest in contracting? And they have a number of contractors there. So I was

familiar with contracting at Cactus. I was a full-time employee who was hired by Cactus,

but I knew other contractors there and I knew what their life was like. And I thought, oh,

this is an amazing opportunity. Like I can take a step back from working full-time at an office

where I'm required to put in my 40 hours of billable time every week.

Hopefully it's billable.

And I can set my hours and I can select my projects.

This is what I knew from contractors.

This is what I knew from how they were working.

So I said, yeah, that sounds great.

How do I do that?

And they were really nice and said, well, you need to do that.

You need to form your own business.

And then we can hire you as a consultant and you'll have to buy your own laptop and that's

what you'll have to do.

So I ended up talking to every consultant I knew at the time, anybody who worked for

themselves.

I had like a three-hour phone call with my friend Patrick where he just runs his own

business now, totally unrelated to what I do.

But he gave me so much intel about, you know, whether or not I should form an LLC and how

I should track my expenses.

And it was amazing.

So I have to give Patrick Esmond huge props for that.

But also I talked to a number of other people.

Victor, who I still work with now, he's on a client project with me and he runs his own

small firm.

He was also a huge help.

I took him out to lunch and asked him.

So I just had all these, you know, I had lunches and phone calls and emails where I just asked

everybody I knew because like I was talking with pair programming, that's my learning

style.

So I like to learn from people and experiences and that's how I know I'm doing the right

thing.

And every single person I talked to told me to form an LLC.

So that's, you know, that's one thing we can talk about today.

You know, why form an LLC?

So that's why I formed an LLC, because that was the feedback I was getting from everyone.

They told you.

Is that, is it, I mean, because Carlton, you've spent time as a consultant.

Is it, are there similar structures in Europe or is it a totally different thing?

Yeah, so I had a limited company in the UK back in the early days.

And I used to put all my work through that.

And then when I came to Spain, you know, I became self-employed.

And now I'm self-employed.

It's just, you know, as Carlton gives it, it's me.

I haven't formed.

There's no legal entity on top.

No, there is.

There is.

You can form an SL, a Sociedad Limitada.

You can form one of those.

I've thought about it a couple of times, but because it's just me and, you know,

I haven't got around to doing that at the moment.

The autonomo status that you have as a self-employed person in Spain

has got most of the benefits of that without the massive overheads.

And bureaucracy in Spain is quite high.

And as soon as you've got an SL, it's like every month more administrative costs.

And for me, at the scale I run, it's just not worth it.

Well, I'm a sole proprietor still, which is, I guess, one of the three options, right?

There's C-corp, LLC, sole proprietor.

I probably should be an LLC, but I haven't done that yet.

But I loved how you covered this in your talk because you really kind of laid out the landscape.

But I agree.

I think most people probably should be an LLC if you had to choose now.

In the UK, it was certainly like you get a limited company.

The bureaucracy was very small and the benefits were very large.

You know, I don't know what it's like in the States.

It depends by state.

I mean, because California, it's almost like $1,000 to have an LLC.

And then there's because actually the startup I worked at out there was an LLC.

and you know um but then some states it's a couple hundred dollars and um but i think it's what it's

it's like a thousand or something to set up and then probably mid 500 something depends on the

state ongoing yeah i don't know i don't remember how much i pay per year my accountant keeps track

of that for me um but it's not very high in north carolina it was definitely higher in california i

think when i formed it it was eight hundred dollars yeah eight hundred's the number i recall

and then i i like i got a refund of a partial refund because i moved in the middle of the year

from them for for that like it was all very confusing and but you know everything was legal

as far as as far as i was aware because i went through i went through legal zoom to set up my

LLC, which was another tip I got from a number of people who I talked to. They just said,

LegalZoom, it's just easy. You just fill out a wizard to form your LLC. And like Carlton was

saying, this is really just particular to the US, but the nice thing about the LLC in the US is that

it helps you separate yourself from your business so that if the worst happens and you get sued,

you your business gets sued, your personal assets aren't liable as long as you are doing a good job

at keeping them separate. Yeah. And that's what you need. And you need liability insurance and

you need an accountant you mentioned and you need to let the professionals do their job because

you don't know about accounting and tax rules and returns and, you know, not to pay someone for

that. I pay my own taxes, Carlton. I probably should. Well, part of me thinks, you know, I've

got a this fancy business degree and um but really I should I I yeah I should have one I mean I I

love how you have that really nice sheet Aaron that you link to from your talk the google doc

laying things out um because I I think that's that's great in some ways that's better better

than like I use TurboTax to pay my taxes in the U.S. and I use their QuickBooks self-employed

which is works great for me so I have separate bank accounts set up for for business um and

personal which you have to and i have a separate credit card and so it all kind of flows through

there but it's everybody i everybody i talk to you seems to want to use accounting software

and i just really like having it all in a spreadsheet i just find it so much there's

so much less overhead to just track your expenses in a single spreadsheet versus learning a ui for

quickbooks or whatever well that depends on how many expenses you would you have i would say

because the nice thing is it just pulls in everything from your credit card so if you have

that is automated expenses that kind of helps it will estimate your taxes but well and i think and

i like how you mentioned you just you you found your person on online right it wasn't a personal

recommendation and not yeah he's not in the same state either which because that's another concern

is that potentially state by state varies yeah so uh one of the places i interviewed at a long

time ago was thumbtack so i wouldn't have been aware of it if i hadn't if they hadn't contacted

me to interview me but that's how i found out about thumbtack and i really like their site

they've done a really really nice job of basically replacing angie's list yeah in a free way awful

i'll dump on them all over the place they're terrible they're like subpar craigslist but they

prey on old people that know oh no yeah no no no not not a good site but but yeah Thumbtack is is

really great and so I went to Thumbtack and I think I they ask you what your project is so I

just said I was looking for a business accountant and I went through the number of steps and then

a number of accountants sort of bid for the project and the one I found was in Georgia and

this at the time I was in California he was in Georgia and he said yeah I have a number of

clients in California, that's fine. I'm very familiar with that tax law. And he had to learn

the North Carolina law when I moved back to North Carolina, but that was fine. And he spent,

I think, an hour with me on the phone, just talking me through things. And at the end of

the phone call, I was like, yeah, absolutely. You're hired. This is great. So he's been my

accountant since that time, since I hired him on Thumbtack. So I'm really, really happy with him.

He's become our personal accountant too. So he's great. And he does my, so I have to,

in order to make 401k payments as an employer. Yeah. Let's talk about this. We can talk about

this a little bit, maybe if you're ready. Yeah. So it's in order. So, so with 401k.

So do you have a solo 401k setup? I have a solo 401k. So there, there's the employee

contributions, which is the same for everybody. The max this year is what? 19,500, something like

that. Yeah. For 2020, 2020. Yeah. So, so that is the max this year for everyone, employee

contributions, no matter what. But there's this thing where if you're working for yourself,

you can make an employer contribution. And if you do that, you need to calculate it based on

your profits and the way my accountant does that is by doing payroll so he oh yeah i want to talk

about this yeah so you have because because i'm not an accountant so i'll just tell you how he

does it i don't know okay sorry i'm sorry to interrupt i get excited and i interrupt but

please speak yeah no no you're fine carlton's laughing he's he knows um you're fine you're

Fine. So I now pay him monthly to do my monthly payroll. And I pay myself my payroll by doing a

direct deposit once a month on the same day every month. So it has to look like payroll. It has to

be payroll. You have to set the salary and pay that salary amount on the same day every month

If that's what you're going to do, like the monthly salary, like you would, if you were

working for, for a monthly paid job somewhere else.

And so he takes that monthly salary base level before the taxes come out.

And the, I think it's up to 20% or 25, I forget the amount exactly.

Yeah, it's 20, 25 and the combined amount is like 56 or something thousand.

So if you make like 160, 170 net, then you can, the employee and the employer can, it's something like 56,000 total.

So I've never maxed it out.

I don't make enough for that because I kind of, I just don't make enough for that.

But if you wanted to max it out.

It's a lot more than you can put aside at your normal 401k.

Exactly.

It's a lot more pre-tax money that you can put aside.

I mean, right now it's a pretty tumultuous time to put money into 401k, so we're all sort of questioning the reality of the stock market here in the U.S.

But that is true.

Like, you can put more money in pre-tax, which means you're going to be taxed less, which is, you know, a good way to make more money.

Yeah, if you think you're going to make more now than in the future, it's a good move.

And the employee side, you have the option of doing Roth if you want.

So you can make Roth 401k contributions, which are post-tax.

But then when you take the money out, you don't get taxed on it.

So anyway, sorry, I overspend time on this stuff.

I have to say my brother-in-law is a financial planner and a tax accountant and a business tax accountant.

He's really, really smart.

He's the FI tax guy.

But I just spoke to him last weekend, and he is a big proponent of employee contributions before employer contributions.

So, really maxing out the employee contributions because of the way that

the employer contributions get taxed on the way out? Well, yeah, because when you run your own

business, you get nailed with self-employment taxes. Well, you don't get nailed, but that's

the biggest expense. Because as a regular employer, it's like 15.3% total, which is

Medicaid, and then the 7.5% that the employer and employee pays. So if you've never worked for

yourself or run a business, you just see the 7% taken out, but the employer is already paying a

whole bunch of stuff on top of that, including for health insurance. Traditionally, pre the

Trump tax thing, where they have this thing called QBI, which is Qualified Basic Income,

which is 20% off for certain types of LLCs, which software consultancies fall into,

you would set up an LLC as an S-corp, so you could be taxed as a corporation, but in fact,

be an LLC. And then you could, in theory, like if you made $10 million, you could say, well,

the average for a software developer is 150,000. And so I will get paid the full tax on the 150,

but then beyond that, I don't have to pay the extra self-employment taxes. And that was why

you would set up payroll historically. Though I'm a little bit interested in why you set up payroll

when you don't do that but i i believe you're you're financial experts but um we're getting

too inside baseball on this yeah there's a lot to think there's a lot to think about especially

the first year it's so much non-programming non-work time to configure all this and that's

the point right is that this is a talk about being a freelance software developer this is what we're

talking about and it's business like you think oh i'm just going to be a freelancer i'm going to do

coding no you're going to do business like all the week is business and then you get 10 minutes

do some actual climbing. I found the first year I really took a hit and I was really quite

frustrated by it. But this last year, it was more pro forma and I was grateful to have some

flexibility around retirement stuff. But I think to Carlton's point, you don't think about all

these things until you do it and it is a serious cost. It's great that you found an accountant

you can trust i've heard quite a few horror stories unfortunately that's scary yeah yeah i

i have an accountant i can trust and then i have my backup of my brother-in-law who i talk to on

the phone and make sure that i'm also it sounds like everything i'm doing is right and like i

said i'm i i did a ton of research for the talk and um whether that research was talking to

my accountant um or watching youtube videos on forming a business i found uh there's this channel

called all all up in your business and it's a she's a lawyer i forget where she's based out of

i think she's southern and she's amazing she's she's a podcast too right because you i think you

recommended it in the talk and i i checked it out she has a youtube channel i don't know if she has

a podcast that's i hope so um i did recommend a bunch of podcasts uh so i'm a huge i'm like a

podcast addict for sure but she she has a youtube channel that's where i learned a lot of things i

i also listened to i recommended um choose fi has a really good podcast on um the financial

independence movement and so i there was an episode with alan donnegan where he talks about

running your own small business he started the pop-up business school and um when we're ready

to talk about clients like there's a lot of stuff that i learned from that podcast about

about that well that seems like a seamless segue so yeah shall we talk about maybe finding clients

yeah because the yeah there's two things one is finding clients and then the other thing that

comes into that is then when you've got clients still keep finding clients so we should talk

about both of those and they both uh they both give me stomach aches if i think about it too

much if i think about you know my contract because i work on a contract basis and i'm not sure if

if you both similarly work on what what sort of working basis are you all on like i'm on a six

month contract right now well i've i've been freelance for ever and ever and ever um currently

i do the jango fellow work which is part-time they do that on a yearly basis and then i have

other clients around the side um but I've forever I've lived on this you know this this contracting

basis and the sort of the nervousness of it is the the lack of security it's not like you haven't got

a job you haven't got a job um and so you need to be for me you need to be conscious of well

this contract will end and then what right yeah yeah so you have multiple contracts are you

are those contracts like a certain number of hours per week so I'm on a current contract of six

six months they had just extended me for six more months so it just began in April and it's

I've agreed to do 30 hours of coding a week for them and that includes meetings and things

and that's sort of my my happy medium there is coding for 30 hours a week because any more than

that and I start to get really drained so that's just me personally over in the years I've done

things right like I consider that to be a full-time gig right because by the time you've

done 30 hours of actual work and then a few admin stuff that's that's your working week

and I've done over the years I've had clients where I've been working for that one company

for a while and that's great because you get loads of money come in it's nice but then when

the contract runs it's like well actually now I'm essentially unemployed and I've got to find some

more and so as i got older what i favored was you know half a day for you half a day for you

you know the okay you know a client where i might come and do you know a few days every few months

you know that kind of and have a bunch of those because i find that on average that's more secure

that's that's more sustainable for me um i don't know when times are great they're they're great

but then they can get bad all of a sudden and i mean for me i've done i've done project-based

primarily um but honestly in the last year i haven't i've just been able to focus on my books

and stuff which is nice um but i do think about when i think about doing it honestly i think i

would maybe go through an agency just so i don't have to deal with all the client management stuff

because there, there is a lot of burden. And so, you know, for me, I'll probably go back to some

consulting later this year, but probably within the context of having someone else manage that.

And I focus on code as much as I can and not deal with that business side of things.

I think it's really hard to find a client who, and maybe you all haven't had the same experience

who will agree to 20 hours a week. Well, they always want you full time, right? They're always

like start as a consultant and then they kind of want to backdoor you into being full time. And

It's like, well, if I wanted to work full-time, I would, but...

Right.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah, no, I think with experience as well, like, you know, what I aim for now, I wouldn't

have been able to get five, 10 years ago.

I just wasn't, didn't have the authority to say, no, I can do half a day.

But, you know, who wants half a day?

Well, you know.

There's a maturity of client too, to recognize they can get value out of that too, I would

say.

I mean, that's part of some clients, you know, just like they ask for whiteboard interviews

and stuff, and then some have completely unrealistic expectations.

And I'm sure, you know, you can see this, Erin, right?

You can sort of sniff when a client is going to be awful to work for because they don't

really understand reality with project estimates.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if I can sniff that.

I mean, I hope so.

You're aware that it's, you know, in the back of your mind.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's nice to work for technical that for more technical clients for

sure, because they understand the reality of, of the difficulty and the complexity.

But yeah, I don't know. I just find it difficult to find clients who are willing to do,

even when you're going through an agency who are willing to say, okay, 20 hours a week,

that's fine. 10 hours a week. That's okay. But yeah, when I started consulting, I was working.

So I was working in California for this Oakland client for Cactus, and I think I was doing

25 hours for them and then 15 for Wharton, who were my former employers, who found out

that I was consulting through a social media post that I posted.

Actually, two ways.

So there were two ways that I connected with Wharton.

One way was I posted to Facebook that I was going to start working for myself, and that

post got a lot of likes from a lot of friends who either, you know, were connected to me from my

Wharton job or, you know, elsewhere. And I guess word got around to a person who I knew who was

working at my former department at Wharton, and she was excited to hear that I had sort of become

a consultant and wanted to work with me. So she reached out to me from that social media post,

and I still work with her department part-time.

And so that was really cool

that that was this sort of like organic way

that I found a client.

And then the other one,

the other way I reconnected with Wharton was

I was at a PiCon a couple of years back

and I ran into a former coworker

and we got to talking about his current boss

and my old boss at Wharton

and what a great boss he is.

And I said, you know, I keep meaning to send Jason an email.

Jason is such a good, he was such a good boss.

He was so technical at that time in my career where I needed someone to be technical and

help guide me more towards framework programming.

And, you know, and this friend of mine was like, yeah, absolutely.

Jason's the best.

And I said, I keep meaning to send him an email.

And he was like, just do it.

Just send him an email.

Just send him a thank you email.

So I got back from PyCon and I sent Jason an email and it was not like I was, the intention

was not to get work from from my old boss it was just the intention my intention was pure

it was just i want to let you know that you were a good boss thank you just a gratitude email and

but you did mention that you're available in the same email no he found out he found out i was

available because i he he just knew i was available because of this other friend so

I ran into so so you're keeping up the contacts right yeah yeah yeah exactly so yeah so he I

didn't mention in the email that I was available he responded thank you for this email this is

I'm having a really rough day so this just came at like a really good time for me um also also this

this other person just mentioned that you're working for yourself now is that true because

we're finally moving that project you worked on to Django and we could use your help. So I had

worked on this like massive cold fusion website right before I left. And so I had the background

knowledge and I had the, you know, I had, then I had like all of the, the couple of years of

experience of working at Cactus full-time at Django. So I was kind of the perfect developer

for that project and that worked out. So I worked on that for, for a little while. So I was,

When I was in California starting out consulting, I was working on that part time and working on this Oakland client part time.

And yeah, I was working out and then I sort of and then it was nice when the Oakland contract ended, I could switch to full time hours with Wharton for a while and sort of like backfill and get that project sort of more quickly done towards their deadline, which was nice.

And then do you find most of your clients come through that kind of organic or, you know, contact network way?

So far, yes. I mean, I've been doing this for probably fewer years than both of you now because I started in 2017.

So, yeah, so far it's been that way.

And then also by my work with Cactus.

So they know me and they like to connect me with work when they have it as a consultant.

I've also worked with another consulting agency.

So I've worked with two different consulting agencies since going full time.

I prefer between the two of them.

Cactus worked out a little better just for the time zones because we're in the same time zone

and I'm local to them now. So that's been really nice. Yeah. So you left California though. That's

what we're getting at, right? So yeah. Yeah. We, we, we knew one month in that we did not want to

stay there. Oh really? I lived out there for a while. Um, what was it for you? Because I would

say it's a really fun, but it's interesting within one month because I love being there and I moved

back for family reasons, but it's an incredibly transient place. So there's this initial rush of

like, oh, you're not from here? I'm not from here. Let's hang out. As well as like, you work in tech?

No way. And then you find out that no one's from there. Everyone works in tech. And, you know,

some of the negative aspects creep in. But I guess you figured that out faster than I did.

What part were you in? Were you in San Francisco?

go yeah so 2010 to 2013 i was in cal hollow i worked in um on second street which is quite

do you know cal hollow no i don't what part what part of the city were you in um inner sunset

yeah well no so cal hollow is in between pack heights and um and the marina i know pack heights

yeah and the marina so i was right next to the presidio cal hollow no i remember yeah cal hell

yeah i thought you were saying cal hollow but no no it's fine no no i i yeah no i mean and i

there's a lot to like about the west coast when you come from the northeast as i do yeah yeah um

certainly miss the produce a lot oh my god year-round farmer's markets you just want to and

avocados at the farmer's market we're like cheap yeah it's like and oh my god yeah and it's sunny

and i mean i have i keep having kids in different states i have an infant now and i'm walking

outside and it's dark at 10 a.m and it was raining and you know in california my younger my oldest

one i would just walk her every day in the sun and you know but it's not everything

yeah um yeah there were a multitude of reasons we didn't stay i guess it was very very expensive

and it felt like it to me to be around a place where people can't this is gonna get rather

philosophical but where people can't work at a grocery store and live at the same place where

they work in a grocery store feels unfair to me or be a teacher yeah or be a teacher yeah exactly

my school my husband works in the education system but he was he he was actually he had a

pretty good salary that brought him out there in the education system it just felt really

it felt like end stage capitalism it just it felt really not great um we were both doing okay

And we were able to afford this adorable one bedroom apartment in inner sunset.

That was just gorgeous.

It was great.

I went for a walk in Golden Gate every day.

Yeah, I mean, it was it was a beautiful place to live.

But yeah, being that far away from family and then and then just just how how how difficult it is for for regular non programmers to live there.

Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask you as well is, this may seem like a segue,

but in the context of consulting in workplaces, diverse workplaces, because I feel like you've

had a good experience with that. And I know you have some thoughts on the benefits and

how to cultivate that since we don't we aren't in a particularly diverse industry yeah yeah so

i would say that when i if i if i get to know a a new place that i could work and i look around

and it looks like everybody looks the same age and the same came from the same background

that's a that's a bad sign to me even if i fit into that you know even if i'm like oh yeah i i

I'm the same way. We're all around the same age. I think it's really important to have a diverse

ecosystem at your workplace, whether that's a client or if you're full-time.

And the client I'm working with right now is a client based out of Oakland, and their

development team is all over the map as far as ages, and it's coming from really different

backgrounds so it's really it's really really nice and i've worked on teams where everyone is

kind of in their 20s and excited to work and and you know isn't really familiar with burnout and

isn't really worried about it too much they will be they want to they want you to hang out and play

starcraft after work yeah so so well i mean maybe maybe or yeah i mean i was the old guy 10 years

ago at a startup so you know yeah but like this this startup thing and the late stage capitalism

and all of that is and the whiteboard interviews isn't it like that they go for that particular

young that don't really know they might you know perfectly talented and what but they've no life

experience kind of worker so that they can put them in to the sweatshop environment and really

get their money's worth right isn't that why they hire them and why they have that hiring process

and i don't think it's that insidious carlton i mean i think that's well i i think that that is

that is some of it i think that it's you have a lot of and here i'm going to burn a bunch of

bridges but you have a lot of founders who are in their early 20s they just want to hire their

friends you have the adults in the room who are in their 30s or 40s who are all male peter pans

and it it i don't think it's they're sitting around you know smoking a pipe thinking we want

to be evil. They're just thinking when it gets to the culture fit part of who do we want to hang

out with, they want to hang out with people like themselves who are all about work and fit those

profiles. I don't think it's quite as... I mean, certainly the startup I worked at, we weren't

thinking, I want to exploit these young MIT Stanford grads. So that's basically the only

people we hired because of a combination of they fit into the culture, they pass the test.

Our other employees, you know, we're kind of like that.

So I'm not saying it's not there, but I think it's more, I don't know, evil is more benign or it just sort of creeps up on you.

It's just you want to hire your friends.

It could be that it's more systemic than, it's not that the individual in the position is sitting there thinking, ha ha, I must exploit them.

But it's like the way, the whole way that it's structured just ends up with those.

just grow you know if you're a male you hit your 30s you grow a neck beard and you move down the

peninsula and work at oracle or something i know i mean i was like i remember being there being like

where's the 30 something male programmer um yeah you know and they exist in many places but it is

that combination i think also it's self-selects i mean carlton you and i wouldn't want to work in

that environment now um and they probably wouldn't want us either so it's it's also

fresh off the fresh off the boat of the airplane from wherever and um but it is it it is kind of

intoxicate intoxicating and and quite fun for for a while i would say to go from not being

surrounded by a tech community to being around it all the time i've recommended your episode on

aging gracefully as a programmer to so many people because i really i think it wasn't even a very

long podcast episode i think it was like half an hour long and it was just it was just a perfect

it was perfect just start to finish so thank you for that i'm just talking about burnout all that

stuff carlton's talk that's how we met i was one of the like 200 people who's seen it on youtube and

i sent him a note yeah no i mean it's you know i when i was a youngster i did

London startup scene a bit and you know yeah you're right it was fun but it's it's not how

you're gonna fill up your 401k but getting back to clients um there were a couple other things I

kind of wanted to to mention on clients too and this talk is this this podcast episode has been

a little organic itself it's chat it's Django chat Django chat yeah um yeah so so one thing is

there's a podcast episode of choose fi where they interview this guy named alan donnegan and he

started the startup or the pop-up business school in london and he's a really interesting guy

and he he's his his mantra is always be caring so it's the abc sort of you know when you think

of abc you might be thinking of that line always be closing in terms of you know sales and and

finding clients and all those things. But he sums it up a different way. He says,

always be caring. And so I really like that mantra. And that's definitely carried me through

my whole career before I was a consultant. I really cared about the projects I was working

on. I really cared to make sure that the technology was right. Sure, that's really

important, but make sure that, that it's accomplishing what the client, whether that's

an internal client that you're working for as a full-time employee or, you know, whatever that

client is, that stakeholder, make sure that, that it's, it's what they want. It's, it's going to be

best suited to their needs and you're listening to them. And so I just, I really want to stress

that that's really helped me connect with clients because my old bosses want to work with me again

because i made our stakeholders happy that's that's really important so yeah that's that's

that's one really big thing i kind of wanted to drive home i don't know if you wanted to talk uh

had any thoughts on that no other than to agree in absolutely 100 like ah finding clients is

difficult right one way of getting a sustainable freelance business or solo business is to have

clients come back to you and they may come back you know eight years later and they might be like

you know i need to you know i need you again and it's like they ain't gonna do that unless you do

a good job and it's a good job by their eyes not your eyes oh i used you know the latest tech

framework and you know look how it was containerized and i deployed it with you know these

none of that matters a shred what matters is their goals their outcomes and you know yeah so yes

yeah well i mean reputation matters everything is a really small world when you get down to it right

which is um kind of nice and sort of too bad when some people don't realize that but

the reality is there's you know there's an endless supply of work that needs good people to do it and

people who do good work know people who do good work and and that's what you look for right

whatever side you're on if you want a colleague or you want to hire someone it's it's reputation

Yeah, and I think there is an endless supply of work out there.

I mean, not right now, there's not because of the whole coronavirus,

but the economy will come back.

And beyond the tech bubble, beyond San Francisco,

there's a whole world that you can get working.

And the problem is a lack of talented people who can communicate rather than work.

It may not feel that way, but that's the case.

And speaking of communicating and building a reputation,

the other thing that goes along with that,

The other piece that I want to talk about with finding clients is becoming somewhat known, whether it's through giving talks or writing blog posts, but putting yourself out there a little bit, like whatever your comfort level is.

So I felt comfortable to give that Django talk last year, but I wouldn't have been comfortable giving a talk at DjangoCon maybe two years prior to that.

That was the talk that I was ready to give at that time, and that led to this podcast, which was really cool.

I also have been writing technical blogs for Cactus, so that's a nice feature.

When I was working full-time at Cactus, they encouraged us to write blogs, and then when I went off and became a consultant,

I said, you know, I've written some blogs for you. I still am interested. I still come up with ideas that I want to write.

and they still pay me to write, to write blogs, I just have to go through a different process with

them. And sort of get, you know, give them a, you know, here's how many hours I think I'm going to

spend writing this blog. And would you, you know, pay me for that, for that many of hours? Would

you be interested in publishing this, this topic that I want to talk about? And so that's another

way to sort of get your, your reputation built up online. Yeah. It's one, it's one thing I

recommend people to get involved in an open source project as, as not, you know, as one

possible avenue. And it does, it can be Django itself, or it can be one of those ecosystem

projects. And if you become, you know, helpful there and you just do a little bit, it doesn't

have to be a lot. I mean, an hour a week can be, you know, a couple of times a month or a couple

of hours you know not not a lot but that adds up over time and all of a sudden it's oh yeah that

person they maintain you know this so-and-so plugin yeah absolutely that's i mean people who

listen to this podcast know that that's always the advice i give is have some open source code or

contributions and and have a post or a talk to get your name out there um it's it i think it's

hard for a lot of developers who may be a little more introverted by nature to do but it is you

know someone's going to google you and what are they going to find right like um if they find

existing work then the interview and stuff can be about that otherwise it's you're going to go

through the whiteboard treadmill but i think that's the hard thing in a way is that like we

think you know i should be doing you know i should spend those hours a week coding or doing like

super advanced python or kubernetes or whatever but the reality is you should be spending it

on your network, on communicating. And I always take attitude over aptitude. And part of attitude

is communication. So once you hit a baseline, it's all about your attitude and your communication

skills, because you can kind of figure anything out versus the loner who maybe is an expert in

some area, but no one wants to work with. That's not who gets hired. So we're coming up on time.

we have links to oh i wanted to ask so what's the story so you're it erin rachel is the name

of your consulting thing because when you set up an llc you can't put um a trademark in there

right so like i can't call my learn django llc for example oh right yeah you cannot call it that um

yeah maybe you could misspell it or something i don't know but that would be pretty weird

um yeah you can't put a trademarked name into it um you yeah it should be easy to be like you

should be able to spell it easily so so that's you know kind of an important thing when you're

coming up with your your llc name um i forget what else was on that slide but yeah you can you can go

back to my talk and and see and then when you actually submit it to your state if you're in

the United States and you're forming an LLC, if it's already been taken, then it's going to get

returned to you and you're going to have to come up with a different name. So you should be able

to go to your state's SOS.gov website, your state's secretary of state website, and look up

the names and make sure that it isn't currently taken. But yeah, you can't have the word Python

in the name of your business or probably the name Django. I assume that's trademarked. I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, part of what the Django Software Foundation does is we enforce the Django trademark. So yeah, that is not, you know, I should know. Well, in naming is it's, it's almost like startup names. It's one of those things where it doesn't matter at all. And yet you spend an inordinate amount of time on it. At least that's my kind of philosophical take on it after spending an inordinate amount of time on startup names. And, you know, I mean, what do I have? I have, I mean, as a sole proprietor, I have a

dba so doing business as account so that's how i it's um so that's what i use for my checking

account so it's like still me but it it's labeled as something else and that's how my mail and

sometimes i'm like do i like the name that i have like mine's still river press but like no one

cares yeah i mean it might be it might be important to have a separate business checking account if

you don't have one already oh yeah you should have that but i'm saying the name um the name

for your llc or or your right your dba like to your point it should be easily spelled it should

be but it's not that's not what's going to make or break your business i don't think so no

yeah yeah i don't think so um i mean cactus has like a misspelling of the word cactus

when you think about it c-a-k-t-u-s and it hasn't seemed to hurt them so carlton you have

you know numinal yeah numinal which was an error like um so i finished a philosophy degree of two

or three and um thought i'll start you know serve a company i need a name i'll call it numinal why

not reminiscent of canton all these things i love so much no one can spell numinal no one can even

say it so like for years it's like how do you spell it i was like but and then i said i'm not

changing it i can't be bothered like just i'm keeping it like oh well that was so i did learn

that the hard way don't have a name that people can't they read they go no one's no one said oh

can't yeah in the history of it is anyone maybe go for like a short name like uh aaron rachel

consulting was my website so it was aaronrachelconsulting.com which feels really long

and finally recently i got the url aaronrachel.dev and so i was like oh that's so much easier to tell

people to go to now. So that makes me really happy. Thank you so much for coming on. I think

your resources are fantastic. Again, I love that you have those deep links to the Google Docs and

the spreadsheets. That's the kind of stuff that because you have a bunch of things you link to

from the talk. It's not just the accounting. I think there's five or six. To me, that's that's

sort of like, like sanding inside like a bureau or something that's like Steve Jobs analogy or

like the back of like a cupboard. Like people don't really see that. But someone who takes a

peak is like oh this person cares about what they're doing they're doing a really good job

like i love that you did that in your talk because you could have easily saved those hours

but i looked at those sheets and i hope others do as well oh yeah yeah thanks i've actually

updated the sheets maybe i should update my shared sheet too to make it a little bit easier but yeah

yeah i think that that i think that layout was nice and easy to follow so thank you i'm glad

you appreciated it anything else carlton no no no just thank you for coming on it was great chat

um it's i love that we spent like you know a good half it talking about accounting because

that's that's freelancing thanks for having me and i can i say thank you for having such diverse

guests on your on your podcast um there are so many coding podcasts out there that don't do that

that but those coding passcode those coding coding podcasts don't have the django community you see

yeah it's the community it's the community it's true yeah thank you we we do put some thought

into it um and it does we're trying to reflect the django community um so excellent all right

we're chat django on twitter we have links to um aaron's website and we'll see you all next week

bye-bye all right take care join us next time bye