Category: Career

The Dip by Seth Godin describes a personal approach to achievement by following a strategy of quality in a world of micromarkets. I’ve read the summary and have tried to further summarize it:

1. You start by finding a micromarket where you can be the best in the world, whether it’s personal financial planning for new parents in Brooklyn or “gluten-free bialys available by overnight shipping.” What constitutes “best” and “the world” is in the eye of the customer, not you.
2. Then you work long and hard to be the best in that micromarket, which will involve slogging through “the dip” where reward is low and effort is high.
3. Along the way you need to be careful to “quit the stuff where you can’t be the best. That leaves you the resources to invest in getting through the Dip.”

That’s the functional summary, you’ll have to read the book to be inspired.

This is another question I hear a lot, especially from managers, is just where to find talent these days. The real straight dope is that you should already be connected and have a wishlist of people you want to hire. But in the cases when that’s not possible I created a list of job sites for software-oriented jobs.

“There’s a simple doctrine. Outside of a person’s love the most sacred thing they can give is their labor. Labor is a very precious thing you have and any time you can combine labor and love you’ve really made a match.” — James Carville

Notes from a talk by Bob Lord:

Ultimately, you are helping people.

Hopefully, this results in something for you too.

Research the situation ahead of time.

Look for opportunities to “reconnect” – to get back to them with something that will help them.

Respond with ATM – Answer Transition Message. Answer positively, transition away from negative ideas, state your message.

Could be a cool job:

The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science is seeking a Web Accessibility Outreach Coordinator to coordinate development of education and outreach materials promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities.

Peter points to this great job search engine at Michigan’s School of Information.