[Robotgroup] A robotgroup challange

[Andre Lamothe]

It's tough, I did contracting from my teens to 20's then started my first 
company at about 23 making games. At the end of the day, its definitely less 
stress working for the man, but then again you have to relegate yourself to 
"this is it" plus dealing with the politics. Contracting can be very 
lucrative if you get on a roll and pick the right thing, but dealing with 
customers is a real pain and they NEVER understand what it is they are 
asking for, so its a different kind of  "working for the man". And of course 
the top level of stress is running a business that develops products and 
sells them. This I recommend to no one unless you are willing to sacrifice 
absolutely everything. But, if you are successful, you can do anything you 
want and experience things very few can. However, if something goes wrong, 
it goes wrong hard.

These days though with the economy the way it is, in my opinion, I think 
everyone needs at least a day job, a consulting gig, and to be trying to 
develop a small business on the side -- basically an "income mix". In 
reference to the comment about "having a life", I agree theoretically, but 
its not practical anymore I don't think. The majority of this country is 
holding on by their fingertips and we all need to just do more, work more, 
and really bare down and work together so we have an excess of money, time, 
resources. The party is over, and the sooner we as a country realize we have 
lost our competitive edge in many areas YEARS ago and we all start kicking 
butt again, I think as a whole we can make the words "United States of 
America" respected rather than laughed at or hated as it is by 99% of the 
world. If you do any traveling to europe for example, or just do business 
globally, NO ONE likes us :( And they have good reason. All you have to do 
is turn on the TV and when I see how the rest of the world lives, I just go 
back to work since I never want to be in a situation like.

So, I think David, the failure you are having is really a success since you 
are mapping the envelope of what you really need to do, the more you do 
that, the better you can make use of your time. And that's the key, work 
smart. I think all of us would love to do X, and build Y. But, these days, I 
like to use the word "Reverse brainstorm", that is look for problems and 
develop solutions. The days of making things we love to make are over (at 
least for a while), we have to indentify problem areas and go work on them. 
Hopefully, those areas are still things you like to do.

Andre'

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "TomD" <TomD at hyperweb.com>
To: "The Robot Group Mailing List" <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] A robotgroup challange


been there, done that.

Sometimes , well lots of times, you walk on the proposal/bid.
If they act cheap or have unrealistic expectations at the start
and you cant correct that, then let them be someone else's problem.

That's why I work for Dell now :)
not so much free time, but I know when it's going to be.
The money's about the same as a good year contracting,
the stress, so much lower.

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