Working On What Matters

It is a great feeling knowing you are close to a finish line after long hours of running. But in my case, there is neither a real nor imaginary finish line (only constant work or a constant need to keep going) and thanks to my job, I’ve been pretty static and hardly have the time to do any physical exercise.

What I meant by not having a finish line in my job is I need to constantly support my clients and often the work never ends on having the interface done or having the whole application working. This is the reason why I still opt for either a flexible full time job or a part time job for any company who specifically need web application developers and for certain companies based in the country, they will be slightly suprised with my rate and usually even if they require you to know nearly everything and have “all that”, their ultimate requirement is for you to be less of an expense to their company. Even if I am only considering a salary higher than my previous salary now, I still have a great chance of getting hired by companies who still do the math and know what is equitable for those working telecommute.

Considering the recession, these are the days when the client plays the “helpless mouse” and the web development company is the “eager cat.” Often, it’s not the chasing part that is daunting but it’s the part when you have to support the people you work for even if it is a hurdle to continuing your real business plan. And whoever thought that freelancing or consulting was a long-term business? Practically one thing I have learned from working with people with capital (or without capital but just relied on sub-consultants to handle everything) was that they focused too much on consulting and lost too much along the way.

Caterina, founder of Hunch.com (and Flickr) wrote an interesting post about “working hard.” Indeed, working hard is overrated. You have to work on what matters. Reinvent the wheel if you want to but make sure it is better. I am now focused on at least three things: E-commerce, Social Media and Design. I am geared to launch at least two E-commerce websites this year and I have helped so many other companies I have worked for in the past with certain E-commerce projects but this time I am focused only on Ruby-based E-commerce solutions.

This is also an announcement that I am teaming up with other developers whom I have worked with in the past. Some of them are based in the Philippines while some are not working in the country and have a different nationality. I guess it hardly matters where you are now in this flat world.

Change is exciting and I have never been too scared of any sort of upheaval. I know what I can do and I know what I just won’t do.