op03

Compass I use is - what are my needs - have they been met? The answers decide how much work and what type of work.

Its very tricky though for multiple reasons. There is a wide spectrum of Needs so one has to develop a vocabulary or map of what exists before being able to answer the question well. Also Needs change with time and context. So the question has to be asked frequently. In relationships and groups that are important the needs of the other person or group also have to be monitored.

I don't think this is a threat. Jargon and bullshit starts overflowing whenever complexity surpasses what the chimp brain can handle.

There are lots of such situations chimps find themselves in these days, where they have no training or instinct on how to react.

Over analyzing these behaviors and the language used when people are out of their depth takes focus away from the fact there are many issues the chimp troupe has no capacity to solve. Just acknowledging and accepting that reality and refocusing the mind on simpler things is what will reduce the bullshit.

As an extreme example take what happens in the military. If you are in a situation surrounded by all kinds of threats and 5 minutes away from possible death what will an untrained mind say? No one sits around analyzing it. Instead there is training to keep the mind focused on the simplest of things.

More like a large mountain range.

You need to stick those reasons somewhere you see them everyday cause they will be a much more useful compass than whats in demand. Whats in demand is always changing.

The way it worked out for me was contacting someone senior at a startup incubator and telling them I wanted some kind of consulting role (few hours a week) to explore more flexible work. They are always hard up for experienced people. That put me in touch with a bunch of startups and I picked one where they had a small project but no one free to work on. That was the door opener and being in a setting with multiple companies all around, it was easy to make contacts, hear what issues different companies had etc. Whenever it aligned with something I knew or was interested in techwise I would try to get involved or help them out.

If you are not a big networker like me the key is to put yourself in environments where you are constantly bumping into people who are telling you their problems :)

Good luck!

You should have begun the write up with WHY you'd "love to start freelancing". Depending on the reasons advice will be very different.

Just humans searching for something to look forward to beyond all the drudgery and suffering.

The efficiency with which the Attention Economy takes advantage of that need is what is really depressing.

Wasn't NSA involved in finding Osama or Suleimani? Find them, then send In Tom Cruise, drone strike what have you. Israel isnt targeted cuz thats what their response woule be to this type of stuff.

Are Russia or China going to react any different from Iran or Pakistan? They currently think they are untouchable. That needs to change.

4. Braindead Apple users press the allow tracking button.

Does anyone know how big an ant or butterfly's brain is? They do things that are pretty mindblowing in my book with those spec of dust sized brains.

I submitted a few patches but got turned of having to deal with Vala and C. Tooling and docs feel ancient compared to whats available in .Net/Java/js etc.

Thats said I really admire how ambitious they tried to be and all the stuff they have managed to produce with such few resources.

"six to seven years" what a joke.

How many people stay on the same team for six to seven years these days to have long term effect on orgs or policy?

Just ask anyone to predict where they will be in six to seven years first or what their predictions were six to seven years back. Most have no clue because this is such a complex ever changing world for a 6 inch chimp brain to fully grok. But lets talk about where the entire chimp troupe will be in six to seven years.

Why not compare it to sports teams where you keep some people on a bench through the season?

I definately dont think a whole bunch of dangerous cobras are being creared.

My answer would be don't waste your time and energy.

We have 6 inch chimp brains. Some types of problems require 7 inch chimp brains or 2000 inch chimp brains or 7 million inch chimp brains.

The only thing you have to understand when you take 2 chimps and throw them into a room with such type of complex problems is blundering ensues.

The focus of all chimps is then drawn to the blundering, whose fault it is, who said what, who did what, who can be blamed, who needs to change etc etc etc but all that just takes focus away from the fact that the problem itself is too complex for a chimp.

This is the Theory of Bounded Rationality (which won a Nobel Prize for explaining why the world couldnt prevent world war 2 after experiencing the devastation of world war 1).

Not everything can be understood. Misunderstanding on the other hand is directly proportional to the complexity of the problem. And it doesn't get more complex that the Israel-Palestine issue.

The chimps will continue to blunder.

The Theory of Bounded Rationality recommends teaching kids that are facing complex problems to ditch them and instead work on simple ones.