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About Me
I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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Category Archives: Consulting Consultants
Consulting Consultants: Commitment
In consulting your commitment is important. Your commitment to your job, your client, and even yourself are all extremely important. Without commitment, a client would not know if you can be trusted to complete the job. Future clients will look at your commitment on other jobs to determine if you are worth both their time and their money. So to remain commited is important. Continue reading
Consulting Consultants: If You Must Specialize in Something
In the article I linked above I touch on something. That something was the idea of specializing in a programming language. Because learning one can help you easily learn many and it can keep you billable and relevant as a consultant. There is more to specializing in a programming language than learning more than one. There is the logic that comes with learning how to develop and program applications that can be transferred to other areas and other platforms, services, and architectures. Continue reading
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Tagged consulting, development, programming
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Consulting Consultants: Honesty versus Exaggeration
There is always a need to, as a consultant, to oversell yourself to some degree. Especially if you are a freelance consultant and not working for a consulting firm. The desire to answer “Yes” to every “Can you do” or “Do you understand” question can be overwhelming when you are trying to land clients, jobs, and projects. The question always exists about when you should be honest and when you should exagerate your skillset. For this week’s Consulting Consultants I want to look at a couple points on both sides. Continue reading
Posted in Consulting Consultants
Tagged consulting, exaggeration, honesty
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Consulting Consultants: Why Specialization Can Hurt
Sure, specializing looks like a great road to go down especially on a technology that doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere soon. However, for the sake of this argument lets consider the Microsoft .Net product stack. How many .Net developers do you know? How many really good ones do you know? If I was to venture a guess, I’d say you know a lot of .Net developers. This makes the .Net developer a commodity of sorts. The more people that can do what you do, the worse off you are. Especially if those other folks can do it better than you. Continue reading
Consulting Consultants: Writing is a Valuable Skill
When you are a consultant, writing becomes an important part of your daily routine. Everything from proposals, emails, to instant messages get written. You need to make sure that you can communicate effectively through your writing even if it is just a simple instant message. Continue reading
Consulting Consultants: Training
There are two distinct routes you can go (3 if you do a combination of the two) when it comes to knowledge: specialization or breadth. Specialization is exactly what it sounds like in that you pick a technology or subject and you dive in deep. You become the guru of that topic/technology/whatever. If you go for breadth, you will now a little about a lot but not have much depth on anyone particular thing. Some consider this a blessing while others might consider it a hindrance, and which one will largely depend on where or with whom you work. Continue reading
Michael Koby 