Archive for October, 2007
In honor of the last week of my work-from-home permatemp gig with A Very Big Corporation, I bring you this question…
L. writes: “I just started (as in, this week!) as a contract editor at a Big-Name Company That Shall Not Be Named and — wouldn’t you know it? — I just got a job offer for something full time with amazing benefits. Yes, it is my ultimate dream to go freelance full time someday (hence my writing to you), but I feel torn. I need the insurance the other company is offering me, plus the annual salary and other benefits are definitely worth writing home about. Thing is, I feel guilty. I know this is only a short-term, three-month contract. But can I really quit and give two weeks’ notice after only having been here a week? Any advice? I don’t want to burn bridges, but something better has indeed come along.”
L., yesterday after handing off one of the projects I’ve been working on since July to my officemate, I sighed, “I can’t believe that come next week I’ll no longer have to juggle freelance writing assignments with this 30-hour-a-week contract. If I wasn’t so exhausted, I’d be doing a soft-shoe. I mean, four months is a very, very long time to commit to one gig.”
My officemate, who has been with the company since the twentieth century, gave me a blank look.
On the commute home (I had to go in for the handoff meeting), I called my beau: “Honey, four months is a very, very long time to commit to one gig, is it not?”
“Actually most of us are terrified to not have a full-time job,” he reminded.
I’m not sure how or why this came to be, but the thought of knowing where I’ll be reporting to work six months down the line scares me more than killer bees, fiery car crashes, man-eating rodents, brain-eating amoebas, Dick Cheney, and FOX news combined.
As this is not the visceral reaction you had upon being offered a cushy full-time gig, L., I say go for it. If the Big-Name Company That Shall Not Be Named wanted to ensure they could keep prized workers like you for the long haul, they’d offer more than temporary contracts. No one could blame you for feeling non-committal about a non-committal employer. Screw the bridge. Even if it catches fire, you’ll still have your cushy staff gig with benefits to wake up to each morning.
October 31st, 2007
My dad was visiting Seattle this past week/end. Since he lives in New York City and thinks the sun rises and sets for the Big Apple and the Big Apple only, we got to talking about some of the articles in Sunday’s New York Times, including this story about how BFFs Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City (the book), and Darren Star, the producer who brought the book to HBO, are now estranged. Evidently Star’s coming out with a new TV show (”Cashmere Mafia”) similar to Bushnell’s new show, “Lipstick Jungle,” based on her book of the same name, which Star had tried to option but was outbid on. Star dragged his feet on telling Bushnell about “Cashmere Mafia” and now that she’s found out, she’s all betrayed and he’s all dead to her.
Blah blah blah. Frenemies, schmenemies, right? But as a self-employed creative type, this article was kinda interesting to me for a number of non-Hollywood gossip reasons:
1. Initially I wondered, Is Darren Star a parasitic opportunist or just really good at his job? Perhaps he is both. Without a decade’s worth of back issues of Variety, we may never know. Supposedly ABC brought the idea for “Cashmere Mafia” to him. I do know this: “Cashmere Mafia” having a similar premise as “Lipstick Jungle,” and Star having co-opted one of Bushnell’s classic SATC coinages (”toxic bachelor”) to promote one of his pre-SATC TV shows is nothing to get your panties in a twist about, nothing to file a plagiarism suit over. In the world of creative coincidences and fair use, this is no BFD. Happens all the time.
But the fact that the writer and producer were such bosom buds makes this sitch particularly sticky. When you have a close friend or S.O. who works in the same creative genre as you, someone you’re constantly bouncing creative ideas off of, it’s helpful to lay down a few ground rules: no one fucks anyone’s boyfriend, no one pitches anyone else’s idea to an editor/producer/studio and tried to fob it off as her own, et cetera. And if an editor/producer/studio should come and ask you to develop a story/show/painting that you know your friend has been itching to make herself or is already in the process of making, you’ll do your friendship a great service by talking it over with your friend first. I’m not saying you have to get her blessing every time, but at least tell her what’s happening. Don’t be Star, who somehow forgot to mention to Bushnell that he was negotiating “Cashmere” with ABC. While she was staying at his house.
Lesson for freelancers: We’ve all had a friend screw our sweetie (if not, you obviously didn’t grow up in New Jersey). And most of us have witnessed idea poachers in the 9-to-5 world. In the freelance world, where you’re often competing with dear friends for awards and assignments, honesty and camaraderie are the best policies. Be generous with the leads you share (with any luck, you’ll be too busy to take every project anyway), and be up front with your creative BFFs about what you’re working on, especially when it encroaches on their turf. And if you’re not sure someone’s your friend or just an opportunist who’s pumping you for ideas and contacts, wire your mouth shut.
2. One anonymous source in the story said Bushnell has made a mere $500,000 from the show’s royalties and only stands to earn another $500,000 from the movie being made. (Mere! Only!) I know a cool million is a ton of money, but it’s only a fraction of what the Hollywood powerhouses involved with this TV/syndication/silver screen enterprise have raked in. (Don’t believe me? Just look up how much the actors in the series and film version have been paid.)
According to the Times article, Bushnell’s original book contract for SATC paid her a less-than-staggering $25,000 advance. But as a first-time author that’s often to be expected. I suspect, though, that she could have negotiated a much better deal than the additional $25,000 she received when Shrewd Star optioned the book’s TV rights.
Lesson for freelancers: You may be the peon now, but you still deserve the best possible contracts. If others get rich off your work, you’d damn well better do so too. Don’t get your contracts? Get legal help.
3. Then again, you could argue that Bushnell made a killing in other ways, mainly with the clout that being the author of SATC earned her: Suddenly she was the writer who birthed the TV series that put HBO and SJP back on the map. New book deals for best-sellers followed, undoubtedly accompanied by six-figure advances — the equivalent of the literary Lotto.
Today Bushnell is rich, world famous, host of her own Sirius radio show, and proud mama of her second TV pilot. Unless she starts spewing trash on the air about whatever demographic it’s fashionable to slander this month (Hollywood producers, perhaps?), the woman isn’t going anywhere.
Lesson for freelancers: Getting paid in prestige when you’re a newbie isn’t all bad, as long as your clients show you the money and bow to kiss your ring once you’ve proved you can deliver the goods and deliver big.
October 25th, 2007
Boostrapper’s done it again. This time they’ve listed The 100 Best Business Finance Posts of All Time, on everything from funding to spending to money management. Yeah, I’ve got a post on negotiating on the list, but I’d recommend it anyway. Some links I’m looking forward to reading:
You get the idea.
Note: Several of the links I clicked went to blogs with header art featuring career coach types rocking a spiffy business suit and an authoritative gaze looking out over crossed arms. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
October 22nd, 2007
Thanks, everyone, for sending in your best Meeting from Hell stories. Who knew there were so many drunk, stoned, vomiting, conniving, idea-snatching, lobotomized, obsessive compulsive, and three-blinks-shy-of-a-nervous-breakdown managers out there? The PayScale story I wanted them for will be out in November and I’ll link to it here once it’s live. If I decided to use your story, I sent you an email confirming as much. Meanwhile, congrats to Marie, who sent in a tale of a rubber chicken-wielding intoxicated client who used a meeting with her as an opportunity to do his personal car shopping. Complete with phone haggling! With a bunch of car dealerships!
Marie’s getting a signed copy of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide, but there are a couple dozen more where that came from. (Actually they’re in my office, and I’m looking to free up some shelf space.) If anyone wants one — $15 + $5 shipping = $20 US — email me and I’ll tell you how to send me some dough so that I can get you a copy.
October 22nd, 2007
Since I’m trotting out all my freelance projects this week and I was just talking about pet photography, I want to introduce you to a journal/book I worked on last summer that Sasquatch Books recently published. It’s called My Puppy’s First Journal, and it features the stunning pet photography of Emily Rieman, proprietress of Best Friend Photography in Seattle. There’s only one way to describe Emily’s work: so freaking gorgeous-adorable it makes you coo and goo and blubber like a baby, which I of course mean in the best possible way.
It probably won’t come as any shock that this goes down in history as my best freelance project ever. It wasn’t as high-paying as, say, my less-sexy mega-corporate high-tech work, but it was hardly work to sift through achingly cute puppy shot after achingly cute puppy shot and come up with accompanying text like, “the first time I humped my person’s leg,” “the first time I pooped on the carpet,” or “the thing I did in front of company that embarrassed my person so much they had to change their name and move to the next state.” (That last one’s not in the book, but I kind of wish it was.) Working on this project was one of those freelance high points where I almost felt guilty accepting money because I was having so much fun. And the fact that Emily was a blast to work with was just icing on the already delectable cake.
So… if you’re a pup fan or you have friends who recently adopted a four-legged bundle of joy, I highly recommend this one. And for the record, this is Emily’s book, not mine. As in, she earns the royalties. I was paid a flat fee by the publisher for my work on the project. So the only thing I get out of you buying the book is the satisfaction of knowing that more people will get to slobber over Emily’s scrumptious pup photos and that another freelancer’s doggone done good.
October 12th, 2007
Here’s my latest article on PayScale. Enjoy…
We’ve all been there. Sunday night rolls around and suddenly we’re covered with hives. Or we find ourselves frantically searching WebMD for some exotic new disease to call in sick with the next morning. Or we begin entertaining “kill the boss” fantasies that rival the pink-collar revenge scenes in the movie “Nine to Five.”
But suffering from a chronic case of the Mondays doesn’t necessarily mean you should dust off your resume and start looking for greener pastures. Some workplace woes are fixable. The trick is knowing which ones — and how to mend them.
The magic is gone
So you’ve been at your job a couple years and now you’re bored. Or frustrated. Or disgruntled. Sound familiar? It’s possible you’ve just fallen into the age-old workplace habit of griping for griping’s sake, says Cynthia Shapiro, author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know — And What to Do About Them.
Instead of pissing and moaning, Shapiro advises, try to tap into what you originally appreciated about your gig and company. If you come up empty, take a long, hard look at your job: Has it changed for the worse since you started? Has the company? Have you changed, perhaps outgrowing the work? If the answer’s yes to any of these, it’s indeed time fly like the wind.
“I hate my boss” syndrome
Sure, a lot of bosses are crummy managers, but only a small percentage of them are sociopathic misanthropes. “If your boss looks like he’s terrible, it’s probably just that you’re terrible at managing up,” says Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.
The solution, says Trunk, is to tell your boss what you need to succeed in your job — be it more lead time on deadlines or more backup when the workload’s piled sky high. But remember, it’s not all about you. It’s about supporting your boss and doing a bang-up job so that she impresses her superiors. Keep your boss happy and you hold the keys to the kingdom.
“I think my boss hates me” syndrome
But what if you are doing a heckuva job, only to be snubbed when your boss hands out the plum projects, pay raises, and promotions? Maybe you’re constantly getting the difficult clients dumped in your lap. Or your job title’s changed so many times your coworkers have no idea what you do anymore. Or you just received a poor performance review, seemingly out of the blue.
If no matter how hard you shine, you’re ignored or sidelined by management, it’s time to wake up and smell the pink slip. “That is not just job ennui,” says Shapiro. “That is danger — you’re in the exit lane.” And while it may be tempting to sulk, your focus should on looking for a new employer. Pronto.
Want more? Read the rest of the article here.
October 12th, 2007
I do a biweekly column called “How’d you land that great job?” for the Seattle Times and its NWjobs employment blog. Usually I have to profile 9-to-5ers, but for this week’s Q&A, my editor let me feature a self-employed pet photographer. The interview was too much fun to keep to myself…
The job: Like many animal-loving kids, Jamie Pflughoeft grew up with dogs, cats and birds for pets, and she dreamed of working with animals someday. In college, she studied animal behavior while working as a pet sitter and dog walker on the side. Stifled after graduation by a tight job market, she decided in 2003 to turn her hobby — taking photos of her pet-sitting and dog-walking “clients” — into a full-fledged business. Today, as top dog of Cowbelly Pet Photography, she snaps the mugs of hundreds of critters a year, turning many of them into brightly colored, digitally enhanced artwork that she’s dubbed Decopaw.
Q: How did you decide to hang your own shingle as a pet photographer?
A: I studied animal behavior at the University of Washington. My master plan was to start a dog training business. I graduated right after 9/11 and the job market was horrible, people were getting laid off right and left. I was willing to take any full-time job I could get working with animals that wasn’t entry level. I looked for a job for a year but couldn’t find one.
I had been doing pet photography as a hobby since 2000, never once considering that I could make a living at it. I’d been working part-time as a dog walker and a pet sitter for a pet-services company while I was going to school. And it was my clients’ pets that I was photographing — for free. So I had a ready-made model base.
I got really great feedback on the photos I was taking and ended up creating a portfolio just for fun. A friend of mine who was also starting a business suggested that I turn my pet photography hobby into a business, and I thought: What a great idea. You know how in the cartoons a light bulb goes off? It was just like that.
Q: Did you have a full-time workload as a pet photographer right away or did that take time?
A: I started the business in July of 2003. But I’ve only been doing it full time for the past two and a half years. For the first year and a half I was doing dog walking part-time to supplement my income.
Q: Do you have any formal photography training?
A: I took one photography class when I was 17. It was a film class and I did all my own darkroom stuff. I’ve always loved photography and I think I’ve always had an eye for it, but as far as the technical aspects of photography, I’m self-taught.
For this job, my background in working with dogs for six years as a dog walker and pet sitter and studying animal behavior at the university level was essential. I would not have this job now without that experience.
Q: What type of pets do you photograph?
A: Dogs are 85 percent of what I do. Cats are about 15 percent. I also shoot any other pet people want me to. I will shoot an iguana if you want. I’ve done rats and horses, too.
Here’s the rest of the article, which includes Jamie’s recommended game plan and resources for aspiring pet photographers. And here’s Jaime’s pet photography blog.
October 11th, 2007
[Hey folks, I’m trying something new here, a guest blog post from an aspiring anti 9-to-5er. Let me know what you think. -Michelle]
By Courtney Nash
I call my husband the “Master of the Mute.” He has worked from home for the past few years as an independent consultant with the New York Times’ online division and is on the phone with a widespread network of people up and down the east coast for much of the day. We don’t have kids, but do have two remarkably large dogs with impressive lungs who revel in saluting every person walking by our house with their pups, as we live right on a favored dog-walking greenbelt. He keeps the mute button on during his calls, expertly clicking it off just as he needs to talk then re-muting to hear people’s replies, sparing them the occasional sudden bout of baying. But he’s not trying to hide the fact that he works from home, he’s just keeping the dogs from disrupting the call. All his virtual cohorts know that he works out of our house, a phenomenon detailed in this New York Times piece on people coming out of the work-at-home closet.
According to the article, what used to be perceived as a sneaky fact that might make homebodies seem less legit now makes the person on the other end of the phone seem more “holistic” and ultimately, more approachable and less a disconnected voice. Designers, writers, dance companies, and technology consultants can come out of hiding, you work from home and that’s ok! The model is even espoused by full-time consulting companies too, like the Seattle firm Point B Solutions Group, which was just voted one of the country’s Top 15 small workplaces in 2007 by the Wall Street Journal. They have no physical offices, so all their consultants work from home when they’re not on site with a client. It’s a situation I envy, as another cube-dweller who is working on her portfolio/client list on the side, hoping to make the jump to 100 percent freelance someday. But I am at least a little lucky, in that my current job allows me to work from home one day a week. And I don’t try to hide that fact from the people I work with, either. They all know I work from home on Fridays, and generally my workgroup tries to avoid meetings on Fridays as a whole so it rarely causes even a minor ripple.
Of course, baring your home office’s soul means drawing the boundaries even a bit more tightly as a freelancer. Those of you free of the cube know that without an office where you can leave your work behind, you have to clearly draw the lines on when and where you conduct your business at home. My husband has a huge working network of newspapers he deals with, and while he was open about his unique work environment, not everyone he deals with got the message out of the gate. Early on, people were calling our house at 5:30 in the morning, not realizing he wasn’t on East coast time. And then there’s the people who call on Friday, and if Eric is otherwise occupied I’ll pick up his line. It’s another part of pulling back the curtain — many of his coworkers know me as his wife, or at least know a bit about me. But at least one actually thought I was his assistant! It was easier to let the charade carry on and take the message than try to explain, I decided.
One aspect of people increasingly staking out their home/work territory that wasn’t covered in the NYT article is how disclosing your work environs is simply another element of good business practices. Even the subtlest of subterfuges could jeopardize your trustworthiness. And conversely, the more you allow yourself to be reflected in your work, the more likely you are to attract clients or customers who actually like you. Which means the odds are much greater that you’ll enjoy working with or for them as well.
Courtney Nash is a web editor at Microsoft who freelances in her spare time. She writes for the Seattle city blog Seattlest.com and is a frequent contributor to Seattle Metropolitan magazine. She’s also a downhill mountain biker and teaches women how to ride through the Dirt Series.
October 7th, 2007
Tell me you don’t want this T-shirt! Thanks to Ariel for sending me the link.
October 7th, 2007
Anita Hill’s op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday triggered a trip down memory lane for me, kind of like one of those “Where were you when Kennedy got shot?” moments. And I’m a-gonna take you with me…
In 1990, I was fairly clueless, certainly when it came to matters of sexual harassment. Only a year earlier, I’d been ass-swatted and propositioned repeatedly by a crazy managing editor at the weekly piece-of-crap community newspaper that hired me straight out of college. When the boss wasn’t rambling on about his “days back in ‘Nam,” he was either ogling the breasts of his female cub reporters or waxing unpoetic about the things he’d do to us behind closed doors if only he were 20 years younger. Lacking any reference point of Proper Workplace Conduct, I chalked it all up to Loser Has-Been Middle-Aged Guy With A Touch Of PTSD Syndrome and nervously laughed it off. The fact that I didn’t speak up and put this dirty old letch in his place still horrifies me today. Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn’t hesitate to put my paltry paycheck (less than $200 a week) on the line to paste that pecker to the wall.
A year later, the professional rep of Professor Anita Hill was on trial, so to speak, during the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. I’d moved from the newspaper in LA to a progressive book publishing company in NY, where my co-workers and I watched a 6-inch B&W portable TV in horror as a bunch of cranky old white guys on Capitol Hill lambasted Hill for speaking out about pervy Thomas’ inappropriate advances, incessant talk of sex and porn, and pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can commentary when she’d worked for him years earlier — curiously, at the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. It was then that I started to (duh!) connect the dots: my mom hadn’t been marching with an “ERA Now!” sign in the 70s just because she had nothing better to do on a rainy Saturday, my former boss was lucky no one had stripped him of his title and paycheck yet, and it took a hell of a lot of guts for a woman to speak out against a Boss Behaving Badly in a work world that amounted to nothing more than an old boys’ club.
I know it’s not the early 90s anymore (though we do still have a Bush “running” the country). Now you can’t read or watch the news for a week without hearing about some discrimination suit or other. Today’s columnists and talking heads seem to love “Women are the new men!” equality-in-the-office stories as much as feminist zines and bloggers do. And even if motivated as much by lawsuit phobia as by social awareness, workplaces are more egalitarian than ever.
But still… There are people who will never believe Anita Hill and all the Anita Hills we have yet to hear from. There’s also this: The price of speaking out against harassment can be quite hefty, at times costing accusers their jobs, reputations, careers, and even mental health. When I was writing The Anti 9-to-5 Guide, a few women I interviewed — successful, ambitious, powerful, well-paid women — said they’d been sexually harassed at work. Not in a “Holy crap, I think I might need to hire a bodyguard” way. But in a “Don’t expect to succeed in this company because, after all, you’re just a chick,” or a “You only got the promotion because you have a hot ass” way. In every case, the women told me they didn’t want to speak up and risk jeopardizing their job. Besides, they “knew it was a losing battle.”
More disturbing, I recently interviewed a couple of career consultants for an article on women’s workplace issues and was told that women should not file a sexual harassment complaint at work, unless they are fully prepared to sacrifice their job and possibly their career. (Evidently retaliation from lawsuit-skittish employers is alive and well.) One consultant I interviewed even went so far as to say, “Why should you have to put your job on the line for some jerk who’s just going to abuse his power at the next company he lands at anyway?”
Maybe it’s easy for me to say I’d risk my job, career, and mortgage to stop some boneheaded manager from acting like a Neanderthal because I work for myself. Maybe my blood wouldn’t be so quick to boil if I was a minimum-wage worker with a couple of kids to feed and couldn’t afford to lose my job no matter what. I’m not sure. But I know that if it weren’t for Anita Hill, countless women like me might not be asking themselves these questions at all.
October 3rd, 2007
