How to make $6,000/hr. aka why expensive is cheap.
For some reason people think a 6-digit salary is a lot of money. It’s probably why everyone’s a hipster here and brags when they don’t have to wear a suit in the office. The truth is no one wears suits outside of the financial industry because no one can afford it. “Zen-gah I love Zen-gah!” \\
Anyways, my girlfriend took a summer job with the government. They gave her 3 months to do something outrageously tedious. Open Excel -> Combine Document A with Document B; Delete Duplicates; Add addresses.
Doing this manually takes 3 months, but with a fair amount of laughter and programming chops, I did it in an hour. Well the hour was rounded up to make Canada feel better :P.
Now obviously someone with my skillsets doesn’t cost 6k/hr. You’re probably looking around $100-200/hr, which is 10x more than the ‘student-rate’, but you get more than 10x the productivity.
The hire-what-i-know logic is pretty detrimental: I can see myself taking 3 months to do this, so I’ll hire someone else for cheaper to do the same task. Instead, we should take a small step and embrace the unknown. Try hiring based on problem-solving, rather than hiring based on cog-swapping.
As an interviewer, I find it most effective to say: “I have a challenge for you” and let the interviewee do all the talking. Regardless of the position, the end goal is to solve problems. Real world isn’t an exam, so don’t model things that way --- Let people talk, think, and get back to you. Things are fascinating if you treat people like people.
Until next time. Z