Small Bets for Engineers 💰 — with Daniel Vassallo (Small Bets)
Apr 26, 2024
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Join Daniel Vassallo, creator of Small Bets community, as he shares insights on career transitions, Small Bets philosophy, and self-employment. Learn about market understanding, lifestyle improvements, time allocation, and criteria for idea selection.
Start with low-hanging fruit and focus on small wins to build a successful portfolio.
Diversify projects to avoid pigeonholing and tunnel vision, fostering creativity and preventing burnout.
Establish rigorous selection criteria for side projects to ensure viable hypotheses and grounded growth.
Deep dives
Preferencing Freedom Over Structure
The speaker reflects on their dislike for structured work environments, such as daily standups, emphasizing the need for freedom in their workflow. They describe their transition from the predictability of working in big tech to seeking independence and exploring new opportunities.
Starting Small and Embracing Uncertainty
Encouraging the audience to start with low-hanging fruit, the speaker advises on setting achievable expectations and focusing on small wins. They recommend a portfolio approach to self-employment, emphasizing learning from both successful and unsuccessful projects.
Avoiding Tunnel Vision and Embracing Diversity
The speaker discusses the importance of not pigeonholing oneself and diversifying projects to avoid tunnel vision. By engaging in different activities like woodworking and tech projects, they find creative solutions and prevent burnout.
Adapting Through Rigor and Expectations
The speaker highlights the significance of having rigorous selection criteria for side projects. They stress the importance of working backward from expectations to ensure viable hypotheses and grounded growth.
Appreciating Gratitude and Learning from Experiences
Encouraging gratitude through expectations, the speaker shares how exceeding expectations can lead to appreciation for the randomness of success. They emphasize the value of staying humble and learning from both planned and unexpected project outcomes.
Today's guest is Daniel Vassallo, the creator of the Small Bets community, which counts more than 5 ,000 members and includes engineers, entrepreneurs, and creators of all kinds.
Daniel is also a former software engineer at AWS, the author of The Good Parts of AWS and created a successful Twitter course.
With Daniel, we will talk about his unconventional journey in tech, the Small Bets philosophy, and advice for engineers about careers, site projects, technology and skills.
Here is what we talked about:
(01:11) Introduction & background
(05:21) Small Bets' genesis & philosophy
(14:36) Understanding the market
(19:36) Taking care of the downsides
(24:43) Improving your lifestyle first
(29:05) The dangers of labelling yourself
(32:10) Allocating your time
(37:13) Self-managing your own work
(45:34) Transitioning to a self-employed lifestyle
(52:21) The selection criteria for your ideas