Erin is a Django consultant whose previous employers include Wharton and Caktus Group. We discuss how to go solo, manage the business aspects, and find clients.
Carlton Gibson 0:06
Hi, welcome to another episode of Django Chat, a weekly podcast on the Django web framework. I'm calling Gibson joined as ever by Will, Vincent. Hello, Will. How are you?
Will Vincent 0:14
I'm good. Hi, Carlton.
Carlton Gibson 0:16
Hello. And this week we've got with a special guest, Erin Mullaney, who's going to come on we're going to talk about freelancing and things like that. Hi, Erin. How are you?
Erin Mullaney 0:22
Hey, I'm doing really well. How are you?
Carlton Gibson 0:25
Malta small this big a bit tired of being locked in the house. But other than that?
Erin Mullaney 0:29
Sure. I think we all are getting a little tired of that. Although I've been a remote worker for I think three years now. So I feel very well prepared for this moment in time.
Will Vincent 0:40
Yeah. Well, you're literally locked in the house in Spain. No, yeah. Well, yeah, there's a lot. I mean, I was just outside with my kids. Can you go outside and your yard? No,
Carlton Gibson 0:49
no, we can go in our back garden, but we're not allowed out in the street. And that's been the same for six weeks.
Will Vincent 0:55
With four kids, everyone.
Carlton Gibson 0:56
Yeah. So I mean, it's
Erin Mullaney 0:58
you can't go for walks
Carlton Gibson 1:00
Now we can go to the shop or the pharmacy and you can go as a single adult. And the police are quite strict about it. And, you know, I mean, Spain's been very heavily hurt. So it's understandable. Absolutely. Everyone starting to look, if there can be some easing, because the kids, the kids need to get out and run a bit. But I think it's going to be a few more weeks yet. So anyway, but
Will Vincent 1:22
well, they have fate mandatory face masks where I'm from in Brookline mass with $50 fines. So that's about as strict as America gets with it. Anywho anyway,
Carlton Gibson 1:35
so working from home. Yeah, I mean, working remotely. So I've been doing that a long time as well. So for me, it was the change wasn't too bad. Apart from the fact I've got children at home the whole time, which obviously, you're not pretty you're not making sourdough bread all the time and catching up on Netflix, Carlton? No, no.
Erin Mullaney 1:52
I think if I wasn't, if I wasn't able to go for walks, I think my code would really suffer personally. So I returned really missed that. I hope you get back to that, Carlton. Yeah, no,
Carlton Gibson 2:02
I missed that. I missed that I do get to do a bit of Tai Chi outside, which is, but I just wanna go for a walk, please. Anyway, but anyway, we should talk about freelancing. And
Will Vincent 2:13
yeah, well, maybe let's, you gave a fantastic Django con talk, which we'll link to in the notes and I want to talk to you about but first, how does one come into the Django world? What was your origin story?
Erin Mullaney 2:24
Um, so my origin story for coding kind of begins when I was working part time while I was in college. So I went to college for computer science, actually, luckily, although
Will Vincent 2:41
you're the only one here who can say that?
Erin Mullaney 2:43
Yes. Yeah, I think I think there's I think there's a
I think that people feel funny about not having gone to school for computer science, and I just want to tell them that it really doesn't matter. I mean, I'm glad I went to school for computer science. It's it's kind of a cool thing to put on. my resume, but where I learned to code was at fault at multiple jobs. So. So while I, well
Will Vincent 3:07
my closest Django friends didn't study it.
Erin Mullaney 3:10
Yeah, yeah. And I was talking to a friend recently about it. And she she was like, Well, of course, he went to school for computer science. So I feel like I have to catch up every night and learn these things. And I was like, No, no, no, I please shut your computer off at 10pm at least, and get a good night's sleep. That's That's way more important. But I digress. So.
Will Vincent 3:31
So I think that attitude, it's important to note that, I mean, you know, the imposter syndrome and everything. I know Carl's I'm curious what you would say. I would say that I certainly the feeling doesn't go away. I just put it in context where I know that nobody knows everything and I don't go around apologizing for it. I don't know. So it's, you know, I don't know I don't feel the need to apologize because no one can just whip off a whiteboard algorithms. And I've had to do that before and
Carlton Gibson 3:56
until I didn't do Computer Science at university. I spent two Yours reading all the right books and doing nothing not, you know, not calling constantly but on the back burner. And so I kind of feel like I know that stuff well enough, but how often does it come in handy? I don't ever have to implement an algorithm the library always compiler.
Will Vincent 4:12
Yeah. When's the last time you did a compiler from scratch?
Carlton Gibson 4:15
You know, might write a parser from time to time. That's it, you know, but yeah, that's a no, no, it's totally not the most relevant thing in the world. But,
Will Vincent 4:26
but I think part of it too, is you get to know the people who are experts, and you realize where they're at. And then you go, there is no white unicorn person that we think is out there who you know, knows everything off the top of their head. Everyone has pretty major gaps. It's just you don't need to tell everyone about them all the time. Yeah, especially you're applying for a job.
Erin Mullaney 4:47
Right and nobody expects you to know everything.
At their in their heart. They don't expect you to just like have this like amazing amount of experience to just know everything without looking at it out. I mean, I look everything up every day. That's I think that's like, the key to being a good programmer is to know how to look things up and know who to ask questions to, like you were talking about with experts. But anyway, I was. So I was in college. And I was working 20 hours a week at this office as an admin person. They found out I was going to school for computer science, they liked me. They saw that I was a hard worker, and they said, Do you want to transfer sort of into a more coding role? So this is around the year like 2000. So there was a lot of needs, like the y2k stuff, there was a lot of needs around around coding, and this was a mutual fund company. So they had a lot of a lot of needs, and they actually had a lot of, I think they're either Fortran or COBOL program.
Will Vincent 5:49
That sounds like textbook COBOL. Fortran, kind of
Erin Mullaney 5:51
Yeah, but they also had a department that was doing Visual Basic and Microsoft SQL and then getting into dotnet. So They said, Do you want to like kind of translate into that department and we'll hook you up with a coding mentor who can help you. And so I got this job I learned about source control. Do you all remember, I'm going to age myself visual sourcesafe. And I learned how to use that I learned Microsoft SQL. And I learned ASP at that time, a little bit of that, and a lot of Visual Basic. So this is going back to like 20 years ago. So that was my first programming job. And I was doing that 20 hours a week and then doing that full time in the summertime. And then when I graduated college, I continued there full time for a year and then transferred. We'll try took a different job at the University of Pennsylvania, where I did cold fusion for many years, and Microsoft SQL, a lot of SQL, a lot of cold fusion. So that's really where I I mean, I think like we're always constantly learning in this industry. So I like to say that's where I was like really thrown into the fire because there they were, the department I was working for was supporting so many different applications. So I would switch from working on a flash application one day to working on a cold fusion the next and just sort of fixing bugs on all these different platforms. So I really felt in a good way thrown into this environment where I had to learn quickly. And I was hooked up with some some good mentors there too. So how I got to Django eventually down the line was they eventually decided to no longer support cold fusion because cold fusion was not going to be supported anymore. I don't know if either of you have heard of cold fusion me. Yeah, yeah. So so we were like a fully Adobe shop, we were doing cold fusion and flash, and if you've heard of flex, we were doing that.
So I'm going to Adobe max every year, which was super fun.
So they, as a as a, as a department at the University of Pennsylvania was specifically working at the Wharton School. And they decided worldwide, we are no longer going to to support cold fusion apps were going to sunset it, we have to pick a different language framework. So they had a task force for it. And this was, this was worldwide. So this is like all sorts of like smaller departments had to had to like be on board for this. So it took some time for them to choose a framework. In the end, it was between Django and a Java framework that I don't remember, and Django one, and I took that as Okay, Django is the thing I need to get into now. So well, we were starting to translate apps from ColdFusion to Django there. I was looking for my next job because I was ready to move to a new state, a new state. So I was moving from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to North Carolina. And that is how I ended up doing Django because Wharton kind of chose it. And then I used it as part of my looking for a new job. I really liked working at Wharton, but I wanted to move and I wanted to change things up so so I took a job. So I started applying to jobs in North Carolina, and a friend of mine sent me a listing in Durham, North Carolina, at this place called cactus group. And it just all the stars aligned, they had an opening, I came down and interviewed there. And it kind of happened a little bit more quickly than I was ready for we weren't quite ready to move to North Carolina, but the job was right so, so I yeah, so I took the job at that Django firm and started really, really learning Django very, very quickly. And that was five years ago in early 2015.
Carlton Gibson 10:03
Right, because like batch listeners don't know, but cactus is one of the sort of older, more established Django agencies, you know, they've been around for forever and part of the community and you know, still are and
Erin Mullaney 10:16
I think 12 years or something like that. Yeah. They had their 10 year anniversary. Recently. I'm trying to remember if it was one year or two years ago, but yeah, they've they're fairly established in the Django world. But I didn't know that at the time. I was just interviewing at a place that did Django.
Will Vincent 10:32
Well, yeah, as a good as a good choice. I mean, I try really hard not to pick favorites, but I would say they're definitely in a small number of elite Tingo consulting firms I recommend to people when they ask
Erin Mullaney 10:41
Yeah, and and at the time, and still currently, a lot of the people there were really amazing mentors for me, and it was just it was a great time to join there. I was, I don't know if you remember Mark Levin care. He was there at the time. Traci is still there, and a number of other people who were able to work with me in this position where I was a longtime coder, but not long time with Django.
Carlton Gibson 11:14
So what makes a good mentor for you? Because we, you know, it's one of the difficult ones People always ask for mentoring and you always as a, you know, a senior or established or long time and you think, Oh, I'd like to mentor but then what is it that makes a good mentor?
Erin Mullaney 11:29
And I think
I'd rather answer the question of what makes a good mentee
put yourself into into the mentees, shoes, because I think of myself as both a mentor and a mentee at different in different relationships with different people. And so when I was coming, I'll talk about when I was coming to cactus because I've been mentored throughout my whole career. But really, when I came to cactus here I am this longtime developer, I know I know the ropes. pretty well, but as far as Django goes, I'm getting my feet wet and and proving myself. So the best way that I could be a good mentee was to really not, not push it too hard. So so I would schedule time with people and say, can you pair program with me for the next 45 minutes on this problem? And we would set a time together, and one of us would be the driver. And I would I that's how I learned about breakpoints because breakpoints was not a thing in cold fusion, cold fusion. It was just totally, it was a different it was a different idea. So I learned about breakpoints by sitting down with a developer, probably the node at cactus group. And he was using IP DB and I learned about them them from him and you You know, so So there are different things that I was able to learn as a mentee by just watching people work, and trying not to take too much of their time. So I was always if I was sitting and pair programming with someone, I was always watching them too and making sure that I wasn't that if they if they were getting to a point where they were like, Okay, I'm done pair programming. I would say, Okay, I think this was really good. Thank you for your time. And I'm gonna go back to my desk and use some of the things that I've learned.
Will Vincent 13:34
Sorry, EQ that some developers don't have.
Erin Mullaney 13:38
I think you can develop. I think you can develop it, though.
Will Vincent 13:41
Yeah, no, but I think that's a fantastic point is that obviously when you're making the ask you don't think of what you can do as a mentee. And I mean, you've listed all the bullet points, I would say, of someone who wants to be mentored of, you know, yeah, it's an important thing to say because, and maybe this sounds a little cold, but I'm sleep deprived. So I'll say it. So some people say, uh, we'd be my mentor as if it's like an honor. And really, it's, it's just like a lot of unpaid free time. So it's important to Yeah, for it to be some reciprocity in the relationship. You know, if you if your colleagues, that's great if it's a random person, you know, Carlton, and myself are approached. I don't know, there needs to be some back and forth. Maybe we are learning about some project you're working on or some part of the community, but it's good to have in mind that it's not just a one way street, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Carlton Gibson 14:34
I try and help them let the forum say in a good question that invites a response that they've done the work and they've, you know, they've, so when you read, you read it, and then immediately you're like, Oh, yeah, there's the answer, or there's a point I'd make where's that other question? It's like, just a dump on it's, it's like, Oh, I can't Where do I even begin? I'd have to do hours of work to even start to answer that question.
Will Vincent 14:56
It's like next level Google skills is knowing how to ask the right question. I think Time to frame it. So it's concise prove that you've done some work, but not have it just be. Yeah. How do I build my app? Which I understand? Yeah, the impulse to ask such a question, but it's not answerable.
Erin Mullaney 15:13
I mean, and you also, the other thing that really helps is that if you're working on working towards the same goal, so a lot of my mentor mentee relationships at cactus specifically, we would be on the same team together. So we were trying to get tickets done. And sometimes pair programming, you actually get things done more intelligently because you sort of step back and talk about the the the solution together. And then you are trying to reach the same goal. So So pair programming can kind of, I don't know, it's a real positive. It's been a real positive experience, for the most part. For me.
Will Vincent 15:54
I'm incredibly envious you've, you've experienced it. I've never experienced it. myself in a room for two years, sort of kind of learned Django and, and, you know,
Erin Mullaney 16:06
a long time, but I have done it at, in both experiences where I was working at cactus and and we would have pair programming time usually because I would ask for it because other people are less or more reluctant maybe to ask for it. I'm not sure why if they feel like they just would rather work on their own or if they just feel like they don't want you to see the magic behind how they come up with solutions, which is a lot of Google. For me.
Carlton Gibson 16:40
It's the exact lack of magic they don't want you to see.
Erin Mullaney 16:45
Yeah, so
Will Vincent 16:46
yeah, but i think that's that's another factor of figuring out when you're, when are you stuck enough to ask for help? And I suppose this goes in the bucket of experience along with googling of, you know, like the three of us we have a sense of like, oh, We'll spend a couple hours, maybe I'll sleep on something. But if, at this point, if I am truly stuck on something, I will then raise my hand. But I don't immediately raise my hand. And I guess I'm just saying there's a sense of when you actually stuck versus when have you not done the work? And there's no need to spend a week on something at any level, but you should at least put the work in and prove that, you know, to Carlton's point about asking a forum question, if you say, here's this concise problem I have, here are the steps I have taken. That didn't work. You can see where someone is on the journey versus when someone just is lazy, basically. And maybe they don't feel lazy, they're frustrated, but like you have to have like enough frustration to have tried.
Erin Mullaney 17:40
I like the way the forums work, too. I like the I started typing a question into them recently before I'd done a lot of research and, and I liked the I think it sort of popped up and said, Have you have you? Are you ready to release this question? Are you ready to ask this question or have you researched it more than I did a little more research on it and I didn't end up asking it. And I was glad I hadn't asked. So I just liked that interface. I just wanted to give you that feedback
Will Vincent 18:08
on the on the official Django forum.
Erin Mullaney 18:10
Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure. who worked on the Django forums. Was it Carlton or
Carlton Gibson 18:16
no, no, it's, um, it's a Rails app. No, it's worse. But yeah,
Will Vincent 18:19
is it it's discourse. It's a textbook. I mean, it's a off the shelf white label thing. And Godwin did a lot of the work to implement it. And we the Django Software Foundation are now continuing to pay for that in going forward as part of the Django ops stuff which, which I should call out. The head of cactus group. Tobias is on the ops team. And there's quite a lot of unseen work to help the Django infrastructure.
Erin Mullaney 18:52
That's awesome. Yeah, Tobias was great.
Will Vincent 18:55
So Bob, do you want to get to so eventually you, you left cactus group and you had this Fantastic talk, which I wish I had seen. So I rolled my own job four years ago. And man, I would have saved me a lot of time if I'd seen your talk before that. How did you get to learning because there's so many things I was like, Yep. Yep. didn't think of that in advance. Yep. So what so you, so you left cactus group and then learned all these things about rolling your own job?
Erin Mullaney 19:24
Yeah. So I never felt like I really left cactus group. Although I did have like a goodbye lunch at the time. I ended up in 2017 moving to San Francisco for a year because my husband got a job offer out there. And so the decision up to me was should I look for a job in San Francisco, there are all these it's a land of tech opportunity. But with that comes whiteboard interviews. You mentioned whiteboard earlier, and I really was not interested in any more white people. board interviews. I've been on a few and I didn't want to go that route. So I didn't really want to work for another tech company. I liked working at cactus. So when we decided to move to San Francisco, which we only stay there for a year, but when we decided to move out there, I asked cactus if I could still work for them, but just based out of California, and they even had a client in Oakland at the time that I knew would benefit from me being out there. So I sort of brought that to them. And they were unable to deal with the taxes in California because California Tax Law is really complicated and different from North Carolina where we're based. So they gave me the option. They sort of said, Look, we can't we can't work with California. Unfortunately, we would love to keep you Do you have any interest in contracting and They have a number of contractors there. So I was familiar with contracting at cactus. I was a full time employee who was hired by cactus, but I knew other contractors there and I knew what what their life was like. And I thought, Oh, this is an amazing opportunity. Like, I can take a step back from working full time at an office where I'm required to put in my 40 hours of billable time every week, hopefully it's billable. And I can set my hours and I can select my my projects. This is what I knew from contractors, this is what I knew from how they were working. So I said, Yeah, that sounds great. How do I do that? And they were really nice. And said, well, you need to you need to do that you need to form your own business. And then and then we can hire you as a as a consultant. And you'll have to buy your own laptop and and that's that's what you'll have to do. So I I ended up talking to every consultant I knew at the time, anybody who worked for themselves. I had a had like a three hour phone call with my friend Patrick, where I just, he just runs his own business now, totally unrelated to what I do. But he gave me so much Intel about, you know, whether or not I should form an LLC and how I should track my expenses. And it was it was amazing. So he, I have to give Patrick Esmond huge props for that. But also, I talked to a number of other people, Victor, who I still work with now he's on a client project with me, and he runs his own small, firm. He was also a huge help. I took him out to lunch and asked him, so I just had all these you know, I had lunches and phone calls and emails where I just asked everybody I knew, because, like I was talking with pair programming. That's my learning. style. So I like to learn from people and experiences. And that's how I know I'm doing the right thing. And every single person I talked to, told me to form an LLC. So that's, you know, that's one thing we can talk about today. You know, we form an LLC, so that's why I formed an LLC, because that was the feedback I was getting from you
Will Vincent 23:24
is that what is it? I mean, because Carlton you spent time as consultant is that there are other similar structures in Europe or is it a totally different thing?
Carlton Gibson 23:32
Yes. So
I had a limited company in the UK back in the early days and I used to put all my work to that and then when it came to Spain, I you know, I became self employed so and now I'm self employed. It's just you know, it's called and gives me I haven't formed
Will Vincent 23:51
there's no legal entity on top though there is there is a there's a
Carlton Gibson 23:57
there you can form an SSL assist site that limited You can format those I've thought about it a couple of times but because it's just me and you haven't got around to doing that at the moment there's no that the autonomous status that you have as a self employed person in Spain is got most of the benefits of that without you know, the massive overheads and bureaucracy in Spain is quite high and as soon as you've got an SL it's like every month more you know administrative costs and for me at the scale I run it's just not worth it.
Will Vincent 24:26
Well, I'm I'm a sole proprietor still, which is I guess one of the three options right there C Corp, LLC, sole proprietor, I probably should be an LLC, but I haven't done that yet. But I loved how you covered this in your, your talk because you really kind of laid out the the landscape but I agree, I think most people should be an LLC probably should be an LLC. If you
Carlton Gibson 24:48
had a choice now in the UK, it was certainly like you get a limited company. The bureaucracy was very small and the benefits were very large. You know, I don't want like in the States, but
Will Vincent 24:59
depend by state I mean, because California has, it's almost like $1,000 to have an LLC. And then there's because actually, I worked out there was an LLC and, you know, but then some states it's a couple hundred dollars and I think it's what it's like 1000 or something to set up and then probably mid 500 something depends on the state. Ongoing. Yeah, I know North Carolina.
Erin Mullaney 25:22
I don't remember how much I pay per year. my accountant keeps track of that for me, but it's not very high in North Carolina. It was definitely higher in California. I think when I formed it was $800 Yeah,
Will Vincent 25:33
800 the number I recall.
Erin Mullaney 25:35
And then I have like, I got a refund of a partial refund because I moved in the middle of the year from them for for that, like, it was all very confusing. And, but, you know, everything was legal as far as as far as I was aware, because I went through. I went through LegalZoom to set up my LLC, which was another tip I got from them. Like a number of people who I talked to, they just said, LegalZoom. It's just easy. You just fill out a wizard to form your LLC. And like Carlton was saying, this is really just particular to us. But the nice thing about the LLC in the us is that it helps you separate your self from your business so that if the worst happens and you get sued, you your business gets sued, your personal assets aren't liable as long as you were doing a good job at keeping them separate.
Carlton Gibson 26:30
Yeah. And that's what you need and you need liability insurance and you need an accountant you mentioned and you need to let the professionals do their job because you don't know about accounting and tax rules and returns and, you know, not pay someone for that.
Will Vincent 26:42
I pay my own taxes, Carlton, I probably Well, part of me thinks you know, I've got this fancy business degree and I really, I I should have one. I mean, I love how you have that really nice sheet Aaron that you link to, from your talk the Google Doc laying things out. Because I think that's, that's great in some ways that's better better than like, I use TurboTax pay my taxes in the US and I use their QuickBooks self employed, which is, works great for me. So I have separate bank accounts set up for for business and personal, which you have to and I have a separate credit card. And so it all kind of flows through there. But it's
Erin Mullaney 27:21
everybody I everybody I talked to seems to want to use accounting software. And I just really like having it all in a spreadsheet, I just find it so much. There's so much less overhead to just track your expenses in a single spreadsheet versus learning a UI for QuickBooks or whatever.
Will Vincent 27:40
Well, that depends on how many expenses you have, I would say because the nice thing is it just pulls in everything from your credit card. So if you have that automated expenses, that kind of helps, it'll estimate your taxes. But when I think and I like to you mentioned you just you you found your person on online, right, it wasn't a personal recommendation. And now Yeah, you He's not in the same state either, which because that's another concern is that potentially state by state varies.
Erin Mullaney 28:05
Yeah. So one of the places I interviewed at a long time ago was thumbtack. So I wouldn't have been aware of it if I hadn't if they hadn't contacted me to interview me. But that's how I found out about thumbtack. And I really like their site. They've done a really really nice job of basically replacing Angie's List.
Will Vincent 28:26
Yeah. Awful. I'll dump on them all over the place. Like subpar Craigslist, but they prey on old people that no,
Erin Mullaney 28:36
oh, no, yeah, no, no, not not a good site, but But yeah, thumbtack is is really great. And so I went to thumbtack and I think if they asked you what your project is, so I just said I was looking for a business accountant and I went through the number of steps and then a number of accountants sort of bid for the project. And the one I found was in Georgia and this at the time, I In California, he was in Georgia. And he said, Yeah, I have a number of clients in California. That's fine. I'm very familiar with that tax law. And he had to learn the North Carolina law when I moved back to North Carolina. But that was fine. And he spent, I think, an hour with me on the phone, just talking me through things. And at the end of the phone call, I was like, Yeah, absolutely. You're hired. This is great. So he's been my accountant since since that time since I hired him on thumbtack. So I'm really, really happy with him. And he's become our personal accountant, too. So he's great. And he does my. So I have to, in order to make 401k payments as an employer.
Will Vincent 29:43
Yeah, let's talk about this.
Erin Mullaney 29:44
We can talk about this a little bit, maybe if you're ready. Yeah, so it's in order. So so with your solo
Will Vincent 29:50
401k Do you have a solo 401k set up,
Erin Mullaney 29:53
I have a solo 401k. So there, there's the employee contributions, which is the same for everybody. Max this year is what 19,500? Something like that. Yes. For 20 220 20 Yeah, so so that is the max this year for everyone employee contributions, no matter what. But there's this thing where if you're working for yourself, you can make an employer contribution. And if you do that, you need to calculate it based on your profits and the way my accountant does that is by doing payroll.
Will Vincent 30:28
So he Oh yeah, I want to talk about this. Yeah. So you have cuz cuz
Erin Mullaney 30:32
I'm not. So I'll just tell you how he does it. I don't know.
Will Vincent 30:36
I'm sorry to interrupt. You get excited to interrupt. Yeah.
Erin Mullaney 30:39
No, no, you're fine
Will Vincent 30:40
Carlton's laughing he's, he knows
Erin Mullaney 30:43
you're fine, you're fine. So So I now pay him monthly to do my monthly payroll and I pay myself my payroll by doing a direct deposit once a month on the same day every month. So it It has to look like payroll, it has to be payroll like you have to set the salary and pay that salary amount on the same day every every month if that's what you're going to do like the monthly salary like you would if you were working for for a monthly paid job somewhere else. And so he takes that monthly salary base level before the taxes come out and the I think it's up to 20% or 25 I forget the amount exactly is
Will Vincent 31:29
2025 and the combined amount is like 56 or something thousand so if you make your 161 70 net then you can the employee in the player employer can it's something like 36,000 total,
Erin Mullaney 31:44
so I've never maxed it out. I don't make enough for that because I I kind of I just don't make enough for that. But But yeah, if you want a lot more than you can put
Will Vincent 31:53
aside at your normal 401k
Erin Mullaney 31:56
Exactly. It's a lot lot more pre tax money that you can put aside, I mean, right now it's pretty tumultuous time to put money into 401k. So we're all sort of questioning the reality of the stock market here in the US. But but that is true like you, you can put more money in pre tax, which means you're going to be taxed less, which is, you know, a good way to to make more money.
Will Vincent 32:23
Yeah, if you think you're gonna make more now than in the future, that's a good move and the employee side you have the option of doing Roth if you want. So you can make Roth 401k contributions, which are post tax, but then when you take the money out, you don't get taxed on it. So anyway, sorry, this is I, I over spend time on this stuff.
Erin Mullaney 32:40
I have to say my brother in law is a financial planner and as a tax accountant and a business tax accountant, he's he's really, really smart. He's a tax guy, but he I just spoke to him last weekend and he is a big proponent of employee contributions before employer contributions. So really maxing out the employee contributions Because of the way that the employer contributions get taxed on the way out,
Will Vincent 33:05
well, yeah, because it all I mean, when you run your own business, I mean, you get nailed with self employment taxes, and there's all the you don't get nailed, but that's the biggest expense. Because as a regular employer, it's like 15.3% total, which is Medicaid. And then like the seven and a half percent that the employer and employee pays. So if you're just if you've never worked for yourself, or run a business, you just see the 7% taken out, but the employee, or is already paying a whole bunch of stuff on top of that, including for health insurance. But traditionally, pre that the Trump tax thing, where they have this thing called q bi, which is qualified basic income, which is 20% off for certain types of LLC s, which software consultancies fall into. You would set up a LLC as an S Corp. So you can be taxed as a corporation, but in fact, be an LLC and then You could, in theory, like if you made $10 million, you could say, well, the average for a software developer is 150,000. And so I will get paid the full, you know, the full tax on the 150. But then beyond that I don't have to pay the extra self employment taxes. And that was why you would set up payroll historically. Though I'm, I'm a little bit interested in why you set up payroll when you don't do that. But I, I believe you're your financial experts. But we're getting to inside baseball. And this is a lot. There's a lot to think about, especially the first year it's so much non programming non work time to configure all this and that's the point right, is that this is a talk about being a freelance software developer. This is what we're here to chat about. It's business like you think I'm just going to be a freelancer, I'm going to do coding, no, you're going to do business, like
Carlton Gibson 34:51
all your week is business and then you get 10 minutes. There's an actual client.
Will Vincent 34:55
I found the first year I really took a hit and it was I was really quite frustrated by it, but this year You know, this last year it was more pro forma. And I was grateful to have some flexibility around retirement stuff, but I think to Carlton's point, I didn't you don't think about all these things until you do it and it is a serious cost and probably it's great that you find an accountant you can trust I've heard quite a few horror stories, unfortunately.
Erin Mullaney 35:21
That's scary. Yeah, yeah, I I have an accountant I can trust and then I have my backup of my brother in law who I talked to on the phone and make sure that I'm also it sounds like everything I'm doing is right. And like I said, I'm I did a ton of research for the talk. And whether that research was talking to my accountant, or watching YouTube videos on forming a business I found there's this channel called all all up in your business. And it's a she's a lawyer. I forget where she's based out of I think she's Southern and she's a
Will Vincent 36:00
She's she gets to write because you I think you've recommended it in the talk and I checked it out.
Erin Mullaney 36:05
She has a YouTube channel. I don't know she has a podcast. So that's I hope so. I did recommend a bunch of podcasts. So I'm a huge fan like a podcast addict for sure. But she she has a YouTube channel that's where I learned a lot of things I I also listened to I recommended choose fi has a really good podcast on the financial independence movement. And so I there was an episode with Alan Donegan where he talks about running your own small business. He started the pop up business school and when we're ready to talk about clients, like there's a lot of stuff that I learned from that podcast about about that.
Carlton Gibson 36:46
Well, it seems like a seamless segue.
Erin Mullaney 36:48
So yeah, so we talked about maybe finding clients.
Will Vincent 36:52
Yeah, cuz.
Carlton Gibson 36:55
Yeah, there's two things. One is finding clients and then the other thing that comes into that is then when you've got REITs still keep finding clients. So we should talk about both.
Erin Mullaney 37:04
And they both, they both give me stomach aches if I think about it too much if I think about, you know, my contract because I work on a contract basis, and I'm not sure if if you both similarly work on contract, what what sort of working basis are you all on? Like I'm on a six month contract right now?
Carlton Gibson 37:20
Well, I've I've been freelance for ever and ever and ever, currently up to the Django fellow work, which is part time they do that on a yearly basis. And then I have other clients around the side that I've forever I've lived on this, you know, this is contracting basis and the sort of the nervousness of it is the the lack of security is not like if you haven't got a job, you haven't got a job. And so you need to be for me, you need to be conscious of well, this contract will end and then what,
Erin Mullaney 37:48
right yeah, yeah. So you have multiple contracts are you are those contracts like a certain number of hours per week, so I'm on a current contract of six, six months. They had just extended me For six more months, so it just began in April. And it's, I've agreed to do 30 hours of coding a week for them. And that includes meetings and things. And that's sort of my, my happy medium there is coding for 30 hours a week, because any more than that, and I start to get really drained. So that's just me personally.
Carlton Gibson 38:23
Over the years, I've done things like I consider that to be a full time gig right? by the time you've done 30 hours of actual work, and then a few admin stuff, that's that's your working week. And I've done over the years, I've had clients where I've been working for that one company for a while, and that's great, because you get loads of money come in, it's nice, but then when the contract runs, it's like well, actually, now I'm essentially unemployed, and I've got to find some more. And so as I got older, what I favored was, you know, half a day for you half a day for you know, the UK, you know, a client where I might come and do you know, a few days every few months. You know that kind of have a bunch of those because I find that on average, that's more secure. That's, that's more sustainable for me.
Will Vincent 39:10
I don't when times are great, they're, they're great, but then they can get bad all of a sudden. And I mean, for me, I've done. I've done project based primarily. But honestly, in the last year, I haven't. I've just been able to focus on my books and stuff, which is nice. But I do think about when I think about doing it, honestly, I think I would maybe go through an agency just so I don't have to deal with all the client management stuff. Yes, there is a lot of burden. And so, you know, for me, I'll probably go back to some consulting later this year, but probably within the context of having someone else manage that and I focus on code as much as I can and not deal with that business side of things.
Erin Mullaney 39:54
I think it's really hard to find a client who and maybe you all haven't had the same experience who We'll agree to 20 hours a week, or they
Will Vincent 40:02
always wants you full time, right? They're always like, a consultant. And then they kind of want to backdoor you into being full time. And it's like, well, if I wanted to work full time, I would but right.
Carlton Gibson 40:13
It would experience as well, like, you know, when what I aim for now, I wouldn't have been able to get 510 years ago, I just wasn't didn't have to be authority to say no, like, I'll do half a day. But you know, who wants half day? Well,
Will Vincent 40:29
you know, there's a maturity of client to to recognize they can get value out of that too, I would say. I mean, that's part of some clients, you know, just like they asked for whiteboard interviews and stuff, and then some have completely unrealistic expectations. And I'm sure you know, you can see this Aaron, right, you can sort of sniff when a client is going to be awful to work for because they don't really understand reality with Project estimates.
Erin Mullaney 40:55
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I can sniff that. I mean, I hope so.
Will Vincent 41:00
You're aware that it's uh, it's, you know, your mind?
Erin Mullaney 41:03
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's nice to work for technical debt for more technical clients for sure. Because they understand the reality of of the difficulty and the complexity. But, yeah, I don't know, I just find it difficult to find clients who are willing to do even when you're going through an agency who are willing to say, okay, 20 hours a week, that's fine. 10 hours a week, that's okay. But, yeah, when I started consulting, I was working. So I was working in California for this Oakland client for cactus, and I think I was doing 25 hours for them. And then 15 for Wharton, who were my former employers who had who found out that I was consulting through a social media post that I posted, actually, two ways. So So there were two ways that I connected with Wharton. One way was I posted to Facebook that I was going To start working for myself, and that post got a lot of likes from from a lot of friends who either, you know, were connected to me from my Wharton job or you know, elsewhere. And I guess, word got around to a person who I knew who was working at my former department at Wharton. And she was excited to hear that I had sort of become a consultant and wanted to work with me. So she reached out to me from that, that social media post and I still work with her department, part time. And so that was really cool that that was the sort of like organic way that I found a client. And then the other one. The other way I reconnected with Wharton was I was at a PI con, a couple years back and I ran into a former coworker, and we got to talking about his current boss and my old boss at Wharton and how what a great boss He is. And I said, You know, I keep meaning to send Jason an email. Jason is such a he was such a good boss. He was so technical at that time in my career where I needed someone to be technical, and help guide me more towards framework programming. And you know, and this friend of mine was like, Yeah, absolutely, Jason's the best. And I said, I keep meaning to send them an email. And he was like, just do it. Just send them an email, just send them a thank you email. So I got back from pi con and I sent Jason an email and it was not like, I wasn't the intention was not to get work from from my old boss. It was just the intention. My intention was pure. It was just, I want to let you know that you were a good boss. Thank you. Just a gratitude email. And
Carlton Gibson 43:46
you did mention that you're available in the same email.
Erin Mullaney 43:49
No, he, he found out I was because I he he just knew I was available because of this other friend. So but that's I ran into. So
Carlton Gibson 44:01
so you keeping up the contact? Like Yeah,
Erin Mullaney 44:04
yeah, exactly. So yeah, so he I didn't mention in the email that I was available, he responded, thank you for this email. This is I'm having a really rough day. So this just came at like a really good time for me. Also, also this, this other person just mentioned that you're working for yourself. Now is that true? Because we are finally moving that project you worked on to Django, and we could use your help. So I had worked on this like massive ColdFusion website, right before I left. And so I had the background knowledge and I had the, you know, I had then I had like all of the the couple of years of experience of working at cactus full time on Django. So I was kind of the perfect developer for that project. And that worked out. So I worked on that for for a little while. So I was when I was in California, starting out consulting. I was working on that part time and working on this Oakland client part time. And yeah, it was Working out and then I sort of and then it was nice when the Oakland contract ended, I could switch to full time hours with work for a while and sort of like backfill and get that project sort of more quickly done towards their deadline, which was nice.
Carlton Gibson 45:17
And then do you find most of your clients come to that kind of organic or con, you know, contact network? way
Erin Mullaney 45:24
so far? Yes. I mean, I've been doing this for probably fewer years than both of you now. Because I started in 2017. So, so yeah, so far, it's been that way. And then also by my work with cactus, so they're, they know me and and they like to connect me with work when they have it as a consultant. I've also worked with another consulting agency. So I've worked with to different consulting agencies since since going full time, I prefer between the two of them. Cactus worked out a little better just for the time zones because we're in the same time zone. And I'm local to them now. So that's been really nice.
Will Vincent 46:15
Yeah. So you left California. That's what we're getting it right. So
Erin Mullaney 46:18
yeah, yeah, we we knew one month in that we did not want to stay there.
Will Vincent 46:23
Oh, really? I lived out there for a while. Yeah. What was it for you? Because I would say it's a really fun, but it's interesting within one month, because I loved being there. And I moved back for family reasons. But it's an incredibly transient place. So there's this initial rush of like, oh, you're not from here. I'm not from here. Let's hang out. As well as like you work in tech. No way. And then you find out that no one's from there. Everyone works in tech. And you know, some of the negative aspects creep in, but I guess you you figured that out. What part
Erin Mullaney 46:56
part were you in? Were you in San Francisco?
Will Vincent 46:58
Yeah, so 2010 to 20 13th I was in Sao Paulo. I worked in on second site which is quite Gino kohala No, I don't what part what part of the city were you in?
Erin Mullaney 47:10
Um, inner sunset?
Will Vincent 47:12
Yeah wasn't no So Cal hollows in between pack heights and Okay, I know Park Heights Yeah, and then the marina says right next to the Presidio
Erin Mullaney 47:20
how hell no I remember yeah cow Yeah, I thought your cow holla but no no
Will Vincent 47:25
no no I ya know i mean and I there's a lot to like about the West Coast when you come from the northeast as I do.
Erin Mullaney 47:32
Yeah, yeah, I'm certainly miss the produce. Oh, my
Will Vincent 47:36
God year round farmers markets you just yeah, too. And I've never heard of
Erin Mullaney 47:40
the farmers market. We're like,
Will Vincent 47:42
yeah, it's like, and oh my god. Yeah, it's sunny and I mean I have. I keep having kids in different states. I have a infant now and our dark at 10am it was raining and you know, in California, my young my oldest one. I would just walk her every day in the sun and You know, but it's not everything.
Erin Mullaney 48:04
Yeah, yeah, there were a multitude of reasons we didn't stay, I guess. It was very, very expensive. And it felt like it to me to be around a place where people can't skinny get rather philosophical. But where people can't work at a grocery store and live at the same place where they work in a grocery store feels unfair to me
Will Vincent 48:28
towards toward being a teacher.
Erin Mullaney 48:30
Yeah, or be a teacher. Yeah, exactly. My school. My husband works in the education system. But he was he he was actually he had a pretty good salary that brought him out there. And the education system. I just felt really, it felt like end stage capitalism. It just it felt really not great. We were both doing okay. And we were able to afford this adorable one bedroom apartment in inner sunset. That was just gorgeous. It was great. I went for a walk and Golden Gate every day. Yeah, I mean, it was it was a beautiful place to live. But yeah, being that far away from family and then and then just just how how difficult it is for for regular non programmers to live there.
Will Vincent 49:17
Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask you, as well as, um, this may seem like a segue, but in the context of consulting in workplaces, diverse workplaces, because I feel like you've had a good experience with that. And I know you have some thoughts on the benefits and how to cultivate that since we don't we aren't in a particularly diverse industry.
Erin Mullaney 49:37
Yeah, yeah. So I would say that when I
if I if I get to know a new place that I could work, and I look around and it looks like everybody looks the same age and the same came from the same background. that's a that's a bad sign to me. Even if I fit into that, you know, even if I'm like, Oh, yeah, I I'm the same way I'm we're all around the same age, I think it's really important to have a diverse ecosystem at your workplace, whether that's a client or, or, you know, if you're a full time. And the the place I'm working, the client I'm working with right now is is a client based out of Oakland and their development team is all over the map as far as ages, and it's coming from different really different backgrounds. So it's really, it's really, really nice. And I've worked on teams where everyone is kind of in their 20s and excited to work and you know, isn't really familiar with burnout and isn't really worried about it too much.
Will Vincent 50:47
They will be they want to, they want you to hang out and play Starcraft after
Erin Mullaney 50:50
work. Yeah, so so. I mean, maybe, maybe, or
Will Vincent 50:56
Yeah, I mean, I was the old guy 10 years ago at startups. You know, yeah.
Carlton Gibson 51:02
But like this, this startup thing in the late stage capitalism, and all of that is and the whiteboard interviews, isn't it like that they go for that particular young, don't really know. They might, you know, perfectly talented and whatnot, but they have no life experience kind of workers so that they can put them in to the sweatshop environment and really get their money's worth. Right? Isn't that why they hire them and why they have that hiring process? And
Will Vincent 51:27
I don't think it's that insidious, Carlton? I mean, I think that's, well, I think that that is, that is some of it. I think that it's you have a lot of in here I'm going to burn a bunch of bridges, but you have a lot of founders who are in their early 20s they just want to hire their friends. You have the adults in the room who are in their 30s or 40s who are all male Peter Pan's and it I don't think it's they're sitting around you know, smoking a pipe thinking we want to be evil. They're just thinking when it gets to the culture fit part of who do we want to hang out with? They want to hang out with people like them. selves who are all about work and fit those profiles. I don't think it's quite as, I mean, certainly the startup I worked at, we weren't thinking, I want to exploit these young MIT Stanford grads. So that's basically the only people we hired because of combination of they fit into the culture, they pass the test our other employees, you know, we're kind of like that. So I'm not saying it's not there, but I think it's more
Carlton Gibson 52:25
I don't know evils more benign or it just sort of creeps up on you. It's just you want to hire your friends. It could be though this whole system more systemic then it's not that the individual in the position is sitting there thinking Haha, I must exploit them. But it's like the way the whole way that it's structured just ends up.
Will Vincent 52:43
We just grow you know, if you're a male, you hit your 30s you grow Neck Beard and you move down the peninsula and work. Oracle or something, right. Yeah. I was like, I remember being there being like, Where's the 30 something male programmer? Yeah, you know, they exist in many places, but it is that Combination I think also it's self selects I mean, Carlton, you and I wouldn't want to work in that environment now. And they probably wouldn't want to see there. So it's it's also amazing because fresh off Fresh Off the Boat of the airplane from wherever and but it is it it is kind of intoxicating, intoxicating and quite fun for a while I would say to go from not being surrounded by a tech community to being around it all the time.
Erin Mullaney 53:27
I've recommended your episode on aging gracefully as a programmer to so many people because I really, I think it wasn't even a very long podcast episode. I think it was like half an hour long. And it's just it was just a perfect, it was perfect. Just start to finish. Thank you for that. Just burn out all that stuff.
Will Vincent 53:47
Carlton stock. That's how we met. I was one of the like, 200 people who seen it on YouTube and I sent him a note.
Carlton Gibson 53:53
Yeah, no, I mean, it's, uh, you know, I when I was a youngster I did London startup, seeing a bit and You know? Yeah, you're right. It was fun, but that's not how you're gonna fill up your 401 K.
Erin Mullaney 54:09
For getting back to clients. There are a couple other things I kinda wanted to, to mention on clients to talk about this. This podcast episode has been a little organic itself.
Will Vincent 54:19
It's chat. It's Django chat, Tigger chat. Yeah.
Erin Mullaney 54:24
Yeah, so one thing is, there's a podcast episode of chuza phi, where they interview this guy named Alan Donegan, and he started the startup or the pop up Business School in London. And he's a really interesting guy. And he, he's his, his mantra is always be caring. So it's the ABC, sort of, you know, when you think of ABC, you might be thinking of that line always be closing in terms of, you know, sales and finding clients and all those things, but he, he sums it up a different way. He says always caring. And so I really like that mantra. And that's definitely carried me through my whole career. Before I was a consultant, I really cared about the projects I was working on, I really cared to make sure that, you know, the technology was right. Sure. Like, that's really important, but make sure that that it's accomplishing what the client, whether that's an internal client that you're working for, as a full time employee, or, you know, whatever that client is that stakeholder, make sure that that it's, it's what they want, it's gonna be best suited to their needs, and you're listening to them. And so I just I really want to stress that that's really helped me connect with clients because my old bosses want to work with me again, because I made our stakeholders happy. That's that's really important. So yeah, that's, that's, that's one really big thing I kind of want to stress I don't know, if you wanted to talk had any thoughts on that?
Carlton Gibson 56:04
No, other than to agree Absolutely. Hundred percent, like, finding clients is difficult, right? One way of getting a sustainable freelance business or solo business is to have clients come back to you. And they may come back, you know, eight years later, and they might relate, you know, I need, you know, I need you again. And it's like, they ain't gonna do that unless you do a good job. And it's a good job by their eyes, not your eyes. Oh, I used, you know, the latest tech framework. And, you know, look how it was containerized and I deployed it with these specs, none of that matters. tread, what matters is their goals, their outcomes, and, you know, yeah, so,
Will Vincent 56:41
yes. Yeah, I mean, reputation matters. Everything is a really small world when you get down to it, right, which is kind of nice and sort of too bad. And some people don't realize that but the reality is there's only you know, there's an endless supply of work that needs good people to do it. And People who do good work know people who do good work and and that's what you look for. Right? Whatever side you're on. If you want a colleague or you want to hire someone, it's its reputation.
Carlton Gibson 57:11
Yeah. And I think there is an endless supply of work out there. I mean, not not right now. There's not because of the pope Coronavirus, but the economy will come back and beyond the tech bubble beyond San Francisco, there's, there's a whole world that you can get working
Will Vincent 57:24
in the problem is a lack of talented people who can communicate rather than work. may not feel that way. But that's the case.
Erin Mullaney 57:33
And speaking of communicating and building a reputation. The other the other thing that goes along with that the other piece that I want to talk about with finding clients is, is having a becoming somewhat known, whether it's through giving talks or writing blog posts, but putting yourself out there a little bit, like whatever your comfort level is, so I felt comfortable to give that Django talk last year. But I wouldn't have been comfortable giving a talk at Django con, maybe two years prior to that. That was the talk that I was that I was ready to give at that time. So and that led to this podcast, which is really cool. I also have been writing technical blogs for cactus So, so it's a nice, that's a nice feature. When I was working full time at cactus, they encouraged us to write blogs. And then when I went off and became a consultant, I said, you know, I've written some blogs for you, I still am interested, I still, like come up with ideas that I want to write, and they still pay me to write to write blogs, I just have to go through a different process with them. And sort of get, you know, give them a, you know, here's how many hours I think I'm going to spend writing this blog and would you you know, pay me for that. For that many of hours. Would you be interested in publishing this this topic that I want to talk about and so That's another way to sort of get your, your reputation built up online.
Carlton Gibson 59:05
Yeah, it's one, it's one thing I recommend people to get involved in an open source project is not you know, is one possible Avenue. And it can be Django itself, or it can be one of the ecosystem projects. And if you become, you know, helpful there and you just do a little bit, it doesn't have to be a knock can be an hour a week and be, you know, a couple of times a month or a couple of hours, you know, not not a lot. But that adds up over time. And all of a sudden, it's Oh, yeah, that person they maintain, you know, this sounds are plugging.
Will Vincent 59:34
Yeah, absolutely. That's, I mean, people who listen this podcast know that that's always the advice I give is have some open source code or contributions and, and have a post or a talk to get your name out there. It's it I think it's hard for a lot of developers who may be a little more introverted by nature to do but it is, you know, someone's gonna Google you and what are they going to find? Right like if they find a Existing work than the interview and stuff can be about that. Otherwise, it's you're gonna go through the whiteboard, treadmill. But I think that's the hard thing in a way is that like we think, you know, I should be doing. You know, I should spend those hours a week coding or doing like super advanced Python or Kubernetes or whatever. But the reality is you should be spending it on your network on communicating. And, you know, I always take attitude over aptitude and part of attitude is communication. So once you hit a baseline, it's all about your attitude and your communication skills, because you can kind of figure anything out versus the loner who maybe is an expert in some area, but no one wants to work with. That's not who gets hired. Right. So we're coming up on time that there we have links to all I want to ask so what's the story so your it, Aaron, Rachel is the name of your consulting thing because when you set up an LLC, you can't put a trademark in there, right. It's like I can't call my learn Django LLC. For example, Oh,
Erin Mullaney 1:01:00
great. Yeah, you cannot call it that. Yeah, maybe you could misspell it or something. I don't know. But that would be pretty weird. Yeah, you can't put a trademarked name into it. You. Yeah, it should be easy to be like, you should be able to spell it easily. So So that's, you know, kind of an important thing when you're coming up with your, your LLC name. I forget what else was on that slide. But yeah, you can, you can go back to my talk and and see. And then when you actually submit it to your state, if you're in the United States, you're forming an LLC. If it's already been taken, then it's going to get returned to you and you're gonna have to come up with a different name. So you should be able to go to your state's sos.gov website, your state's Secretary of State website, and look up the names and make sure that it isn't currently taken. But yeah, you can't have the word Python in in the name of your business, or probably the name Django. I assume that's trademarked. I don't know.
Will Vincent 1:02:04
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, part of what the Django Software Foundation does is we enforce the Django trademark. So yeah, that's, you know, I should know. Well in naming is it's almost like startup names it's one of those things where it doesn't matter at all and yet you spend an inordinate amount of time on it. At least that's my kind of philosophical take on it after spending an inordinate amount of time on startup names and you know, I mean, what do I have I have I mean as a sole proprietor, I have a DBA so doing business as account so that's how I it's so that's what I use for my checking account. So it's like still me but it's labeled as something else. And that's how my mail and sometimes I'm like, I like the name that I have, like mine still river press, but like, no one cares.
Erin Mullaney 1:02:52
Yeah, I mean, it might be it might be important to have a separate business checking account if you don't have one already.
Will Vincent 1:02:59
Oh, yeah, you should have that. But I'm saying the name the name for your LLC or or your right, your DBA. Like to your point it should be easily spelled it should be, but it's not. That's not what's gonna make or break your business.
Erin Mullaney 1:03:12
I don't think so. No.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think so. I mean cactus has like a misspelling of the word cactus when you think about it ck to us and it hasn't seemed to hurt them So,
Will Vincent 1:03:26
Carlton, you know me now?
Carlton Gibson 1:03:28
Yeah noumenal which was an error like, so I finished a philosophy degree of two three. And so I'll start you know so the company I mean a name I'll call it Luminant why not reminiscent of Canton all these things I love so much. No one can spell noumenon no one can even say it. So like for years it's like how do you spell it? But then it has I'm not changing I can't be bothered like to some keeping it they Oh, well. That was yes I did learn that the hard way don't have a name that people can't they read the go home.
Will Vincent 1:04:00
No one's No one said Oh can't Yeah, yeah history of it as anyone that
Erin Mullaney 1:04:05
maybe go for like a short name like Aaron, Rachel consulting was my website. So it was Aaron Rachel consulting calm, which feels really long. And finally recently I got the URL Aaron, Rachel Dev. And so I was like, Oh, that's so much easier to tell people to go to now. So that makes me really happy.
Will Vincent 1:04:25
Thank you so much for coming on. I think your resources are fantastic. Again, I love that you have those deep links to the Google Docs and the spreadsheets. That's the kind of stuff that because you have a bunch of things you link to from the top it's not just the accounting than it was five or six. To me, that's that's sort of like, like sanding inside like a bureau or something that's like Steve Jobs analogy or like the back of like a cupboard, like people don't really see that but someone who takes a peek is like, Oh, this person cares about what they're doing. They're doing a really good job. Like, I love that you did that in your talk, because you could have easily spent save those hours but I looked at those sheets. I hope others do as well.
Erin Mullaney 1:05:01
Oh, yeah, yeah. Thanks. I've actually updated the sheets. Maybe I should update my shared sheet to to make it a little bit easier. But yeah, yeah, I think that that I think that layout was nice and easy to follow. So thank you. I'm glad you appreciate it.
Will Vincent 1:05:15
Anything else, Carlton?
Carlton Gibson 1:05:16
No, no, no, just thanks for coming on this great chat. It's, I love that we spend like, you know, a good half hour talking about accounting, because that's, that's freelancing.
Erin Mullaney 1:05:26
Thanks for having me. And I can I say thank you for having such diverse guests on your on your podcast. There are so many coding podcasts out there that don't do that, that
Carlton Gibson 1:05:38
those coding pass code, but those coding coding podcasts don't have the Django community See?
Erin Mullaney 1:05:43
Yes. Thank
you unity. It's the kids.
Will Vincent 1:05:47
Thank you. We do put some thought into it. And it does. We're trying to reflect the Django community. So fun. All right. We're chat Django on Twitter. We have links to Aaron's website and we'll see you all next week.
Carlton Gibson 1:06:03
Take care. Join us next time.