Let me be clear that I don’t know much about taxes so anything I tell you may be wrong, however, I know two things for sure: You need to pay quarterly estimated taxes, and they’re going to be about 40% of revenue (1099 basis).

I guess another thing I know is that there’s 1099 basis (employer withholds no taxes) and W2 basis (employer withholds some taxes). I don’t have a clue what you need to withhold on yourself (you still do) if you’re W2 as I’ve never worked on that basis. There’s plenty of info on teh internets, but you should maybe ask your tax guy/gal.

In terms of pay, this means that you’d better be quoting a high enough rate on 1099 to cover the taxes, plus any additional costs you have now compared to when you weren’t contracting, such as health insurance. Did I say this would be fun? No.

You’ll probably want to start talking to somebody who’s good with taxes, because you may need to be logging your mileage and keeping all manner of receipts that will help cut down your bill come April. And find out the advantages of an S Corp or LLC, which can help even more. Employers seem to like contractors who are S Corp or LLC.

If anybody has info about general liability insurance, I hope they comment. I had one contract that required GL, and when my insurance company said they’d never heard of it, the employer was nice enough to strike it from the contract. That’s another thing: anything you’re not comfortable with in the contract, ask. They may be happy to change it. If I was doing content that could hurt somebody (medical instructions?) I’d be hunting down that GL with a lot more enthusiasm.

Negotiating rate: How bad do you want this gig? How perfect are you for it? Can they get somebody else easily? What sense do you get about budget? All of these questions come into play when you negotiate the rate. I had one client flat out say, “Oh, we can’t afford that. We can only afford X.” I felt she was sincere (she seemed bummed) and I wanted experience in that sector, so I took the lower rate.

Almost everybody I’ve worked with so far has listened to my rate and come back with an offer of about 5 to 10% less. In some cases (I really like the people/opportunity/location/whatever) I’ll do it. In others, I have had the sense that budget was not an issue; they just always come back and ask you to work for less. In each of those cases I have politely reiterated my rate, and they’ve always come back and said OK.

I heard a rule of thumb years ago: every job you bid, go $5 higher on your rate. When you start getting turned down, you’re too high! Sounds good, but how many jobs do you want to bid? And how do you know you’re not starting way too low or high? One hint can be gleaned from what agencies are advertising. My first job out of college was at a temp help agency. Depending on the role, we charged the client 10 to 15 % more than we were paying the worker. I have no idea how valid these percentages are in various states and present day. But if you look at jobs via agencies that have similar experience and education requirements to your resume, you can probably add 10 to 15% and use that as a starting rate.

A note on working for agencies: I haven’t worked through an agency, but here’s a hint. Not all of this 10 to 15%  is profit; there are various taxes and overhead the agency takes out of their cut. However, some of it *is* profit and you may sometimes be able to use that to your advantage. The agency may be willing to take a smaller percentage and give you a higher rate if circumstances are perfect. If they really want or need to keep the client and the client really likes you, they may take a cut. Alternatively, they can sometimes negotiate a higher net rate with the client, giving both of you a better deal. An agency should not be offended if you discuss a negotiation. If you get politely rebuffed, however, I don’t recommend pushing it.

A final note: I always try to make sure that I do something for free for each client. If you find out there’s a piece of collateral they’d like but don’t have budget for, do it on a weekend and let them know you’re not billing for it. I had one client somehow blow away the file structure I’d set up before I left when the project ended. I went in for a few hours and rebuilt it, making clear I was doing it because I enjoyed working with them and wanted them to succeed, as opposed to billing them. Should you work 20 hours free? Probably not. I usually do 3 – 8 hrs, depending on what they need and how long I’m there. They will remember me fondly. And I believe that usually ends up being paid forward.

So what do you rely on? This will be no surprise:  Your network. And social networking. In tandem. I hope you have already started networking. Like, X years ago, X being in high school or earlier. And while networking *can* mean keeping the contact information of colleagues you trust and admire, and it *can* mean occasionally lifting a beverage with people in your network, actually nurturing your network means doing things for others in your network whenever it’s conceivably possible, in advance of when you might need them.

In his book Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi points out that your network is working optimally when you have laid the groundwork in advance. Then, when you need an introduction, a recommendation, advice, or even venture capital, your network will be primed to support you. This may seem a little calculating. But you can’t approach it from a perspective of “I’ll help Fred so later he’ll owe me one.” Instead, I get a lot of joy knowing I may have helped someone, and it’s almost always turned out to be a surprise later on when they are able to help me, often indirectly. I hope that when you enter the job market, it’s with the knowledge that you’ve been able to help others. The mythical Karma train *does* come back around. I don’t want to belabor this as there are many better sources for networking than me. I’ll just say that I have been surprised (and delighted) many times by the crazy ways the network helps. I had a gig that I got by chatting with the girlfriend of my boyfriend’s second ex. We had referred some work to the second ex. xoxoxo, Karma!

But you already surely know about networking. How can networking work with social networking? I have played with Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn. There are many others, but these three do it for me.

Twitter: I’m not sure it’s a good idea to mix business and pleasure on twitter. That’s because, if you want people to follow you, they need to know what they’re getting. Are they following somebody who knows a lot about UA or somebody who likes to cook and go to restaurants? It’s confusing if they’re interested in one but seeing tweets on both. Since I’m not the type to tweet (or even blog very often) about UA, it’s pretty much a toy for me, and I enjoy following people. On to the more useful ones!

Facebook: My FB friends are from HS, even elementary school, college, sorority, almost all former employers, current employers, and even friends of FB friends who I’ve friended via comments. Some of these folks are very helpful networkers, so when I’m looking for a gig, or for someone to fill a gig I don’t want, I post it as my status. I make sure it stays there for about 24 hours, and then I change it up. You never know when your friend who’s in the insurance business will need something edited. Also, they’re your friends; they should know if you’re lookin’ for work. OTOH, this is not the source of the real pay dirt.

LinkedIn can connect you with any target company you want. You just need an appropriately constructed network. Again, don’t wait til you need it to get started. I’m sure there are excellent competitors to LinkedIn. I just found LI first. Your reach with LI is based on your own personal collection of contacts. If everyone you are linkedin to is from one sector or company (such as infosec) guess what? You aren’t going to have great contacts in telco, for example. I *could* be directly linkedin to 50% or more of the colleagues from one particular former employer, but I quit seeking links after about the first 70, because at that point, I knew I could contact anybody I wanted via my existing links. I realized that I needed to link to people who were in completely different businesses and industries: consulting, telco, manufacturing, etc. because that is how you extend your personal reach into a vast number of companies. Also, link in to people from your HS (if local) and college. More reach.

There are tomes of “how-to” use linked in info, but I’ve yammered on long enough, so I’ll tell you the most important way it’s helped me. I read publications like Atlanta Business Chronicle and e-newsletters like TAG and any industry-specific pubs of industries I’m interested in. When I see articles about a company that’s got great revenue news or is in the press for whatever reason, I search on linkedin to see who in my network knows somebody at that company. I ask the person in my network for an intro, which includes the text of the email I would be sending their friend. In the email to their friend, I do NOT say I’m looking for gigs. In fact I do this *all the time*, even when I’m not looking for gigs (see earlier bit about casting your bread). I simply mention that I’ve seen blah blah blah in publication X, found it and am interested in Period. Every time I’ve done this, I’ve gotten invited to link in to the person. Although it’s never directly resulted in a gig, I have been contacted by a new contact’s contacts. One note: once you get past a first-degree connection, you need to be very aware how little you know this person and the limitations they need to put on their recommendation of you. When that happens, I ask to do lunch and get to know them a little. After all, according to Keith Ferrazzi, you should never eat alone anyhow

* LinkedIn clearly states, and others I know believe, that you should never link in to anyone you don’t “know and trust”. That’s a valid stance, however, I think you can expand your reach to people you don’t know well and still maintain your integrity as a referrer by carefully defining your limited knowledge of the person, should you be asked for a connection, introduction, or reference.

Finally, as a little note, I do not advise using the sites where people can bid on gigs. I’ve heard folks on TV stating that’s a good way to get experience (maybe, if you have none) or a foot in the door, but these jobs have such bad pay rates, you’re better off spending that time on your network, or working at Starbucks. You’re only as good as your portfolio, and how good can samples be that somebody is only willing to pay $5/hr for?

Note: I know there are plenty of folks out there who love contracting for multiple clients, but this article is for people who are basically refugeeing out of “permanent” jobs. I would love comments from happy contractors to help explain the good aspects of contracting. I can think of many reasons I am enjoying contracting: learning new things, meeting a lot of great people (bigger network!), generally having some flexibility in hours and location, and many more. On the other hand, there are business issues to handle that you never deal with as a “permanent” employee.

First off, for those coming away from a full-time, “permanent” job, you may well be able to get more of the same! In the last couple of months, I’ve been hearing of more full-time, perm slots. This is quite different than the landscape for the past couple of years, especially in industries that are comprised of a lot of startups, like infosec (my area of expertise) and other tech sectors.

I was told by someone who would be in a position to know, that in the Fall of ’08, when the financial collapse was becoming obvious, virtually every CEO who was living off venture capital got a call from their VCs saying, “the money you thought needed to last you until the summer now needs to last you until next year.” I’m not as sure about what was happening in non-vc-reliant businesses, but essentially every open requisition suddenly became contractor budget instead. And it’s stayed that way until recently. Hopefully this is turning around, and anecdotal evidence says it is.

So for the time being, you may be a contractor! But here’s more news: for the most part, you’ll be looking at either short contracts or part-time contracts. That’s extremely scary unless you have a rich mom or significant other. However, I have absolutely found that it is not all that difficult to cobble two or more contracts together to maintain full-time hours, or more. In fact, I have “given” more than one of my contracts to colleagues because I have had too much work. I have also been turning things down, because there’s too much work. In another post, I’ll blog about where all this work is coming from.

Note: I have always wanted to serve jury duty, but now that I finally got called, I’m a contractor. So I did not want to serve at this time. Hopefully next time, I will be an employee and can serve.

Don’t worry about being exactly on time. I arrived 20 mins early. They will be happy to accept you late.

Bring a comfy chair, the kind you take to your kids’ lacrosse games or whatnot.  The reason will become clear later in the post when I go over the chain of events.

Your jury summons states that there’s  free parking and a shuttle from the Ted. Screw that. Park in the Underground Atlanta lot for under ten bucks.

You will know where to go. Just follow all the other people. It will be obvious.

Take a snack that contains both protein and carbs, along with a water bottle. You’re going to need sustenance if you don’t get dismissed.

Pray to get dismissed.

They show you a video that thanks you for your civic duty and explains nifty things like the difference between jail and prison. This is not helpful compared to knowing what will happen if your group goes on to voir dire (the part where they try to determine which 12 of the 60 in your group to select for the jury). That’s why I’m posting this.

So, here’s how the day went:

7:40 arrive and go through security, including metal detectors and potential frisking. Go to the jury assembly room and make yourself comfy-ish. It’s really not bad. You will look back on it wistfully later. Check in. Watch the video. Read. They have reading material in case you run out.

9:45 several other groups lucked out and were released. Evidently, being confronted with the specter of a Real Live Jury motivates previously intractable defendants to plea bargain (criminal) or settle (civil). My group gets a 20 minute break. You’re allowed to go down to the “cafeteria” or get items from the vending machines.

11:00 My group is called. I am told I am number 21, and I need to remember that. We are told to go upstairs to courtroom 8A and wait in the hallway.

In the hallway, a clerk attempts to get us to line up in order of our numbers. It’s not easy. People have forgotten their numbers, and the clerk must speak softly because there’s a trial ongoing in the courtroom next door. As she places you in line, the clerk hands you a laminated card with your number on it. Everyone wonders aloud: why didn’t they hand us these downstairs when they gave us our numbers, and then tell us to go line up in order? Gang members abound, apparently present to support whichever of their brethren is on trial next door. You are now thankful for the metal detectors downstairs.

Noon We are still waiting in the hallway, which has a cement floor with a thin coating of industrial carpeting. My feet hurt and I want to sit down. People begin to sit on the floor against the walls. Shortly thereafter, they get us to file in to the courtroom.

The defendant and his attorney and the prosecutors (2) attempt to make eye contact with each of us, presumably to identify anybody they know or people who look like they might be sympathetic. The judge comes in and tells us how grateful everybody is that we’re doing our civic duty (as if we had a choice). The judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney begin voir dire, asking the group as a whole questions. If you feel the question pertains to you, you raise your card. They will interrogate you more later. Questions are things like, “Have you ever hired a defense attorney?” and “Are you prejudiced against the defendant’s race in a way that would prevent you from reaching a verdict based on the facts?” Plenty of cards went up for questions like the latter, either from people who were bold enough to identify themselves as racist (in front of a black judge) or from people who had a race-based escape strategy.

Note: This will NOT help you get out early. Every single member of our jury group would be there until the bitter end, regardless of how they answered the voir dire questions. That’s probably the big takeaway from this posting. If you make it to voir dire, make yourself at home. NOBODY will tell you this at the courthouse, allowing hope to survive. Just go ahead and abandon all hope when you get your number.

1:00 Jurors 1-12 stay behind for voir dire part 2. Numbers 13-24 (my row) get an hour lunch break. Everybody else is told to report at 4.  Non-yummy lunch in the “cafeteria” ensues.

2:00 Back to the hallway for some more waiting, then we’re called in to sit in the 12 actual juror chairs. We stand up in turn and answer a series of questions printed on the back of our juror cards: Name, Neighborhood, Occupation, Spouse’s occupation, children, ever been a victim of a crime?, how ’bout your family and friends?, ever been involved in a trial?

After you answer that, the judge, Defense Attorney, and prosecutors get to ask you personal questions. In front of the other 11 jurors. People volunteered info like having been arrested for posession, having confusion problems and health problems (“irritable bowels” one lady said), etc. They also had to share their stories of crimes committed against their persons. These were primarily further explorations of the questions people had answered positively during part 1 of voir dire.

It quickly becomes obvious that people’s escape strategies are, for the most part, going to fail. The judge was very calm and impressive. If you insisted that you were a racist (or whatever) he basically took you down the path of, “You’re going to be presented with facts and a simplified version of the law that pertains to the case. Are you able to take the facts and decide which side of the specific law they fall on?” It’s pretty hard to beat that.

Our row finishes, and we file out into the infernal hallway. I spent the next 3 hours sitting on my coat, my tailbone killing me.

5:20 We all file back into the courtoom. It takes about 25 minutes for the lawyers to sign off on all the papers confirming which 12 of us are lucky winners. The judge returns, thanks us again, and reads off the 12 names. It’s like being in the Miss America pageant when they announce the top 10, only backward: I count off the number of remaining spots on my fingers, praying not to hear my name. Hurrah! 13 names are called (13′s the alternate) and mine’s not one of them. It’s about 6:00 and I am free to go.

Why did I get not get selected? I think it’s a combination of having a teenage son coming up in April for a trial for some school misconduct and “hardship”. The judge made a big deal about inconvenience not being the same as hardship. I explained that I was a contractor and would not be paid for the duration of the trial, but more importantly, we have a release date 5 days hence, and it would create a hardship for the entire company to be without my services at this time. They could easily get somebody to replace me, and I’d lose my job. I’m not sure which of these reasons was more compelling, or whether it was a combination or something else altogether.

That’s it, for what it’s worth. I hope it helps somebody out. I’m serious about taking the camp chair.

Here’s what I did:

I went onto the master page of a 1-column document (no side-heads) and added 2 new text flows. Be sure to choose “Template for Body Page Text Frame”, name them B and C, specify 1 column each, and don’t select automatically connect to existing text flow (which is not on the same window as the other selections). When you draw the text frames, leave a reasonable gutter, at least .25″.

The result is that you can control the text in the left and right text frames (B and C) by clicking in the columns, and you can add graphics that span both columns by clicking in the gutter. Needless to say, this is very cludgy! So far, I’m controlling the placement of graphics with pilcrows! I don’t think you’d want to do this for anything longer than about 4 or 6 pages, like my brochure. And in a perfect world, I’d get a different tool for this (InDesign?).

1. When I loaded up, you asked me if I wanted to use the structured version or the unstructured one. So you know which one I use. Quit showing me search results for both. The results list becomes way too long, with lots of redundant entries.

2. I just need a hint sometimes about where to get started, but you always skip the first step in the directions. You do it so consistently, I think it’s part of your style sheet to do so. Here’s today’s example:

I want to use the Text Frame tool, but the help doesn’t tell me where to find it. It’s on the Tools Palette, eh? How do you find that? I finally found it by accident. It’s (interestingly) located on the Graphics menu. Graphics. It’s not the authors’ fault the Text Frame Tool is on the Graphics menu, but I think I would have said something to myself like, “Dang! Nobody’s ever going to find it there, so I’d better deal with that explicity in the help.” (And, no, the hypertext link after that sentence in the screenshot does not help.)

Next up, if anybody can find the Add New Text Frame dialog box, please let me know in the comments. If you follow the directions in this topic or the 2 that show up when you search specifically on “Add New Text Frame dialog”, you get the Create New Text Frame dialog box, and it doesn’t have the same fields as described for ANTF dialog box.

I have spent maybe an hour trying to find tools that I know the specific names of, because a) too many results show up due to my first whinge, above, and b) they’ve skipped the first step in the topics that do seem relevant.

OTOH, you don’t want to clutter up your procedures by prefacing them with 3 or 4  – or even just one – redundant getting started step. I solve this problem by prefacing procedures with a single navigation line that gets them to wherever I think they will be starting from. Something like:

Navigation: Policies > Management > Edit > select the policy you want to edit

(or sometimes Select the policy you want to edit may be #1 in the proc)

I’m interested in hearing about other ways people have handled this.

However, I do feel the need for a brief statement of what the product is intended to do (not a big marketing blurb), and a description of the scope and intended audience of the guide, and — finally — information about what other user assistance resources are available. 

Interestingly, I’m looking at an Administrator guide that has that information on the front cover. Turn that page, and what do you have? Content! (Actually, the table of contents.) There’s not a single page of preface. It’s nice. I think I may go with that. 

Off-topic: This publication is clearly intended to be viewed online. The left and right margins are about .5″ It looks fine online, but it’s pretty annoying as a printout. The content is lovely, though. It’s been a long time since I read a user manual and thought the content was lovely.

Here, there’s a pretty small amount of documentation in place. When you take redundancy and un-helpful screenshots into account, we’re probably talking about 100 pages. We expect that to grow considerably, so I would really like to talk them into buying FrameMaker or (maybe) the Technical Communication Suite.

I know why *I* prefer FrameMaker: the ease with which it supports the template I created, which is Information Mapping-like in some ways, if I’ve got to narrow it down to just one reason. Designing the same template in Word is difficult and has some elements that simply cannot be reproduced.

I’d love to hear what pfoduct you prefer for longer technical documents and why (longer being more than 30 pages, to me).

Here’s a link to an article comparing Frame and Word. Word doesn’t come out looking too great It’s a little dated; some of his complaints about Frame have been addressed in more recent versions.

http://ivanwalsh.blogspot.com/2006/04/microsoft-word-compared-against-adobe.html

Maybe I’ll actually have time to blog now

Whatever the reason, people seem to get VERY PASSIONATE about their bad travel experiences. Mine? How ’bout the support guy named “Chris” in Madras informing me that I am “Veeeerrrrryyyy happpppeeeee” that Delta took my miles transfer money instantly but would not be transferring the miles for a couple of weeks, or our interesting and loosely defined-by-Delta weekend in Cleveland*.

Bill Baker is so passionate about his bad experience with JetBlue that he’s suing them in small claims court and blogging about it! What fun. In Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, he explains how the internet made it possible for vengeance to be wrought (against all likelihood) after a cell phone was stolen. Let’s see how Bill does vs JetBlue now that he’s got Time’s Person of the Year (You) and me on his side.

* Ahh, Cleveland. It’s actually a fun city, with many inner-city neighborhoods experiencing a revitalization that extends to their nightlife…or so we hear. We were flying up Thursday, early enough to hit a jazz club and then explore some cool ‘hoods before heading to rural Ohio later Friday for an event. When we got to the departure gate, we were all informed that there’d be a 20 minute delay b/c the crew was coming off another plane. OK, cool. Some time later, we were all informed that they had LOST THE CREW. They thought they were in the building; it’d be another 20 minutes. Long story short, they 20 minutes-ed us into several hours during which they found the crew! they lost them agan! they were getting another crew! the other crew was making its way to us! Finally we boarded and prepared to push back. And a maintenance guy appeared in the front of the plane and had some convo with the cockpit. Guess what? They had taken so long to get us a crew, that the plane would not make it back to Atlanta in time for a government mandated service window. The pilot actually took a stand for the forces of good; he came on and said something about it not being fair and him taking us to Detroit anyway (what???) and they’d just have to service the plane there. He lost. Delta asked us all to troop a couple of concourses down to another plane we could use. At this point, it was going to be too late to go out in Cleveland, so we tried to rebook for the morning, figuring we’d save the cost of a night’s hotel, get a good night’s sleep at home, and start fresh in the morning. Oh, no, Delta would not allow that. So we go to the other concourse, and guess what? We lost the crew. We could see the plane out on the tarmac, but all its lights were off and there were no Delta employees anywhere. In the end, we got to Cleveland around 2 am, on a flight originally scheduled to arrive around 6:30 pm.

I asked James why they couldn’t get us a plane/crew and delay a different flight, minimizing the pissed-off-ness of both crowds. He wisely explained that it was in Delta’s best interest to REALLY piss off the passengers who were already pissed off than to slightly piss off more people. He explains it better.

But wait, there’s more!

Our return trip was scheduled for Sunday evening around 6:30. Yes, they do a round trip from Atlanta to Cleveland and back. Or they would if they ever got their shit together. Sure enough, the plane from Atlanta was delayed. The gate agent told us it would probably depart around 2 am (how often do they screw this route up that they know what horrific time it will actually occur?) When pressed, the agent admitted that the chances of a plane flying from Cleveland to Atlanta at 2 am were “very small”. He agreed to put us up at the Fairview Park Ramada, which includes a club called “Froggys”. I’m not sure when those photos were taken, but it was evidently before the mold/beer/cigarette smoke/filth/bedbugs/Stevens party arrived. But at least they were finally honest about the fact that Delta does not give a crap about its Atlanta/Cleveland route.

That’s one of Bill’s points on his blog: if you aren’t going to service a route properly, don’t service it at all. Rock on, Bill!!!

Originally found on brandflakesforbreakfast.