Four times does seem excessive, but I have been called back by companies to interview for other positions in the past. I wasn't a fit for some reason in the first instance, but my information was saved and presented again when another opportunity came up that they thought I would be a fit for.
This is the biggest thing I miss from my consulting days. I would never work a 5-day week. It would either be a 3-day or 4-day week, leaving lots of time for travel, family and hobbies.
Sadly, I could never see our clients accepting any business day where we are not available during regular business hours.
Clients are surprisingly willing to deal with that. It may be less of a hard constraint than you think it is, particularly if you train your clients to expect that type of working relationship.
I had an interesting call with a doctor client recently. "I didn't notice a number on your website." "That's correct." "So how am I supposed to get in touch with you?" "I recommend email." "But you only respond to email a day later." "That's correct." "Shouldn't you make yourself more available to your customers?" "With respect, doctor, I'm exactly as available as I wish to be."
You would think she'd be mad after a conversation including that, but she actually left happy, because I was able to fix her problem.
Kind of ironic that a doctor would say that to you. Just try getting a doctor's direct line or cell. It's almost impossible, they have receptionists because they'd be overwhelmed with patients calling them with stupid questions all day if they didn't.
Of course, you could also just hire a remote assistant to field phone calls for you if you wanted.
Maybe I'm parsing your comment incorrectly, but do you mean that you used to have clients that allowed you to make your own schedule but you no longer do? Out of curiosity, what caused the change?
I firmly believe we'll see more people move to a consulting model where they work far fewer hours, are more productive and make as much or more money as before.
This was really exciting news to me, until I read that they would never consider doing this for the higher tiers. We are currently active subscribers for both platforms that we paid for annually in March, which prevents us from switching to this model and being able to spread our costs. We would love to be able to upgrade to a higher tier using a monthly cost rather than a large payment each year, especially for Visual Studio integration.
I agree. It would be great if they added the option for a higher monthly fee that only included the Visual Studio integration with no other features or benefits. It's ridiculous to have to pay at least $1k USD to able to use Visual Studio.
