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Sebastian Varga
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Decent techie, shit at business
I think I am a decent techie. I have been working as an IT Freelancer for 15 years, in IT total for 25 years. I know IT infrastructure from datacenter to cloud inside out and I am a decent IT security guy, too.
But I suck at business scaling. I could try to find and rent out brains and bodies like myself and scale that way (aka consulting firm). But I’m really terrible at networking (the human...
Sebastian Varga
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Is IT Overwhelming You?
As a startup, is the complexity of the IT-Infrastructure overwhelming you? Is it too complicated to run your services? Is it too expensive?
Sebastian Varga
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What is the first thing in the morning you think about?
When you get up in the morning, what's the first business thing you think about? What are you worried about, what do you look forward? What's a problem you need to be solving?
Sebastian Varga
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If you need free help with bootstrapping your cloud for your product, this is your chance
If you're trying to bootstrap your product in the cloud (or don't know, what you need - not everything works best in the cloud), I will help the next 5 people for free.
Background: I'm about to launch my IT-Infrastructure agency .techStack (check my profile) which helps companies designing, deploying and operating their cloud, hybrid or on-premises architecture.
You don't need to leave your...
Sebastian Varga
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What was the biggest mistake you made in your career?
Share your story.
I'll start:
I once rebooted a whole production cluster in Google, while implementing an upgrade. 10,000 servers went down. A few alarm bells went off.
My team was awesome. Everyone chimed in, drained the traffic to the cluster in a couple of seconds, some customers saw a 403 for a few seconds, that was it. We changed processes and procedures and had a good laugh. And I...
Sebastian Varga
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Well, first of all, have you uploaded CVs to chatGPT to get a summary? And then check for inconsistencies? And then ask for possible interview questions?
Another tool I can imagine is to crosscheck CVs across social media platforms etc.
Now, while I write those words, I also realize how creepy this is...
Anyone working on a HR-tech related product?
Emilia Vicini
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Sebastian Varga
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Superpower: Understanding abstract concepts with having only fragmented information
Archnemesis: Describing technology in a concise and brief way...
What's your superpower? And who is your archnemesis?
Emilia Vicini
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Sebastian Varga
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Hiring a senior expert in 20 minutes and get results the next day - how valuable?
Especially in IT, real talent and expertise is rare. So companies are desperately looking for experts, often as contractors. But the process is lengthy, cumbersome and time consuming. You need to write the profile, get candidates, interview. And once you found someone, onboarding can take a month or so, so before you get the first results, you may have spent the better part of 20k $/£/€ - or...
Sebastian Varga
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Hi Neha, great question and exactly what I'm trying to achieve with my Freelance business. As a Freelancer, your only leverage to scale is to increase your hourly rate and to bring in other Freelancers to work alongside with you (which you then charge to your clients). The leverage in Services is similar, you scale with people, that's your main leverage, unless you create a product which is a...
What distinct challenges do service-based companies face compared to product-based companies?
Sebastian Varga
started a discussion
Hiring freelancers in Startups
I would be interested if some of you have hired external freelancers for your startup, and if yes in what capacity?
Where you happy with their performance? Did they boost your growth or were they a drain to your company's budget?
I would love to hear about your experiences.
.techStack is the most efficient way to get industry experts to design and build your optimal IT Infrastructure. Forget expensive freelancers - subscribe at a flat-rate & see results in hours or days, not weeks or months.
.techStack
IT-Infrastructure consulting as flat-rate subscription
Sebastian Varga
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Hey Product Hunt community!
Introducing .techStack - reimagining the world of IT Infrastructure consulting.
The usual way of carrying out an IT project is by hiring freelancers and commencing with prolonged discussions, exhaustive onboarding processes, and endless meetings which aren't just a drain on time - they're a drain on resources and potential growth. And they are insanely expensive....
.techStack
IT-Infrastructure consulting as flat-rate subscription
Sebastian Varga
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It's not about tools. It's about not to use complex and too many of them. Many things on our computers are a distraction. And the worst of them all are meetings. You probably rarely use 80% of the software on your computer and only use 10-20% extensively.
So the best "tool" is this:
- no fancy productivity tool.
- no meetings
- check mails not all the time
What's the best tool you've discovered recently that has significantly boosted your team's efficacy?
Baptiste Amen
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Sebastian Varga
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Our target-customers are companies which require IT-Infrastructure expertise fast and inexpensively and can't afford or don't want to hire the Accenture's and KPMG's of this world, paying 100k+ for questionable results. :-)
🎯 Summarize your target customer in one sentence – I'll Begin!
Deniz
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Sebastian Varga
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Late to the thread, I had it saved for later.
So I'm about to launch exactly that. Other than many who seem to do design work, which I think leans itself perfectly to this, I am trying this for IT-Infrastructure consulting. I've been working in IT-Infra for over 20 years now, and 11 as a freelance consultant.
What I've learned over the last decade is that companies require bespoke solutions...
💡 Unpacking the Product Hunt Trend: Services into Products
Deniz
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Sebastian Varga
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So this one is really interesting for me. When I started as a freelance consultant 12 years ago, it took me forever to get my first client. Now I'm trying to use the productize approach to remove my time constraint. Just done building the website and honestly feeling quite overwhelmed what to do next. Of course reaching out to old customers is probably a good start, I guess
🚀 Product Launch 🧨 Which stage do you find most challenging?
Deniz
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Sebastian Varga
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Started coding at the age of 11, good old assembler on C64 and later Amiga. Then studied law (of all things), hated it, took a job for Berlitz (the language school) in Germany to run their IT. They had an old Pentium 133 MHz server running Novell 4.0. I converted all of that into a proper server infrastructure. Now, 22 years later, I'm trying to productize my consulting business...
What was your first role in the tech industry, and how did it shape your journey 🚐
Deniz
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