Interesting Data Gigs # 71: Build your own thing

Open positions at 1-800-FLOWERS, Squarespace, North Labs, DigitalRoute and Apple

Author

Marcos Ortiz
December 01, 2023

In partnership with

If you are not a subscriber of Interesting Data Gigs, join 3630 Data geeks (between this newsletter and LinkedIn) that receive it directly in their inbox each week — it’s free.

Data brokers play a shady game — harvesting your personal data online, and selling it to the highest bidder. No informed consent required.

In fact, every time you accept cookies or download an app from a bad actor, your data could be at risk. Opting out is possible of course — but made difficult by design.

It’d take the average person 304 hours to manually complete all the data removal requests needed to secure their privacy. That’s why the VPN specialists at Surfshark created Incogni: The data removal service that takes care of wiping your personal info from hundreds of databases, reducing the threat of robocalls, scams, and fraud.

Safeguarding your data shouldn’t take up your spare time. Leave it to Incogni — Our readers get 60% off the Incogni annual plan at this link with code PRIVACY.

Hey Data Geek.

Today, I wanted to discuss (again) why you need to build your “small empire”.

Build your own thing now

I don’t know why I felt that, but I knew that if Broadcom would acquire Vmware; the next thing would be a layoff. And unfortunately, I was right.

It’s not fun to be part of a layoff.

Many years ago, I was let go by the company I was working at that time; and to be honest: It was scary. I was in a different city ( far away from my hometown), living on a small rent, and with many bills to pay.

Fortunately, thanks to a good friend of mine (shout out to Yunior), I found a job very soon. This was almost 8 years ago, and at that time I understood I needed to build my own thing and not rely on a job anymore.

I’m not in that position yet, but since then, I've have taken baby steps to reach that goal.

Why I’m talking about this now? It’s sad to see a lot of posts from people who lost their jobs on LinkedIn; many people with mortgages, with big car payments, and with a big family to feed.

My advice? 

Be prepared. Don’t wait for this. Build a side project( a newsletter like this one perhaps?).

It’s not easy but not impossible. Start a Data consulting gig on the side. Charge for your time.

Do it now. You will thank me later.

If you need help, send me a message [email protected] or happy to do an exploratory call with you.

Be prepared, my friend.

Who is hiring this week?

Good luck with your job application

If your company is actively hiring, start getting monthly drops of world-class hand-curated Data Analytics/Software Engineering people who are open to new opportunities.

Right now we have 51 candidates ready for an interview. You can access it today, starting at just $19 USD per month

Recommendation of the week: JSON-LD Database by Fluree on Product Hunt

I helped Fluree’s team to launch its new product. It’s a very interesting product. Here’s the tl;dr:

With security, trust, and global vocabularies, Fluree enables you to compose data across decentralized sources and collaborate on shared data products.

🔹 Open Source/Standards

🔹 Knowledge Graph

🔹 Immutability + Time Travel

🔹 Security Policies Built In

Interesting resources of the week

Tool of the week

Try it and thank me later. You will love it

Marcos out

Join the conversation

or to participate.