NDA? Not interested!
NDAs aren't worth my time or show me you're maybe a bad client.
Nik Spyratos
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Latest posts
Being pro-social on the indie web
TL;DR If you wouldn't say it to someone's face, don't say it online. Someone emailed me a question about an article I wrote back in 2017. I wrote a simplistic response back, and all I got in response was a wordy email to tell me I'm wrong in many ways. I don't know about you, but that's not pro-social behaviour on many levels: I don't know you from a bar of soap, and you immediately want to launch…
It's okay to stay where you are.
Original title was: "It's okay to just be an individual contributor" We often get an engrained sense that we must always evolve in our careers. Must get the next engineering level, or must chase the next salary bump, or must climb the ladder into management. It's exhausting at times. It's also not necessarily the best move for everyone. Not everyone has the same ambitions. More importantly, it's…
Instead of radical changes, consider gradients of change
In an as-yet-unpublished post, I've written about thinking of some life & career changes. Part of pondering that has been realising that not everything needs to be a radical shift. You can build your own gradient of change from your current position, and see what you're comfortable with trying out before committing to any bigger move. Let's work on a practical example. I'm currently working as a…
You don't need to be a web master to build digital businesses
This idea isn't groundbreaking. The novelty is in being able to realise this concept in myself, as someone who is capable of doing all these "professional" things . With the ubiquity of low/no code web building services, I've seen lots of small creators pop up that purely use these services without any sort of "professional front" to hide their usage. In other words: You don't need a custom web…
Content is king, but does anyone want to consume it?
Everyone wants to put out more content, but does anyone actually want to consume more content? It's very easy to get the impression these days that the best thing you can do for your personal benefit online, is post content to build a following. It's easy to fall into the trap of pushing out volume for growth-at-scale (which also usually means low effort content) in this idea. Personally, I try to…
Building global wealth from South Africa - The Complete Guide
My compendium post for South Africans on forex, investing globally, getting paid from abroad as an individual and business, and tax. All in one!
Full guide to working for foreign companies from South Africa
A detailed guide to the ins and outs of being a remote worker for a non-South African company.
Tiny but Mighty: My favourite kind of tool
I consider myself a bit of a minimalist. I like to do more with less. Perhaps that's not precise enough. I like to do more with more precise tools . Sometimes that means physically smaller. Sometimes it means handling only niche use cases. Sometimes, it means not using things. Sometimes it means going with pen and paper! Why am I like this? Even I barely know. It's a mesh of many reasons. One side…
Weekend tinkering: Building FrankenPHP Laravel binaries
Playing around with Laravel binary builds using FrankenPHP