More and more often, those companies look to technology consultants to fulfill their needs. There are real advantages to being a consultant. You make contacts with a lot of different people; you get exposure to many industries; and most important, unlike a software developer in the IT department for a brick-and-mortar company, as a technology consultant, you are the profit center…so long as you are billing. Consulting can be hugely rewarding—but it’s easy to fail if you are unprepared. To succeed, you need a mentor who knows the lay of the land. Aaron Erickson is your mentor, and this is your guidebook. Erickson has done it all—from Practice Leadership to the lowest level project work. In The Nomadic Developer, he brings together his hardwon insights on becoming successful and achieving success through tough times and relentless change. You’ll find 100% practical advice and real experiences—his own and annotations from those in the trenches. In addition, renowned consultants—such as David Chappell, Bruce Eckel, Deborah Kurata, and Ted Neward—share some of their hard-earned lessons. With this useful guidebook, you can Objectively assess whether the consultant’s life makes sense for you Break into thebusiness and build a career path that works Avoid the Seven Deadly Firms by identifying unscrupulous technology consultancies and avoiding their traps and pitfalls Understand the business models and mechanics that virtually all consulting firms use Master secret consulting success tips that are typically left unstated or overlooked Gain a competitive advantage by adding more value than your competitors Continue your professional development so you stay billable even during bad times Profit from both fixed-bid and time-and-materials projects Build a personal brand that improves your resiliency no matter what happens

    Perhaps you tell yourself to just buckle down and get it all done—skip lunch, work a longer day. Maybe you throw your hands up, recognize you can’t do it all, and just begin fighting the biggest fire or greasing the squeakiest wheel.And yet you know how good it feels on those days when you’re working at peak productivity, taking care of difficult and meaty projects while also knocking off the smaller tasks that have been hanging over your head forever. Those are the times when your day didn’t run you—you ran your day. To have more of those days more often, you need to discover what works for you given your strengths, your preferences, and the things you must accomplish.Whether you’re an assistant or the CEO, whether you’ve been in the workforce for 40 years or are just starting out, this guide will help you be more productive. You’ll discover different ways to:• Motivate yourself to work when you really don’t want to• Take on less, but get more done• Preserve time for your most important work• Improve your focus• Make the most of small pockets of time between meetings• Set boundaries with colleagues—without alienating them• Take time off without tearing your hair outArm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

    It has led nothing short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed.Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is irrel-evant. At Netflix, you don't try to please your boss, you give candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don't need approval, and the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested. But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the world.Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of The Culture Map and one of the world's most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial ideologies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from Hastings's own career, No Rules Rules is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.

    But current leadership practices were designed for large, centralized organizations, making them increasingly obsolete. Bob Johansen, who has been projecting future trends from Silicon Valley since 1968, outlines five literacies leaders need to develop to cope with this brave new world. Johansen says leaders need the literacy of projecting themselves into the future and -looking backwards- to make sure they are preparing for potential new developments. They have to cultivate the literacy of voluntarily engaging with their fear in a safe way, using simulations and gaming, so they can immerse themselves in the things they're worried about and deal with them. Distributed leadership is a third vital literacy--leaders need to know how to guide organizations that have no center, grow from the edges, and can't be controlled. In a globalized world they must master multimedia leadership--the literacy of having presence and influence even when they're not physically present. And finally, to stay on top of all this, they need the literacy of creating positive energy: leaders have to be extremely fit, physically and mentally, to keep their own energy and that of their organizations high to cope with this era of extreme disruption. Johansen presents dramatic and mind-expanding examples of how forward-looking organizations are developing these literacies and offers readers sage advice on how to cultivate them.

    Following months of research and study they selected the 100 best examples, gained access to and interviewed the people who’d made the reinventions happen. Generating tens of thousands of pages of transcripts they then began to search for shared traits and lessons learned from the best serial reinventors.Eventually they identified the ten rules for reinvention. Each reinvention rule is featured in its own chapter and vividly illustrated with specific examples and the stories of the people who made it happen.If you’re committed to growth and agree that constant change is required in order to achieve it The Reinventors will be one of the most important books you’ll read.

    Dubbed Billionaire Bachelor Cove because of the resident's single status and income portfolios, The Cove is the perfect place to hide away from the world. But, as the residents soon find out, they can't hide from love. 
 Moonlight Serenade with the Billionaire In a world that’s constantly pushing the next new thing, Annie Reynolds finds beauty and inspiration in the past: history, vintage clothing, and a special love for big band swing music. As caregiver for an aging aunt, Annie finds herself championing a cause to protect Aunt Martha’s home in one of Seattle’s oldest buildings. Billionaire real estate investor Dexter Bolt loves nothing more than a city skyline dotted with cranes—a sign of a booming economy. With his eye on his great-grandfather’s fifteen-story “skyscraper,” Dex is hyped to gut and rebuild it, and he’s not going to let anything stand in his way. Trouble starts when Dexter discovers the elderly woman living in his building and goes head-to-head with her beautiful niece. When an iron-clad lease means his threats don’t work, Dexter takes a different approach to freeing up his building: romancing lovely Annie to his side of the construction line. While Dexter and Annie tour Seattle neighborhoods and beyond, Annie has a secret reason of her own for stalling Dexter’s plans. Will they distract each other long enough to move past their differences, and will a desire to be together prove strong enough to keep them from saying goodbye forever?

    She hadn’t given a second thought to running away with her soulmate. Life had been perfect, until tragedy struck.After waking from her coma, she can’t remember the man she had fallen in love with. She had no idea how she ended up in New York, or became pregnant. All she had left of him were teasing memories that played out in her dreams and an adorable little girl. Even after seven years, Hannah couldn’t help it, she was still in love with a stranger.

    His unemployed accountant father is an outspoken critic of the recent default on the crushing national debt, which brings on most of their problems with the law. But his mother is the real complication when it comes to bringing potential girlfriends over to the house. She’s a fanatical prepper. Though Zach can’t see the imminent danger, his parents whisk his family away to the Great Smoky Mountains in case the entire country crumbles into martial law. When the drones circle like buzzards and the bombs start falling, someone has to be the resistance....

    Grab the first three books in the Shadow and Light series for only 99¢! *** SALE ENDS APRIL 28, 2019 Broke and living in a one-bedroom apartment the size of a closet is not what you’d expect from an elite Hunter like me. But Hunting demons and half-breeds isn’t your average nine-to-five job with benefits. The hours are long and the pay usually sucks. I didn’t think I was going to make rent again until the Council, the group of angel-born who’d shunned me all those years ago, offered me a job—a paying one. I could either tell them to shove it, or take the job. So what’s a gal to do? Take the gig, of course. Everything would have worked out fine if the Council hadn’t forced me to work the case with Jax—an angel-born warrior who happened to be way too pretty to be legal. Turns out Jax has an agenda of his own and is determined to make my life hell, but I’m stuck with him. For now. And things went downhill from there when I found out the demon I’m Hunting is a Greater demon. And yeah, it’s Hunting me too. Swell. *Recommended for mature YA+ due to language The Shadow and Light series are sassy, fast-paced urban fantasy filled with demons, angels, vampires, werewolves, witches, fae, leprechauns, jinn, and shifters. If you enjoy urban fantasy books with a kick-ass heroine and plenty of action, suspense and humor, then you’ll love reading the Shadow and Light series. Grab your copy today! "Dark Hunt is a thrilling paranormal story, which will have you reading late into the night. I devoured it, and I couldn’t stop." "Dark Bound is thrilling, exciting and one of the best paranormal series I’ve read." “Dark Rise is a nail-biting, thrill ride. Welcoming you into a whole new world of Paranormal.”

    She is theirs to breed.As the daughter of an elder, Daya never expected to be given as tribute to the Kavari who protect her people... that is until she was stripped bare to be examined by the huge, handsome warriors.Her defiance during their intimate inspection earns her a humiliating spanking, and an even more shameful climax with her bottom still burning soon follows, but that is only the smallest taste of what she knows is in store for her when her new mates decide it is time to claim and share her.These fearsomely sexy brutes plan to breed her, yet as she is carried back to their village naked after she ran away it isn't the thought of what they're going to do to her that leaves her blushing...It's the fact that her body begs to be conquered.Publisher's Note: Conquering Their Maiden is a stand-alone novel which is the second entry in the Kavari Masters series. It includes spankings and rough, intense sexual scenes. If such material offends you, please don't buy this book.

    But she knows he’s off limits—someone like him would never get involved with someone like her, not when she comes from a family of troublemakers.After the pair kiss at a masked ball, Marin is left wanting Rocco more than ever, but knowing it can’t happen, she has to protect her heart even as she risks breaking his.Rocco can’t help but wonder what life would be like if he was with the beautiful Marin, but he also knows that her family’s status wouldn’t go over well with his parents or with the pack. Choosing Marin as his mate could mean giving up his birthright as the pack’s alpha. And he can’t give up everything to be with Marin. Can he?Books in this paranormal romance collection:Dragon’s EnchantmentFae DreamsWarlock PrinceWolf’s TroublesContent warning: Explicit love scenes and lots of sexy shifters. Intended for mature audiences.

    He needs to go into hiding until he can afford the surgery to get a new face. All the cash he had left, he invested to buy a hacked virtual reality collar off the black market. For a wanted man such as himself, this is the only way to make any kind of money without further jeopardizing his location and identity. There’s a problem though. When he first logs into Eternal War Online and chooses his faction, the network detects his unauthorized device and generates a bunch of critical errors. Immediately, there’s a hotfix that is applied and which erases all his selections. John is sent into the Eternal Battlefield, the highest level PvP area of the game—obviously, with no chance of survival. Limited to one character by collar, John finds himself in a dire situation. With no faction to back him up, he’s a free target for everyone. And with no fighting skills and no gear (except for a pair of cotton briefs), he’s no match for any of the players. John will keep dying and respawning in that impossible location. But as he tries to keep to the shadows and stay alive, he will soon find that his strange predicament is not without benefits. For one, his lack of ties to any faction allows him to loot every corpse—which will lead him to unlock secret classes, like: Salvager and Smuggler. Secondly, while every faction has its own language that prevents players from different groups from talking to each other, he’s not restricted by that constraint and can understand everyone. Unable to join the fight, as every blow sustained results in his instadeath, John will discover that his only chance to start earning some cash will be to partner up with the criminal underworld in the game and set up a salvaging operation. For a fee, he will loot you and return your soul-bound items—allowing you to skip the 6 hour waiting period before they materialize back in your inventory. Also, he will experiment with crafting and creating weapons and enchantments that will start to shake things up in the game. Obviously, not everyone will take kindly to his bold moves and John will attract the wrath of a few powerful players. But then, you can’t expect to please everyone when you’re making a name for yourself as a Merchant of Death!

    But when a stranger offers him an unusual coin, he begins to understand alchemy a little better, and suddenly thinks that it could be a way to make a living after all.Marco’s problem is that fate doesn’t plan for his life to fit that plan, at least not at Algornia’s shop in the Lion City. An evil force is rising, and sending its destructive energy out to scour kingdoms and cities for some unknown purpose. Marco becomes an inadvertent pawn in the machinations of the evil, when he is caught up in the violence and drama of a Corsair raid, and taken away from everything – the Lion City, Algornia’s shop, even Constance the model.There are undreamt of allies and friends and opportunities though, and escape is possible. Starting over a new life is not quite as easy however, as Fate starts to hunt Marco down, demanding that he live up to the challenges that are thrown his way, as a champion begins to emerge to face the brunt force of evil.The Gorgon’s Blood Solution is the first volume in Alchemy’s Apprentice, a new fantasy series by Jeffrey Quyle.

    In the chaos following World War III, the Patriarch of the Church of the Resurrection rebuilt Earth's society into a collection of over 500 independent city-states. With alien technology that gave him complete control over the Earth's orbital space, the Patriarch outlawed war, and introduced the Constructed Reality MMORPG Primacy Online. He only allowed the city-states to engage in military conflicts with one another inside of the game. City-state leaders that attempted to ignore Church Canon were destroyed, along with their armies, by the Church's orbital particle cannons. For more than a thousand years, there have been no wars fought on the Earth's soil. The release of Primacy Online VI: Legacy of Balor signals the beginning of World War IX. Each city-state will lock 50,000 draftees into cryogenic capsules and upload their minds into a character sheathe in the game. Until the armistice conditions have been reached, they will play Primacy Online in War Mode, with the death of the character sheathes meaning their real deaths, but this time there is a twist to the World War. Every still living perma-banned cheater from Primacy Online will be a special draftee for World War IX. They will be organized into a special contingent in the service of the Church of the Resurrection. Patrick Armagh is terminally ill. Like a large number of other Primacy Online players, he is afflicted with an incurable nervous system disorder. He has less than five years to live and should be exempted from the draft, but five years ago, he was given a permanent ban from Primacy Online for cheating. Along with the other perma-banned cheaters, he will be forced to play Primacy Online VI: Legacy of Balor in War Mode, but Patrick's actual method of cheating was never discovered. Morgan Danan, Speaker of the City of Mann, and the acknowledged number one player of Primacy Online has deal for Patrick. With her help and his undiscovered cheat, he has the chance to become a virtual God within Primacy Online. When you are already as good as dead, there is nothing better than the chance to spend your last days as a living god. What could possibly go wrong?

    You’ll explore how four different teams used Kanban to make paradigm-changing improvements in software development. These teams were struggling with overwork, unclear priorities, and lack of direction. As you discover what worked for them, you’ll understand how to make significant changes in real situations.The four case studies in this book explain how to:Improve the full value chain by using Enterprise KanbanBoost engagement, teamwork, and flow in change management and operationsSave a derailing project with KanbanHelp an office team outside IT keep up with growth using KanbanWhat seems easy in theory can become tangled in practice. Discover why “improving IT” can make you miss your biggest improvement opportunities, and why you should focus on fixing quality and front-end operations before IT. Discover how to keep long-term focus and improve across department borders while dealing with everyday challenges. Find out what happened when using Kanban to find better ways to do work in a well-established company, including running multi-team development without a project office.You’ll inspire your team and engage management to make it easier to develop better products.