[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to find remote, part-time DevOps consult...
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Ask HN: How to find remote, part-time DevOps consulting positions?
I just launched a part-time consulting business that I'm hoping to
grow. I'm currently working my local contacts, but I'd like to
expand my reach to non-local entities. Ideally, I'd be working
with smaller teams, helping overloaded dev teams make decisions
about DevOps, automation, product architecture, etc, along with
then implementing those decisions. I'm also definitely open to
working with larger orgs, but in my experience, they are less
likely to be open to the part-time consulting option. My question
is: where do I look? Most job boards are FTE only, and the
consulting business seems to rely a lot on "I know a guy who could
help with this." type references. I'm located in VA, USA, so I'm a
long ways away from the typical Silicon Valley startup scene,
although we do have a nice little niche here where I am. Thanks
for any advice or stories you might have!
Author : viertaxa
Score : 10 points
Date : 2021-02-21 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
| Jugurtha wrote:
| > _I 'm also definitely open to working with larger orgs, but in
| my experience, they are less likely to be open to the part-time
| consulting option._
|
| We're a tiny, boutique, consultancy specialized in machine
| learning. We pretty much exclusively work with large
| organizations in diverse sectors and industries and for a variety
| of functions. We work on projects, and we build custom products
| for them, and that requires deep dives into the domains in
| question. It's doable.
|
| > _My question is: where do I look? Most job boards are FTE only,
| and the consulting business seems to rely a lot on "I know a guy
| who could help with this." type references._
|
| Yes. I doubt anything we have worked on was posted anywhere. It
| mostly was meeting executives at an organization, and then
| working with them and their people. I think one additional reason
| is that they didn't really want to advertise the direction they
| were taking. Even with certain entities in some countries that
| are required to go through a public tender process to select a
| partner, they can do a restricted tender and get you on a
| shortlist so it doesn't take forever to happen. Therefore, you
| are right. Networking, connections, referrals. It never hurts to
| consistently deliver, and have recommendation letters from
| organizations you've worked with.
|
| > _I 'm located in VA, USA, so I'm a long ways away from the
| typical Silicon Valley startup scene, although we do have a nice
| little niche here where I am._
|
| Team in Algiers, Algeria. We have a couple of people in Paris,
| France for business purposes (lead generation and customer
| development). Our clients are mostly in Europe, none in Algeria,
| because there are no companies of a size we are used to deal
| with.
|
| Back to your question: "How to find remote, part-time DevOps
| consulting positions?". One very effective way is what I call
| meta-consulting, or "consulswing", or a "gravitational slingshot"
| [oh, these consultants and their douchey names]: your consulting
| company "A" does DevOps for consulting company "B" in another
| field. They like you so much that they'll get you to do DevOps
| for their clients "C", "D", "E", etc.
|
| It is not required that you do DevOps for "B" to begin with, but
| in my experience, people tend to be more enthusiastic talking
| about you when you've done good work for them.
|
| I replied[0] to a similar thread a few days ago. As per my
| answer, we have gone through quite the experience curve and
| refined our processes doing ML projects over the years, then we
| built our machine learning platform[1] to be able to do ML work
| more effectively and consistently. Why does this matter? It
| matters because if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have been in
| a position to even accept more clients unless we scaled by adding
| more people, and then that would be our fixed cost that would
| oblige us to keep doing projects to pay them, or let them go.
|
| As someone who has been a turnaround person[2], the first thing
| we did when the dust settled was to build our platform so we
| wouldn't live through the Christian Bale's weight yo-yo/swing
| equivalent.
|
| All the best,
|
| - [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26179224
|
| - [1]: https://iko.ai
|
| - [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26182988
| viertaxa wrote:
| Also, if anyone has any good advice on pricing your service,
| please drop that here too!
| wizzerking wrote:
| Start with UpWork.com I use this to get side jobs that last
| ususaly 1 - 6 months other sites that i have come across either
| here or elsewhere https://30hourjobs.com/
|
| Other links from HAcker News
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081900
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17987421
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17569294
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563
|
| Best Wishes to y9ou and your loved ones
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