[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term w...
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Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?
Hello HN In a short form question: If you do, where do you look
for a short time projects? I'd like to put my skill set to use and
work on a project, I'm available for 6-9 months. The problem seems
to be for me, that I cannot find any way of finding such project.
I'm quite skilled, I have 15 years of experience, first 3 as a
system administrator, then I went full on developer - have been
full stack for 2 of those years, then switched my focus fully on
the backend - and ended up as platform data engineer - optimizing
the heck out of systems to be able to process data fast and
reliably at larger scale. I already went through UpWork, Toptal
and such and to my disappointment, there was no success to be
found. Do you know of any project boards, or feature bounty
platforms, that I could use to find a short time project? Thank
you for your wisdom :)
Author : shinypenguin
Score : 185 points
Date : 2025-03-13 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Now is not a great time to be looking for this kind of work
| unfortunately.
| sbrother wrote:
| That's not true in the AI/ML space. But for everything else I
| would agree.
| sukiorigami wrote:
| I think your network is the best place to look for this sort of
| work. Sometimes people will reach out to me with short term
| projects which is the best way to get gigs like this. Maybe start
| looking at your colleagues on linkedin, see what they are up to,
| and think of ways to contribute to what they are working on. The
| best people to contact in this scenario are leadership and
| decision makers. A SWE II isn't gonna help you much but a CTO at
| an early stage startup might be a good person to send a DM if
| they are friends with you (or even if they aren't!) :)
| thekevan wrote:
| I've found when people ask this question, it's usually because
| they don't have a network to ask. Or, right or wrong, they just
| don't like the social aspect of going to their friends for
| work.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| To be fair, there's a good argument for never mixing friends
| and business. You wouldn't want a project that goes wrong
| (which is a risk of doing business and somewhat expected and
| budgeted for on both sides) to jeopardize an friendship, and
| similarly you wouldn't want someone exploiting your
| friendship to get an unfair advantage in business (that they
| will often not reciprocate if the situation was reversed).
| deadbabe wrote:
| Short term work is more plentiful when money is easy and there's
| a lot of entrepreneurial activity going on due to some recent
| catalyst such as mobile app platforms or the dotcom boom etc.
|
| Right now we're in the AI boom and some people may be making
| money peddling agentic solutions but money is tight and
| businesses are hurting.
|
| It's also hard to trust a short term dev who doesn't really need
| the money. You have no leverage over them. They sort of just do
| as they please.
| throwanem wrote:
| Hard to trust someone who takes that perspective on the
| relationship, too. I'll work for a control freak if I need the
| money bad enough, but you're not going to get the best I can
| offer if you don't have the sense to keep a loose rein.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > It's also hard to trust a short term dev
|
| You said the unpopular but honest thing.
| magicstefanos wrote:
| > who doesn't really need the money
|
| Finally someone says it
| praptak wrote:
| > It's also hard to trust a short term dev who doesn't really
| need the money. You have no leverage over them. They sort of
| just do as they please.
|
| On one hand I agree. On the other hand I cannot help but
| contrast this with how free market capitalism is advertised:
| free agents entering free mutually beneficial contracts at
| their own free will, everyone benefits. Then suddenly when the
| worker is actually free to leave then it becomes a problem.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It's not a problem if the worker is offering a commoditized
| service. Problem is a dev isn't really a commodity. Their
| value increases the more they work on your application and
| build familiarity, which isn't easily replaced. Sometimes a
| short term dev can construct a system only they truly
| understand and then you're entirely at their mercy. Now you'd
| have to keep an ongoing arrangement with them for future
| support.
|
| It's a similar issue with long term devs too. Employers
| hoping to squeeze their devs for 40 hours a week consistently
| are going to be very disappointed if they found out how much
| their devs actually work. What you're really paying them for
| is to stick around so when shit hits the fan or you need new
| features fast you already have the best people for the job
| ready to go, no need to hire some contractor and go through
| an onboarding.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| There's a common belief, especially among older people -- and
| not just employers -- that the natural way of things is for
| there to be a larger number of workers competing for a
| smaller number of jobs, and if that ratio gets flipped,
| something's gone wrong. They consider it unseemly for the
| worker to have the upper hand, especially if it might raise
| prices for them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| This belief is fairly central to capitalism, and capitalist
| societies are actively managed to maintain the described
| conditions.
| dpz wrote:
| Most ad-hoc work I've picked up has been people I've previously
| worked with/for. Maybe worth reaching out to people you have a
| prestablished relationship with
| limbero wrote:
| I did this a few years ago and the winning recipe was a shameless
| (i.e. deeply shameful) linkedin post where I pretty much just
| summarized my skillset and explained that I was looking for a
| senior engineer equivalent of a summer internship, with no chance
| of extension.
|
| Got me 3-4 offers. None of the offering companies had ads out for
| roles like this, so this was pretty much the only way.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Why's this shameful, exactly?
|
| There's no shame in saying you're available to work.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| IMHO selling yourself (selling anything, really) is a bit
| demeaning. But this is probably a class affectation on my
| part, not real moral intuition.
| jraph wrote:
| Don't almost everyone sell themselves? Many people, as
| employees, sell themselves for 5 days per week, every week,
| except days off.
|
| And everybody buys stuff, and therefore relies on people
| selling stuff.
|
| The only way I see we could avoid being exposed to selling
| would be do have a different way to organize the economy /
| the society.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think it's the self-promotion part that's seen as slimy
| and shameful. Yes, as an employee I trade my time for
| money, but I don't write blog posts at the office about
| what kind of transformational and high-impact work I'm
| capable of, and about this week's top-10 coding life-
| hacks, and how I can single-handedly turn your project
| around from life support to on-schedule deployment.
|
| Admittedly, the people who are good at this tend to get
| promoted and quickly end up as Directors and VPs... It
| just... ugh, turns my stomach.
| jraph wrote:
| Oh, I see. Well, I guess I'm fine with the self promotion
| (which you do a bit to get hired even as an employee), as
| long as it's honest, polite, done a the right place and
| not annoying.
|
| I'm not on LinkedIn (and I hope I won't need to be there
| the day I want to freelance) but I guess people are there
| for exactly this stuff, so posting an ad for yourself
| there is only fair, I suppose.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > but I don't write blog posts at the office about what
| kind of transformational and high-impact work I'm capable
| of, and about this week's top-10 coding life-hacks, and
| how I can single-handedly turn your project around from
| life support to on-schedule deployment.
|
| That's not at all what the comment above was suggesting.
|
| Saying you're open for work and offering services is not
| slimy.
|
| I think you're confusing LinkedIn slop with offering
| services. They're not the same thing.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Those people are good at imitating the form of what
| curious and highly motivated by things beyond money do
| naturally.
|
| Early programming blogs were written by people who had
| thoughts they just needed to share with the world.
| Because they were highly confident and self motivated
| people, they also often ended up being sought after and
| making a lot of money.
|
| Then later others tried to turn the process into a
| formula they could use to increase their earning power,
| even if they were writing about things they weren't
| passionate about.
| limbero wrote:
| You put it better than I could have done myself!
|
| My post was truthful, useful for both me and the
| potential employers, and I know it's what linkedin is
| for. Objectively, I did nothing wrong. And still I was
| really embarrassed by it, and deleted it after I landed a
| job.
|
| I just _really_ don 't like tooting my own horn. I was
| raised to prize humility, I guess it's quite common in
| Sweden.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| As one of the other replies (nested too deep to reply to
| directly) said, many of us were raised to be humble and
| self-effacing, especially about skills related to innate
| abilities like intelligence. So it feels unseemly to say,
| in essence, "Hey, you should hire me because I'm great at
| X, Y, and Z." It feels weird enough to list skills and
| accomplishments in a resume, but overtly selling yourself
| feels wrong.
|
| Maybe people like us should team up in pairs and promote
| each other. I'd have no problem talking up a colleague I
| knew to be talented, far more forcefully than I'd ever do
| for myself.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Selling ANYTHING is demeaning? So you believe the only non-
| demeaning way to live would be to live entirely self-
| sufficiently, making and growing everything yourself?
| margalabargala wrote:
| There are multiple definitions of the word "selling". The
| poster is referring to what salespeople do, not what a
| grocery store does.
| sgc wrote:
| Grocery stores are experts at sales tactics throughout
| the store. All that fruit does not look so beautiful in
| the field, and virtually every store is trying to develop
| their 'ethos' to capture the customers with enough money
| to be able to care about that.
|
| There is no way to avoid selling in life. Otherwise, at
| the least, you will be constantly overlooked. There
| should be no shame in it. The shame is only when sales
| replaces instead of presents the value proposition you
| are offering.
| anon7725 wrote:
| There is a trivial defeat for nearly all grocery store
| sales tactics: make a shopping list.
|
| Engaging with certain salespeople is an altogether
| different proposition. In order to buy a car, you are
| forced to interact with multiple odious people who have
| ripping you off as their sole objective. Thats what I
| think of when I think of a "salesperson". See also
| mattress stores, wireless carrier "retention"
| departments, HVAC installers, etc.
| cpfohl wrote:
| I hear and understand that gut feeling. Whenever I hit that
| particular feeling, though, I remind myself that it's only
| shameful if you're knowingly selling something that can't
| deliver what you're promising.
| hathawsh wrote:
| I can understand what you're saying, but there's a
| different way to look at it. Imagine yourself in the
| future. You're in a position of leadership and people want
| your advice. Let's say a student asks you how they should
| get a high level job in a competitive marketplace. What
| would you say?
|
| Personally, I would tell the student they should be
| ambitious and tell people what their skills are. They
| should ask for responsibilities and compensation. They
| should tell people that they are worth the risk.
|
| If you agree with me about giving that advice, then you
| should now put yourself in the place of the student.
| Shouldn't you receive the same advice? Shouldn't you be
| ambitious and ask people to give you responsibilities and
| compensation? If so, then you can understand why selling
| yourself is actually important and there's nothing immoral
| or slimy about it. It feels wrong sometimes, but that
| feeling may not be aligned with reality.
| jimbokun wrote:
| You can remain dignified and poor or become demeaned and
| rich.
| lazyeye wrote:
| "Pessimists are often right, optimists are often happy
| and wealthy."
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| Commerce is demeaning?
| singleshot_ wrote:
| If you look around, I believe you will see many people
| buying things for fun, while those same people toil to
| sell something.
|
| It appears that one half of commerce is demeaning but
| some people compensate with the other.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Only when you're trying to sell bullshit. If I can actually
| solve someone's problem, and they don't mind my price, then
| we're helping solve each other's problems and everyone
| benefits!
|
| Where things get sleezy is when you're competing with
| applicants that will bullshit, so you have to bullshit as
| well just to keep up, or when customers have unrealistic
| expectations and waste your time.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| There's literally no shame in this. Jobs are just value
| exchange. Job applications are a proposal, to say, here's what
| I can offer you. If you're very honest about that, and about
| what you're looking for in return, they can make more informed
| decisions. Everyone's life is vastly different, there's no
| shame in declaring what you have to offer (edit: and what
| you're looking for). Everyone is better at some things and
| worse at others. This is the basis of the economy.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > There's literally no shame in this. Jobs are just value
| exchange.
|
| Came to say exactly this: some teams actually do just need
| someone to pick up some slack for a bit to ship some big
| project but don't have a long term role. Consulting companies
| are pure crapshoot since you can't typically pick your exact
| technical resource.
|
| Pure value exchange. This should be more common.
| valbaca wrote:
| > deeply shameful
|
| Your feelings are what they are, but this is the _least_
| shameful post I would ever see on LinkedIn. It 's someone
| _actually_ looking for work! and not just posting some super
| cringe low-IQ engagement-farm copypasta.
|
| Finding work is _exactly_ what LinkedIn ought to be for
| ghaff wrote:
| I certainly don't think it's shameful. But, while that's more
| or less what LinkedIn was intended for, it's also become sort
| of a last man standing medium for professional professional
| posts--or at least pointers to such--unless you can
| organically drive enough traffic to a subscription or a
| website.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _it 's also become sort of a last man standing medium for
| professional professional posts--or at least pointers to
| such--_
|
| With you so far...
|
| > _unless you can organically drive enough traffic to a
| subscription or a website._
|
| Ahh no, I hope you don't mean to "organically" drive
| "enough" traffic from LinkedIn to a subscription or website
| elsewhere? Because that's exactly the kind of thing that's
| killing LinkedIn for job search and professional
| networking.
| ghaff wrote:
| Professional networking mostly happens in-person anyway.
| For me, LinkedIn is mostly an updating Rolodex. But, if
| you have a newsletter or website, you probably need to
| drive traffic _somehow_. LinkedIn isn 't the only
| mechanism and maybe not a very good one but it is a
| channel at least in the tech industry.
| doright wrote:
| I guess the reality is, what we term "shameful, amoral,
| slimy and vapid LinkedIn spammers" are actually thousands
| of relatively like-minded people all saying some variation
| of "please let me get/keep a job or I won't be able to keep
| living" in just a creative/repetitive enough fashion that
| one or more recruiters/persons who know other people will
| keep them in orbit for the next source of income.
|
| I have been on the other side of this (not doing it) and
| the effects are fairly straightforward: no more paychecks.
|
| I guess if you're not a recruiter or your job prospects are
| taken care of, you can safely pretend the LinkedIn social
| feed doesn't exist - it isn't written for you. Its sole
| purpose is for people to get what they need to survive and
| carry on. So I've resolved to not blame others for having
| to post there so much. This is money - hence life - were
| talking about here, unfortunately or not.
| racl101 wrote:
| Could not have said it better.
| ge96 wrote:
| OMG there was one about how an engineer in San Francisco is
| crying about his $2K in salad bills and his Cyber Truck while
| making like a half a mil a year
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Surely it was satire? Surely...? Please
| angvp wrote:
| That was a sarcastic one, made by a comedian who used to
| work in tech, lol
| fragmede wrote:
| I'd guess that's Austin Nasso and TechRoastShow. They
| clearly know the subject matter well.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/austinnasso/?hl=en
|
| https://www.instagram.com/techroastshow/?hl=en
| Cerium wrote:
| For others who missed it..
| https://www.threads.net/@austinnasso/post/DFLc9-hv4xg?hl=en
| kragen wrote:
| Thank you! Your knowledge is very valuable.
| baskinator wrote:
| Good book on the topic of selling -
| https://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is-human/
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| I'd believe you're better off working on yourself.
|
| Maybe do toy projects for your potential portfolio, learn an
| additional skill (AI?), and build many weekend projects until
| something sticks.
| james_marks wrote:
| Publishing articles, etc to demo your skill helps you stay top of
| mind.
|
| Even if only the 5 people in your network see it, they are the 5
| people that need that steady reminder of your skills and
| availability.
|
| I've also hired people outside my network this way, when I
| happened to stumble on someone with a great article in the exact
| thing I'm working on.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I've started thinking about this. Articles/blogs/repos to
| generate interesting opportunities.
|
| It's one thing to network and talk about your skills. It's a
| different thing to demonstrate them.
| brudgers wrote:
| Yes they are different. Sales is much much harder.
|
| Clients don't care about your skills.
|
| Clients care if you can solve their actual problems.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| In my experience, admittedly not that long term yet, no one
| even looks at repositories. I got really good stuff in there,
| that demonstrates my developer skills, but hiring people
| never seemed to even have taken a look, nor shown any
| interest in what I might be able to present to them. Instead
| they me gave BS ad-hoc coding tasks in the interviews. Could
| also be, that they are unfamiliar with any of the not
| mainstream stuff I did and did not dare ask questions,
| because they felt out of their own depth.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I've had good luck here, having been contacted based on what I
| posted on the the monthly Seeking Freelancer post.
|
| I think it's dried up now, but I found some projects from
| Codementor a few years ago.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Look in unexpected places, like temp agencies.
|
| I was once in a similar position as you. I signed up with an
| agency that specialized in placing people in temporary jobs in
| creative companies. (Ad agencies, design studios, architecture
| firms, etc.). I ended up with a temporary web dev position that
| turned into a full-scale full-time warehouse automation job.
|
| Once they see you're reliable and can think, many non-tech
| companies will find places where your skills can be put to use.
|
| Tech is everywhere. Look outside the SV bubble.
| gamegod wrote:
| As others said - use your network. Making a post on LinkedIn and
| trying to get your network to reshare it could help a lot.
| mhitza wrote:
| I find contracts through my network and Upwork, the later became
| slower last x months, as general investments did.
|
| Play the numbers game. If you have a specific speciality you can
| use platforms like LinkedIn to reach out to companies that might
| need your service (through decision makers).
|
| You can also connect directly with digital agencies and let them
| know you are available if they need to offload some work.
|
| The LinkedIn jobs platform itself feels useless for contract work
| (at least in the EU) as most contract jobs are employee-like
| contracts disguised as contract work (full-time availability, no
| subcontracting/delegation).
| sampton wrote:
| It depends on how badly you need the money. If you really need to
| get paid you are probably better off finding a full time job and
| quit after 9 months. Otherwise invest the time in yourself. Work
| on a passion project or a blog.
| prepend wrote:
| Usually that will burn a bridge with that employer and look bad
| on your resume.
|
| Much different career wise than having short term contracts
| that are designed around a specific job.
|
| I know that companies don't necessarily follow an ethical
| standard but I find that I can at least follow personal ethics
| and that's within my control. I've always treated my employers
| like I would like to be treated, even if the employer was being
| a jerk.
|
| Over 30 years I've found that people remember and it's
| surprising how acting ethically sticks in people's minds and
| comes back in positive yields. I like to think I'd act the same
| way no matter what, but it's a plus that acting properly ends
| up being better in the long run.
| eweise wrote:
| Ethics are great but so is feeding your family and paying
| your mortgage.
| magicstefanos wrote:
| Feeding your family is the more "ethical" thing here
| rsanek wrote:
| You don't have to add it to your resume, right? If you want
| to mention the work in future interviews, you can easily talk
| about it as short-term contracting work.
|
| I'm not sure what's wrong ethically about it though? Is it
| that you wouldn't have provided enough value to the firm in 9
| months?
| ernestipark wrote:
| Your network is always the best bet to start. Leverage past co-
| workers who can vouch for you, reach out, let people know you're
| available.
|
| If you're a part of YC or other similar investor/tech networks,
| often those are very strong referral networks.
|
| Beyond that, there are various niche job boards and sites like
| https://www.fractionaljobs.io/, https://www.hirefraction.com/,
| marketerhire.com depending on the type of work you do.
|
| Sites like upwork/toptal can be good but often are a race to the
| bottom.
|
| Relevant: I started a newsletter a little while back exploring
| this space for tech workers
| leros wrote:
| I haven't found these fractional sites to be very useful for
| development work. The rates are low and the few dev jobs
| already have 100s of applications.
| murph wrote:
| Try former employers.
|
| You've already got context, know the stack, whatever.
|
| They might be happy to have a known contributor solve some
| problem or project for them.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| Sign up for small company at bottom, find things to fix. Set
| timeline and expectations to leave in 9mo. By then you'll be
| running parts of the company. You may not actually want to do
| this long term, or it may be a nice side income. Plan for not
| continuing to do it, document well, and everyone will be happier
| em-bee wrote:
| where does one find such a company?
| hakaneskici wrote:
| In your situation, I'd focus on rephrasing my existing skill set
| in such a way that it emphasizes how I can help solve the
| _current_ problems with scaling AI deployments.
|
| As for the "where" - keep an eye on growing AI startups that need
| to scale fast.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| I'm game to talk to you if you want to ken AT erdosmiller DOT
| com, we're always on the lookout for fantastic talent.
| Nelkins wrote:
| Not to be too much of a recruiter, but I started a software
| consultancy where we get this kind of work. Typically projects
| that last a quarter, but with some potential for extending
| (although they also frequently just last a quarter). I actually
| have a project in the pipeline right now that I'm looking for a
| dev for (if I can't find one, I'll end up just taking on the work
| myself).
|
| Email is in my profile if you want to connect :)
| nathias wrote:
| what's this network people keep bringing up?
| zb3 wrote:
| It's the thing OP and I don't have, otherwise we'd not be
| asking these questions. HN being helpful as always..
| taormina wrote:
| I mean, don't undervalue your own network without trying.
| Maybe you haven't worked with anyone famous, most of us
| haven't! But someone you know might be in the right place at
| the right time and mention you to the right person. Of course
| it's imperfect but you have interacted with a lot more people
| in the past than you are giving yourself credit for. It's
| about putting yourself out there and allowing that to happen.
| No one said to just pray to the network and quit looking
| though. But people who already know you are a good apple from
| past experience are the best.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It's based on the template for most question forum responses
| that aren't actually responsive to the question.
|
| If I could figure out how to fix that, I'd be pitching a Quora-
| like start up that actually works.
| snow_mac wrote:
| My suggestion is talk to small, indie recruiters. Big recruiting
| firms will not likely have these types of roles. I'm currently
| doing a 2 month contract, 40 hours a week, for a small tech
| consulting agency.
| em-bee wrote:
| where do you find those recruiters?
| zdragnar wrote:
| In my area, it's not uncommon for companies to use short term
| contracts to scale teams up temporarily. These companies often
| work with local recruiters, and some of those even specialize
| primarily in short term contract placement.
|
| In short, they're a quick and easy way to expand your network, so
| to speak, since they're always willing to take your resume even
| if they don't have anything immediately available.
| tzury wrote:
| A. Within your circles. Make sure everyone knows you are
| available.
|
| B. Think of best creative solutions you came up with throughout
| your career.
|
| Use LLM to write a post every other day (!). Within a month, you
| have 15 posts, which people will find useful as they search.
|
| At the bottom f each put your contact details and a closing
| paragraph that you are available for consultancy.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I found my current gig using moonlightwork.com but that was over
| 5 years ago now.
| paxys wrote:
| Having the right technical skills is only 50% of the requirement
| (and realistically even less than that). The harder battle is
| being a good salesman. Push yourself and your services at every
| opportunity. Send mass emails to friends and old collegues. Write
| daily puke-inducing posts on LinkedIn. Write blog posts and make
| toy Github projects with "looking for work" blurbs at the top of
| each one. Set a goal to post N times a day on
| X/Threads/LinkedIn/Reddit/wherever else you can think of, and hit
| those targets. Keep doing all of this for an extended period of
| time and the leads will start flowing in. Then you need to start
| putting even more effort into closing those leads and signing
| contracts.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Ugh. This is probably one of those "Thanks, I hate it!"
| moments. You're probably 100% right, and this is why I could
| never be an independent contractor. This kind of self-promotion
| and lead generation seems so demeaning, slimy, and shameful,
| and I'd probably die of embarrassment if I ever had to do it.
| Yet it comes so naturally to some people. It sucks that this
| kind of skill is required to make it on your own.
| ghaff wrote:
| How else would anyone actually know that you were available?
| And that they should give you money?
|
| And, even if you get referred, you still need to seal the
| deal.
|
| And even within a larger company, unless someone like your
| manager more or less does it for you, "advertising" your
| accomplishments is pretty essential if you want anyone to
| reward your accomplishments.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| it's not about forcing yourself to be a good salesman, but
| rather about showcasing your skills, expertise, and
| personality in a genuine and authentic way
| paxys wrote:
| Everyone in the world, including a million experienced
| programmers, are already showcasing their skills in a
| "genuine and authentic" way. Why are you better than
| anyone else for the job?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I don't think they are, and I don't think it's necessary
| (or possible) to be better than anyone else.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Seriously? Have you seen the absolute crap that some
| people produce? You really don't think "it's necessary
| (or possible) to be better than anyone else"?
|
| Race to the bottom, here we come!
| cinntaile wrote:
| It's nice to interpret someone's post in good faith, then
| he doesn't have to defend something he never said.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand how what I quoted could be
| taken any other way.
| endemic wrote:
| 'cos you put yourself out there
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That's exactly what a good salesperson is doing.
| jraph wrote:
| > Yet it comes so naturally to some people.
|
| Maybe, but I think many (most?) people doing it don't like
| having to do it, and for many people, it's probably not that
| natural. It's practice, learned and trained skills.
|
| > I'd probably die of embarrassment if I ever had to do it.
|
| If it's because a lack of self-confidence, work on this,
| being reasonably self-confident makes life so much more
| enjoyable.
|
| Otherwise, I believe this embarrassment would be ill-placed,
| and therefore I would suggest, if you haven't done it
| already, that you think hard on why. And if you've already
| done that, I'm quite interested in the deep reasons why you
| think you'd be so embarrassed :-)
|
| > This is probably one of those "Thanks, I hate it!" moments
|
| Yep, can't agree more xD
| fragmede wrote:
| It's totally cringe, and the first couple of times you have
| to do it it'll be uncomfortable. But growth happens at the
| edge of your comfort zone and you'd be mistaken that
| everyone's a born natural at it. Most people have to practice
| at it in order to get good at one. Few people just born with
| it. So what, you're not one of them. You weren't born knowing
| how to program either.
|
| As far as slimy, I mean, yeah, don't break ethical
| boundaries; don't lie, don't take credit for other people's
| work; and it'll be fine. The ick feeling comes when we see
| others do amoral things like that and get ahead, but all you
| have to do to avoid that slimy feeling is to not lump all
| self-promotion together, and then just don't do the unethical
| bits.
| 3acctforcom wrote:
| Lying about the true cost of software and taking credit for
| your employees work is the basis for consulting. Some might
| term these as Profit, and Reputation. But that's sales for
| you.
| kmoser wrote:
| Independent contractor here. Admittedly, it's not for
| everybody. But once you've built up a base of clients who
| need your services regularly, you don't need to keep seeking
| more, at least not at nearly the same rate. Also, word of
| mouth will keep people coming to you. The reality is that I
| almost never have to sell myself. But I've been doing this
| for decades, and YMMV.
|
| Of course, your ability to do this will be somewhat dependent
| on your stomach for communicating with strangers who come
| your way.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. I have a contractor at the moment who has been in
| business for a long time and inherited the business from
| his father. He doesn't market or advertise. But he still
| needs to communicate and deal with someone who comes his
| way.
| quectophoton wrote:
| The way I would describe it is: "How do you like applying to
| new jobs and doing interviews? Now imagine that being half
| your job."
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| Yeah, it's definitely a separate set of skills, and probably
| not one that typically fits personality-wise with the typical
| computer guru set. I was self-employed for a couple decades,
| and while I usually didn't go hungry because it paid well
| when I was working, the work that walked in the door on its
| own never got me ahead either.
|
| No one's fault but my own, but I should have realized a lot
| sooner that real success would require a lot more proactive
| "sales" effort; and that if I wasn't willing to do that, I
| needed to go work for someone else a lot sooner than I
| finally did.
| doright wrote:
| I just see it as a "mask" you put on for a specific audience
| that has the potential to greatly increase your prospects and
| then take off everywhere else. At a certain point the
| prospects (not going broke) override any shame you could
| feel.
|
| I don't think selling oneself is something that reflects on
| one's character given what's at stake. The important people
| who know who you really are will also treat that mask of
| yours as fake. But they could also play up your appeals in
| the LinkedIn comments section to ultimately improve your
| chances of... getting a job. Which is all that really matters
| at the end of the day.
| aprdm wrote:
| Networking with people you know in your career
| zhs wrote:
| You could check out https://www.gofractional.com, it's built for
| this kind of thing.
| ryandrake wrote:
| A lot of people are probably going to reply with "Use your
| network!" which has always struck me as kind of vaguely
| incomplete and unhelpful advice. It's like telling an investor
| "Buy low and sell high." and leaving it at that. OK, thank you,
| Captain Obvious, that's wonderful, but how?
|
| Maybe it's different in the independent contracting world, but
| I've found my "network" only semi-helpful in gaining employment.
| They can give good ideas about companies to try, they can help
| you refine your resume, and do interview coaching, and if you're
| lucky they work at the same company you want to apply for so can
| submit your resume with the "recommend" box ticked, but that's
| all they seem to be able to do. I've never once had someone in my
| network who had his hands directly on the "hire this man!" lever
| at the company.
| alaithea wrote:
| This is going to go pretty OT from the original post.
|
| The handful of times in my ~20 year career that I've gotten a
| shortened interview process because of connections, the
| organization has turned out to be a dumpster fire. Admittedly,
| I ignored red flags that I wouldn't have if I wasn't feeling
| special for having an "in," so part of that is on me. But
| lowering hiring standards to preference one person means
| they'll lower the standards for others, too, and that has
| consequences. As much as I'd love there to be shortcuts in
| life, I'm not sure they really exist.
| weitendorf wrote:
| I think someone in OP's situation is likely to have several
| friends and acquaintances that are at least engineering
| managers at this point in their career, who in many companies
| (not huge ones) can have a lot of influence over hiring. If you
| work in startups and stuff it's highly possible that some
| friend or acquaintance is a founder that is currently hiring.
|
| The main reason I'd second the advice to use their network is
| that I get tons and tons of unsolicited contact from developer
| contracting firms and basically don't trust any of them. The
| only people I have contracted with are people I knew already
| and trusted. Also, if I did end up paying contract developers
| who I didn't trust already, I'd still probably not be willing
| to pay any of them exceptionally unless they were a known
| entity, whereas someone I trust already would be less of a
| financial risk since I'd have a sense of what value they'd
| actually add.
|
| Anyway, I think the answer to your problem is "build your
| network" but I always found that advice kind of silly. The
| actual valuable parts of your network are people who you've
| built relationships with while working, which is more of an
| incidental than deliberate process in most cases. I guess maybe
| you could be a little intentional about it though by carefully
| choosing where you work and who you work with, and how you
| engage with others at work.
| toptal wrote:
| CEO of Toptal here. If you like, I can ensure we review your
| profile and client matching history to see if there's anything we
| overlooked. I'm available on Slack or taso@toptal.com. We'll see
| if we can optimize your visibility to clients needing
| backend/data optimization experts.
|
| While we look into this, Opire (an open-source bounties site) has
| lots of short-term opportunities.
| dep_b wrote:
| I quit using Toptal because I was living in Western Europe and
| got extremely lowballed at a given point. As if I simply had to
| match the rates of people from Eastern Europe or Northern
| Africa.
|
| I got a better hourly rate through the platform when still
| living in Latin America. Before Covid, it was amazing.
| hnisoss wrote:
| I'm doing my last engagement on toptal rn as well. Will quit
| after. The company I m working for is awesome but toptal part
| not so much anymore. From staff to FUD. They cut down my rate
| to 1/3 of what I used to charge few years back. (They still
| bill client 2x what I get, of course).
| lokhura wrote:
| I hope Toptal has changed since I interviewed with them in
| 2015, because it was one of the worst tech interview
| experiences I had in a while. The interviewer was rude and
| clearly inexperienced in the tech stack he was asking questions
| about. I did a take home excersise and it was clear that he
| didn't even bother to read the code and just wanted to outsmart
| me.
| rglover wrote:
| Curious, are there any exceptions to your coding test (I
| applied back in 2021 or so, not sure if this is still a
| requirement)?
|
| The test didn't like my solutions/speed (which meant I couldn't
| move forward), however, I'd say I'm more than qualified to be a
| Toptal dev (see projects in my HN profile [1]).
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/rglover
| zetazzed wrote:
| In a past startup, we had at least one person apply to our
| regular job postings with a cover that transparently said "I know
| this is a full-time, long-term posting, but I really want to be a
| contractor for a bounded time." Since it was a great fit and they
| were available right away (and we urgently needed more people),
| we made the "hire" and ended up working together for a while.
| Only worked because it was quite transparent and up front in the
| application though.
| aylmao wrote:
| There's plenty of comments about searching one's network, but I
| was looking for a comment that mentioned this. Startups do tend
| to prefer permanent full-timers, but hiring the right person
| takes time and startups also very much like getting the work
| done.
|
| At one point I was unsure about joining a startup and it was
| them who suggested doing a temporary contract as a way to test
| the waters. In that case it was only a week but it was also
| enough for me to decide to join full-time. If joining full-time
| is a possibility you'd consider, I'd also mention that to the
| startup early on.
| _ink_ wrote:
| Everybody says your network. Is this an US thing? Everyone in my
| network is employed in bigger or smaller companies. They might
| search for a full-time hire, but not for project work. Is this
| different in the EU or is my network too small?
| lnsru wrote:
| In Germany freelance work is killed by
| "Scheinselbststandigkeit". Authorities will eventually require
| to pay some taxes afterwards if you have only one client. Both
| from freelancer and the company. Companies don't want that and
| shady body leasing agencies are thriving. The people from these
| agencies have separate offices and companies go sometimes too
| far to separate real employees and rented staff. Network does
| not help much.
| creer wrote:
| Bigger or smaller companies is exactly who hires consultants
| and contractors (yes, medium too).
|
| A few companies aim for full time only - but I don't feel
| that's many. Some companies have overall contracts and
| outsource to specific services companies - and will rarely
| consider individuals (both US and Europe).
|
| Your network is not people who will necessarily hire you for a
| project. They are people who might at some point know
| something.
|
| Your network should also include other consultants and
| contractors who are likely to be over- or under-worked at any
| time and could use your help.
| dj_axl wrote:
| Any niche? I mean, possibly large-scale data processing, yet I've
| seen people go more niche than that. In other words if your
| resume has 5+ years in one particular industry then that might be
| whom to target.
| develatio wrote:
| lemon.io :)
| peterarmstrong wrote:
| Write an in-progress book about some niche = lead magnet for this
| type of work :)
|
| (disclosure: founder of Leanpub)
| stuaxo wrote:
| I the UK I go on job sites and search for contracts.
|
| Though linkedin has eaten a lot and a bunch have merged.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Just get a regular job and quit after a few months. Don't put it
| on your resume and don't work anywhere that the burnt bridges
| matter. They would have no problem laying you off after 6 months
| perrygeo wrote:
| Don't focus on finding work, you'll just be selling your time to
| the lowest bidder.
|
| If you can afford it, build something for free, blog what you
| learn, and ship it. Build a portfolio of real working software
| and technical writing. If your software has users, talk to them
| and you should find plenty of work.
| rkpandey4tech wrote:
| I may have something for you. Please DM me at
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragpandey
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