Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor? • Hacker News Board

I am a remote executive recruiting contractor. Applied through a job listing. They liked me. They hired me. Now I look for senior and executive people online, remotely.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#13

Post by mrleiter » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

boffinism wrote: post #10

It may make you feel dirty, but get on LinkedIn and connect with a bunch of recruiters. This is literally what they are there for. My LI feed and inbox are a constant stream of contracting opportunities in London, and a (small, admittedly) percentage of them are remote. (Of course, they're no use to me, as I'm very happy as a mostly-remote startup CTO, but these opportunities are out there.) Contracting tends to be s…

Yes, this. A lot of recruiting goes through LinkedIn.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#14

Post by philip1209 » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

I'm a digital nomad who as in the same position. I couldn't find contract work for high-skill engineers. So, I started building a marketplace for it. Today that's Moonlight - we are still small, bootstrapped, and growing, but we have companies ranging from startups to a publicly-traded company hiring through the site. Hourly rates average a little over $100US.

https://www.moonlightwork.com

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#15

Post by chrisa » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

I recently started posting about this here: http://www.breakintoconsulting.com

My basic advice is: become a visible expert in the space by starting a blog, posting articles, and go to meetups and speak. Then, start with your network (old jobs and coworkers) to look for work, and expand out from there.

The good news is there is a ton of work for javascript developers right now, so that’s one advantage you have.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#16

Post by sebleon » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

What's your email?

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#17

Post by esaym » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

> so I can travel the world while working remotely.

I thought the same thing. Perhaps it is because I work for someone else instead of for myself, but since I've been full time remote for the last 2 years, I've had 0 free time for anything. I rarely leave the house. Pretty much everything I need comes from online purchases or grocery delivery as I don't even have time to do that.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#18

Post by 3131s » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #3

Surprisingly, you have to do a lot of meatspace visits.

And if you're half way around the world and can't meet in person, people are really hesitant to work with you. I started out remotely with neither a compsci degree nor any prior experience at a tech company, and I definitely advise against being in that situation. The only good outcome was that it spurred me to generalize more so that I could build and deploy something for a client from start to finish on my own.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#19

Post by isp » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

lbutler wrote: post #8

I lived and worked in Edinburgh for 2 years working as a contractor for an engineering consultancy, I had to eventually leave the UK because my visa was going to expire. They were so desperate for skilled engineers in Scotland when it was suggested I could keep working remotely they jumped straight on it. I'm now working 100% remotely for them in Canada. As others have suggested getting yourself into the contracting…

May I ask which consultancy this was?

I have found that there is not a huge amount of remote work for companies based out of Scotland.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#20

Post by mancerayder » Fri, May 11, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

boffinism wrote: post #10

It may make you feel dirty, but get on LinkedIn and connect with a bunch of recruiters. This is literally what they are there for. My LI feed and inbox are a constant stream of contracting opportunities in London, and a (small, admittedly) percentage of them are remote. (Of course, they're no use to me, as I'm very happy as a mostly-remote startup CTO, but these opportunities are out there.) Contracting tends to be s…

I do this, too. Unfortunately, recruiters suffer from two really big problems for a contractor:

1. They take a cut, a very big cut, of your hourly or daily rate. Thus, to the client, you seem very expensive, and to you, you seem cheaper than you should be. It becomes a new effort to maneuver a proper rate.

2. Recruiters suffer from the fact that they are salespeople, and salespeople often intuitively omit information for fear they'd lose the deal. So they operate the same way as they do for employee recs. Here's a concrete example: several times in the last several months, I received offers of "contract to hire" even though the recruiter told me it was contract only. They failed to tell the client I was contract-only, and they failed to tell me it was a contract-to-hire. Believe me, they knew. Then the inevitable question, where I have to be careful not to be too mean in the response, "Can I ask you why you want to stay as a contractor? It's a really exciting company and there's stock opt... yadda yadda." For a contractor doing it right, every invoice is a bonus or an opportunity to purchase stocks with no vesting and no strings. :-)