Ask HN: Where to find contract work as a developer?

I've signed up for the major jobs sites, dice, monster, etc. And some smaller ones like cybercoders and talentpair. I indicated I was interested in contract work and my mailbox is full of 20 to 50 emails a day.

A majority are for lower rate jobs, but there's a promising nibble once or twice a week.

Contract to hire seem to be super popular right now, but you're under no obligation to accept their offer. In my experience their offers are less than have the contract rate.

I also ran my own consulting company for a while. Word of mouth was my best way to find work. It seemed like once I finished a job with someone they were happy to tell me about their buddy than needed work done too.

Do prepare for the downtime between jobs. I had dry spells as long as 5 months.

There are options for this in Linkedin. You specify in your profile location and type of work (perm/contract) you are interested.

I'm not sure if it's a option, but contract roles are probably more common than FTE here in Aus. I've been contracting for the last 6 years and most of the work I've had has either been through my network, or through recruiters. There are tech recruitments agencies here and nearly all of them have someone that specialises in contracts.

In my experience, if you have the right people in your network that you know will be looking for contractors at some point, they'll come to you first before putting the job out on job sites.

Are you thinking of being a contractor (as in you work for one company like an employee for 3-6 months), or a freelancer that comes in to complete certain tasks?

I tried that a few years ago and was able make a semi decent go of it. But not since they started to charge to bid on projects.

What most people don't realize is you are playing a completely different game. People want the cheapest and good. Most of the work involved quickly understanding what the project needed and wording it in a way that could get a conversation going and then the real work of selling yourself, defining the project and trying to justify why you need so many hours when the 5 dollars an hour guy says no problem we'll do it today.

The biggest problem is upwork ranks people by score, salary and/or specialist creds they give. You need to respond within minutes or be cheaper.

The work required to make things work and the rewards don't add up. I'm old enough to remember rentacoder and freelancer. These platforms startoff paying well and slowly turn into something else as supply increased. What happens is the quality drops so the best clients move on and you are left with vague requirements and impossible tasks like the $100.00 build me a google search engine project and it becomes unusable.

Are you saying to look at NY state government job listings and find contracting roles that way? Or are you suggesting I make connections with state gov't to get work as a contractor?