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Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

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

#101

Post by arrtz »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #95
arrtz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I think my first post left out some context so I should be a bit more explicit that the job is being an interviewer: You interview software engineering candidates on behalf of our clients. (Possible you already get this, but mentioning it just in case.) As for the 10 hours, we spend a lot of time onboarding and then continuously training our interviewers. Between that and the overhead of managing the relations…

What kind of pay does it involve? I'm always open to some steady gigs/moonlighting things as I find software clients for myself.

I'll double check with our interviewer team on Monday but I believe it's $70-100/hr.

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

#102

Post by alexman »

philip1209 wrote: post #14

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

Would be great if you give hint about how much info/time is need to complete the signup on the developer onboarding page: https://www.moonlightwork.com/onboarding/developer

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

#103

Post by gremlinsinc »

borplk wrote: post #100
gremlinsinc wrote: post #2

Best thing to do is look on r/forhire on reddit, build up a portfolio on upwork/etc, and check all the remote job boards like remoteok, weworkremotely, etc.. Freelancing is hard to start - -you need to be part marketer, you don't get paid for the time finding new clients, but AFTER you have a steady stream of good business, it gets a bit easier to keep filling your pipeline with jobs through word of mouth / etc.

r/forhire and upwork are absolute piles of garbage with 90% of the jobs being "edit my shopify theme for $25". If you are an experienced engineer with more sophisticated skills and don't live in India and Pakistan just don't bother.

I totally agree it's my emergency site when I can't find clients or need money. Reddit had been real good for me as has word of mouth on LinkedIn as well. I think remote job boards are good to if a steady but remote job is preferable over freelance contracts. I definitely am not stumping for upwork at all unless you're in a bind, but if you have a decent grade on there you can get the better jobs but it's still a pile of crap I agree.

If only there were like a global dev Union or something so the price of devs was standard everywhere or at least had a minimum wage of like $20-30 per hour.

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

#104

Post by leetbulb »

philip1209 wrote: post #14

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

Just signed up :D Thanks!

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

#105

Post by langitbiru »

philip1209 wrote: post #14

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

I am still waiting for cryptocurrency or Paypal support. Stripe is not supported in my country.

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

#106

Post by philip1209 »

langitbiru wrote: post #105
philip1209 wrote: post #14

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

I am still waiting for cryptocurrency or Paypal support. Stripe is not supported in my country.

We looked at cryptocurrency very closely. Basically, money laundering laws and slow adoption of crypto among businesses make it really hard to get adoption among clients: https://www.moonlightwork.com/blog/cryptocurrency-and-compan...

I have a moral opposition to Paypal after using it personally, but we are looking at solutions such as Payoneer to expand country support!

It's worth pointing out that you can incorporate in Estonia or the USA (e.g. through Stripe Atlas) to get access to Stripe.

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

#107

Post by philip1209 »

alexman wrote: post #102
philip1209 wrote: post #14

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

Would be great if you give hint about how much info/time is need to complete the signup on the developer onboarding page: https://www.moonlightwork.com/onboarding/developer

That's reasonable - thanks for bringing it up. Our #1 focus right now is improving the client experience to get more jobs on Moonlgiht, but redoing the developer onboarding experience is next up on the list. I've logged your feedback for that project!

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

#108

Post by cbzehner »

Ma8ee wrote: post #42
Kluny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place. What if you're mediocre, though?

Then you belong in the cubicle. Stay there until you are good. (Which won’t happen automatically, you have to put in the work.)

This isn't true. Very few people are bad across the board -- find your strengths (as other commenters have said) and focus on those.

It's better to be excellent in one or two areas, especially ones your passionate about than solid across the board. If you suck at something and it's causing problems, that's a different story -- but don't get stuck on comparing yourself to others.

I wish I could downvote this comment. Please ignore it.

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

#109

Post by Kluny »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #58
Kluny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place. What if you're mediocre, though?

It depends on which vector you deem yourself mediocre. If you think your technical skills are mediocre and want to be a technical contractor, then focus on being a great solutions provider. And by "solutions provider," I mean take the time to deeply understand the root causes of your clients' problems, then help them find the actual solutions. Sometimes these solutions are not even technical, which is totally okay. C…

I can write code that works, finish features, and I'm pretty good at debugging. I can also teach/encourage others without condescending, ask good questions, and explain a problem clearly technically and non-technically (once I understand it myself).

I guess I'm mediocre in that it consistently seems to take me 8-10 hours to finish jobs that come with a 4 hour time estimate (my company is big on estimates). I'm also pretty sloppy - code reviewers routinely catch minor errors that I should have known better than to commit.

I have the experience, way too often, of using some feature that I pushed months or years ago and learning that it's, like, haunted or something. Doesn't work the way it's supposed to at all. Obvious failures that I should never have called "done".

When it comes to building a complete product, from start to finish, I mostly can't get past MVP stage (talking about personal projects in this case). And I once spent over a month trying to update the version of TinyMCE for a CMS that I was working on, and did not succeed. I literally got another job and left the company with that task unfinished. The new job pays double, and I still feel like a bit of a fraud.

And yeah, I'm writing "bog-standard PHP" as the other commenter put it. I've tried to get work in other languages to diversify my skillset, and haven't succeeded. At this point I'm starting to not care anymore - I like PHP just fine, loose typing be damned, and I'm starting to think I want to move out of technical roles rather than improve my language skills.

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

#110

Post by lifeisstillgood »

chasd00 wrote: post #85

network and get to know directors/upper management at very large companies. You can do a lot of this by just hanging out at happy hour spots near a large corporate campus. Those people are the ones that get tasked with implementing large programs or processes. If you they know you and your skills are even remotely relevant then they'll reach out to you when they can't get anyone in the internal IT/tech department to…

How close to stalking are you suggesting ?
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