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Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#101

Post by soulofmischief »

georgestrakhov wrote: post #93

Hello. I am also doing this and have more leads / opportunities/ projects than I can handle at the moment. All from my network. Happy to collaborate / share. Please leave links to your cool projects / GitHub / portfolio etc and I'll reach out if it feels like a possible match. Thank you and best of luck.

I've been in the bad habit of not publicly publishing a lot of my more interesting projects from the last few years, but I also consult and would love to talk shop. Happy to share code and projects over email. Even if your current workload is outside my wheelhouse, it would be good to make a connection. Email in bio.

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#102

Post by bdangubic »

I have been a solo contractor for little over 15 years now. This was my goal all along and it did not happen overnight. My path was more organic, I was a W2 for quite some time and in that time I had one personal focus - become more valuable to the company than they are to you. I took on tasks everyone was running away from, I changed code which was preceded by comments like “// DO NOT TOUCH THIS OR COMPANY WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS” and after so time every big thing that was needed or every customer fire/emergency needed me. I was even called into an emergency meeting on my honeymoom :)

once I was comfortable I am fairly indispensible part of the business I submitted my resignation along with an offer to continue working as an independent contractor which was swiftly accepted. once I got this first (and as steady as it gets) thing everything went much smoother after this, word of mouth mostly and I went to a lot of meetups (especially pre covid) from where I got a number of contracts too

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#103

Post by rohitv »

The best is proof of work. If you don't have any, build something and show that off. Even listing out the companies you have worked for will be good. Cold email could work if its not completely "cold", i.e, find companies/people who are in the space/industry where you have worked so that they can see you have solved a similar problem before. 10+ years of software engineering is quite valuable, you just have to present yourself in a way where the value can be seen.

Also, never, ever work for free. One, your time is worth more than you think. Second, it makes you sound a bit less serious and less valuable and you will attract clients that are not fun to work with. Not worth your time at all. The only people who MAYBE should be working for free are students who are in high school.

I have been freelancing on and off on the side for the past 8 years and this year pulled the plug and going full time on it and tbh I am now oversubscribed. So, there's definitely a need for it.

My first few clients (8 years ago) were through posting on reddit (/r/forhire) and then also on the monthly HN freelancer thread (was shocked they stopped doing that, I have gotten 2 solid clients from those!).

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#104

Post by rohitv »

rotten wrote: post #25

Working as a feeelance consultant means you have to do marketing AND sales. (and backend paperwork as well). You need to be able to float through stretches of no work, and you need to be able to deal with clients who won't pay you. Your product is yourself, so you start with brand building. What are your differentiators? (human) Networking is the most common way to market your services, but some write books, speak at…

This 100%. Just to give another viewpoint on this, having just started going full time on my solo agency, I actually love doing the sales and marketing stuff and scoping the work for clients. Yes, it does take a lot of time away from pure technical work but I do enjoy the balance of it. So, it does depend on your own interests and how you like to spend your time. Freelancing/Consulting is definitely not for everyone. And tbh, lets see maybe in a year or two I will be fed up of the sales/marketing stuff too.

One thing I will say though is that, it also comes with a lot of flexibility and freedom and you set our own hours and location which in itself is very valuable. Of course has its own pros and cons and you have to be quite disciplined to begin with.

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#106

Post by f3b5 »

Aurornis wrote: post #65
santiagobasulto wrote: post #3

General consultancy is an extremely crowded space. As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. My advice would be to differentiate yourself: - Become an expert in 1 thing, and one thing only: either start an open source project, or b…

> As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. This is why cold outreach is rarely effective. Until you’ve seen it, you don’t realize the volume of incoming freelancing pitches coming from all of the freelancers. It’s getting worse wi…

Re cold outreach: it depends. The bar is abysmally low, and most outreach is just an untargeted spam cannon. Don't be like those people.

If you manage to make the outreach warmer, it can work surprisingly well. I built a tool to identify high-intent leads on LinkedIn which gets me acceptance rates of 60%+ by finding people that comment on relevant content to my niche: https://www.getibex.com

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#107

Post by sminchev »

I am still in the phase of: Just released it, and fighting hard to make it working.

But mainly, a lot of things accumulated. I am 40 now, with two kids, the second - 6 months old. When she is 20, I will probably need to use daipers for elderly people. And she needs proper education.

AI is changing the world, and being a software developer might not be a safe long-term position anymore.

With my, almost 20 years of professional experience, as a software developer contractor, seeing a lot of project, I just felt confident enough to try. Let's see how it will go :)

I will you all the best in your journey :)

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#108

Post by hdgvhicv »

sminchev wrote: post #107

I am still in the phase of: Just released it, and fighting hard to make it working. But mainly, a lot of things accumulated. I am 40 now, with two kids, the second - 6 months old. When she is 20, I will probably need to use daipers for elderly people. And she needs proper education. AI is changing the world, and being a software developer might not be a safe long-term position anymore. With my, almost 20 years of pro…

> When she is 20, I will probably need to use daipers for elderly people.

60 really isn’t that old

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#109

Post by mekoka »

guzfip wrote: post #48
aerhardt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Become an expert in 1 thing I endorse this. I've been doing generalist consulting for about six years, and I love flying solo. I've been successful in landing some big customers and interesting projects, but I'm tired of the inefficiency that comes with being a generalist, so I've decided to specialize vertically. I had a super-interesting project in executive search in the last couple years, and I've decided to se…

How? This is what I never understood. Every domain expert I’ve ever knowing is because they’ve already I can spend all the time I have reading and toying around in a subject, but until I have real concrete experience to guide me, it’s usually pretty difficult to become an “expert” in anything. I know how to become an advanced hobbyist, but thats never in my life translated to someone being willing to pay me over say,…

If you're a dev, one approach to specialization is to align with the tooling associated with common "profit center" processes. Become a Salesforce/Hubspot/Odoo/Shopify developer. If you're not interested in developing, you can specialize in learning one specific ecosystem really well and then teach companies -- typically SMBs -- how to set themselves up and organize their operations around it.

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#110

Post by sminchev »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #108
sminchev wrote: post #107

I am still in the phase of: Just released it, and fighting hard to make it working. But mainly, a lot of things accumulated. I am 40 now, with two kids, the second - 6 months old. When she is 20, I will probably need to use daipers for elderly people. And she needs proper education. AI is changing the world, and being a software developer might not be a safe long-term position anymore. With my, almost 20 years of pro…

> When she is 20, I will probably need to use daipers for elderly people. 60 really isn’t that old

I know. Just kidding with the daipers ;). I am conerned, at that age, working like I do it now won't be really possible, and that really might affect our monthly income and etc.
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