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Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#141

Post by arym »

Building a dream for someone who doesn't ask for it, but who deserves:

I live in a less-developed country, where university students aren't well-treated neither by staff & faculty (underestimated and humiliated), nor by government (54 USD/Mo scholarship for ~40%, no housing, no dining, no basic students services), nor by companies coming just for low-paid hard-coders and unpaid interns.

I endured studying in these circumstances, and finally graduated with a MSc & Eng. in Computer Science.

Now, I decide to make something valuable in honour of the student community; a service that students deserve; which take in consideration student dignity; and which help to restore student confidence and hope.

I'm looking for a startup or a small business idea, which can generate some money just for me and 2 other friends (our team), just to survive! But most importantly offer the first awesome and affordable quality service for students. Even a small service, because for our student community less is always more!

I can make web apps, and have access to some student infos (name, university, classOf). I also have access to cloud services via a restricted credit card! And I can have mobility to national universities.

Do you have some ideas and/or advice to share?

I've posted my story here as a comment first because I think it make sense, secondly I don't know how do I make it visible! I'm a greenhorn HNer; let's be tolerant :)

Thanks Dale1

Sorry for my English mistakes!

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#142

Post by nekopa »

CriticalSection wrote: post #35

I worked in IT, with no BSCS. I took some college classes at nights and weekends while working. When 2008 rolled around, I knew things were shaky at my company, but many companies I looked at had "Required: BSCS" or even when not, HR would grill me on college when I applied. I began saving a lot. I decided if I could find an equivalent or better job I'd leave, otherwise I'd take my chances - I had many months warning…

Hey, I would like to get in touch with you, as I am about to take a year off to try building an app based lifestyle business. My email is in my profile.

Just looking for some hints and tips, will probably setup an 'Ask HN' closer to the start- I have about three months of commitments left before I go full time on app building.

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#143

Post by yblu »

zackmorris wrote: post #135
yblu wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some tips for new oDesk users? I registered on oDesk for 2 months already and although I'm fairly experienced (10 years), I got zero contact so far. I must miss some important thing to get noticed or contacted.

I apologize in advance for how long this got :-/ At first I was signed up on freelancer.com as well and did several ~$150 contracts where I could bid/get picked/do the work/get paid practically the same day, which helped my psyche. I also did a relatively large project on elance.com but unfortunately didn't get paid for it due to disputes over milestones (the customer kept adding to the to do list), which is what led…

Wow, this is an awesome answer! A big thank you for taking time sharing your experience. There are many good points and I will definitely go over this again and again as I work on oDesk.

Regarding my situation with the getting initial works, I think I will do what you said, like doing the tests and adding stuff to profile. May I ask that for the first few contracts, did you apply for them or did the clients discovered you? Did you have to say anything to make them comfortable with the fact that you have zero work done on oDesk before?

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#144

Post by jscn »

Nursie wrote: post #94
hcho wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is actually on par with US, if you accept to work in a "at will" arrangement. Let's say London is about the levels of New York in terms of compensation.

Contract work is not quite the same as the at-will arrangement, nor is it the majority of available work in London. That said, you're right and that's the reason I do it. It's the only way I've found to match the salary I had in Australia.

I'd love to know a little more about what you were doing and where in Australia.

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#145

Post by kzisme »

russell wrote: post #78
zackmorris wrote: post #53

Currently contracting through oDesk. I tend to average about 25 billable hours per week, with the remainder of my time split between learning about technology trends and working on long term personal projects. This led to a six month stint last year as a contractor at a local business that is exploring startup approaches like Agile/Scrum, which was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I was also lucky enough to be…

Hey Zach, advice to you from an industry elder. From your comments, I would put you in your late 30s, young enough to be scrappy but experienced enough to be on a founding team. The only reason for doing is to gain industry domain experience. (Software doesnt count.) The domain can suggest startup possibilities. Consulting income is a trap, unless you make massive savings. Dont look back at what might have been. I wo…

So as a college student now and graduating in two years what should I be focusing on currently and into graduation?

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#146

Post by kzisme »

mattront wrote: post #22

I've been in software development for 20 years now. Started to work as a student at a top consulting firm in my country, at the expense of dropping out of CS studies - real work (and earning good money) was so much more interesting than studying. After that I switched a couple of regular jobs and enjoyed every single one of them: working on real-world problems (electronic banking, multimedia production) together with…

Any suggestions for a software development student? I'm generally still getting my feet wet, and struggling to keep myself busy with interesting things.

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#147

Post by efdee »

orware wrote: post #40

Hi Dale, I ended up starting out at UC Berkeley and during that first year of school I got my first real introduction to programming and computer science. However, I was also running a failing dial-up Internet service business (a cousin of mine had gotten my parents to purchase it so I could run it and earn some money/learn a bit about business, which was cool during high school) and was trying to maintain a long-dis…

Thanks for writing this, and sorry for your loss.

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#148

Post by mattront »

kzisme wrote: post #146
mattront wrote: post #22

I've been in software development for 20 years now. Started to work as a student at a top consulting firm in my country, at the expense of dropping out of CS studies - real work (and earning good money) was so much more interesting than studying. After that I switched a couple of regular jobs and enjoyed every single one of them: working on real-world problems (electronic banking, multimedia production) together with…

Any suggestions for a software development student? I'm generally still getting my feet wet, and struggling to keep myself busy with interesting things.

Try to work on some real projects (student job, startup, open source, app...) besides your studies. There is nothing more depressing from an employer's point of view than a CS graduate with no projects to show.

Start with small projects. It is very rewarding to finish something, even more so if you get people to actually use your work.

Also, software engineering is a very multi-faceted profession, that can involve much more besides programming:

- understanding business processes, regulatory needs, economics; - working closely with people as part of collecting user needs, customer support and team work; - education and psychology; - user experience and design; - ...

There is a lot of place and flexibility to find what interests you the most.

Re: Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

#149

Post by vram22 »

zackmorris wrote: post #135
yblu wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some tips for new oDesk users? I registered on oDesk for 2 months already and although I'm fairly experienced (10 years), I got zero contact so far. I must miss some important thing to get noticed or contacted.

I apologize in advance for how long this got :-/ At first I was signed up on freelancer.com as well and did several ~$150 contracts where I could bid/get picked/do the work/get paid practically the same day, which helped my psyche. I also did a relatively large project on elance.com but unfortunately didn't get paid for it due to disputes over milestones (the customer kept adding to the to do list), which is what led…

Thanks for sharing your experiences, and I'm going to read it in full, but just wanted to suggest that it may be easier to read if you break up your comment into shorter paragraphs at logical points, with a newline between paragraphs.
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