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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?

#151

Post by gizzlon »

InexSquirrel wrote: post #129
gizzlon wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Become an expert in 1 thing Any suggestions to what that could be? I'm a backend developer looking to specialize in something with a clear demand. Top-of-the-head ideas are things like: Kubernetes, Postgres, Caddy, Self-hosting, Go or Google Cloud Obviously, one has to try to gauge the demand before spending too much time on it

My take on it is more around domain speciality, than a purely technical focus. I'm a web developer / designer-lite (amongst other things in previous lives), and have embedded myself as the web-tech guy for an embedded / hardware team. I help provide better customer facing interfaces (through websites, apps, etc) to both end users and manufacturer that the company uses. I've made small, simple tools that can be packag…

> My take on it is more around domain speciality, than a purely technical focus.

Yeah, I think that is good advice. You just need "an in", somewhere to start.

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

#152

Post by gizzlon »

icedchai wrote: post #141
gizzlon wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Become an expert in 1 thing Any suggestions to what that could be? I'm a backend developer looking to specialize in something with a clear demand. Top-of-the-head ideas are things like: Kubernetes, Postgres, Caddy, Self-hosting, Go or Google Cloud Obviously, one has to try to gauge the demand before spending too much time on it

Sadly, all of this stuff is a commodity. The market is flooded with such "experts." I'm not saying you aren't better than all of them, you may very well be, it is just very hard to differentiate.

I think you're right that it would be hard to differentiate.

I don't think there are many actual experts though, experts as in the people your developers call when they can't figure it out themselves. But the marked is probably small-ish, and there's a large effort to become a real expert.

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

#153

Post by preetigagarwal »

Referrals from the first 2-3 clients were everything. But to get those first clients — LinkedIn outreach with a very specific message about their problem worked better than anything else. Generic 'I am available for work' messages got ignored completely.

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

#154

Post by fuzztester »

iainctduncan wrote: post #46

I did similar stuff for many years (and sometimes still do). By far the most effective was going and meeting people in adjacent or similar fields and making sure they knew about me. My favourite was helping scientists - not the highest paying gigs, but the most interesting work and sometimes it led to great ongoing relationships as their go to tech person. I would absolutely not offer freebies. That telegraphs desper…

>I would absolutely not offer freebies. That telegraphs desperation. Instead, offer a free initial consultation for a 1 hour meeting,

that is still a freebie, though, by definition. if you offer anything for free, it is a freebie.

and, offering a freebie does not necessarily signal desperation. i am not saying that one should not offer freebies, or even that one should. it all depends. and many variations are possible.

For example, escrow, via a services marketplace.

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

#155

Post by fuzztester »

gsliepen wrote: post #35

I worked on an open source application, and some people wanted to use parts of it as a library in their commercial applications. So I started a consultancy due to that demand. I still had a regular job at the same time though, so there was never a need to gather enough clients to make a living out of the consultancy job. Things I learned: - Get an accountant ASAP, even if the income is small. Just the peace of mind t…

>You need to stay on top of things and communicate regularly, even if your client doesn't.

you have to tell them that they have to communicate regularly too. otherwise, how can business be done. how can issues be sorted out. they will blame you for the issues later, although they did not discuss them with you. aka cya syndrome.

if they continue not to do it, you should fire them. or use reverse signoff protocol.

"we mutually agreed at the start of this engagement, that if you don't sign off on acceptance of a given deliverable within x days, it is understood that you have accepted it and will pay for it".

If it happens more than once, leave them. it indicates they don't take you seriously.

all such terms should be put in the contract, initially.

if they don't agree to such mutually protective terms, don't sign the contract at all.

Negotiate a kill fee for the contract too.

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

#156

Post by em-bee »

preetigagarwal wrote: post #153

Referrals from the first 2-3 clients were everything. But to get those first clients — LinkedIn outreach with a very specific message about their problem worked better than anything else. Generic 'I am available for work' messages got ignored completely.

how do you find out about the problems though? i haven't come across anything like that on linkedin. and if it is not there, then i wouldn't even know where else to look. their website? their blog? people/companies generally don't write about their problems. even in job descriptions here usually isn't anything about the problems they want to solve.

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

#157

Post by em-bee »

laughing_abder wrote: post #148

[flagged]

teardowns of companies I liked

how do you do that? how do you get the details about the company for that? i look at company websites, i usually only find marketing stuff but not really anything useful to tell me what's inside.

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

#158

Post by ludicity »

em-bee wrote: post #146
ludicity wrote: post #29

It's bedtime in Melbourne, but I write what would be fair to call a well-known tech blog, and very publicly started a consultancy about 1.5 years ago. Pretty much in the same niche you're in. We made enough money to pay two people full -time wages in the first year and I've cracked $1K per hour on some engagements (not many, and each one was Happy to have a chat if you drop me an email.

so effectively you already had an audience? how long did you write the blog? how did you popularize it?

My history is all pretty public on the blog, but tl;dr write every day, don't be a coward re: topic, and work hard at writing well. It's easier than ever to meet cool people in tech through writing since almost everyone is spamming nonsense on AI.

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

#159

Post by fuzztester »

fuzztester wrote: post #155
gsliepen wrote: post #35

I worked on an open source application, and some people wanted to use parts of it as a library in their commercial applications. So I started a consultancy due to that demand. I still had a regular job at the same time though, so there was never a need to gather enough clients to make a living out of the consultancy job. Things I learned: - Get an accountant ASAP, even if the income is small. Just the peace of mind t…

>You need to stay on top of things and communicate regularly, even if your client doesn't. you have to tell them that they have to communicate regularly too. otherwise, how can business be done. how can issues be sorted out. they will blame you for the issues later, although they did not discuss them with you. aka cya syndrome. if they continue not to do it, you should fire them. or use reverse signoff protocol. "we…

Been there, seen that, got the t-shirt (and the scars), for many of the above points.

The kill fee idea, I got from this video:

"fuck you, pay me" by mike monteiro

https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U

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