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Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#201

Post by jasonm23 »

itake wrote: post #151
3pt14159 wrote: post #79

Side gigs don't really earn much. If you've got a friend that you've worked with before and they have a startup or something, ask for some peanuts amount of equity as an hands on advisor. It'll do more for your CV than 20 hour side gigs glueing some libraries together. Or pick a well known library / framework and contribute. Or rescue a "looking for [co-]maintainer" library out there.

I earn $10k/mo contracting 20 hours per week. Personally, this extra income helped me maximize my day job benefits (401k and ESPP) and provided liquidity during the home buying process.

I'd be interested to know how you're doing this. Can you share more information?

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#202

Post by 3pt14159 »

itake wrote: post #151
3pt14159 wrote: post #79

Side gigs don't really earn much. If you've got a friend that you've worked with before and they have a startup or something, ask for some peanuts amount of equity as an hands on advisor. It'll do more for your CV than 20 hour side gigs glueing some libraries together. Or pick a well known library / framework and contribute. Or rescue a "looking for [co-]maintainer" library out there.

I earn $10k/mo contracting 20 hours per week. Personally, this extra income helped me maximize my day job benefits (401k and ESPP) and provided liquidity during the home buying process.

I'd wager it's for the same company for over 3 months or more and its for people you've worked with or for in the past that trust you for a domain specific issue that doesn't need 100% of your time. Like a cloud infra engineer for a less than 20 person startup or something like that.

What I meant by side gigs was the more typical model of finding small gigs with flexible (read: resource constrained) buyers.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#204

Post by rswskg »

itake wrote: post #151
3pt14159 wrote: post #79

Side gigs don't really earn much. If you've got a friend that you've worked with before and they have a startup or something, ask for some peanuts amount of equity as an hands on advisor. It'll do more for your CV than 20 hour side gigs glueing some libraries together. Or pick a well known library / framework and contribute. Or rescue a "looking for [co-]maintainer" library out there.

I earn $10k/mo contracting 20 hours per week. Personally, this extra income helped me maximize my day job benefits (401k and ESPP) and provided liquidity during the home buying process.

Do you work over the weekend?

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#205

Post by eclat »

itake wrote: post #151
3pt14159 wrote: post #79

Side gigs don't really earn much. If you've got a friend that you've worked with before and they have a startup or something, ask for some peanuts amount of equity as an hands on advisor. It'll do more for your CV than 20 hour side gigs glueing some libraries together. Or pick a well known library / framework and contribute. Or rescue a "looking for [co-]maintainer" library out there.

I earn $10k/mo contracting 20 hours per week. Personally, this extra income helped me maximize my day job benefits (401k and ESPP) and provided liquidity during the home buying process.

Please teach me your ways. How does one find an opportunity like that?

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#206

Post by eclat »

jjevanoorschot wrote: post #37
MrPatan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FANGs? startups? contracts? It's been a while since I looked, is 200k the norm now? Asking for a friend...

I mentioned £200k because it's near the top end for a senior engineer in London (although not the very top). FAANG, some Unicorns, trading firms will pay this to a senior engineer. Bear in mind this is total compensation, so part of that will be in stock or options. For engineers based in the UK that are shocked by this number I'd recommend reading this [0] article. It's about compensation in the Netherlands but the…

This was a great read, thanks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#207

Post by yolo3000 »

synergy20 wrote: post #185
yolo3000 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this last year. I work full time for ~100/hr, and someone I've worked with before, recommended me to an early stage startup in the US. They paid me ~130/hr just to be part of the meetings with their EU based dev team. Monthly I was making 2-3k extra but the context switching, startup rollercoaster, dev team not performing turned out to be stressful. In the end they secured funding and assembled an in house dev…

tried both full time and contractor years back, too stressful, can't deal with both with kids, I since focus on one of them, not both at the same time, for the sake of my own health.

By full time with 100/hr I meant that I'm a contractor working for a company for 40hrs a week. Since we started to work remote I picked up a second assignment of a few hours extra a week. But all in all it becomes more stressful.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#208

Post by whoareya »

angarg12 wrote: post #163
itake wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I earn $10k/mo contracting 20 hours per week. Personally, this extra income helped me maximize my day job benefits (401k and ESPP) and provided liquidity during the home buying process.

Maybe you can answer a question that is nagging me. I recently moved to the US, and ever since I keep getting messages on LinkedIn offering contract/freelance jobs. However the hourly rate is so poor that it would pay less that my current job base pay (not counting stocks and bonuses). In Europe the rule of thumb is that contract job should pay 2x your full time job rate. This is based on the associated overhead plus…

In the UK we have Temp jobs, ECM (ie/ inside IR35) Fixed term contract (FTC) too, not just contract (outside IR35). a) There are not as many outside IR35 jobs in US (1099 is the term they use) b) yes, once a recruiter randomly contacts you, they are outside of their usual placements which usually means their contacts have all declined it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#209

Post by pc86 »

ulrashida wrote: post #173
pc86 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me I encourage my staff to have "side gig" of their own business, but will not sign off on them contracting on the side. Imagine believing that you have the right to "sign off" on what your employees do in their free time provided they're not directly competing with you.

It's a simple legal ass cover. Should the manager / lead care if there's a side gig in play while all other needs are being met? No, of course not. However, what if the side gig becomes a bit more than planned and now your team member isn't delivering, gets sick more often, or is otherwise grinding themselves into the ground (and doesn't recognize the need to get out of that situation)? You can care about your team m…

I mean these are different answers, right?

If they stop delivering, you do what you do if they stop delivering. Coaching, performance discussions, reassignment/termination. Whether it's because of a side gig or not is irrelevant.

If they get sick more often, you...? What would you do normally? Hopefully the answer is "support them." If this is cover for "they're saying they are sick but I think they're just working on their side gig" then refer to #1 but you better be right about it.

> You can care about your team member's welfare and support them 100%, but part of that support should be defining the rules of play so that all parties know what the agreement is.

I agree with this 100%. The agreement is that they're paid a full-time salary for full-time work (whatever that means whether it's ass-in-seat for 40 hours, or WFH or whatever). Whatever they do outside of that time isn't the company's business unless they're directly competing with them.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#210

Post by pc86 »

tremon wrote: post #188
pc86 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me I encourage my staff to have "side gig" of their own business, but will not sign off on them contracting on the side. Imagine believing that you have the right to "sign off" on what your employees do in their free time provided they're not directly competing with you.

It's not imaginary, it's called copyright. In many jurisdictions (including the US, FAFAIK) your employer retains the copyright of things you produce in your free time that fall within your job description (e.g. if you might have done the same thing on company time). So if you have a side gig that matches your day job and your work output is covered by copyright: yes, you need your employer's sign-off.

The US is not a single jurisdiction, there are at least 50 with regards to employment law. I've worked in several and at no point has any employer held any copyright to things I product in my free time.

> if you have a side gig that matches your day job

Well this is competition, isn't it? That's completely different.

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