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Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#41

Post by maerF0x0 »

deadbabe wrote: post #4

Short term work is more plentiful when money is easy and there’s a lot of entrepreneurial activity going on due to some recent catalyst such as mobile app platforms or the dotcom boom etc. Right now we’re in the AI boom and some people may be making money peddling agentic solutions but money is tight and businesses are hurting. It’s also hard to trust a short term dev who doesn’t really need the money. You have no le…

> It’s also hard to trust a short term dev

You said the unpopular but honest thing.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#42

Post by ryandrake »

jraph wrote: post #37
ForHackernews wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO selling yourself (selling anything, really) is a bit demeaning. But this is probably a class affectation on my part, not real moral intuition.

Don't almost everyone sell themselves? Many people, as employees, sell themselves for 5 days per week, every week, except days off. And everybody buys stuff, and therefore relies on people selling stuff. The only way I see we could avoid being exposed to selling would be do have a different way to organize the economy / the society.

I think it's the self-promotion part that's seen as slimy and shameful. Yes, as an employee I trade my time for money, but I don't write blog posts at the office about what kind of transformational and high-impact work I'm capable of, and about this week's top-10 coding life-hacks, and how I can single-handedly turn your project around from life support to on-schedule deployment.

Admittedly, the people who are good at this tend to get promoted and quickly end up as Directors and VPs... It just... ugh, turns my stomach.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#43

Post by brudgers »

bob1029 wrote: post #12
james_marks wrote: post #8

Publishing articles, etc to demo your skill helps you stay top of mind. Even if only the 5 people in your network see it, they are the 5 people that need that steady reminder of your skills and availability. I’ve also hired people outside my network this way, when I happened to stumble on someone with a great article in the exact thing I’m working on.

I've started thinking about this. Articles/blogs/repos to generate interesting opportunities. It's one thing to network and talk about your skills. It's a different thing to demonstrate them.

Yes they are different. Sales is much much harder.

Clients don’t care about your skills.

Clients care if you can solve their actual problems.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#44

Post by cortesoft »

ForHackernews wrote: post #27
cushychicken wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why’s this shameful, exactly? There’s no shame in saying you’re available to work.

IMHO selling yourself (selling anything, really) is a bit demeaning. But this is probably a class affectation on my part, not real moral intuition.

Selling ANYTHING is demeaning? So you believe the only non-demeaning way to live would be to live entirely self-sufficiently, making and growing everything yourself?

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#45

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #39
paxys wrote: post #36

Having the right technical skills is only 50% of the requirement (and realistically even less than that). The harder battle is being a good salesman. Push yourself and your services at every opportunity. Send mass emails to friends and old collegues. Write daily puke-inducing posts on LinkedIn. Write blog posts and make toy Github projects with "looking for work" blurbs at the top of each one. Set a goal to post N ti…

Ugh. This is probably one of those "Thanks, I hate it!" moments. You're probably 100% right, and this is why I could never be an independent contractor. This kind of self-promotion and lead generation seems so demeaning, slimy, and shameful, and I'd probably die of embarrassment if I ever had to do it. Yet it comes so naturally to some people. It sucks that this kind of skill is required to make it on your own.

How else would anyone actually know that you were available? And that they should give you money?

And, even if you get referred, you still need to seal the deal.

And even within a larger company, unless someone like your manager more or less does it for you, "advertising" your accomplishments is pretty essential if you want anyone to reward your accomplishments.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#47

Post by kragen »

limbero wrote: post #6

I did this a few years ago and the winning recipe was a shameless (i.e. deeply shameful) linkedin post where I pretty much just summarized my skillset and explained that I was looking for a senior engineer equivalent of a summer internship, with no chance of extension. Got me 3-4 offers. None of the offering companies had ads out for roles like this, so this was pretty much the only way.

Thank you! Your knowledge is very valuable.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#48

Post by ryandrake »

A lot of people are probably going to reply with "Use your network!" which has always struck me as kind of vaguely incomplete and unhelpful advice. It's like telling an investor "Buy low and sell high." and leaving it at that. OK, thank you, Captain Obvious, that's wonderful, but how?

Maybe it's different in the independent contracting world, but I've found my "network" only semi-helpful in gaining employment. They can give good ideas about companies to try, they can help you refine your resume, and do interview coaching, and if you're lucky they work at the same company you want to apply for so can submit your resume with the "recommend" box ticked, but that's all they seem to be able to do. I've never once had someone in my network who had his hands directly on the "hire this man!" lever at the company.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#49

Post by toptal »

CEO of Toptal here. If you like, I can ensure we review your profile and client matching history to see if there's anything we overlooked. I'm available on Slack or taso@toptal.com. We’ll see if we can optimize your visibility to clients needing backend/data optimization experts.

While we look into this, Opire (an open-source bounties site) has lots of short-term opportunities.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#50

Post by taormina »

zb3 wrote: post #28
nathias wrote: post #23

what's this network people keep bringing up?

It's the thing OP and I don't have, otherwise we'd not be asking these questions. HN being helpful as always..

I mean, don’t undervalue your own network without trying. Maybe you haven’t worked with anyone famous, most of us haven’t! But someone you know might be in the right place at the right time and mention you to the right person. Of course it’s imperfect but you have interacted with a lot more people in the past than you are giving yourself credit for. It’s about putting yourself out there and allowing that to happen. No one said to just pray to the network and quit looking though. But people who already know you are a good apple from past experience are the best.
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