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Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
71–80 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#72I've quit my day job in 2012, found a contract with a great client on Upwork (forget how it was called at the time). Initially a 6 months project, I've worked with them for 2 years. Got a few other contracts off that site, until one day I've asked one of my main clients to move out of that platform and work with me directly. Worked with them 2 years, until I got an offer in January to become a full time technical dir…
> 1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place. What if you're mediocre, though?
What does mediocre mean?
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#73I've quit my day job in 2012, found a contract with a great client on Upwork (forget how it was called at the time). Initially a 6 months project, I've worked with them for 2 years. Got a few other contracts off that site, until one day I've asked one of my main clients to move out of that platform and work with me directly. Worked with them 2 years, until I got an offer in January to become a full time technical dir…
> 1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place. What if you're mediocre, though?
You can produce quality work.
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#74We actually have a few interviewers at Karat who are doing exactly what you're doing. (Disclaimer in case it wasn't clear: I work at Karat :)) It's remote contract work, but we find the work for you, so you don't need to spend any time finding clients etc. This can be really helpful for contractors who are just starting out like yourself, or for existing contractors who are looking to supplement their work.
At a high level how it works is: You put availability on your calendar; we schedule you for interviews in those slots. You can set as much or as little availability as you want week to week, at any time of day. The interviewing is all online, so you can do it from wherever you want as long as you've got a quiet location and a reliable high-bandwidth internet connection.
All we look for are solid technical chops and interpersonal skills, though prior interviewing experience is great. We train you on how to conduct interviews (generally takes about 25 hours including mentoring and practice interviews); training is paid and again on your own schedule. The only real restriction is that we ask that you be able to interview 10 hours a week on average, just because otherwise the time investment and ongoing training stop making sense.
If that sounds interesting you can apply here: https://jobs.lever.co/karat/d44ab283-c7c0-4bbd-b8c3-4dc0ced6...
Also happy to answer any questions about it here or via email: josh@karat.io
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#75I've quit my day job in 2012, found a contract with a great client on Upwork (forget how it was called at the time). Initially a 6 months project, I've worked with them for 2 years. Got a few other contracts off that site, until one day I've asked one of my main clients to move out of that platform and work with me directly. Worked with them 2 years, until I got an offer in January to become a full time technical dir…
> 1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place. What if you're mediocre, though?
Increase your rates regardless. Clients don't know, or really care, about quality so long as what you build works.
Where quality is important is in keeping your costs low. Having to revisit old code to fix bugs or trying to work with bad code to add features has very little impact on your client. It affects you. Strive to write good code for your own sake.
Plus, if you take on fixed price projects writing code you don't need to go back to really increases your profit.
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#76Best thing to do is look on r/forhire on reddit, build up a portfolio on upwork/etc, and check all the remote job boards like remoteok, weworkremotely, etc.. Freelancing is hard to start - -you need to be part marketer, you don't get paid for the time finding new clients, but AFTER you have a steady stream of good business, it gets a bit easier to keep filling your pipeline with jobs through word of mouth / etc.
About how much can a relatively skilled developer get on upwork or similar? My feeling when bidding for projects there was that I needed to go incredibly low to compete with businesses in India or Pakistan. Or does it get better as you get more clients?
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#77Working remote only with a mix of direct customers and customers through TopTal. To have TopTal as a backup is great. Land a new gig in a week perhaps two if you're picky (and your reputation is good).
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#78I've quit my day job in 2012, found a contract with a great client on Upwork (forget how it was called at the time). Initially a 6 months project, I've worked with them for 2 years. Got a few other contracts off that site, until one day I've asked one of my main clients to move out of that platform and work with me directly. Worked with them 2 years, until I got an offer in January to become a full time technical dir…
> 1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place. What if you're mediocre, though?
Doesn’t matter. People pay too much for broken crap all of the time.
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#79I just got contacted from a company called NewtonX that connects tech leaders with companies that need an initial phone consultation. I haven't gone through with it but it looks like a decent way to do remote work.
Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been on Moonlight since it has launched and has not panned out very well for me. I'm in that ballpark of rates and most projects have been duds. Only 1 lead to a prospect and he balked on the rate (again, in the ballpark of what Phil is advertising here).
How have those projects been duds?
They either ask for a dev and then take it back (half of the time, according to Phil above), or my guess is they think I'm too expensive (and yet, I'm still priced less than the average that you see for a senior front-end/rails developer). The proposals I submit are highly targeted - what they need is exactly what I can provide. And yet only 1 proposal has lead to a statement of work, and they rejected it.
Whereas a serious amount of networking locally yielded me a 10% pay increase and a 6 month contract.
I think this is why you get all of this advice saying that these kinds of sites are a race to the bottom and not worth investing too much time into.