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Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

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Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#81

Post by acconrad »

philip1209 wrote: post #60
acconrad wrote: post #53

Earlier 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).

Thanks for being on Moonlight! We have been working hard to increase the number of jobs. It's been about doubling month over month and has been our #1 focus. We are working on a lot of product and marketing initiatives focused on that. It looks like you've submitted a few proposals - unfortunately, half of the jobs stopped before selecting a developer. If we had more posts on the site, getting declined would be more…

I'll give it a shot again in 6 months. I've since landed a contract (not related to the platform) but my gut is that my effort was not worth it. I got much better results from my own local networking at higher rates.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#82

Post by thrawaylost112 »

1. Get foot in the door. Bid lowest and touch the codebase, oh now it's dirty and you've access to their secret.

Tell them, oh it's dirty code - it's unmaintainable crap. I quoted you the wrong rate, to deal with this I'll need $500 per hour I've other contracts waiting for me. But yeaa this is something which I had done last month for a different client. Now, I am busy, so just drop me a line on whatsapp if you don't find anyone else to do it. Leave this, "Anyone who can really do, will charge at-least 2x of what I am quoting"

2. Wait

3. Wait

4. You get the contract.

Don't regret for the ones who never get back to you, you'll make plenty from the one who tickle you the second time!

At $500/hr even if you are not the expert of the task you are undertaking, you'll find plenty of people on upwork to do it for 100-200/hr. Why? Those people just want to talk with a technical person who has clearly defined the scope of work! Most of those people are technically good from Russia.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#83

Post by mcjiggerlog »

arrtz wrote: post #74

We 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…

I don't quite understand the proposition. Why would I need to do 10 hours of interviews per week?

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#84

Post by fmntf »

philip1209 wrote: post #14

I'm a digital nomad who as in the same position. I couldn't find contract work for high-skill engineers. So, I started building a marketplace for it. Today that's Moonlight - we are still small, bootstrapped, and growing, but we have companies ranging from startups to a publicly-traded company hiring through the site. Hourly rates average a little over $100US. https://www.moonlightwork.com

Really nice. I signed up. I have a question: why are you forcing me to setup stripe in the signup phase? I would prefer to do it later (when I get some work). Of course getting paid would be a priority for me, but not now.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#85

Post by chasd00 »

network and get to know directors/upper management at very large companies. You can do a lot of this by just hanging out at happy hour spots near a large corporate campus. Those people are the ones that get tasked with implementing large programs or processes. If you they know you and your skills are even remotely relevant then they'll reach out to you when they can't get anyone in the internal IT/tech department to give them the time of day.

Also, huge veins of money run through these places you just need to stick in a needle. Cutting a check for $150k means absolutely nothing to them. I've seen million dollar budgets burned with absolutely nothing to show in the end and the business team just shrugs and moves on.

Those are the gigs you want.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#86

Post by viraptor »

johnvanommen wrote: post #48
esaym wrote: post #17

> so I can travel the world while working remotely. I thought the same thing. Perhaps it is because I work for someone else instead of for myself, but since I've been full time remote for the last 2 years, I've had 0 free time for anything. I rarely leave the house. Pretty much everything I need comes from online purchases or grocery delivery as I don't even have time to do that.

This x 1000 Before I worked remotely, I thought that working remotely would allow me time to exercise and eat better. I had dreams of going on a daily bicycle ride, instead of being stuck in my car. The reality is that working remotely just allows me to put in insane amounts of hours. About once or twice a week I'll start my workday at three in the morning due to insomnia, and just work 12-16 hours straight. I think…

You're still paid for a standard day of work. This is insane and you can just stop. Set the alarm for 17:00, disconnect, and go cook something.

You pretty much have to do it at some point unless you think you can happily spend the rest of your life like this. I'm working with a primarily remote working people, and yes - due to flexibility sometimes people get caught up in something and work later. But mostly we're telling each other that things can wait and to go offline. Normally we all still save time since there's no commuting.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#87

Post by philip1209 »

fmntf wrote: post #84
philip1209 wrote: post #14

I'm a digital nomad who as in the same position. I couldn't find contract work for high-skill engineers. So, I started building a marketplace for it. Today that's Moonlight - we are still small, bootstrapped, and growing, but we have companies ranging from startups to a publicly-traded company hiring through the site. Hourly rates average a little over $100US. https://www.moonlightwork.com

Really nice. I signed up. I have a question: why are you forcing me to setup stripe in the signup phase? I would prefer to do it later (when I get some work). Of course getting paid would be a priority for me, but not now.

It's mainly identity verification and fraud reduction. The whole app strongly relies on Stripe Connect, so we also want to make sure you can get paid automatically.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#88

Post by arrtz »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #83
arrtz wrote: post #74

We 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…

I don't quite understand the proposition. Why would I need to do 10 hours of interviews per week?

First, I think my first post left out some context so I should be a bit more explicit that the job is being an interviewer: You interview software engineering candidates on behalf of our clients. (Possible you already get this, but mentioning it just in case.)

As for the 10 hours, we spend a lot of time onboarding and then continuously training our interviewers. Between that and the overhead of managing the relationship with the interviewer, we find things work best with interviewers above a certain activity level. Put another way, it's easier to work with 10 interviewers doing 10 hours a week each than 100 interviewers doing 1 hour a week each.

Does that make sense?

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#89

Post by rbitar »

We help senior remote developers around the world contract with companies here in the US, mostly Startups, for freelance work. Feel free to check us out at Skillhire.com

You’ll have to go through a technical interview process but most jobs are seeking JS developers, especially Node, React-Redux and React Native devs.

Hopefully we’re one more resource to help devs like yourself who want to travel and work.

Re: Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

#90

Post by kasey_junk »

joshvm wrote: post #47
Kluny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 should still aim for charging quite a bit higher than what you think is reasonable. There are an awful lot of bad developers, so even mediocre is probably fine. I've had consulting gigs where I've charged $200 an hour to answer a survey as a domain expert, and I learned later that I probably undercharged. People will pay, don't worry about that. If you land a job that you feel got a bit close for comfort, lower y…

I can’t imagine any professional setting I’ve been in, where firing up the machinery to get a consultant in place would be worth $200. Conversely I’ve been in many situations where an expert reading one page of text and nodding (with a follow up email) was worth several thousand dollars.
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