21–30 of 53 posts
I found other odd dev work through family friends and by making a well-performing app for a small platform. This was all a nice supplement during university and internships, but not enough to compete with full-time remote work.
- Specialize in something during normal employment (Python backend/cloud infra).
- Build and contribute to a few Open Source projects. Thanks to that I have a small portfolio to show to potential clients.
- Use an agency to help me find clients. Since I didn't really know where to start I looked for advice. An old HN thread mentioned Toptal so I registered without really thinking it would work. After a quite long interview process I got into the platform and landed my first customer a few days after. Overall it is a positive experience and a good way to get started, but other HN comments are more nuanced so YMMV.
fyi, I spent my time in school actually learning, when I felt a class assignment was worthless, and I saw slackers getting A's by pandering to the teacher, I'd focus on learning something new and screw my grades. (did just fine, but wasn't straight A's because of this)
My methods paid off. I got an internship my second semester (teacher in my first class at school told me to apply at his work place), was hired as employee after 9 months in related field while still in school, and got my first freelance gig the last month before I graduated. Freelance ever since... been working on a startup for too long now though, lol. (I think many people here are working on startups)
Still brand new to this, but have pretty much hit the tipping point from "unsure if enough work" to "too much work" immediately. If the goal is to be on your own, one thing that is incredibly useful is to build a network of people who would be in a complimentary business to yours, are likely to stumble across work that you would be able to do, and aren't in the position to do themselves. For me, that's working with a…
I'm doing freelance EE hardware design. About 5 years into my career I worked for a small consulting firm that did a lot of mechanical engineering and a little electrical. The owner could not find enough work for the mechanical guys and was tired of the ups and downs of consulting so he closed the business. I asked him if I could continue working directly for one of his old clients and he said sure. So that would giv…
I have had a good amount of success on upwork.com, targeting financial / stock trading algorithms.
Check my profile for details...
I'm doing freelance EE hardware design. About 5 years into my career I worked for a small consulting firm that did a lot of mechanical engineering and a little electrical. The owner could not find enough work for the mechanical guys and was tired of the ups and downs of consulting so he closed the business. I asked him if I could continue working directly for one of his old clients and he said sure. So that would giv…