Ask HN: Are you ok?

I strongly disagree. If your manager is being unreasonable, it's wishful thinking to try and reason with him.

Considering the barrier to entry for software engineering is a lot higher than most industries, the notion that our managers are less capable of understanding than in other industries seems misplaced.

> how long did it take before you got enough work through referrals?

First referral was 3 months in. Work before that was from a friend of a friend, and someone I met in my coworking space.

People don't generally go through the effort of finding new freelance developers unless they have at least a month of work for them to do, so I'm not constantly scrambling to look for work.

> and how much does your location matter to find clients?

I think I could find clients almost anywhere, but I think they wouldn't pay as much elsewhere. NYC has a high concentration of high-revenue companies.

That said, I've only really worked from NYC and near NYC, so I don't really have any basis for comparison.

> i am unable to find any local clients but i also can't easily move to anywhere else because i have a family with school-age kids which you don't move on a whim. people keep recommending upwork and similar places, but the quality of the offers there is not good either, and i end up competing with cheap labor. all the advice i find online is about how to get better leads, but not about how to get leads in the first place.

My experience is limited here because my life situation is very different, but here are some ideas.

1. I don't live in NYC, I live 90 minutes outside it. This means I can travel, but in practice I don't do it frequently. So if you could travel a few times a year, you might get a lot of the benefits of living in NYC or SF without actually living there.

2. Upwork didn't even let me create a profile. Maybe think about people who you've worked with in the past (at previous employers or who left your company) and see if they or their companies are looking for any freelance work?

3. Obviously your risk tolerance is a lot lower than mine due to your family, so you might try doing stuff part-time. First step would be to make sure you have proper boundaries with your current job so you're not working overtime (which I'd say you should do regardless of any of my other advice anyway). And then look for small contracts, which can build a freelance portfolio and potentially get you more work.

Thanks for asking.

This was a weird week at work. I've been at this place for a year and a half. I wasn't excited about the work but was in a bad spot financially so took the job. It's nothing like the fancy folks here, only internal help desk in a healthcare org. I've had lots of ups and downs over that time as the nature of the work directly has stressed me out physically and mentally. The amount of calls, the tedium and sameness, the attempts to get management to solve problems and help us be more efficient falling on deaf ears, etc etc. I really broke down over a call and getting into a meaningless argument with a colleague and had to leave. I told my boss I thought I was finished. He said take the day and relax.

The next day, we talked, and worked out the issue. He's been very supportive despite some of my behavior and we're working on adjusting my role away from what I'm doing now and towards things that better fit my personality. The other guys are having some fun and jokes about it at my expense (as if a mental breakdown is just a 'fun happy sick day') but I'm doing my best to ignore the jibes.

I've been in therapy since February, working on a lot of other issues plus this and my therapist had some interesting insights as well. We both think this is a good change. The biggest thing is trying to find some meaningful things in life to balance out the inevitable stresses of work.

It's difficult in the US to find a good therapist, either because of shady insurance companies or, now that things are somewhat less stigmatized, great demand, but I highly recommend it. Your friends may be great but there's nothing like an objective perspective with years of training. Ask for sliding scale if you need some financial help.

Also, I learned through this process, it's entirely possible to have mild or moderate depression and not really know it until those down times really hit hard. I used to think "oh, it's just melancholy", etc. A small pill every day and therapy have made what could've been a difficult past two months much more bearable.

Anyway, that's my story for this week. Hope everyone out there is OK and has a great weekend.

nr 1. is a good point. i am actually doing that, and most of my current leads come from that.

nr 2. is something i heard frequently, but always leaves me at a loss. i just don't have enough past contacts to get anything out of that. it requires me to keep in touch with friends and colleagues remotely, which is something i find very hard to do.

for nr 3. i'd take a part-time remote job in a heartbeat, if i could find one. all jobs i have seen so far are full-time and not a good fit.

i forgot to mention, pretty much all work i got in the past few years was referrals. there just weren't enough of them. which means my referral network is not strong enough and i see no way to make it larger other than getting work elsewhere.

I am a math research programmer with an advanced mathematical, programming, and engineering background, but I don't have a career or degree and I am not a student either. The universities at this point are pure social judgement garbage and the professors are more concerned with administrative bloat than with science. If I can manage to get a career in this idiocracy then I may be okay in the long run.. but I am on my own with that since the universities are unreliable and useless.. I have no plans of going back to university and will continue my research in pure mathematics, engineering, and computer science independently until I get a career. For now, I am okay and happy with having the freedom to study my own way, but obviously I am not guaranteed a career.