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Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

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Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#21

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

akor wrote: post #19
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #17

This is maybe going to be an unpopular suggestion, but I think certain technologies are going to more commonly be associated with race-to-the-bottom markets, and I think PHP is one of those. It might make sense in investing in studying some more niche and higher-barrier-to-entry languages.

What languages do you suggest? Does Javascript have the same association with "race-to-the-bottom markets"? Having used Symfony and Laravel I don't understand why PHP has such a bad rep except that it's on the easier side so any language that makes things simple would suffer the same fate (attracting inexperienced developers (hello Javascript, Ruby, Python)). Both PHP and Javascript have many language specific issues…

I intentionally didn’t suggest any, because I didn’t want this to turn into a language shootout, or for me to sound like a fanboy of the particular languages I prefer. It’s the same reason why I avoided levelling criticisms at PHP. And yes, I do think JavaScript has the same market supply issue.

If you haven’t done much other than PHP and JavaScript, I’d suggest going through the Seven Languages in Seven Weeks book, and also doing a bit of market analysis; see who’s hiring for which languages.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#22

Post by ArtofSaf »

Here's something you can do:

1. Go to https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/PHP to see websites that use PHP

2. Focus on smaller to mid-size companies (large corporations likely have the tech team and contractors to cover almost of their needs)

3. (Optional) Search for each company on Linkedin and add managers with relevant roles (VIP of sales, project manager, marketing manager, etc.). The goal is to familiarize them with your name so they're more likely to open your email (step 5).

4. Find the email format of these companies with https://hunter.io/.

5. Reach out to the most senior person with a relevant role at each company with a personalized 1-on-1 email.

The key here is to review their website and business and share 2-3 ideas of what you can them build or fix (if there are any glaring issues or vulnerabilities). They may not necessarily use your ideas but the goal is stand out and help them understand how they can put your programming skills to use. Here's a template you can reference: https://artofemails.com/new-clients#developer

There are a lot of businesses out there whose teams don't have the capacity to build everything so they would be keen to have a reliable freelance programmer help them bring some features or projects out of backlog.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#23

Post by starvingbear »

akor wrote: post #19
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #17

This is maybe going to be an unpopular suggestion, but I think certain technologies are going to more commonly be associated with race-to-the-bottom markets, and I think PHP is one of those. It might make sense in investing in studying some more niche and higher-barrier-to-entry languages.

What languages do you suggest? Does Javascript have the same association with "race-to-the-bottom markets"? Having used Symfony and Laravel I don't understand why PHP has such a bad rep except that it's on the easier side so any language that makes things simple would suffer the same fate (attracting inexperienced developers (hello Javascript, Ruby, Python)). Both PHP and Javascript have many language specific issues…

I think PHP is still good. It definitely seems lower in priority for most companies remote or local than it used to be by far but it isn't going away or anything. Niche languages depend on a lot of factors. And debatable on what is still niche but I think Elixir, Scala, Go and Rust are a group to look at. My personal choice has been Elixir and that has worked out great. Lots of remote jobs too with it. A fellow made a post recently about how to find remote jobs in it https://blog.lelonek.me/how-to-find-an-elixir-job-db4c836890

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#24

Post by breck »

I would recommend strongly against freelancing. Instead, try and join up with a remote team. YouTeam.com might be relevant.

Find a team where you are a specialist, you'll earn a higher hourly rate and probably have a lot less stress.

Try to pair up with a few different groups until you find one that you love, then stick with that one.

Source: I did a lot of freelancing in the 2000's before joining up with a larger consultancy and the latter earned me probably 3x hourly rate, the projects were more interesting for bigger companies, and the coworkers became friends for life.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#25

Post by gustavohoa »

s1k3s wrote: post #14
juskrey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humiliating machine disguised as a freelance platform

I thought that too while looking over their "screening process", but now I'm really curious to see how hard it is to get in. Did you go through it?

I did, it was the default coding challenge you find in other companies, with a take home project for the last project. There's 4 steps, which can be time consuming.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#26

Post by blueadept111 »

breck wrote: post #24

I would recommend strongly against freelancing. Instead, try and join up with a remote team. YouTeam.com might be relevant. Find a team where you are a specialist, you'll earn a higher hourly rate and probably have a lot less stress. Try to pair up with a few different groups until you find one that you love, then stick with that one. Source: I did a lot of freelancing in the 2000's before joining up with a larger co…

Did you post the right url? YouTeam.com is a French website.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#27

Post by Stevvo »

krn wrote: post #18
Stevvo wrote: post #15

gitcoin.co I made $15k+ on there pretty easily before boring of web development and moving on to other things. One advantage is nearly all of it will be open source and show on your github profile.

> I made $15k+ on there pretty easily How did that translate into the hourly rate in your case?

~$100/hr, definitely there were some outliers, like a $500 issue that took 30 minutes, and others that got stuck in code review for weeks and took up a disproportionate amount of time.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#28

Post by balfirevic »

breck wrote: post #24

I would recommend strongly against freelancing. Instead, try and join up with a remote team. YouTeam.com might be relevant. Find a team where you are a specialist, you'll earn a higher hourly rate and probably have a lot less stress. Try to pair up with a few different groups until you find one that you love, then stick with that one. Source: I did a lot of freelancing in the 2000's before joining up with a larger co…

So you are currently employed full time? One of the biggest advantages of freelancing would seem to be the flexibility of working hours and the amount of work you take.

(Of course, as a freelancer you are running a small business, which may or may not be something you enjoy).

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#29

Post by lotyrin »

s1k3s wrote: post #14
juskrey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humiliating machine disguised as a freelance platform

I thought that too while looking over their "screening process", but now I'm really curious to see how hard it is to get in. Did you go through it?

I started it once when I was super under-utilized in my day job and was looking at ways to stay stimulated.

I figured I'd start out getting approved as being able to do useful work in a particular CMS in a particular language (Where I expected the acceptance criteria to be low (and the size/complexity of engagements to be low) -- customize a listing of content, build a custom form, customize how content is themed, etc...

After typical screener quiz etc. and a Skype interview, there was a take home challenge that resembled "build a minimalist custom ERP with and shoehorned inside of WordPress" , probably a good 20 hours of work minimum if you were using an MVC framework with decent developer experience, let alone trying to bang it together inside a CMS without much support infrastructure for such things.

I declined to complete the challenge.

I might have had better results going straight for a language + framework actually suited to creating custom apps, but it didn't give me a great impression.

Re: Ask HN: Where can I find remote or quality oriented freelancing work?

#30

Post by john_moscow »

ArtofSaf wrote: post #22

Here's something you can do: 1. Go to https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/PHP to see websites that use PHP 2. Focus on smaller to mid-size companies (large corporations likely have the tech team and contractors to cover almost of their needs) 3. (Optional) Search for each company on Linkedin and add managers with relevant roles (VIP of sales, project manager, marketing manager, etc.). The goal is to familiarize…

I happen to run a small company with a website built in PHP and I get several generic emails every couple of days from random individuals and fly-by-night "SEO consultancies", claiming that they "found issues on my website", "could help optimize website", "get us reach top Google positions" etc.

Most of this is auto-generated junk based on some keyword scrapping, but given the volume of it, I don't think it's possible to be taken seriously in that niche anymore.

I also get several "personalized emails" per week peddling software developers for hire, management trainings, factories in China, real estate investment opportunities and countless other junk, so I wouldn't count on that channel either. Anything that looks like a cold email goes straight to trash simply due to the volume of it.

IMO, a much better strategy would be to publish articles showing your expertise (i.e. comparing similar technologies, or sharing step-by-step instructions on accomplishing some familiar task), while mentioning that you do consulting in that area. People usually don't mind if you share them on Reddit/Linkedin/Twitter/HN and that can get a you a much better traction than cold-mailing people.

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