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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?

#31

Post by arcturus17 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #21
akor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I personally don't find PHP attractive at all, but in recent months I've been very surprised to meet some devs who are making absolute bank with it (including WordPress devs). I think success as a freelancer depends a lot on being a good salesman, delivering value to your client, and being efficient. Whether the end product (eg, a WP installation) is "quality" in terms of software engineering might be highly debatable... I can totally understand why a Scala dev wouldn't want to touch PHP projects with a 10-meter pole, but that doesn't mean that you can't be highly successful with it.

Personally, I can code in a few languages but I build mostly in JS. I understand why some engineers would not want to work with it and I'm not personally offended by that, but I think ES6+ can provide a great dev experience. And while there's certainly a lot of crappy jobs in the space, there also seems to be really interesting work to be found around Node / React / Vue etc.

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

#32

Post by fabflying »

cameldrv wrote: post #7

Show up to PHP meetups in your area if you're near a largish metro. Go for beers afterward, meet the people, mention what you are doing. Keep doing this and wait and you'll likely start getting work coming your way that has a completely different category of client than you'd see on some sort of marketplace.

This... every meetup I attend has people looking for help

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

#33

Post by preinheimer »

john_moscow wrote: post #30
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 possibl…

I'm in a very similar boat to you, I think I've deleted three messages this morning...

But it would still be possible to get my attention. The average message is something along the lines of Hi {name}. I was at your site {domain} and had some ideas. [the same copy every single person gets]

If instead someone emailed me something that showed that they not only knew what domain they were mailing but understood what our product offered and how maybe they could help I'd probably keep reading. For me that might look like:

----

Hey Paul,

I love what you've built with WonderProxy, this GeoIP testing niche you've carved out is super interesting, I wish I'd known about it years ago! We had this horrible integration that refused to load in Germany but worked perfectly in our office, debugging over Remote Desktop at 3am still haunts my dreams.

Anyways i'm actually wondering if there's a way we can work together. I'm a senior PHP developer and I've got a lot of experience building OKTA integrations. It looks like you've started offering SAML, but let me tell you OKTA is like the secret sauce to get loved by IT departments. Your team is likely capable of building this in-house, but why spend tens or hundreds of hours learning the ins and outs of this stuff when I can build it in half the time with a quarter of the bugs :).

let me know if you're interested

----

I'm not saying I'd hire that gal/guy, but if it was something I wanted we would at least have a conversation. I'd optimize for quality messages to qualified companies, rather than quantity anything.

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

#34

Post by PorterDuff »

blueadept111 wrote: post #26
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.

Dammit, it's like they have a different word for everything.

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

#35

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

arcturus17 wrote: post #31
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I personally don't find PHP attractive at all, but in recent months I've been very surprised to meet some devs who are making absolute bank with it (including WordPress devs). I think success as a freelancer depends a lot on being a good salesman, delivering value to your client, and being efficient. Whether the end product (eg, a WP installation) is "quality" in terms of software engineering might be highly debatabl…

WP is such a dumpster fire it's unlikely that PHP skills are going to become obsolete any time soon.

From a freelance/consultancy niche it's almost ideal. Demand is high, and employers/clients are likely to have relatively simple requirements (i.e. a brochure/catalog site with a bit of a backend, not a huge industrial db that needs to run at planetary scale backed by a devops machine.)

It's not a personal interest but it seems to work well for people who can stand out from the pack, even a little.

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

#37

Post by arcturus17 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #35
arcturus17 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't find PHP attractive at all, but in recent months I've been very surprised to meet some devs who are making absolute bank with it (including WordPress devs). I think success as a freelancer depends a lot on being a good salesman, delivering value to your client, and being efficient. Whether the end product (eg, a WP installation) is "quality" in terms of software engineering might be highly debatabl…

WP is such a dumpster fire it's unlikely that PHP skills are going to become obsolete any time soon. From a freelance/consultancy niche it's almost ideal. Demand is high, and employers/clients are likely to have relatively simple requirements (i.e. a brochure/catalog site with a bit of a backend, not a huge industrial db that needs to run at planetary scale backed by a devops machine.) It's not a personal interest bu…

Yea agree, that’s what I’ve learnt in the last few months after years of thinking “this shit can’t be profitable”.

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

#38

Post by breck »

blueadept111 wrote: post #26
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.

Whoops! Dot io

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

#39

Post by breck »

balfirevic wrote: post #28
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).

This was years ago.

> One of the biggest advantages of freelancing would seem to be the flexibility of working hours and the amount of work you take.

Agreed. You have to find the right shop. Basically you are looking for a smallish consultancy (probably 10 - 40 people) that has a steady stream of clients but variable workload and needs people that can come on and off projects on demand. San Francisco had a lot of these types of places in the 2000's. Probably rarer in other places, but I imagine a decade later with the improvement in remote work technologies there might be a lot of these globally now.

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

#40

Post by ethanwillis »

gabor_biro wrote: post #11

I've been using upwork.com for a few months now and I'm getting regular projects as a mobile developer. Interesting ones too, sometimes to patch up an existing project, sometimes to start a new one. It took roughly a month though until the first clients started responding to my applications. Create a sexy profile and be patient.

I can vouch for upwork. The initial warmup phase can be a little rough, but if you use it consistently it's really good. I've probably billed 20-30k in work on there part-time.
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