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Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#211

Post by giarc »

lazyant wrote: post #210
giarc wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't related to OP questions but moreso to your situation. I work in a hospital and I was talking to an occupational health safety advisor (probably makes CAD $80k/yr). He told me he was an ED physician in his home country of Colombia for 25 years. He can't practice here in Canada without going through full training again. He would make $300k/yr or more if he was able to practice. I asked him what was different…

Sorry but please: Colombia, not Columbia. (And to the comment, yes I've seen this kind of situation in Canada).

Sorry, used to writing British Columbia. Will edit.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#212

Post by xondono »

3pt14159 wrote: post #21

What I've seen that has worked in the past is this: Pick an open source project that is in a language that is respectable and commit to contributing to it for three or four months. Full time. Try to make sure that your written English is clear and professional in things like PRs. Try to keep your code as clean and as well tested and linted as possible. Once the core team gets to know you a bit you'll be able to reach…

This sounds like a “follow your dream” pitch.

Great for the survivors, bad for 99.99% that did not make it. I’d be curious to know how many people tried that got nothing for their effort.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#213

Post by dheera »

latenightcoding wrote: post #59
3pt14159 wrote: post #21

What I've seen that has worked in the past is this: Pick an open source project that is in a language that is respectable and commit to contributing to it for three or four months. Full time. Try to make sure that your written English is clear and professional in things like PRs. Try to keep your code as clean and as well tested and linted as possible. Once the core team gets to know you a bit you'll be able to reach…

This is bad advice for someone who has only been coding for 3 years (according to OP). People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to open source projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly. It is way more common to see brilliant developers make $0 from open source projects.

> could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly

Honestly most of those companies don't look at their resumes. Back when I was in college I submitted my resume to one of those companies no less than about 10 times.

And then suddenly out of the blue some PM at that company reached out to me saying they came across my website and saw a couple cool projects and asked if I would be interested in sending them a resume. (Yes, I did, and I got the offer, but ended up later declining it since I wanted to do a PhD.)

But that shows that clearly the previous 10 times my resume went nowhere.

In most tech companies any employee reasonably high up on the ladder can more or less whisk you into the interview process if they know you or your work and it's strong. Whether or not you get the job depends on the interview, but you'll at least almost surely get the interview. Multiple merged PRs on an open source project by that company is a near 100% ticket to the interview. Don't underestimate the power of knowing people, even if you are an amazing coder.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#214

Post by neil_s »

3pt14159 wrote: post #70
latenightcoding wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad advice for someone who has only been coding for 3 years (according to OP). People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to open source projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly. It is way more common to see brilliant developers make $0 from open source projects.

Not true. One of the people I'm referring to was under 25 when he landed a $500k USD remote job at a FAANG company. I'd share more, but too many people would figure out who it is. He didn't get that offer by applying directly. The point is not that OP is going to make $500k a year. The point is to be smart about the language and project that you pick and to be reliable, professional, and open to learning quickly and…

As a 26-year old at Google, this example sounds surprising to me. I'd rule out Amazon, Apple and Netflix, and you'd have to be ~L6 to get $500K at Facebook or Google, which I don't see any of them hiring fresh grads at no matter how good/famous they are, and definitely not remotely.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#215

Post by katsura »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #198
andreygrehov wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how does the interview look like for these people? Do they still have to go through all the coding/system design rounds?

I also would assume and sincerely hope the stupid tests around "can this person write software?" are eliminated when you have people on the team _using_ software the candidate wrote.

Not at google: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#216

Post by ken »

fxtentacle wrote: post #58
wokwokwok wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue work for peanuts and work for free are not significantly distinct on many freelance sites. Unless you're suggesting that there's a meaningful difference in doing 40 hours of work for 5 bucks and working for free?

There is if you get non-monetary benefits such as a 5 star review pushing you up in the rankings, thereby making it much easier to get future bookings at higher prices. Edit: conceptually, it's nore like an unpaid internship. I know someone who got a highly paid job by first doing it for free for 3 months to prove his skills, as he was lacking formal certifications Edit2: I honestly don't get why this is being downvo…

> I know someone who got a highly paid job by first doing it for free for 3 months to prove his skills

And I know dozens of people who got burned by being talked into working for "exposure".

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#217

Post by justaguyhere »

theblackcat1002 wrote: post #175
nurettin wrote: post #158

@noddly I have some actionable advice. You are in an excellent spot. week 1, 2 maybe 3: search for popular android applications that have low ratings that you can implement, sort them whichever way you prefer, do some wireframes and plan your first project. Do not spend less than 3 weeks. Do not spend more. Week 4: This is the most important week. Figure out the tech you will be using. Make lots of demos projects, fa…

This is actually what I did, but with web application and services. I tried app development in the one of my first few projects but finally gave up for web apps because it allows faster trial and error ( mainly I can push changes in UI and UX faster to a wider audience ). My take away is that stay away from "hot" topics ( news, game app ) unless you have a solid background because you need a really polish product to…

Can you give an example of a web app/service that you created? Are these SaaS or content sites monetized by ads/affiliate etc?

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#218

Post by preben »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #98
latenightcoding wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad advice for someone who has only been coding for 3 years (according to OP). People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to open source projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly. It is way more common to see brilliant developers make $0 from open source projects.

3pt14159 isn't saying that noddly should try and make money doing open source. Noddly should gain the respect of an open source maintainer. These maintainers receive lots of requests for job openings and contract positions. Most of it is just recruiter spam, but some of it is real and the maintainer would be happy to forward them on to someone they respect, along with a recommendation. It's that recommendation that's…

What kind of open source projects are useful to go for? This seems like by far the best way to spend a few months. I know Python best but I don't mind learning a new language.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#219

Post by dbancajas »

3pt14159 wrote: post #125
levesque wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd share more, but too many people would figure out who it is. Feels like your example is very specific and would not generalize to the average programmer.

I know many people that did this. Not all of them are making $500k a year, but here is some more examples: - Multiple Rails contributors, one that turned core. Those folks are making well north of $200k a year. - Ember contributors or contributors to projects around ember-data or similar. Multiple people making north of $200k a year. - A guy that dove into contributing to Postgres. He wouldn't even share how much his…

> ike most people who play a sport don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. For most people, it’s either a hobby, or a byproduct of the efforts they go to in their day job (i.e. fixes to their company’s private fork of a FOSS project, that can then sometimes be upstreamed.)

What would be good OS projects related to C++/Python that can generate the figures you're mentioning? Asking for myself here.

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