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Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#31

Post by leros »

akerl_ wrote: post #24
leros wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those companies were willing to hire me. Hopefully this doesn't arrogant, but those companies can't hire someone of my caliber. They're mediocre companies that can only hire average/mediocre people. I wouldn't want to join a company like that full time, but I could see it being fun to hop in and help them out with a big project. For example one company was a media company that you've probably heard of. For their next…

I’m not sure why you think a company that wanted to hire you for a leadership role would pay you as a free-lancer to do that role. Generally consultant and full-time hiring pipelines and roles are fully separate, for a variety of reasons. Also, just in case it wasn’t obvious, this comment does read as extremely arrogant. A company wanted to hire you, you didn’t want to work there because they’re “average/mediocre”, s…

I think that because that's exactly what I was discussing and doing with multiple companies.

The only reason I never got into serious compensation talks is that I was just testing out the waters to see if my contacts could help me find interesting work.

I did actually do some small and limited architectural design projects / tech leadership projects (think 40 hour total project time over several weeks) and I was able to get a rather high rate for that.

I'm not sure why people are saying contract leadership isn't a thing. My day job routinely hires temporary contract leadership for things outside our wheelhouse. The people we contract are people who would never work at our company because it's beneath them, but they're willing to take some short highly paid contracting jobs.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#32

Post by tdfx »

ushakov wrote: post #29
iainctduncan wrote: post #23

It depends what you mean by contracting - which can be anything from "an employee who gets no benefits so a bit more money" to freelancing. If you're looking for ongoing part-time contracting, I have successfully landed multiple contracting jobs by applying to places that were looking for full time work, for whom my skills were an exceptionally good fit, and saying "I know you weren't thinking of part-time remote con…

why do the employers prefer hiring rather than contracting?

Speaking as an employer, availability is important. If you're only working 15-20 hours a week for me, you've surely got other commitments that are occupying your mind and time. I've also seen many people doing part-time contracting take on more than they can handle, either moonlighting part-time from their full-time job or taking on too many simultaneous gigs. I've done this myself as a contractor, so I understand why it's happening, but as the employer I don't want to be on the receiving end.

I still hire part-time contractors for things, but for anything that's time sensitive or availability is a concern, I prefer to have a full-time employee.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#33

Post by ushakov »

jollybean wrote: post #27
leros wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it mostly finding your own clients? I did a bit of asking around last year and I found several opportunities where companies have small average quality engineering teams who need someone to lead an effort in something like a product manager and engineering architect role. Those sounded interesting, though I did not follow up. My main fear is pay. Ideally, I'd like to be able to make at least $300/hr. I have no ide…

$300/hr is the same as $600K/year. As a manager, who are you going to pay that kind of rate to? Why would someone hire a contractor at that rate, when they could hire the top tier Google Engineers? $200-300/hr rates are usually for 'expertise' style inputs - it's where you have industry leading or arcane knowledge in your field, and you bill for your insight, which might just be a few hours. A lawyer who specializes…

hey, could you check my website (in my profile) and estimate my hourly rate?

Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#34

Post by jollybean »

akerl_ wrote: post #24
leros wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those companies were willing to hire me. Hopefully this doesn't arrogant, but those companies can't hire someone of my caliber. They're mediocre companies that can only hire average/mediocre people. I wouldn't want to join a company like that full time, but I could see it being fun to hop in and help them out with a big project. For example one company was a media company that you've probably heard of. For their next…

I’m not sure why you think a company that wanted to hire you for a leadership role would pay you as a free-lancer to do that role. Generally consultant and full-time hiring pipelines and roles are fully separate, for a variety of reasons. Also, just in case it wasn’t obvious, this comment does read as extremely arrogant. A company wanted to hire you, you didn’t want to work there because they’re “average/mediocre”, s…

It's not arrogant if it's true, it's just candid.

We would never communicate things like that - that would be arrogant, but if he's giving us the reality, then it's fine.

That said - the 'Red Flag' to me is that someone things they are going to 'contract' and 'help out a bit' and 'fix their architecture'.

This seems worse the a bit glib, it seems upside down.

This seems like someone who might be a good engineer and who has worked on good teams ... but doesn't have the maturity to understand how these projects tend to unfold.

'Fixing a Broken Project' has to be the most scary thing in software and in most cases it's not doable.

Teaching some best practices - yes. Helping to identify problems - yes. Maybe slicing off a few obvious things, sure - i.e. maybe they need a caching strategy.

But when 'Thing are Wrong' there are usually a lot of problems and 99% of the time, someone thinks they can hire a 'Savior' to come in and fix it. The 'Savior', offered a pile of money is likely to buy into their own ability to be the 'Savior'.

But the psychological development from those frothy heights, as the realization sets in that they're crashing on the rock of Scylla ... well there has to be a good German word for that.

We should try to recognize the variety of inputs that may have created what resulted in seemingly an 'architecture problem' when that might not be the source of the conundrum. A team of 'mediocre people' will probably only ever be capable of doing something to a certain calibre. The Winnipeg Symphony will never sound as good as the NY Philharmonic, College Basketball teams are not competitive with Pro Teams etc..

Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#35

Post by nickjj »

Having done contract work for ~20 years without using any platforms, I would say start locally to find clients. It'll be harder now due to Covid but with no network or online presence beforehand no one will know you exist.

The long haul would be to start blogging about what you plan to do contract work for and build up an audience but this may take years to materialize.

Initially I wouldn't worry about business cards, resumes, paid ads or anything like that. Just focus on things that will help folks make more money. That's really what it boils down to. For a lot of software development related gigs not too many people hiring contract workers care about formal education or certificates. It's a matter of they pay you $X but you return a multiple of $X in value to their business.

For pricing yourself, I think that'll depend on what you plan to do contract work for. For a quick and dirty ballpark you could take your salary hourly rate and add 30-50%. That's because it's usually substantially cheaper to hire contract workers since there's no health benefits or major costs of hiring. Plus you typically go in to address a specific issue so it's efficient to hire a contract worker for let's say 2 months vs a full time salary with yearly raises, 401k matching, etc.. Your taxes are also going to be more complicated as a contract worker if you live in the US. These are a few things to consider when pricing yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#37

Post by leros »

jollybean wrote: post #27
leros wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it mostly finding your own clients? I did a bit of asking around last year and I found several opportunities where companies have small average quality engineering teams who need someone to lead an effort in something like a product manager and engineering architect role. Those sounded interesting, though I did not follow up. My main fear is pay. Ideally, I'd like to be able to make at least $300/hr. I have no ide…

$300/hr is the same as $600K/year. As a manager, who are you going to pay that kind of rate to? Why would someone hire a contractor at that rate, when they could hire the top tier Google Engineers? $200-300/hr rates are usually for 'expertise' style inputs - it's where you have industry leading or arcane knowledge in your field, and you bill for your insight, which might just be a few hours. A lawyer who specializes…

My day job company pays upwards of $1000/hr to short-term contract leadership people. I guess it's really more consulting than contracting but the lines seem pretty blurry based on what I've seen. Based on what I've seen for senior/principal engineering contracting, I'd say $500/hr is completely realistic, so my goal of $300 feels realistic. Perhaps I'm in a weird sector of the industry or something, but I don't think so.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#39

Post by ushakov »

tdfx wrote: post #32
ushakov wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do the employers prefer hiring rather than contracting?

Speaking as an employer, availability is important. If you're only working 15-20 hours a week for me, you've surely got other commitments that are occupying your mind and time. I've also seen many people doing part-time contracting take on more than they can handle, either moonlighting part-time from their full-time job or taking on too many simultaneous gigs. I've done this myself as a contractor, so I understand wh…

ok, but what if you need to complete a task and cannot assign or find employees in a reasonable amount of time? would you then consider contracting the task?

Re: Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

#40

Post by sillysaurusx »

leros wrote: post #37
jollybean wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$300/hr is the same as $600K/year. As a manager, who are you going to pay that kind of rate to? Why would someone hire a contractor at that rate, when they could hire the top tier Google Engineers? $200-300/hr rates are usually for 'expertise' style inputs - it's where you have industry leading or arcane knowledge in your field, and you bill for your insight, which might just be a few hours. A lawyer who specializes…

My day job company pays upwards of $1000/hr to short-term contract leadership people. I guess it's really more consulting than contracting but the lines seem pretty blurry based on what I've seen. Based on what I've seen for senior/principal engineering contracting, I'd say $500/hr is completely realistic, so my goal of $300 feels realistic. Perhaps I'm in a weird sector of the industry or something, but I don't thin…

Holy jeezus, I was worried I was flexing by mentioning my $200/hr rate. Dude or dudette, if you feel that’s realistic, the half Jew side of me is rooting for you. Godspeed.

$1,000/hr, what the fuck. I don’t think I’ve dropped a legit WTF on HN before. That’s a 40hr a week rate for at least a month, right? Otherwise you’re probably using the wrong comparison to what you want. But still… sure wouldn’t take many hours at that level. What do they do?

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